Search results for ""currency""

The exchange rate is the most important price in any economy, since it affects all other prices. Exchange rates are set, either directly or indirectly, by government policy. Exchange rates are also central to the global economy, for they profoundly influence all international economic activity. Despite the critical role of exchange rate policy, there are few definitive explanations of why governments choose the currency policies they do. Filled with in-depth cases and examples, Currency Politics presents a comprehensive analysis of the politics surrounding exchange rates. Identifying the motivations for currency policy preferences on the part of industries seeking to influence politicians, Jeffry Frieden shows how each industry's characteristics--including its exposure to currency risk and the price effects of exchange rate movements--determine those preferences. Frieden evaluates the accuracy of his theoretical arguments in a variety of historical and geographical settings: he looks at the politics of the gold standard, particularly in the United States, and he examines the political economy of European monetary integration. He also analyzes the politics of Latin American currency policy over the past forty years, and focuses on the daunting currency crises that have frequently debilitated Latin American nations, including Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. With an ambitious mix of narrative and statistical investigation, Currency Politics clarifies the political and economic determinants of exchange rate policies.

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A groundbreaking collection on currency derivatives, including pricing theory and hedging applications. "David DeRosa has assembled an outstanding collection of works on foreign exchange derivatives. It surely will become required reading for both students and option traders."-Mark B. Garman President, Financial Engineering Associates, Inc. Emeritus Professor, University of California, Berkeley. "A comprehensive selection of the major references in currency option pricing."-Nassim Taleb. Senior trading advisor, Paribas Author, Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options. "A useful compilation of articles on currency derivatives, going from the essential to the esoteric."-Philippe Jorion Professor of Finance, University of California, Irvine Author, Value at Risk: The New Benchmark for Controlling Market Risk. Every investment practitioner knows of the enormous impact that the Black-Scholes option pricing model has had on investment and derivatives markets. The success of the theory in understanding options on equity, equity index, and fixed- income markets is common knowledge. Yet, comparatively few professionals are aware that the theory's greatest successes may have been in the derivatives market for foreign exchange. Perhaps this is not surprising because the foreign exchange market is a professional trading arena that is closed virtually to all but institutional participants. Nevertheless, the world's currency markets have proven to be an almost ideal testing and development ground for new derivative instruments. This book contains many of the most important scientific papers that collectively constitute the core of modern currency derivatives theory. What is remarkable is that each and every one of these papers has found its place in the real world of currency derivatives trading. As such, the contributing authors to this volume can properly claim to have been codevelopers of this new derivatives market, having worked in de facto partnership with the professional traders in the dealing rooms of London, New York, Tokyo, and Singapore. The articles in this book span the entire currency derivatives field: forward and futures contracts, vanilla currency puts and calls, models for American exercise currency options, options on currencies with bounded exchange rate regimes, currency futures options, the term and strike structure of implied volatility, jump and stochastic volatility option pricing models, barrier options, Asian options, and various sorts of quanto options.

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Is conventional money simply a discourse? Is it merely a socially constructed unit of exchange? If money is not an actual thing, are people then free to make collective agreements to use other forms of currency that might work more effectively for them? Proponents of “better money” argue that they have created currencies that value people more than profitability, ensuring that human needs are met with reasonable costs and decent wages—and supporting local economies that emphasize local sustainability. How did proponents develop these new economies? Are their claims valid? Grappling with these questions and more, Money and Liberation examines the experiences of groups who have tried to build a more equitable world by inventing new forms of money. Presenting in-depth profiles of the trading networks that have been constructed both historically and more recently, including Local Exchange Trading Schemes (England), Green Dollars (New Zealand), Talente (Hungary), and the barter system in Argentina, Peter North shows how the use of currency has been redefined as part of political action, revealing surprising political ambiguity and a nuanced understanding of the potential and limits on alternative currencies as a resistance practice. Peter North is lecturer in geography at the University of Liverpool.

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Using the theme of Currency to invite reflection on the contemporary power of the photograph to relay and relate meaning across distance, the Triennial of Photography Hamburg explores the value of photography in the 21st century. The extension of this economic term to art and visual culture allows for a sustained engagement with photography and its relationship to value-making, canon-making, access, circulation, and knowledge production. At a time when the production, distribution, and consumption of photographic images has become ubiquitous and we have learned to structure our contemporary world through a lens, the digital image has become the currency of exchange on social platforms. Fostering interdisciplinary dialogue, the Critical Reader Lucid Knowledge: The Currency of the Photographic Image gathers international perspectives that reflect on how photography shapes today’s narratives, as well as our perception and experience of the world.

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Colonialism persists in many African countries due to the continuation of imperial monetary policy. This is the little-known account of the CFA Franc and economic imperialism. The CFA Franc was created in 1945, binding fourteen African states and split into two monetary zones. Why did French colonial authorities create it and how does it work? Why was independence not extended to monetary sovereignty for former French colonies? Through an exploration of the genesis of the currency and an examination of how the economic system works, the authors seek to answer these questions and more. As protests against the colonial currency grow, the need for myth-busting on the CFA Franc is vital and this exposé of colonial infrastructure proves that decolonisation is unfinished business.

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The global financial crisis in 2008 brought central banking to the centre stage, prompting questions about the role of national central banks and - in Europe - of the multi-country European Central Bank. What can central banks do, and what are their limitations? How have they performed? Currency, Credit and Crisis seeks to provide a coherent perspective on the functions of a central bank in a small country by assessing the way in which Ireland's financial crisis from 2010 to 2013 was handled. Drawing on his experiences as Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland and in research and policy work at the World Bank, Patrick Honohan offers a detailed analytical narrative of the origins of the crisis and of policy makers' conduct during its most fraught moments.

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Today's global financial markets are every bit as vicious psychologically, and sometimes even physically, as the battles the great warriors throughout history have faced. Just as the warriors of old rode out to battle with the confidence and knowledge to conquer new lands and foes, so do the warriors of the market who thrive on the battleground of the trading floor. In Warrior Trading, Clifford Bennett, one of today's leading currency forecasters, outlines a path to trading success by highlighting the characteristics, the knowledge and skills, and the psychological state of mind required to be a true warrior trader. You'll be introduced to some fresh and unique perspectives regarding the markets, by looking at fundamental and technical analysis, as well as discovering how best to trade within the markets as an individual. Most importantly, you'll learn how to take advantage of those moments when the perceptions of most traders (the herd) are at odds with the underlying reality-moments when fear, greed, and other emotions wreak havoc on the ordinary trader's ability to operate objectively. Divided into three comprehensive parts, Warrior Trading will show you how to develop the focus, attitude, and mental discipline of a top trader so that you can make the most out of your time in the markets.

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Explores the role of performance in US presidential politics Combines theoretical argument and original interviews with leaders in U.S. presidential speechwriting Proposes a new perspective on the contemporary rise of mainstreamed populism by exploring features of populist-style politics through the lens of distrust Interdisciplinary exploration of the role and function of performance in representative democracy that fully integrates politics and theatre/performance perspectives Focuses on U.S. presidential politics since Watergate, whilst contextualizing recent developments through historical case studies from the French Revolution to early and turn-of-the-century American presidents The erosion of trust in politicians and political institutions is a major challenge in early twenty-first-century democratic politics, not least in the United States. This book argues that, rather than being a flaw or corruption, the potential for political distrust must be understood as an essential feature of representative democracy because representation works through performance. The book explores performance as a constellation of factors: scripts, embodiment, ideas of selfhood, and historical norms and ideals. It draws on key scholarship of political representation, rhetoric, and populism; on theories of performativity, theatricality, and acting; and on interviews the author conducted with political speechwriters spanning presidential administrations and campaigns from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama to demonstrate both that distrust is inherent in representative politics and that in mainstreamed populism distrust becomes a focal point around which the theatre of politics revolves.

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This book is for anyone who is interested in the economic analysis of the future of the international monetary system and the USD, and the rising importance of the RMB. It points out the unsustainability of the dollar standard in the long run, that China has unique incentives to internationalize its currency, and how Hong Kong plays an important role. It explains the real reasons for China to internationalize its currency, including using external commitments to force financial sector reforms ('daobi' in Chinese). It applies economic theories accessible to laymen to establish that financial development and openness are crucial for RMB internationalization to succeed, and that greater exchange rate volatility is inevitable due to the 'open-economy trilemma'. Employing the 'gravity model', the book predicts quantitatively that the RMB is likely to be a distant third payment currency after the USD and the euro, but surpassing the Japanese yen in the next decade.

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Many of the world's major economies boast dominant international currencies. Not so for China. Its renminbi has lagged far behind the pound, the euro, and the dollar in global circulation—and for good reason. China has long privileged economic policies that have fueled development at the expense of the renminbi's growth, and it has become clear that the underpowered currency is threatening China's future. The nation's leaders now face the daunting task of strengthening the currency without losing control of the nation's economy or risking total collapse. How are they approaching this challenge?In The People's Money, Paola Subacchi introduces readers to China's monetary system, mapping its evolution over the past century and, particularly, its transformation since Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978. Subacchi revisits the policies that fostered the country's economic rise while at the same time purposefully creating a currency of little use beyond China's borders. She shows the key to understanding China's economic predicament lies in past and future strategies for the renminbi. The financial turbulence following the global crisis of 2008, coupled with China's ambitions as a global creditor and chief economic power, has forced the nation to reckon with the limited international circulation of the renminbi. Increasing the currency's reach will play a major role in securing China's future.

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This book shows how early economic ideas structured Christian thought and society, giving crucial insight into why money holds such power in the West. Examining the religious and theological sources of money's power, it shows how early Christian thinkers borrowed ancient notions of money and economic exchange from the Roman Empire as a basis for their new theological arguments. Monetary metaphors and images, including the minting of coins and debt slavery, provided frameworks for theologians to explain what happens in salvation. God became an economic administrator, for instance, and Christ functioned as a currency to purchase humanity's freedom. Such ideas, in turn, provided models for pastors and Christian emperors as they oversaw both resources and people, which led to new economic conceptions of state administration of populations and conferred a godly aura on the use of money. Divine Currency argues that this longstanding association of money with divine activity has contributed over the centuries to money's ever increasing significance, justifying various forms of politics that manage citizens along the way. Devin Singh's account sheds unexpected light on why we live in a world where nothing seems immune from the price mechanism.

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This book shows how early economic ideas structured Christian thought and society, giving crucial insight into why money holds such power in the West. Examining the religious and theological sources of money's power, it shows how early Christian thinkers borrowed ancient notions of money and economic exchange from the Roman Empire as a basis for their new theological arguments. Monetary metaphors and images, including the minting of coins and debt slavery, provided frameworks for theologians to explain what happens in salvation. God became an economic administrator, for instance, and Christ functioned as a currency to purchase humanity's freedom. Such ideas, in turn, provided models for pastors and Christian emperors as they oversaw both resources and people, which led to new economic conceptions of state administration of populations and conferred a godly aura on the use of money. Divine Currency argues that this longstanding association of money with divine activity has contributed over the centuries to money's ever increasing significance, justifying various forms of politics that manage citizens along the way. Devin Singh's account sheds unexpected light on why we live in a world where nothing seems immune from the price mechanism.

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Fines and monetary damages account for the majority of legal sanctions across the whole spectrum of legal governance. Money is, in key respects, the primary tool law has to achieve compliance. Yet money has largely been ignored by social analyses of law, and especially by social theory.The Currency of Justice examines the differing rationalities, aims and assumptions built into money’s deployment in diverse legal fields and sanctions. This raises major questions about the extent to which money appears as an abstract universal or whether it takes on more particular meanings when deployed in various areas of law. Indeed, money may be unique in that it can take on the meanings of punishment, compensation, denunciation or regulation. The Currency of Justice examines the implications of the ‘monetization of justice’ as life is increasingly regulated through this single medium. Money not only links diverse domains of law; it also links legal sanctions to other monetary techniques which govern everyday life. Like these, the concern with monetary sanctions is not who pays, but that money is paid. Money is perhaps the only form of legal sanction where the burden need not be borne by the wrongdoer. In this respect, this book explores the view that contemporary governance is less concerned with disciplining individuals and more concerned with regulating distributions and flows of behaviours and the harms and costs linked with these.

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"SAP Foreign Currency Revaluation-regulations, its impact, and what it takes to implement it in SAP-is a single handbook that simplifies a complex and daunting task of currency valuation for SAP and other ERP implementers. A must-read!" -Kalpesh Khandhadia, SAP Consultant, Linksoft-IT Inc. "Following the process presented in this book, we eliminated the hours we spent each month manually reviewing and adjusting our global currency financial statements. Thank you Susanne Finke, for making this complicated topic understandable!" -Ron Roberts, Process Lead, Financial Systems, Hollister Inc. "It's great to see all the foreign currency information captured in one place and spelled out so clearly. Great job!" -Nadean L. Moore, SAP FI Consultant, Moore Consulting "This SAP Foreign Currency Revaluation book . . . covers the necessary SAP tables and transactions for revaluation and provides excellent examples of the SAP entries. A well-written book." -Dave Paz, SAP Consultant, DLP Consulting LLC With essential information on the proper rules and regulations needed to comply with FAS 52, SAP Foreign Currency Revaluation: FAS 52 and GAAP Requirements is a valuable reference for controllers, CFOs, IT and accounting managers, and SAP consultants who are involved in FAS 52 compliance projects, regardless of whether their companies are using SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, or proprietary software. Its detailed coverage of statutory requirements, business execution of currency revaluation in SAP, and SAP configuration walks readers through: * The U.S. accounting statutory requirements, net income, organizational, and financial consolidation impacts * An overview of currency revaluation with discussion of stock transfer and tax implications * FAS 52 requirements for currency exchange rates and translation * Corporate standards for G/L indicators that are impacted by currency revaluation * Three methods available to execute currency revaluation and their differences * One of the newer ways the SAP R/3 software provides users to execute currency revaluation * The SAP configuration to implement currency revaluation * Setting up custom variants to view the critical fields used in the currency revaluation

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The exchange rate is the most important price in any economy, since it affects all other prices. Exchange rates are set, either directly or indirectly, by government policy. Exchange rates are also central to the global economy, for they profoundly influence all international economic activity. Despite the critical role of exchange rate policy, there are few definitive explanations of why governments choose the currency policies they do. Filled with in-depth cases and examples, Currency Politics presents a comprehensive analysis of the politics surrounding exchange rates. Identifying the motivations for currency policy preferences on the part of industries seeking to influence politicians, Jeffry Frieden shows how each industry's characteristics--including its exposure to currency risk and the price effects of exchange rate movements--determine those preferences. Frieden evaluates the accuracy of his theoretical arguments in a variety of historical and geographical settings: he looks at the politics of the gold standard, particularly in the United States, and he examines the political economy of European monetary integration. He also analyzes the politics of Latin American currency policy over the past forty years, and focuses on the daunting currency crises that have frequently debilitated Latin American nations, including Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. With an ambitious mix of narrative and statistical investigation, Currency Politics clarifies the political and economic determinants of exchange rate policies.

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Many scholars have noted the role of China's demand for silver in the emergence of the modern world. This book discusses the interaction of this demand and the early-nineteenth-century Latin American independence movements, changes in the world economy, the resulting disruptions in the Qing dynasty, and the transformation from the High Qing to modern China. Man-houng Lin shows how the disruption in the world's silver supply caused by the turmoil in Latin America and subsequent changes in global markets led to the massive outflow of silver from China and the crisis of the Qing empire. During the first stage of this dynastic crisis, traditional ideas favoring plural centers of power became more popular than they ever had been. As the crisis developed, however, statist ideas came to the fore. Even though the Qing survived with the resumption of the influx of Latin American silver, its status relative to Japan in the East Asian order slipped. The statist inclination, although moderated to a degree in the modern period, is still ascendant in China today. These changes—Qing China's near-collapse, the beginning of its eclipse by Japan in the East Asian order, and shifting notions of the proper relationship between state and market and between state and society—led to "China upside down."

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In 2010, the 2008 global financial crisis morphed into the “eurocrisis.” It has not abated. The 19 countries of Europe that share the euro currency—the eurozone—have been rocked by economic stagnation and debt crises. Some countries have been in depression for years while the governing powers of the eurozone have careened from emergency to emergency, most notably in Greece. In The Euro, Nobel Prize–winning economist and best-selling author Joseph E. Stiglitz dismantles the prevailing consensus around what ails Europe, demolishing the champions of austerity while offering a series of plans that can rescue the continent—and the world—from further devastation. Hailed by its architects as a lever that would bring Europe together and promote prosperity, the euro has done the opposite. As Stiglitz persuasively argues, the crises revealed the shortcomings of the euro. Europe’s stagnation and bleak outlook are a direct result of the fundamental challenges in having a diverse group of countries share a common currency—the euro was flawed at birth, with economic integration outpacing political integration. Stiglitz shows how the current structure promotes divergence rather than convergence. The question then is: Can the euro be saved? After laying bare the European Central Bank’s misguided inflation-only mandate and explaining how eurozone policies, especially toward the crisis countries, have further exposed the zone’s flawed design, Stiglitz outlines three possible ways forward: fundamental reforms in the structure of the eurozone and the policies imposed on the member countries; a well-managed end to the single-currency euro experiment; or a bold, new system dubbed the “flexible euro.” With its lessons for globalization in a world economy ever more deeply connected, The Euro is urgent and essential reading.

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This book ? written by leading academics and practitioners in the field ? brings together cutting edge research on exchange rate regime and monetary union issues. There is a particular focus on the implications for member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) which is itself working towards forming a monetary union for the Gulf States.The relatively dramatic movements in the US dollar in the recent past, and also in the early 1990s, have called the practice of pegging to the US dollar into question for a group of countries that predominantly rely on hydrocarbons as their primary export. The book considers the key issues which must be addressed by the GCC in trying to form a monetary union for the Gulf countries and also the rigid pegging of member states? currencies to the US dollar. The proposed monetary union raises clear issues in terms of the appropriateness of such a regime for these countries and whether, for example, the necessary institutional mechanisms are in place ahead of the proposed union. Currency Union and Exchange Rate Issues brings together the perspectives of a group of experts who focus on these important issues, and provide analysis of the policy options. Academics, policymakers and postgraduates in international finance will find much to consider and learn from in this informative book.

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When Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz posed this question in the original edition of The Euro, he lent much-needed clarity to a global debate that continues to this day. The euro was supposed to unify Europe and promote prosperity; in fact, it has done just the opposite. To save the European project, the euro may have to be abandoned. Since 2010, many of the 19 countries of Europe that share the euro currency—the eurozone—have been rocked by debt crises and mired in lasting stagnation, and the divergence between stronger and weaker economies has accelerated. In The Euro, Joseph E. Stiglitz explains precisely why the eurozone has performed so poorly, so different from the expectations at its launch: at the core of the failure is the structure of the eurozone itself, the rules by which it is governed. Stiglitz reveals three potential paths forward: drastic structural reforms, not of the individual countries, but of the eurozone; a well-managed dissolution of the euro; or a bold new system dubbed the “flexible euro.” With trenchant analysis—and brand new material on Brexit—The Euro is urgent and timely reading.

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In The Currency of Empire, Jonathan Barth explores the intersection of money and power in the early years of North American history, and he shows how the control of money informed English imperial action overseas. The export-oriented mercantile economy promoted by the English Crown, Barth argues, directed the plan for colonization, the regulation of colonial commerce, and the politics of empire. The imperial project required an orderly flow of gold and silver, and thus England's colonial regime required stringent monetary regulation. As Barth shows, money was also a flash point for resistance; many colonists acutely resented their subordinate economic station, desiring for their local economies a robust, secure, and uniform money supply. This placed them immediately at odds with the mercantilist laws of the empire and precipitated an imperial crisis in the 1670s, a full century before the Declaration of Independence. The Currency of Empire examines what were a series of explosive political conflicts in the seventeenth century and demonstrates how the struggle over monetary policy prefigured the patriot reaction to the Stamp Act and so-called Intolerable Acts on the eve of American independence. Thanks to generous funding from the Arizona State University and George Mason University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.

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The papers gathered in this volume explore the economic and social roles of exchange systems in past societies from a variety of different perspectives. Based on a broad range of individual case studies, the authors tackle problems surrounding the identification of (pre-monetary) currencies in the archaeological record. These concern the part played by weight measurement systems in their development, the changing role of objects as they shift between different spheres of exchange, e.g. from gifts to commodities, as well as wider issues regarding the role of exchange networks as agents of social and economic change. Among the specific questions the papers address is what happens when new objects of value are introduced into a system, or when existing objects go out of use, as well as how exchange systems react to events such as crises or the emergence of new polities and social constellations. One theme that unites most of the papers is the tension between what is introduced from the outside and changes that are driven by social transformations within a given group.

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Synopsis coming soon.......

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As globalization is redefining the field of corporate finance, international finance is now part and parcel of the basic literacy of any financial executive. This is why International Corporate Finance is a “must” text for upper-undergraduates, MBAs aspiring to careers in global financial services and budding finance professionals. International Corporate Finance offers thorough coverage of the international monetary system, international financing, foreign exchange risk management and cross-border valuation. Additionally, the book offers keen insight on how disintermediation, deregulation and securitization are re-shaping global capital markets. What is different about International Corporate Finance? Each chapter opens with a real-life mini-case to anchor theoretical concepts to managerial situations. Provides simple decision rules and “how to do” answers to key managerial issues. Cross-border Mergers & Acquisitions, Project Finance, Islamic Finance, Asian Banking & Finance are completely new chapters that no other textbooks currently cover. Accompanied with a comprehensive instructor support package which includes case studies, an Instructor’s Manual, PowerPoint slides, Multiple Choice Questions and more.

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The Forex Options Course is a practical, hands-on guide to understanding and trading forex options. Designed to build a trader's knowledge base in a step-by-step manner, this reliable resource moves from the straightforward to the more sophisticated with discussions of everything from basic plain vanilla calls and puts to intriguing first-generation exotic binary options. Written in a straightforward and accessible style, The Forex Options Course will help you develop the skills and strategies needed to succeed in today's dynamic forex market.

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A record of the Coinage of the Americas Conference (COAC) held in 1985. Contents : The Confederate Currency Reform of 1862, The CSA Banking Convention of 1861 and its Delegates, An Historian's View of the State Bank Notes, Collecting Trends in Obsolete American Currency, An Introduction to Obsoloete American Currency, The Financial Concerns of a Government Employee in the 1840s, The History of Development of 'America' as Symbolized by an American Indian Female, The Smillie Family: Banknote Artists, New York City Small Change Bills of 1814-1816, Currency in Crisis: America's Money 1840-1845, and Lynchburg (VA) City Paper Money of 1862.

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Metaphors of money have shaped theories of sexual psychology ever since Enlightenment doctors explained the mind-body as an 'animal economy' whose currency was desire, figured as a liquid form of energy that could be spent or saved, profitably invested or pleasurably squandered.In this erudite and groundbreaking book, David Bennett explores the power of economic language to mould both scientific and popular thinking about desire from the eighteenth century to the present, on topics as disparate as onanism and advertising, psychoanalysis and shopping, Christianity and communism, prostitution and revolution.The Currency of Desire combines intellectual history with modern critical theory to shed new light on the interactions between money and desire, homo oeconomicus and homo psychologicus.

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Why have the states of Europe agreed to create an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and a single European currency? What will decide the fate of this bold project? This book explains why monetary integration has deepened in Europe from the Bretton Woods era to the present day. McNamara argues that the development of a neoliberal economic policy consensus among European leaders in the years after the first oil crisis was crucial to stability in the European Monetary System and progress towards EMU. She identifies two factors, rising capital mobility and changing ideas about the government's proper role in monetary policymaking, as critical to the neoliberal consensus but warns that unresolved social tensions in this consensus may provoke a political backlash against EMU and its neoliberal reforms. McNamara's findings are relevant not only to European monetary integration, but to more general questions about the effects of international capital flows on states. Although this book delineates a range of constraints created by economic interdependence, McNamara rejects the notion that international market forces simply dictate government policy choice. She demonstrates that the process of neoliberal policy change is a historically dependent one, shaped by policymakers' shared beliefs and interpretations of their experiences in the global economy.

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In Take a Sad Song: The Emotional Currency of "Hey Jude," James Campion dives deeply into the song's origins, recording, visual presentation, impact, and eventual influence, while also discovering what makes "Hey Jude" a classic musical expression of personal comfort and societal unity conceived by a master songwriter, Paul McCartney. Within its melodic brilliance and lyrical touchstones of empathy and nostalgia resides McCartney's personal and professional relationship with his childhood friend and songwriting partner, John Lennon, and their simultaneous pursuit of the women who would complete them. There are also clues to the growing turmoil within the Beatles and their splintering generation scarred by war, assassination, and virulent protest.Campion's journey into the song includes the insights of academic experts and professors in the field of musicology, sociology, philosophy, psychology, and history. Campion also reveals commentary from noted Beatles authors, biographers, music historians, and journalists and, finally, a peek into the craft of songwriting from a host of talented composers across several generations. Take a Sad Song is a tribute to how a song can define, inspire, and affect us in ways we do not always fully comprehend, as well as a celebration of a truly amazing track in the Beatles canon that reveals one band's genius and underscores its lasting voice in our cultural and musical landscape.

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G. A. Cohen was one of the most gifted, influential, and progressive voices in contemporary political philosophy. At the time of his death in 2009, he had plans to bring together a number of his most significant papers. This is the first of three volumes to realize those plans. Drawing on three decades of work, it contains previously uncollected articles that have shaped many of the central debates in political philosophy, as well as papers published here for the first time. In these pieces, Cohen asks what egalitarians have most reason to equalize, he considers the relationship between freedom and property, and he reflects upon ideal theory and political practice. Included here are classic essays such as "Equality of What?" and "Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat," along with more recent contributions such as "Fairness and Legitimacy in Justice," "Freedom and Money," and the previously unpublished "How to Do Political Philosophy." On ample display throughout are the clarity, rigor, conviction, and wit for which Cohen was renowned. Together, these essays demonstrate how his work provides a powerful account of liberty and equality to the left of Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, Amartya Sen, and Isaiah Berlin.

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Money in the history of political thought, from ancient Greece to the Great Inflation of the 1970sIn the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, critical attention has shifted from the economy to the most fundamental feature of all market economies—money. Yet despite the centrality of political struggles over money, it remains difficult to articulate its democratic possibilities and limits. The Currency of Politics takes readers from ancient Greece to today to provide an intellectual history of money, drawing on the insights of key political philosophers to show how money is not just a medium of exchange but also a central institution of political rule.Money appears to be beyond the reach of democratic politics, but this appearance—like so much about money—is deceptive. Even when the politics of money is impossible to ignore, its proper democratic role can be difficult to discern. Stefan Eich examines six crucial episodes of monetary crisis, recovering the neglected political theories of money in the thought of such figures as Aristotle, John Locke, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes. He shows how these layers of crisis have come to define the way we look at money, and argues that informed public debate about money requires a better appreciation of the diverse political struggles over its meaning.Recovering foundational ideas at the intersection of monetary rule and democratic politics, The Currency of Politics explains why only through greater awareness of the historical limits of monetary politics can we begin to articulate more democratic conceptions of money.

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Gustav Peebles takes an anthropological look at two seemingly separate developments in Europe at the turn of the millennium: the rollout of the euro and the building of new transnational regions such as the Oresund Region, envisioned as a melding of Copenhagen, Denmark, with Malmö, Sweden. Peebles argues that the drive to create such transnational spaces is inseparable from the drive to create a pan-national currency. He studies the practices and rhetoric surrounding the national currencies of Denmark and Sweden, the euro, and several new "local currencies" struggling to come into being. The Euro and Its Rivals provides a deep historical study of the welfare state and the monetary policies and utopian visions that helped to ground it, at the same time shedding new light on the contemporary movement of goods, people, credit, and debt.

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The way that money works now is a blip. It’s a temporary institutional arrangement agreed in response to specific political, technological and economic circumstances. As these circumstances change, so money must change. Many people think that it will undergo a pretty significant change in the very near future and we need to start planning for the coming era of digital currency. The historian Niall Ferguson wrote in 2019 that “if America is smart, it will wake up and start competing for dominance in digital payments”. Competing for this new currency dominance could mean a new cold war in cyberspace with, for example, Facebook’s private currency facing off against China’s public currency facing off against a digital euro. Or would a digital dollar win this new space race? This is not just the concern of wide-eyed technologists obsessed with Bitcoin. In a 2019 speech the governor of the Bank of England said that a form of global digital currency could be “the answer to the destabilising dominance of the US dollar in today’s global monetary system”. But which digital currency? Will we really be choosing between the Federal Reserve and Microsoft (between dollar bills and Bill’s dollars)? Or between Facebook’s Libra and the Chinese Digital Currency/Electronic Payment system “DC/EP”? Between spendable SDRs and Kardashian Kash? It would be a mistake to see this as a technical debate about cryptocurrencies and blockchains, about hash rates and key lengths. It matters far beyond the virtual boundaries of the new age. The dollar’s dominance gives America the ability to exert soft power through the International Monetary and Financial System. A serious implication of replacing existing monetary arrangements with new infrastructure based on digital currency is that this power might be constrained. How might America respond to losing its hegemony? Now that the technologists, the business strategists, the economists and the national and international regulators are beginning to glance in the direction of these alternatives, the whole topic of digital currency needs to be explored. In this book, industry expert David Birch sets out the economic and technological imperatives, discusses the potential impact, and highlights a series of tensions—between public and private and, most importantly, between East and West—to contribute to the high-level debate that we must have to begin to shape the International Monetary and Financial System financial system of the near future.

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Coinage and currency—abstract and socially created units of value and power—were basic to early modern society. By controlling money, the people sought to understand and control their complex, expanding, and interdependent world. In Making Money in Sixteenth-Century France, Jotham Parsons investigates the creation and circulation of currency in France. The royal Cour des Monnaies centralized monetary administration, expanding its role in the emerging modern state during the sixteenth century and assuming new powers as an often controversial repository of theoretical and administrative expertise. The Cour des Monnaies, Parsons shows, played an important role in developing the contemporary understanding of money, as a source of both danger and opportunity at the center of economic and political life. More practically, the Monnaies led generally successful responses to the endemic inflation of the era and the monetary chaos of a period of civil war. Its work investigating and prosecuting counterfeiters shone light into a picaresque world of those who used the abstract and artificial nature of money for their own ends. Parsons’s broad, multidimensional portrait of money in early modern France also encompasses the literature of the age, in which money’s arbitrary and dangerous power was a major theme.

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The foreign exchange market is huge, fascinating and yet widely misunderstood by participants and non-participants alike. This is because its unanswered questions are numerous. For instance, what is the purpose of the $4 trillion per day trading volume? What determines currency trends and who are the players in the FX arena? Does FX drive other financial markets, or is it the passive end-product of all the other markets? FX is without clear supply and demand factors, so how do traders determine sentiment and price direction? Much is written in an effort to answer these questions, but a lot of it is just noise. In the 12 pieces here, Barbara Rockefeller and Vicki Schmelzer draw on their combined 50 years' experience in foreign exchange to cut through the clutter and provide an elegant and razor-sharp look at this market. Their analysis is accurate, useful and enlivened by many anecdotes and examples from historic market events. They cover: how the matrix concept can help observers understand foreign exchange market action; what professional FX traders take into consideration before entering into positions; whether the FX market can be forecast; the interplay between foreign exchange and other financial markets; how technology has levelled the playing field between big and small players, and at what cost; whether the prospect of reserve currency diversification away from the dollar is likely; and the toolkit that central banks use to manage national economies and the effect of this on currencies. "The Foreign Exchange Matrix" is the go-to book for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the world of foreign exchange.

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This edited volume on "Credit, Currency, or Derivatives: Instruments of Global Financial Stability or Crisis" contains original papers that examine various issues concerning the role, the structure and functioning of credit, currency and derivatives instruments and markets as they relate to financial crises. We stress the importance of the inter-linkages of these instruments and markets in promoting or hindering financial stability or crises as well as government policies, on a local and global level. The papers in this volume highlight various aspects of credit and currency instruments and markets, along with their interactions, for the stability of domestic and international financial systems. Particular emphasis is given on the failures of regulatory systems and their implications for systemic financial crises. Also, the papers analyze the costs of financial crises and explore the institutional and economic arrangements that could ameliorate the adverse effects of financial crises in advanced and emerging-market countries.

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