Search results for ""currency""

The first full-length examination of the medieval Charlemagne tradition in the literature and culture of medieval England, from the Chanson de Roland to Caxton. The Matter of France, the legendary history of Charlemagne, had a central but now largely unrecognised place in the multilingual culture of medieval England. From the early claim in the Chanson de Roland that Charlemagne held England as his personal domain, to the later proliferation of Middle English romances of Charlemagne, the materials are woven into the insular political and cultural imagination. However, unlike the wide range of continental French romances, the insular tradition concentrates on stories of a few heroic characters: Roland, Fierabras, Otinel. Why did writers and audiences in England turn again and again to these narratives, rewriting and reinterpreting them for more than two hundred years? This book offers the first full-length, in-depth study of the tradition as manifested in literature and culture. It investigates the currency and impact of the Matter of France with equal attention to English and French-language texts, setting each individual manuscript or early printed text in its contemporary cultural and political context. The narratives are revealed to be extraordinarily adaptable, using the iconic opposition between Carolingian and Saracen heroes to reflect concerns with national politics, religious identity, the future of Christendom, chivalry and ethics, and monarchy and treason. PHILLIPA HARDMAN is Readerin Medieval English Literature (retired) at the University of Reading; MARIANNE AILES is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Bristol.

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Recent crises in emerging markets have raised doubts about the desirability of relaxing controls on capital mobility. George Fane, however, uses evidence from the crises in Asia and Latin America to reassert the traditional case that such controls are an excessively blunt instrument for achieving financial stability.This book argues that recent official proposals for reforming the 'international financial architecture' are also unlikely to reduce the frequency of currency and financial crises to an acceptable level. The author proposes an alternative plan to achieve greater financial stability: banks should have to double the currently accepted percentage of capital to risk-weighted assets from 8 to 16 percent and the risk-weights for loans to emerging markets should also be raised substantially the financial sectors in emerging markets should be fully opened to foreign competition bankruptcy procedures in emerging markets should be greatly strengthened central banks should adopt flexible exchange rates, backed by credible targets for inflation or monetary growth. If flexible exchange rates are not adopted, central banks should at least avoid the widespread practice of trying to sterilise the monetary effects of capital flows The author argues that the implementation of this plan will be a far more effective way of enhancing financial stability than controlling international capital flows, or trying to force private lenders to make new loans to countries that suffer crises.This book will be required reading for scholars and policymakers in the areas of international financial economics, financial regulation, development economics and Asian studies.

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The integration process of 'The Common Market of the South' (MERCOSUR) has been characterized by serious economic turbulence, including the devaluation of the Brazilian currency and the severe Argentinean monetary crisis. As a response to these difficulties, the adoption of monetary union has emerged as one possible solution to the financial uncertainty which has plagued this region.Whereas some believe MERCOSUR should become a free trade area, others are convinced that nothing less than full monetary union can bring stability to the region and ease the financial fragility of the member countries. This book discusses the future of MERCOSUR, focusing on monetary union and macroeconomic policy co-ordination, and addresses a number of important questions including: is it possible, or even desirable, to achieve monetary integration? what would the pre-conditions be for establishing such a union? what would the convergence criteria be for joining the monetary union? what are the expected economic consequences for the member countries? These questions are all addressed with particular reference to the experience of EMU and the lessons which can be learnt by MERCOSUR countries, in terms of the difficult transitions they may have to face.The book brings together a host of distinguished British, Argentinean and Brazilian economists to elucidate the critical policy issues surrounding the merits of monetary union in South America. Financial economists, international monetary economists, international relations experts, academics and practitioners interested in the issues surrounding economic and monetary union will all value the perceptive insights found in this volume.

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When Ecuador's cut-flower industry took off in the mid-1980s, it rode a wave of international credit peddling and currency speculation that would lead countries of the Global South into successive debt crises and northern financial firms to fortune and dominion. By the start of the twenty-first century, as the Ecuadorian economy collapsed and its ties with international finance became strained, flower exporters rebuilt their businesses around the profitability of their indigenous labor force, drawing local communities deeply into new plantation systems taking over the highlands. In A Feast of Flowers, Christopher Krupa goes inside Ecuador's booming cut-flower industry to chronicle the ways its capitalist pioneers built a booming export industry around a racial ideology, turning indigenous people's purported differences into resources for industrial expansion. At the core of this racial system is a belief, central to postcolonial science and politics in Ecuador, in capitalism's unique capacity to change people's racial identity and to liberate oppressed populations from racial subordination. Krupa shows how such views not only guide how indigenous people are today incorporated into demanding labor systems in Ecuador's new export plantations, but also how indigenous minds and bodies became sites of study and intervention by scientists, politicians, and economic planners throughout the last century, all looking to change indigenous people in some way. Combining nearly two decades of ethnographic and historical research, A Feast of Flowers shows how aggressive capitalist expansion in postcolonial contexts may revive longstanding intersections between race and economy to facilitate new modes of dispossession under the guise of humanitarian intervention.

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The history of mountaineering has long served as a metaphor for civilization triumphant. Once upon a time, the Alps were an inaccessible habitat of specters and dragons, until heroic men—pioneers of enlightenment—scaled their summits, classified their strata and flora, and banished the phantoms forever. A fascinating interdisciplinary study of the first ascents of the major Alpine peaks and Mount Everest, The Summits of Modern Man surveys the far-ranging significance of our encounters with the world’s most alluring and forbidding heights.Our obsession with “who got to the top first” may have begun in 1786, the year Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard climbed Mont Blanc and inaugurated an era in which Romantic notions of the sublime spurred climbers’ aspirations. In the following decades, climbing lost its revolutionary cachet as it became associated instead with bourgeois outdoor leisure. Still, the mythic stories of mountaineers, threaded through with themes of imperialism, masculinity, and ascendant Western science and culture, seized the imagination of artists and historians well into the twentieth century, providing grist for stage shows, poetry, films, and landscape paintings.Today, we live on the threshold of a hot planet, where melting glaciers and rising sea levels create ambivalence about the conquest of nature. Long after Hillary and Tenzing’s ascent of Everest, though, the image of modern man supreme on the mountaintop retains its currency. Peter Hansen’s exploration of these persistent images indicates how difficult it is to imagine our relationship with nature in terms other than domination.

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A generation has passed since a physician first noticed that women who drank heavily while pregnant gave birth to underweight infants with disturbing tell-tale characteristics. Women whose own mothers enjoyed martinis while pregnant now lost sleep over a bowl of rum raisin ice cream. In Message in a Bottle, Janet Golden charts the course of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) through the courts, media, medical establishment, and public imagination. Long considered harmless during pregnancy (doctors even administered it intravenously during labor), alcohol, when consumed by pregnant women, increasingly appeared to be a potent teratogen and a pressing public health concern. Some clinicians recommended that women simply moderate alcohol consumption; others, however, claimed that there was no demonstrably safe level for a developing fetus, and called for complete abstinence. Even as the diagnosis gained acceptance and labels appeared on alcoholic beverages warning pregnant women of the danger, FAS began to be de-medicalized in some settings. More and more, FAS emerged in court cases as a viable defense for people charged with serious, even capital, crimes and their claims were rejected. Golden argues that the reaction to FAS was shaped by the struggle over women's relatively new abortion rights and the escalating media frenzy over "crack" babies. It was increasingly used as evidence of the moral decay found within marginalized communities--from inner-city neighborhoods to Indian reservations. With each reframing, FAS became a currency traded by politicians and political commentators, lawyers, public health professionals, and advocates for underrepresented minorities, each pursuing separate aims.

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This is the first of three volumes from the project 'Authority and Persuasion: the Role of Commonplaces in Western Europe (c.1450-c.1800)'. The project was launched by the universities of Copenhagen, Durham and Groningen and involved scholars from a range of disciplines who researched the use of commonplaces as a means of persuasion in the early modern world. Commonplace as a technical term refers to the loci communes collected in late medieval and early modern commonplace books. In the project, however, the notion of commonplace was broadened to include means of persuasion in all kinds of texts as well as the visual arts, theatre, music and other media. This broader notion embraces metaphors, proverbs, figures, and expressions that enjoyed both a history of use in a given society or language community and a wide currency in that society. This first volume, subtitles 'Reformation, Counter-Reformation and Revolt', focuses on the role of argument from commonplaces, whether linguistic, textual, visual, performative, or musical, during a period of rapid and far-reaching ideological and social change characterised by theological controversies and political turmoil. Progressing from a strict to a more flexible definition of the commonplace, the thirteen contributions to this volume explore the role of the commonplace in the early modern classroom, its place in contemporary polemic and controversy as well as its relationship with (disputed) authority, and trace its presence across a variety of media in the visual, theatrical, and spatial arts. The second volume concerns 'Consolidation of God-given Power', and the third volume deals with 'Legitimation of Authority'.

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Recent crises in emerging markets have raised doubts about the desirability of relaxing controls on capital mobility. George Fane, however, uses evidence from the crises in Asia and Latin America to reassert the traditional case that such controls are an excessively blunt instrument for achieving financial stability.This book argues that recent official proposals for reforming the 'international financial architecture' are also unlikely to reduce the frequency of currency and financial crises to an acceptable level. The author proposes an alternative plan to achieve greater financial stability: banks should have to double the currently accepted percentage of capital to risk-weighted assets from 8 to 16 percent and the risk-weights for loans to emerging markets should also be raised substantially the financial sectors in emerging markets should be fully opened to foreign competition bankruptcy procedures in emerging markets should be greatly strengthened central banks should adopt flexible exchange rates, backed by credible targets for inflation or monetary growth. If flexible exchange rates are not adopted, central banks should at least avoid the widespread practice of trying to sterilise the monetary effects of capital flows The author argues that the implementation of this plan will be a far more effective way of enhancing financial stability than controlling international capital flows, or trying to force private lenders to make new loans to countries that suffer crises.This book will be required reading for scholars and policymakers in the areas of international financial economics, financial regulation, development economics and Asian studies.

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An engaging and accessible introduction to a broad range of critical approaches to contemporary mass media theory and research A decade after its first publication, Critical Media Studies continues toshape and define the field of media studies, offering innovative approaches that enable readers to explore the modern media landscape from a wide variety of perspectives. Integrating foundational theory and contemporary research, this groundbreaking text offers the most comprehensive set of analytical approaches currently available. Twelve critical perspectives—pragmatic, rhetorical, sociological, erotic, ecological, and others—enable readers to assess and evaluate the social and cultural consequences of contemporary media in their daily lives. The new third edition includes up-to-date content that reflects the current developments and cutting-edge research in the field. New or expanded material includes changing perceptions of race and gender, the impact of fandom on the media, the legacy of the television age, the importance of media literacy in the face of “fake news”, and developments in industry regulations and U.S. copyright law. This textbook: Presents clear, reader-friendly chapters organized by critical perspective Features up-to-date media references that resonate with modern readers Incorporates enhanced and updated pedagogical features throughout the text Offers extensively revised content for greater clarity, currency, and relevance Includes fully updated illustrations, examples, statistics, and further readings Critical Media Studies, 3rd Edition is the ideal resource for undergraduate students in media studies, cultural studies, popular culture, communication, rhetoric, and sociology, graduate students new to critical perspectives on the media, and scholars in the field.

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American photographers have been fascinated by the lives of California farmworkers since the time of the daguerreotype. From the earliest Gold Rush–era images and the documentary photographs taken during the Great Depression to digital images today, photographers and farmworkers in California have had a complicated and continuously changing bond. In Everyone Had Cameras, Richard Steven Street provides a comprehensive history of the significant presence of California farmworkers in the visual culture of America.Street’s account spans 150 years and sheds a new perspective on some of America’s photographic masters, such as Carleton E. Watkins, Ansel Adams, and Dorothea Lange, and brings to light heretofore unknown and unheralded work by perceptive amateurs, socially committed journeymen, digital documentarians, commercial propagandists, and left-wing critics. Through their artistry, these figures powerfully revealed—and at times obscured—the human cost of industrial agriculture and cheap food. Photographers are deeply embedded in the farmworker story, Street shows, and it cannot be understood without paying attention to their ever-evolving vision. Indeed, cameras are so prevalent on picket lines and at strikes and demonstrations that it is normal to see not only photojournalists but also police, protesters, and growers awaiting a decisive—or incriminating—moment to capture. Deftly weaving the remarkable diversity of field photography into this story of labor activism, Everyone Had Cameras establishes a new history of California photography while chronicling the impact that this visual medium—called by some the common currency of modern dialogue—has had on a vast, dispossessed class of American workers.

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States of Rage permeate our culture and our daily lives. From the anti-Catholic protests of ACT-UP to the political posturing of Al Sharpton, from the LA Riots to anti-abortion gunmen murdering clinic personnel, the unleashing of rage, marginalized or institutional, has translated into dead bodies on our campuses and city streets, in our public buildings and in our homes. Rage seems to have gained a currency in the past decade which it previously did not possess. Suddenly we appear willing to employ it more often to describe our own or others' mental states or actions. Rage succinctly describes an ongoing emotional state for many residents and citizens of the United States and elsewhere. States of Rage gathers for the first time a critical mass of writing about rage--its function, expression, and utilities. It examines rage as a cultural phenomenon, delineating its use and explaining why this emotional state increasingly intrudes into our social, artistic, and academic existences. What is the relationship between rage and power(lessness)? How does rage relate to personal or social injustice? Can we ritualize rage or is it always spontaneous? Finally, what provokes rage and what is provocative about it? Essays shed light on the psychological and social origins of rage, its relationship to the self, its connection to culture, and its possible triggers. The volume includes chapters on violence in the workplace, the Montreal massacre, female murderers, the rage of African- American filmmakers, rage as a reaction to persecution, the rage of AIDS activists, class rage, and rage in the academy.

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Coined by Republican strategist Kevin Phillips in 1969 to describe the new alloy of conservatism that united voters across the southern rim of the country, the term "Sunbelt" has since gained currency in the American lexicon. By the early 1970s, the region had come to embody economic growth and an ambitious political culture. With sprawling suburban landscapes, cities like Atlanta, Dallas, and Los Angeles seemed destined to sap influence from the Northeast. Corporate entrepreneurialism and a conservative ethos helped forge the Sunbelt's industrial-labor relations, military spending, education systems, and neighborhood development. Unprecedented migration to the region ensured that these developments worked in concert with sojourners' personal quests for work, family, community, and leisure. In the resplendent Sunbelt the nation seemed to glimpse the American Dream remade. The essays in Sunbelt Rising deploy new analytic tools to explain this region's dramatic rise. Contributors to the volume study the Sunbelt as both a physical entity and a cultural invention. They examine the raised highway, the sprawling prison complex, and the fast-food restaurant as distinctive material contours of a region. In this same vein they delineate distinctive Sunbelt models of corporate and government organization, which came to shape so many aspects of the nation's political and economic future. Contributors also examine literature, religion, and civic engagement to illustrate how a particular Sunbelt cultural sensibility arose that ordered people's lives in a period of tumultuous change. By exploring the interplay between the Sunbelt as a structurally defined space and a culturally imagined place, Sunbelt Rising addresses longstanding debates about region as a category of analysis.

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PROFITING FROM THE WORLD'S ECONOMIC CRISIS In Profiting from the World's Economic Crisis, author Bud Conrad, Chief Economist for Casey Research, predicts a rough road ahead for us—due to economic imbalances that have built up over the past decade—but reveals how you can prosper during these difficult times by tracking global market trends and finding investment opportunities that match those trends. With this book, Conrad outlines the long-term direction of our economy as driven by increasing U.S. government and trade deficits, oil prices, Social Security and Medicare obligations for baby boomers, the credit crisis, and the weakening dollar. He also examines why some of the government's actions—such as bailing out banks and curbing interest rates—fail to address more serious, long-term issues such as too much debt. The crisis we have entered is not a typical business recession, but, instead, a major deleveraging which is the biggest shift since the Great Depression. The stagflation of the U.S. economy will present great challenges on a global scale. And since no market travels in a straight line, you need to be positioned correctly, with the right investments, to protect yourself and profit from the twists and turns you'll inevitably face in today's turbulent economic environment. Profiting from the World's Economic Crisis deftly addresses how to gain your financial footing during these difficult times by highlighting global investment opportunities—such as gold, interest rates, currency, and commodities—that are likely to help you profit in the coming years. Visit www.caseyresearch.com

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Today Europe finds itself in a crisis that casts a dark shadow over an entire generation. The seriousness of the crisis stems from one core political contradiction at the heart of the European project: namely, that what urgently needs to be done is also extremely unpopular and therefore virtually impossible to do democratically. What must be done - and almost everyone agrees in principle on the measures that would be needed to deal with the financial crisis - cannot be sold to the voting public of the core member states, which so far have been less affected by the crisis than those on the periphery, nor can the conditions that core members try to impose be easily sold to voters in the deficit countries. The European Union is therefore becoming increasingly disunited, with deepening divides between the German-dominated ‘core’ and the southern ‘periphery’, between the winners and the losers of the common currency, between the advocates of greater integration and the anti-Europeans, between the technocrats and the populists. Europe finds itself trapped by the deepening divisions that are opening up across the Continent, obstructing its ability to deal with a crisis that has already caused massive social suffering in the countries of the European periphery and is threatening to derail the very project of the European Union. In this short book, Claus Offe brings into sharp focus the central political problem that lies at the heart of the EU and shackles its ability to deal with the most serious crisis of its short history.

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The mother tongue of the Roman Empire and the lingua franca of the West for centuries after Rome’s fall, Latin survives today primarily in classrooms and texts. Yet this “dead language” is unique in the influence it has exerted across centuries and continents. Jürgen Leonhardt has written a full history of Latin from antiquity to the present, uncovering how this once parochial dialect developed into a vehicle of global communication that remained vital long after its spoken form was supplanted by modern languages.Latin originated in the Italian region of Latium, around Rome, and became widespread as that city’s imperial might grew. By the first century BCE, Latin was already transitioning from a living vernacular, as writers and grammarians like Cicero and Varro fixed Latin’s status as a “classical” language with a codified rhetoric and rules. As Romance languages spun off from their Latin origins following the empire’s collapse—shedding cases and genders along the way—the ancient language retained its currency as a world language in ways that anticipated English and Spanish, but it ceased to evolve.Leonhardt charts the vicissitudes of Latin in the post-Roman world: its ninth-century revival under Charlemagne and its flourishing among Renaissance writers who, more than their medieval predecessors, were interested in questions of literary style and expression. Ultimately, the rise of historicism in the eighteenth century turned Latin from a practical tongue to an academic subject. Nevertheless, of all the traces left by the Romans, their language remains the most ubiquitous artifact of a once peerless empire.

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The much-needed manifesto by the Sanest Politician in the Entire Cosmos, from capping the price of croissants at £1 to taking over Downing Street.'Count Binface will be Prime Minister. It's only a matter of time' IndependentGreetings, life-form! My name is Count Binface. I am an intergalactic space warrior, leader of the Recyclons and three-time British election veteran. And as part of my overarching mission to control the entire omniverse, I have come to conquer Britain. It's not that I want to do this - you need me to. Because the one thing everyone can agree on right now is that Earth is in an absolute state. And of all its messed-up nations, the British are particularly deranged. In this book, I share my story for the first time, my political beliefs and even the occasional recipe, in return for a reasonable - nay, bargain - amount of Earth currency. I also provide an alien's-visor-view of your past, so that you can learn from past mistakes. This isn't the first potted history of Britain ever to be committed to print, but I can guarantee that compared to any others, mine will be the most accurate. If anyone cares to argue about that, which one of us has had access to a time machine? So settle down, grab a beverage, and let's make your planet Count.'Count Binface in his steely, glimmering, elusiveness is both a galactically intimidating - and curiously heartening symbol of the future of British politics - #believeinthebin' Rory Stewart'Count Binface is out of this world' Emily Maitlis

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In the beginning, there were four financial instruments: a bank deposit, a bill of exchange, a bond, and an equity. Today, as a result of a steady stream of financial innovations, the market landscape is far less sparse-and far more complex. To help you maneuver smoothly and profitably within this crowded and much-evolved arena, Julian Walmsley's New Financial Instruments has been thoroughly revised and expanded to include complete coverage of all the new financial instruments available to market practitioners. New Financial Instruments, Second Edition offers a clear, practical perspective on the shifts and changes behind today's dizzying proliferation of market tools and techniques. Its in-depth examination of both international and domestic markets probes the nature, causes, and consequences of financial innovation, as well as the ins and outs, advantages and disadvantages of the myriad products engendered by change. New Financial Instruments, Second Edition is a comprehensive, comparative guide offering concise descriptions of convertibles, warrants, preferred stocks, and other instruments. In addition, Walmsley's clear-eyed analysis distills the latest variations in areas such as barrier options, asset-backed securities, credit derivatives, structured notes, and equity derivatives. There's important information on the origin and methodology of each innovative technique, as well as essential details on the risks, rewards, and key considerations that must be understood before deciding on one instrument over another. New Financial Instruments, Second Edition takes you step-by-step through a wide range of procedures, revealing how to: * Analyze risk level and return * Use interest rates and currency swaps in synthetic securities * Value exotic options, weighing the risks they entail against the leverage they provide The book also addresses such key topics as: * Basic analytical tools-present value calculations, zero-coupon curves, modern portfolio theory, value at risk, continuous compounding * Securitization-transferable loan instruments, Eurocommercial paper, and asset-backed securities * Swaps-interest rate, currency, diff, zero coupon, asset, and equity * Options-barrier, binary, cliquet, ladder, rainbow, shout * Mortgage-backed securities-market development, superfloaters and inverse superfloaters, PAC bonds, reverse PACs and lockouts, TAC bonds Supported by extensive illustrations and working examples, this indispensable resource is a must for anyone seeking to understand and apply the latest financial innovations. A comprehensive guide to today's new financial instruments-what they are, how they work, and how you can profit from them Written by an expert practitioner in the field, this up-to-date, systematic guide takes you through the ins and outs, advantages and disadvantages, risks and rewards of today's sophisticated new financial tools and techniques. Now revised and expanded, New Financial Instruments has complete coverage of bonds, equities, warrants, and other traditional vehicles, as well as a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in asset- and mortgage-backed securities, credit and equity derivatives, convertibles, and preferred stocks. "With the flood of innovations we have seen in international finance in recent years there was a great need for a succinct, comprehensive survey of the field. New Financial Instruments fills that need admirably."-Professor Brian Scott-Quinn, ISMA Centre, University of Reading, U.K. (www.ismacentre.rdg.ac.uk) "For the practitioner to keep up with innovations across a wide range of markets is always difficult. This book will be a great help to those who need to bring themselves up to date with a great variety of markets."-John Langton, Chief Executive, International Securities Market Association, Zurich

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The foreign-exchange market is often referred to as the Slaughterhouse where novice traders go to get 'chopped up'. It is one of egos and money, where millions of dollars are won and lost every day and phones are routinely thrown across hectic trading desks. This palpable excitement has led to the explosion of the retail FX market, which has unfortunately spawned a new breed of authors and gurus more than happy to provide misleading and often downright fraudulent information by promising traders riches while making forex trading 'easy'. Well I'll let you in on a little secret: there is nothing easy about trading currencies. If you don't believe me then stop by Warren Buffet's office and ask him how he could lose $850m betting on the dollar or ask George Soros why his short yen bets cost him $600m not once but twice in 1994. What's wrong with these guys, don't they read FX books? In reality, the average client's trading approach combined with the unscrupulous practices of some brokers make spot FX trading more akin to the games found on the Vegas strip than to anything seen on Wall St. The FX market is littered with the remains of day traders and genius 'systems,' and to survive in the long-run traders have to realize that they are playing a game where the cards are clearly stacked against them. Have you ever had your stop hit at a price that turned out to be the low/high for the day? Bad luck perhaps? Maybe. What if it happens more than once? Do you ever feel like the market is out to get you? Well guess what, in this Zero Sum game it absolutely is. Covering the day-to-day mechanics of the FX market and the unsavoury dealings going on, Beat the Forex Dealer offers traders the market-proven trading techniques needed to side-step dealer traps and develop winning trading methods. Learn from an industry insider the truth behind dirty dealer practices including: stop-hunting, price shading, trading against clients and 'no dealing desk' realities. Detailing the dealer-inspired trading techniques developed by MIGFX Inc, consistently ranked among the world's leading currency trading firms, the book helps turn average traders into winning traders; and in a market with a 90% loss rate winning traders are in fact quite rare! More than just a simple manual, Beat the Forex Dealer brings to life the excitement of the FX market by delivering insights into some of the greatest trading triumphs and highlighting legendary disasters; all written in an easy to read style. Make no mistake about it there is a lot of money to be made in currency trading, you just have to know where to look. Sidestepping simple dealer traps is one way of improving your daily p&l, but it is surely not the only one. Successful trading comes down to taking care of the details, which means skipping the theoretical stuff and providing only up-to-date, real-life examples while sharing the FX trading tips that have proved so profitable over the years. By stripping away the theory and getting down to the core of trading, you too will find yourself on the way to beating the forex dealer!

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For courses in introductory econometrics. This package includes MyLab Economics. Engaging applications bring the theory and practice of modern econometrics to life Ensure students grasp the relevance of econometrics with Introduction to Econometrics -- the text that connects modern theory and practice with motivating, engaging applications. The 4th Edition maintains a focus on currency, while building on the philosophy that applications should drive the theory, not the other way around. The text incorporates real-world questions and data, and methods that are immediately relevant to the applications. With very large data sets increasingly being used in economics and related fields, a new chapter dedicated to Big Data helps students learn about this growing and exciting area. This coverage and approach make the subject come alive for students and helps them to become sophisticated consumers of econometrics. Also available with MyLab Economics By combining trusted author content with digital tools and a flexible platform, MyLab™ personalizes the learning experience and improves results for each student. Note: You are purchasing a standalone product; MyLab Economics does not come packaged with this content. Students, if interested in purchasing this title with MyLab Economics, ask your instructor to confirm the correct package ISBN and Course ID. Instructors, contact your Pearson representative for more information. If you would like to purchase both the physical text and MyLab Economics, search for: 0134610989 / 9780134610986 Introduction to Econometrics Plus MyLab Economics with Pearson eText -- Access Card Package, 4/e Package consists of: 0134461991 / 9780134461991 Introduction to Econometrics 0134543939 / 9780134543932 MyLab Economics with Pearson eText -- Access Card -- for Introduction to Econometrics

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Written originally for the education of the polite London classes in ‘canting’ – the language of thieves and ruffians – should they be so unlucky as to wander into the ‘wrong’ parts of town, A New Dictionary of Terms, Ancient and Modern, of the Canting Crew by ‘B.E. Gent’ is the first work dedicated solely to the subject of slang words and their meanings. It is also the first text which attempts to show the overlap and integration between canting words and common slang. In its refusal to distinguish between criminal vocabulary and the more ordinary everyday English of the period, it sets canting words side by side with terms used by sailors, labourers, and those in the common currency of domestic culture. With an introduction by John Simpson, chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, describing the history and culture of canting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as the evolution of English slang, this is a fascinating volume for anyone with a curiosity about language, or wishing to reintroduce ‘Dandyprat’ or ‘Fizzle’ into their everyday conversation. Anglers, c Cheats, petty Thievs, who have a Stick with a hook at the end, with which they pluck things out of Windows, Grates, &c. also those that draw in People to be cheated. Dandyprat, a little puny Fellow. Grumbletonians, Malecontents, out of Humour with the Government, for want of a Place, or having lost one. Strum, c. a Periwig. Rum-Strum, c. a long Wig; also a handsom Wench, or Strumpet.

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In The Captive Sea, Daniel Hershenzon explores the entangled histories of Muslim and Christian captives—and, by extension, of the Spanish Empire, Ottoman Algiers, and Morocco—in the seventeenth century to argue that piracy, captivity, and redemption helped shape the Mediterranean as an integrated region at the social, political, and economic levels. Despite their confessional differences, the lives of captives and captors alike were connected in a political economy of ransom and communication networks shaped by Spanish, Ottoman, and Moroccan rulers; ecclesiastic institutions; Jewish, Muslim, and Christian intermediaries; and the captives themselves, as well as their kin. Hershenzon offers both a comprehensive analysis of competing projects for maritime dominance and a granular investigation of how individual lives were tragically upended by these agendas. He takes a close look at the tightly connected and ultimately failed attempts to ransom an Algerian Muslim girl sold into slavery in Livorno in 1608; the son of a Spanish marquis enslaved by pirates in Algiers and brought to Istanbul, where he converted to Islam; three Spanish Trinitarian friars detained in Algiers on the brink of their departure for Spain in the company of Christians they had redeemed; and a high-ranking Ottoman official from Alexandria, captured in 1613 by the Sicilian squadron of Spain. Examining the circulation of bodies, currency, and information in the contested Mediterranean, Hershenzon concludes that the practice of ransoming captives, a procedure meant to separate Christians from Muslims, had the unintended consequence of tightly binding Iberia to the Maghrib.

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When Ecuador's cut-flower industry took off in the mid-1980s, it rode a wave of international credit peddling and currency speculation that would lead countries of the Global South into successive debt crises and northern financial firms to fortune and dominion. By the start of the twenty-first century, as the Ecuadorian economy collapsed and its ties with international finance became strained, flower exporters rebuilt their businesses around the profitability of their indigenous labor force, drawing local communities deeply into new plantation systems taking over the highlands. In A Feast of Flowers, Christopher Krupa goes inside Ecuador's booming cut-flower industry to chronicle the ways its capitalist pioneers built a booming export industry around a racial ideology, turning indigenous people's purported differences into resources for industrial expansion. At the core of this racial system is a belief, central to postcolonial science and politics in Ecuador, in capitalism's unique capacity to change people's racial identity and to liberate oppressed populations from racial subordination. Krupa shows how such views not only guide how indigenous people are today incorporated into demanding labor systems in Ecuador's new export plantations, but also how indigenous minds and bodies became sites of study and intervention by scientists, politicians, and economic planners throughout the last century, all looking to change indigenous people in some way. Combining nearly two decades of ethnographic and historical research, A Feast of Flowers shows how aggressive capitalist expansion in postcolonial contexts may revive longstanding intersections between race and economy to facilitate new modes of dispossession under the guise of humanitarian intervention.

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Is the world destined to suffer endless cycles of conflict and war? Can rival nations become partners and establish a lasting and stable peace? How Enemies Become Friends provides a bold and innovative account of how nations escape geopolitical competition and replace hostility with friendship. Through compelling analysis and rich historical examples that span the globe and range from the thirteenth century through the present, foreign policy expert Charles Kupchan explores how adversaries can transform enmity into amity--and he exposes prevalent myths about the causes of peace. Kupchan contends that diplomatic engagement with rivals, far from being appeasement, is critical to rapprochement between adversaries. Diplomacy, not economic interdependence, is the currency of peace; concessions and strategic accommodation promote the mutual trust needed to build an international society. The nature of regimes matters much less than commonly thought: countries, including the United States, should deal with other states based on their foreign policy behavior rather than on whether they are democracies. Kupchan demonstrates that similar social orders and similar ethnicities, races, or religions help nations achieve stable peace. He considers many historical successes and failures, including the onset of friendship between the United States and Great Britain in the early twentieth century, the Concert of Europe, which preserved peace after 1815 but collapsed following revolutions in 1848, and the remarkably close partnership of the Soviet Union and China in the 1950s, which descended into open rivalry by the 1960s. In a world where conflict among nations seems inescapable, How Enemies Become Friends offers critical insights for building lasting peace.

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The political and economic history of Latin America has been marked by great hopes and even greater disappointments. Despite abundant resources - and a history of productivity and wealth - in recent decades the region has fallen further and further behind developed nations, surpassed even by other developing economies in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. In "Left Behind", Sebastian Edwards explains why the nations of Latin America have failed to share in the fruits of globalization and highlights the dangers of the recent turn to economic populism in the region. He begins by detailing the many ways Latin American governments have stifled economic development over the years through excessive regulation, currency manipulation, and thoroughgoing corruption. He then turns to the neoliberal reforms of the early 1990s, which called for the elimination of deficits, lowering of trade barriers, and privatization of inefficient public enterprises - and which, Edwards argues, held the promise of freeing Latin America from the burdens of the past. Flawed implementation, however, meant the promised gains of globalization were never felt by the mass of citizens, and growing frustration with stalled progress has led to a resurgence of populism throughout the region, exemplified by the economic policies of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. But such measures, Edwards warns, are a recipe for disaster; instead, he argues, the way forward for Latin America lies in further modernization reforms, more honestly pursued and fairly implemented. As an example of the promise of that approach, Edwards points to Latin America's giant, Brazil, which in recent years has finally begun to show signs of reaching its true economic potential.

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Motivational hedonism (often called “psychological hedonism”) claims that everything we do is done in pursuit of pleasure (in the widest sense) and to avoid pain and displeasure (again, in the widest sense). Although perennially attractive, many philosophers and experimental psychologists have claimed to refute it. Human Motives shows how decision-science and the recent science of affect can be used to construct a form of motivational hedonism that evades all previous critiques. On this view, we take decisions by anticipating and responding affectively to the alternatives, with the pleasure / displeasure component of affect constituting the common currency of decision-making. But we do not have to believe that the alternatives will bring us pleasure or displeasure in the future. Rather, those feelings get bound into and become parts of the future-directed representation of the options, rendering the latter attractive or repulsive. Much then depends on what pleasure and displeasure really are. If they are intrinsically good or bad properties of experience, for example, then motivational hedonism results. Carruthers argues, in contrast, that the best account is a representational one: pleasure represents its object (nonconceptually, in a perception-like manner) as good, and displeasure represents it (nonconceptually) as bad. The result is pluralism about human motivation, making room for both genuine altruism and intrinsic motives of duty. Clearly written and deeply scientifically informed, Human Motives has implications for many areas of philosophy and cognitive science, and will be of interest to anyone wanting to understand the foundations of human motivation.

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Open-Economy Macroeconomics for Developing Countries focuses on fiscal, monetary and exchange rate issues of importance to less developed economies. The book argues that the dichotomy between the short-term macroeconomic stabilization goal and the long-term economic growth objective commonly found in developing countries' policy framework is inappropriate. The authors report empirical evidence to support the proposition that macroeconomic stability is a pre-requisite for sustained economic growth and the root of macroeconomic instability in developing countries lies in the government budget deficits. The book discusses the stabilization tools available to deal with capital flows, supply shocks and the effects of financial deregulation. It opens with a discussion of macroeconomic policy problems for open developing economies and an historical overview of the international institutions such as IMF, GATT and UNCTAD. The authors then provide a comprehensive review of macroeconomic models which are popularly used to analyse policy dilemmas related to internal and external balances of open economies.Having reviewed the institutional and theoretical framework, the authors assess the macroeconomic impact of financial deregulation, capital flows and foreign investment. They address the debt crisis, financial instability, capital flight, currency substitution and exchange rate arrangements. The authors also consider more general issues such as the political economy of macroeconomic management and the institutional framework that may enhance credibility and effectiveness of macroeconomic policy. In conclusion, they stress that the openness of an economy itself acts as a constraint on macroeconomic mismanagement and hence may enhance economic growth.This comprehensive book will be an important addition to the literature, and will be of use to advanced undergraduates and graduates of development economics, development studies and financial and monetary economics.

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The successes and failures of an industry that claims to protect and promote our online identities What does privacy mean in the digital era? As technology increasingly blurs the boundary between public and private, questions about who controls our data become harder and harder to answer. Our every web view, click, and online purchase can be sold to anyone to store and use as they wish. At the same time, our online reputation has become an important part of our identity—a form of cultural currency. The Identity Trade examines the relationship between online visibility and privacy, and the politics of identity and self-presentation in the digital age. In doing so, Nora Draper looks at the revealing two-decade history of efforts by the consumer privacy industry to give individuals control over their digital image through the sale of privacy protection and reputation management as a service. Through in-depth interviews with industry experts, as well as analysis of media coverage, promotional materials, and government policies, Draper examines how companies have turned the protection and promotion of digital information into a business. Along the way, she also provides insight into how these companies have responded to and shaped the ways we think about image and reputation in the digital age. Tracking the successes and failures of companies claiming to control our digital ephemera, Draper takes us inside an industry that has commodified strategies of information control. This book is a discerning overview of the debate around who controls our data, who buys and sells it, and the consequences of treating privacy as a consumer good.

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Capitalism and slavery stand as the two economic phenomena that have most clearly defined the United States. Yet, despite African Americans' nearly $500 billion annual spending power, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the ways U.S. businesses have courted black dollars in post-slavery America. Robert E. Weems, Jr., presents the first fully integrated history of black consumerism over the course of the last century. The World War I era Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to northern and southern cities stimulated initial corporate interest in blacks as consumers. A generation later, as black urbanization intensified during World War II and its aftermath, the notion of a distinct, profitable African American consumer market gained greater currency. Moreover, black socioeconomic gains resulting from the Civil Rights movement which itself featured such consumer justice protests as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, further enhanced the status and influence of African American shoppers. Unwilling to settle for facile answers, Weems explores the role of black entrepreneurs who promoted the importance of the African American consumer market to U.S. corporations. Their actions, ironically, set the stage for the ongoing destruction of black-owned business. While the extent of educational, employment, and residential desegregation remains debatable, African American consumer dollars have, by any standard, been fully incorporated into the U.S. economy. Desegregating the Dollar takes us through the "blaxploitation" film industry, the vast market for black personal care products, and the insidious exploitation of black urban misery by liquor and cigarette advertisers. Robert E. Weems, Jr., has given us the definitive account of the complicated relationship between African Americans, capitalism, and consumerism.

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The Second World War put an end to America's historical isolation from international power politics, and so also to the long-standing American defiance of the Realist ideology that shaped Old World affairs. The advent of transoceanic military technologies, now wielded by menacing states such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, made Americans more receptive to the Realist idea that international relations is about fear and survival. The American Realists Reinhold Niebuhr, Hans Morgenthau, and Kenneth Waltz developed a modern strategic framework that sought to introduce American leaders and the educated public to these harsher realities of international politics. They emphasized a clear-eyed, cold approach to the play of interests, egotism, and the drive for power in world affairs-a struggle in which the threat of major war remained, in the end, the only legitimate currency. Yet even as Americans began to accept this new Realism, thermonuclear weaponry threatened to make it absurd. A major war to defend the nation might result in its total destruction; a thermonuclear war leading to the death of hundreds of millions of citizens seemed an unusual way to preserve American survival. This dilemma became central to the Realist understanding of Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and Waltz. How could a Realist approach to international politics and war be sustained in the face of possible global annihilation? Glimmer of a New Leviathan is the engrossing story of how the three chief architects of an influential ideology struggled with the implications of their own creation. It offers crucial historical context for contemporary debates about weapons of mass destruction and the post-Cold War international order.

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Videogames! Aren’t they the medium of the twenty-first century? The new cinema? The apotheosis of art and entertainment, the realization of Wagnerian gesamtkunstwerk? The final victory of interaction over passivity? No, probably not. Games are part art and part appliance, part tableau and part toaster. In How to Talk about Videogames, leading critic Ian Bogost explores this paradox more thoroughly than any other author to date.Delving into popular, familiar games like Flappy Bird, Mirror’s Edge, Mario Kart, Scribblenauts, Ms. Pac-Man, FarmVille, Candy Crush Saga, Bully, Medal of Honor, Madden NFL, and more, Bogost posits that videogames are as much like appliances as they are like art and media. We don’t watch or read games like we do films and novels and paintings, nor do we perform them like we might dance or play football or Frisbee. Rather, we do something in-between with games. Games are devices we operate, so game critique is both serious cultural currency and self-parody. It is about figuring out what it means that a game works the way it does and then treating the way it works as if it were reasonable, when we know it isn’t.Noting that the term games criticism once struck him as preposterous, Bogost observes that the idea, taken too seriously, risks balkanizing games writing from the rest of culture, severing it from the “rivers and fields” that sustain it. As essential as it is, he calls for its pursuit to unfold in this spirit: “God save us from a future of games critics, gnawing on scraps like the zombies that fester in our objects of study.”

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Existentialism is the philosophy of human existence, which flourished first in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s and then in France in the decade following the end of World War II. The operative meaning of existentialism here is thus broader than it was circa 1945 when the term first gained currency in France as a label for the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. However, it is considerably less broad than the view proposed by commentators in the 1950s and 1960s who, in an attempt to overcome Sartre's hegemony, discovered the seeds of existentialism far and wide: in Shakespeare, Saint Augustine, and the Old Testament prophets. In this dictionary, existentialism is understood as a decidedly 20th-century phenomenon, though with roots in the 19th century. Effort has been made to understand the philosophy of existentialism, as all philosophies should be understood, as part of an ongoing intellectual tradition: an evolving history of problems, concepts, and arguments. The Historical Dictionary of Existentialism explains the central claims of existentialist philosophy and the contexts in which it developed into one of the most influential intellectual trends of the 20th century. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and more than 300 cross-referenced dictionary entries offering clear, accessible accounts of the life and thought of major existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Martin Buber, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as thinkers influential to its development such as Wilhelm Dilthey, Henri Bergson, Edmund Husserl, and Max Scheler. Historical Dictionary of Existentialism affords readers an integrated, critical, and historically-sensitive understanding of this important philosophical movement.

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An examination of coined money and its significance to rulers, aristocrats and peasants in early medieval EuropeBetween the end of the Roman Empire in the fifth century and the economic transformations of the twelfth, coined money in western Europe was scarce and high in value, difficult for the majority of the population to make use of. And yet, as Rory Naismith shows in this illuminating study, coined money was made and used throughout early medieval Europe. It was, he argues, a powerful tool for articulating people’s place in economic and social structures and an important gauge for levels of economic complexity. Working from the premise that using coined money carried special significance when there was less of it around, Naismith uses detailed case studies from the Mediterranean and northern Europe to propose a new reading of early medieval money as a point of contact between economic, social, and institutional history.Naismith examines structural issues, including the mining and circulation of metal and the use of bullion and other commodities as money, and then offers a chronological account of monetary development, discussing the post-Roman period of gold coinage, the rise of the silver penny in the seventh century and the reconfiguration of elite power in relation to coinage in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In the process, he counters the conventional view of early medieval currency as the domain only of elite gift-givers and intrepid long-distance traders. Even when there were few coins in circulation, Naismith argues, the ways they were used—to give gifts, to pay rents, to spend at markets—have much to tell us.

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This is a condensed edition of 'The Road to Serfdom' republished in this edition with 'The Intellectuals and Socialism' (originally published in 1949). In 'The Road to Serfdom' F. A. Hayek set out the danger posed to freedom by attempts to apply the principles of wartime economic and social planning to the problems of peacetime. Hayek argued that the rise of Nazism was not due to any character failure on the part of the German people, but was a consequence of the socialist ideas that had gained common currency in Germany in the decades preceding the outbreak of war. Such ideas, Hayek argued, were now becoming similarly accepted in Britain and the USA. On its publication in 1944, 'The Road to Serfdom' caused a sensation. Its publishers could not keep up with demand, owing to wartime paper rationing. Then, in April 1945, Reader's Digest published a condensed version of the book and Hayek's work found a mass audience. This condensed edition was republished for the first time by the IEA in 1999. Since then it has been frequently reprinted. There is an enduring demand for Hayek's relevant and accessible message. The 'Road to Serfdom' is republished in this impression with 'The Intellectuals and Socialism' originally published in 1949, in which Hayek explained the appeal of socialist ideas to intellectuals - the 'second-hand dealers in ideas'. Intellectuals, Hayek argued, are attracted to socialism because it involves the rational application of the intellect to the organisation of society, while its utopianism captures their imagination and satisfies their desire to make the world submit to their own design.

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Create fun and intricate money origami using your Washingtons, Franklins, and Lincolns.These days, a dollar won't get you very far, but—in the right hands—a dollar bill can become a work of art. In Michael LaFosse & Richard Alexander's Dollar Origami, the world-renowned origami artist and co-founder of the eminent Origamido Studio shares twenty incredible creations specifically designed to be made out of dollar bills. Folded money models are wonderful gifts and conversation pieces, and LaFosse & Alexander make it easy for you to get started with projects ranging from "very simple" to "challenging." Money origami is more popular than ever, thanks to the panoply of designs and the wonderful folding qualities of the dollar bill. Many people like to give cash gifts or tips in folded money. While the classic origami folds still fascinate, money-fold enthusiasts are always looking for fresh ideas. LaFosse & Alexander's Dollar Origami is full of original designs to learn origami quickly and easily. At such a great value—folding money has never been so easy or affordable!This origami book contains: Full color, 64-page book Step-by-step instructions Colorful diagrams and photographs Origami folding guide and tips 20 original origami projects 48 tear-out practice "dollar bills" 3 hours of downloadable or streamable video tutorials Videos are also streamable and downloadable online It's no wonder that more and more people realize how fun dollar bill origami can be. Printed currency is easy to fold, remarkably durable, intricately patterned, and readily available. Money origami projects include: The Windmill Pillow Prosperity Bamboo The George Washington Knot Drahcir the Dragon And many more…

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Is globalization leading us toward a world of fewer and fewer currencies and, consequently, simplified monetary management? Many specialists believe this is the case, as the territorial monopolies national governments have long claimed over money appears to be eroding. In The Future of Money, Benjamin Cohen argues that this view--which he calls the "Contraction Contention"--is wrong. Rigorously argued, written with extraordinary clarity, and thoroughly up-to-date, this book demonstrates that the global population of currencies is set to expand greatly, not contract, making monetary governance more difficult, not less. At the book's core is an innovative theoretical model for understanding the strategic preferences of states in monetary management. Should governments defend their traditional monetary sovereignty, or should they seek some kind of regional consolidation of currencies? The model offers two broad advances. First, whereas most scholarly work evaluates strategic options individually or in comparison to just one other alternative, this model emphasizes the three-dimensional nature of the decisions involved. Second, the model emphasizes degrees of currency regionalization as a central determinant of state preferences. Cohen also systematically explores the role of the private sector as an alternative source of money. The book concludes with two key policy proposals. First, fiscal policy should be resurrected as a tool of macroeconomic management, to offset the present-day erosion in the effectiveness of monetary policy. Second, the International Monetary Fund should more actively help coordinate the decentralized strategic decision-making of governments. The future of money will be perilous. But, by mapping out the alternative policies countries can follow, The Future of Money shows it need not be chaotic.

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Amid widespread concern that our approach to testing and grading undermines education, two experts explain how schools can use assessment to support, rather than compromise, learning.Anyone who has ever crammed for a test, capitulated to a grade-grubbing student, or fretted over a child’s report card knows that the way we assess student learning in American schools is freighted with unintended consequences. But that’s not all. As experts agree, our primary assessment technologies—grading, rating, and ranking—don’t actually provide an accurate picture of how students are doing in school. Worse, they distort student and educator behavior in ways that undermine learning and exacerbate inequality. Yet despite widespread dissatisfaction, grades, test scores, and transcripts remain the currency of the realm.In Off the Mark, Jack Schneider and Ethan Hutt explain how we got into this predicament, why we remain beholden to our outmoded forms of assessment, and what we can do to change course. As they make clear, most current attempts at reform won’t solve the complex problems we face. Instead, Schneider and Hutt offer a range of practical reforms, like embracing multiple measures of performance and making the so-called permanent record “overwritable.” As they explain, we can remake our approach in ways that better advance the three different purposes that assessment currently serves: motivating students to learn, communicating meaningful information about what young people know and can do, and synchronizing an otherwise fragmented educational system. Written in an accessible style for a broad audience, Off the Mark is a guide for everyone who wants to ensure that assessment serves the fundamental goal of education—helping students learn.

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The forecast demise of nationalism under the new moral orders of communism and internationalism has proved illusory. In the present century, to an extent greater perhaps than in all others, nationalism has been the dominant force in the affairs of humankind. Why should this have been? Why is it that a national identity should continue to be the aspiration of almost all peoples without one and, at the same time, the justification - in the process of obtaining, securing and expanding it- for casting aside every trace and tradition of civility? In Encounters with Nationalism Ernest Gellner seeks some answers. His approach is to consider first the ideas of the main modern thinkers on the subject, from Marx, List, Malinowski and Carr, to Masaryk, Heidegger, Patocka, Hroch, Havel and Said. He examines the origins, subjects and context of their writings, their interactions with culture and politics, and their influence - both on theory and on events. The range is wide, covering Eastern, Western and Islamic societies, and includes extensive discussions of the related themes of civil society, theocracy, communism, imperialism, capitalism and liberalism. Professor Gellner is never less than trenchant. He is concerned here not only to understand, but to criticize. He confronts several powerful and fashionable notions that fuel and/or attempt to explain contemporary nationalism - among them postcolonialism. On the one hand he exposes their incoherence and irresponsibility; on the other he places them alongside ideas of real currency. Nor does he evade the controversy surrounding the nature of judgement itself: the reader will also find here concise and penetrating discussions of relativism, pluralism, objectivity and the possibility of universal values.

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The twentieth-century artist Bruno Schulz was born an Austrian, lived as a Pole and died a Jew. First a citizen of the Habsburg monarchy, he would, without moving, become the subject of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, the Second Polish Republic, the USSR and, finally, the Third Reich. Yet to use his own metaphor, Schulz remained throughout a citizen of the Republic of Dreams. He was a master of twentieth-century imaginative fiction who mapped the anxious perplexities of his time; Isaac Bashevis Singer called him “one of the most remarkable writers who ever lived.” Schulz was also a talented illustrator and graphic artist whose masochistic drawings would catch the eye of a sadistic Nazi officer. Schulz’s art became the currency in which he bought life. Drawing on extensive new reporting and archival research, Benjamin Balint chases the inventive murals Schulz painted on the walls of an SS villa—the last traces of his vanished world—into multiple dimensions of the artist’s life and afterlife. Sixty years after Schulz was murdered, those murals were miraculously rediscovered, only to be secretly smuggled by Israeli agents to Jerusalem. The ensuing international furore summoned broader perplexities, not just about who has the right to curate orphaned artworks and to construe their meanings, but about who can claim to stand guard over the legacy of Jews killed in the Nazi slaughter. By re-creating the artist’s milieu at a crossroads not just of Jewish and Polish culture but of art, sex and violence, Bruno Schulz itself stands as an act of belated restitution, offering a kaleidoscopic portrait of a life with all its paradoxes and curtailed possibilities.

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In this compelling study, Jacob Neusner argues that economics is an active and generative ingredient of the system of the Mishnah. The Mishnah directly addresses such economic concerns as the value of work, agronomics, currency, commerce and the marketplace, and correct management of labor and of the household. In all its breadth, the Mishnah poses the question of the critical place occupied by the economy in society under God's rule. The Economics of the Mishnah is the first book to examine the place of economic theory generally in the Judaic system of the Mishnah. Jacob Neusner begins by surveying previous work on economics and Judaism, the best known being Werner Sombart's The Jews and Modern Capitalism. The mistaken notion that Jews have had a common economic history has outlived the demise of Sombart's argument, and it is a notion that Neusner overturns before discussing the Mishnaic economics. Only in Aristotle, Neusner argues, do we find an equal to the Mishnah's accomplishment in engaging economics in the service of a larger systemic statement. Neusner shows that the framers of the Mishnah imagined a distributive economy functioning through the Temple and priesthood, while also legislating for the action of markets. The economics of the Mishnah, then, is to some extent a mixed economy. The dominant, distributive element in this mixed economy, Neusner contends, derives from the belief that the Temple and its designated castes on earth exercise God's claim to the ownership of the holy land. He concludes by considering the implications of the derivation of the Mishnah's economics from the interests of the undercapitalized and overextended farmer.

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This volume brings together nine papers from a conference on international macroeconomics sponsored by the NBER in 1985. International economists as well as graduate students in the fields of global monetary economics, finance, and macroeconomics will find this an outstanding contribution to current research. It includes two commentaries for each paper, written by experts in the field, and Frenkel's detailed introduction, which serves as a reader's guide to the arguments made, the models employed, and the issues raised by each contributor. The studies analyze national fiscal policies within the context of the international economic order. Malcolm D. Knight and Paul R. Masson use an empirical model to show that fiscal changes in recent years in the United States, West Germany, and Japan have caused major disturbances in net savings and investment flows. Linda S. Kole uses a two-country simulation model to examine the effects of a large nation's expansion on exchange rates, interest rates, and the balance of payments. In other studies, Warwick J. McKibbin and Jeffrey D. Sachs discuss the influences of different currency regimes on the international transmission of inflation; Kent P. Kimbrough analyzes the interaction between optimal tax policies and international trade; Sweder van Wijnbergen investigates the interrelation of fiscal policies, trade intervention, and world interest rates; and Willem H. Buiter uses an analytical model to look at fiscal interdependence and optimal policy design. David Backus, Michael Devereux, and Douglas Purvis develop a theoretical model to investigate effects of different fiscal policies in an open economy. Alan C. Stockman looks at the influence of policy anticipation in the private sector, while Lawrence H. Summers shows the effects of differential tax policy on international competitiveness.

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The extraordinary, unknown story of two giants of American history—Henry Ford and Thomas Edison—and their attempt to create an electric-powered city of tomorrow on the Tennessee River During the roaring twenties, two of the most revered and influential men in American business proposed to transform one of the country’s poorest regions into a dream technological metropolis, a shining paradise of small farms, giant factories, and sparkling laboratories. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison’s “Detroit of the South” would be ten times the size of Manhattan, powered by renewable energy, and free of air pollution. And it would reshape American society, introducing mass commuting by car, use a new kind of currency called “energy dollars,” and have the added benefit (from Ford and Edison's view) of crippling the growth of socialism.The whole audacious scheme almost came off, with Southerners rallying to support what became known as the Ford Plan. But while some saw it as a way to conjure the future and reinvent the South, others saw it as one of the biggest land swindles of all time. They were all true.Electric City is a rich chronicle of the time and the social backdrop, and offers a fresh look at the lives of the two men who almost saw the project to fruition, the forces that came to oppose them, and what rose in its stead: a new kind of public corporation called the Tennessee Valley Authority, one of the greatest achievements of the New Deal. This is a history for a wide audience, including readers interested in American history, technology, politics, and the future.

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An accessible yet in-depth introductory textbook on the basic concepts of phonetics, fully updated and revised This broad, interdisciplinary textbook investigates how speech can be written down, how speech is produced, its acoustic characteristics, and how listeners perceive speech. Phonetics: Transcription, Production, Acoustics, and Perception introduces readers to the fundamental concepts of the discipline, providing coverage of all four areas of phonetics. This comprehensive textbook also familiarizes readers with concepts from other disciplines related to phonetics—such as physiology, anatomy, and psychology—through relatable, real-life examples. Now in its second edition, the text has been substantially revised to improve clarity and currency, based on student feedback received by the authors over the past decade. Brief “Nutshell” introductions have been added to all chapters to provide a clear overview of key points within the body of the text. Expanded content to this new edition examines voice quality, the acoustic correlates of different phonation types, intonation, and different theories of speech perception. Written in a clear and concise style by two of the field’s leading scholars, this textbook: Covers related relevant areas, including vocal fold vibration and the physiology of the ear Offers examples from other languages to highlight aspects of phonetics not found in English Includes chapter-by-chapter exercises, engaging illustrations, and a detailed glossary Features a companion website containing additional resources such as figures and sound files Phonetics: Transcription, Production, Acoustics, and Perception, 2nd Edition is an ideal text for both introductory and advanced courses in phonetics and speech science, general linguistics, related disciplines such as psychology, speech pathology, and audiology, and for anyone interested to learn about how we speak and hear.

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A pocket-sized travel guide, packed with expert advice and ideas for the best things to see and do in Berlin, and complemented with a sturdy pull-out map - perfect for a day trip or a short break.Whether you want to gaze at world-class art on Museum Island, climb the glittering dome of the Reichstag or find the best bars in Europe's coolest capital - this great-value, concise travel guide will ensure you don't miss a thing. Inside Mini Map and Guide Berlin:- Easy-to-use pull-out map shows Berlin in detail, and includes a U-Bahn and S-Bahn map- Colour-coded area guide makes it easy to find information quickly and plan your day- Illustrations show the inside of some of Berlin's most iconic buildings- Colour photographs of Berlin's museums, architecture, shops, cathedrals, and more- Essential travel tips including our expert choices of where to eat, drink and shop, plus useful transport, currency and health information and a phrase book- Chapters covering Unter den Linden, Museum Island, Alexanderplatz, North Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain, Tiergarten, Kreuzberg, Around Kurfürstendamm, and Around Schloss Charlottenburg Mini Map and Guide Berlin is abridged from DK Eyewitness Travel Guide Berlin.Staying for longer and looking for a more comprehensive guide? Try our DK Eyewitness Top Ten Berlin. About DK Eyewitness Travel: DK's Mini Map and Guides take the work out of planning a short trip, with expert advice and easy-to-read maps to inform and enrich any short break. DK is the world's leading illustrated reference publisher, producing beautifully designed books for adults and children in over 120 countries.

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From Ben Mezrich, the New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires and Bringing Down the House, comes Bitcoin Billionaires - the fascinating story of brothers Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss's big bet on crypto-currency and its dazzling pay-off.Ben Mezrich's 2009 bestseller The Accidental Billionaires is the definitive account of Facebook's founding - and the basis for the Academy Award-winning film The Social Network. Two of the story's iconic characters are Harvard students Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss: identical twins, Olympic rowers, and legal foils to Mark Zuckerberg. Bitcoin Billionaires is the story of the brothers' redemption and revenge in the wake of their epic legal battle with Facebook - and the first great book from the world of bitcoin.Planning to start careers as venture capitalists, the brothers quickly discover that no one will take their money for fear of alienating Zuckerberg. While nursing their wounds in Ibiza, they accidentally run into a shady character who tells them about a brand new idea: cryptocurrency. Immersing themselves in what is then an obscure and sometimes sinister world, they begin to realize "crypto" is, in their own words, "either the next big thing or total bulls--t." There's nothing left to do but make a bet.From the Silk Road to the halls of the Securities and Exchange Commission to the Facebook boardroom, Bitcoin Billionaires will take us on a wild and surprising ride while illuminating a tantalizing economic future. On November 26th, 2017, the Winklevoss brothers became the first bitcoin billionaires. Here's the story of how they got there - as only Ben Mezrich could tell it.

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This is the third of three volumes from the project 'Authority and Persuasion: the Role of Commonplaces in Western Europe (c.1450-c.1800)'. The project was launched by the universities of Copenhagen, Durham and Groningen and involved scholars from a range of disciplines who researched the use of commonplaces as a means of persuasion in the early modern world. Commonplace as a technical term refers to the loci communes collected in late medieval and early modern commonplace books. In the project, however, the notion of commonplace was broadened to include means of persuasion in all kinds of texts as well as the visual arts, theatre, music and other media. This broader notion embraces metaphors, proverbs, figures, and expressions that enjoyed both a history of use in a given society or language community and a wide currency in that society. This third volume, subtitled 'Legitimation of Authority', focuses on the eighteenth century, an era in which many new political groups appeared, challenging and confronting existing rulers and elites, who in turn were forced to find alternative ways of legitimating their authority. Although the traditional commonplace books went out of fashion, the ten contributions in this volume demonstrate that practices of quotation as well as persuasive uses of stock material did not disappear. As in the previous two volumes, the authors represented in the present one have studied the use of generalised commonplaces in different sources and genres and in various media, such as political rituals and symbols, news sources, reference books, literature and also theatre and music. The first volume concerns 'Reformation, Counter-Reformation and Revolt, and the second volume deals with 'Consolidation of God-given Power'.

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Taiwanese foreign direct investment rapidly expanded in the mid-1980s when the domestic wage rate and the value of the Taiwanese currency skyrocketed simultaneously. Losing their competitive edge at home, many Taiwanese firms relocated to lower wage countries; mainly Southeast Asia and China.Taiwanese Firms in Southeast Asia provides a comprehensive review of Taiwan's direct investment in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. It also explores the motivation behind investment in Asia, Europe and the US. In most countries, incidence of foreign direct investment is positively correlated with firm size. However, in Taiwanese firms, the opposite is true. The book examines the reasons for this and assesses the difference in practice between small and large firms conducting foreign direct investment, focusing on the manufacturing sector. The book also includes an original, comprehensive survey and a series of interviews with Taiwanese parent firms and their subsidiaries in Southeast Asia. The authors conclude that networking underscores the core competitiveness of Taiwanese firms and when these firms invest abroad, they attempt to maintain a close connection with domestic networks to retain competitiveness and flexibility. However, they will have difficulty in sustaining this in the long-term because co-ordination of production across national borders requires intensive input of managerial resources which are scarce among Taiwanese firms. In the long-term, they have to localize and integrate themselves into the local networks.The book is a result of joint research efforts by Taiwanese, American and Southeast Asian scholars and will be required reading for students and scholars of economies in Southeast Asia, international business, Asian studies and multinational enterprise.

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Diverted by the dramatic military and political events of July 1944, few Americans realized the significance of an international conference taking place at Bretton Woods, a mountain resort in New Hampshire, far from the battle zones. There United Nations experts were completing plans for a world monetary and financial system that they hoped would create a prosperous, efficient global economy and avert economic tensions that might lead to another world war. Until the dollar crisis of 1971, decisions made at Bretton Woods provided the institutions and rules for international finance. The conference ushered in an era of unprecedented expansion of world trade and prosperity. Based on extensive research in previously unavailable sources, A Search for Solvency relates intriguing and often complicated issues of economic analysis and diplomatic history. It offers a succinct and comprehensive survey of international monetary development from the collapse of the pre–World War I gold standard to the devaluation of the dollar in 1971. In effect, it explains the origins of late twentieth-century global inflation and currency problems. The author details how the ghost of the Great Depression, the failure of monetary reconstruction efforts after World War I, and the memory of the nineteenth-century gold standard guided efforts to construct the Bretton Woods system. This preoccupation with the past, as well as political constraints, produced a monetary system protected against past dangers—fluctuating currencies, controls, and deflation—but dangerously vulnerable to inflationary pressures. The weaknesses of Bretton Woods, a system geared to an era in which economic power was concentrated in the United States, became visible in the 1960s and painfully apparent by the mid-1970s.

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Book clubs are everywhere these days. And women talk about the clubs they belong to with surprising emotion: "You will never know what a difference it made in my life". But why are the clubs so important to them? Which women join book clubs and why? And what do the women discuss when they meet? To answer questions like these, Elizabeth Long spent years observing and participating in women's book clubs in the Houston area and interviewing members from dozens of different discussion groups. Far from being an isolated activity, she finds that for club members reading is an active and social pursuit, a crucial way for them to reflect creatively on the meaning of their lives and their place in the social order. Similar to their 19th-century predecessors, whom Long also considers, women today find in reading groups the inspiration, support and self-confidence to reimagine themselves both individually and collectively. Tracing how this process works, Long takes us on a guided tour of the book clubs themselves, from how they are formed and organized to how members choose which books to read. Through vivid examples, she shows how women use literature to achieve personal insight and empowerment. She then turns her attention to the emergence of book clubs that are run through chain bookstores, television shows and the Internet, and considers the importance of such clubs for women as a broader cultural forum. Far from just an excuse to get together once a month, book clubs are here revealed to be a vital arena for self-formation, one that has as much currency now as it did a century ago.

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