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In the Shadow of the Holocaust and the Inquisition: Israel's Relations with Francoist Spain
by Raanan ReinThis is an analysis of the reasons for the failure of all efforts to establish diplomatic relations between Israel and Francoist Spain from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s. It uncovers the political discussions and the diplomatic moves of each country.
In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities
by Davarian L BaldwinAcross America, universities have become big businesses—and our cities their company towns. But there is a cost to those who live in their shadow. Urban universities play an outsized role in America&’s cities. They bring diverse ideas and people together and they generate new innovations. But they also gentrify neighborhoods and exacerbate housing inequality in an effort to enrich their campuses and attract students. They maintain private police forces that target the Black and Latinx neighborhoods nearby. They become the primary employers, dictating labor practices and suppressing wages. In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower takes readers from Hartford to Chicago and from Phoenix to Manhattan, revealing the increasingly parasitic relationship between universities and our cities. Through eye-opening conversations with city leaders, low-wage workers tending to students&’ needs, and local activists fighting encroachment, scholar Davarian L. Baldwin makes clear who benefits from unchecked university power—and who is made vulnerable. In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower is a wake-up call to the reality that higher education is no longer the ubiquitous public good it was once thought to be. But as Baldwin shows, there is an alternative vision for urban life, one that necessitates a more equitable relationship between our cities and our universities.
In the Shadow of the Member States: Policy-Making Agency by the ASEAN Secretariat and Dialogue Partners (Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific)
by Lukas Maximilian MüllerThis book provides practice-oriented insights into the agency of two previously underestimated actors in Southeast Asian regionalism: the ASEAN Secretariat and ASEAN’s dialog partners. In doing so, it offers an inside view of the policymaking processes in the ASEAN Political-Security and the ASEAN Economic Community, analyzing the interplay and agency by both actors in agenda setting, formulation, decision-making, implementation, and monitoring. Drawing on a trove of novel data, including never-before analyzed sources and numerous interviews with ASEAN insiders, the book showcases a number of concrete cases of policymaking, including competition and counterterrorism policies. The chapters focusing on the ASEAN Secretariat address aspects related to institutional autonomy, capacity, and reforms within the bureaucracy. In the chapters on ASEAN's dialog partners, the book provides insights into the bilateral management of institutional support programs, as well as the impacts of support on ASEAN's policymaking processes.
In the Shadow of the State: Intellectuals and the Quest for National Identity in Twentieth-century Spanish America
by Nicola MillerCarlos Fuentes once observed that to be a Spanish American intellectual was to fulfill the roles, by default, of “a tribune, a member of parliament, a labor leader, a journalist, a redeemer of his society.” Such statements reflect the view that the region’s intellectuals have often acted as substitutes for the structures of a civil society. An alternative view casts Spanish American intellectuals in a far more reactionary role. Here, it is suggested that the elaboration of inert popular stereotypes such as the stoic Indian and the heroic gaucho has resulted in an infinite postponement of authentic cultural identity, and a perpetuation, aided by intellectuals, of a social order in which popular demands were either ignored or repressed. In the context of this debate, this book explores the roles played by intellectuals in the creation of popular national identities in twentieth-century Spanish America, and seeks to identify the factors which lie behind two such contrasting evaluations of their contribution. Ranging across the intellectual centers of Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Mexico and Peru, it illustrates vividly the diversity and evolution of intellectual life in the region. Particular attention is paid to the idea of peripheral modernity and its influence on intellectual activity, as well as to the contributions made by intellectuals to the three major strands in debates on popular national identity: bi-culturalism, anti-imperialism and history.
In the Shadow of the White House: A Memoir of the Washington and Watergate Years 1968-1978
by Jo HaldemanFor her first forty years, Jo Haldeman's life followed a conventional path. While her husband, Bob, built his career in advertising, Jo comfortably settled into her role as mother of four, housewife, and community volunteer. In 1968, Jo's world changed dramatically. Richard Nixon was elected President of the United States, and Bob was offered the job of a lifetime--White House Chief of Staff. As Jo and Bob discussed the opportunities and challenges that this move would entail, little did she anticipate the course that her life, and her relationship with Bob, would take over the next ten years. In this insightful, poignant, and guileless memoir of those ten years, Jo shares her story as the wife of H. R. Haldeman, often referred to as the second most powerful person in the White House. She offers a window into the world of trips on Air Force One, weekends at Camp David, and events at the White House, as well as family vignettes and the growing stresses of her husband's demanding job. Then a bungled burglary at the Watergate erupted into a national scandal. The news began to feature the Haldeman name. Blaring headlines and vicious political cartoons accompanied new revelations of a cover-up. Multiple investigations and Senate hearings followed. Criminal proceedings loomed. Jo's compelling account takes the reader on her journey from the heady heights of Washington life through an excruciating public resignation and trial to her husband's conviction and imprisonment. In a true period piece, Jo illuminates the story of the "woman behind the man" and personalizes the Watergate experience. Enhanced by her personal photographs and the immediacy of her present tense delivery, In the Shadow of the White House is a fascinating work of nonfiction that reads like a novel. Jo Haldeman was married to H. R. "Bob" Haldeman, Richard Nixon's Chief of Staff, for forty-four years. She lives in Santa Barbara, California, and has four children and six grandchildren.
In the Shadows of State and Capital: The United Fruit Company, Popular Struggle, and Agrarian Restructuring in Ecuador, 1900-1995
by Steve StrifflerWinner of the 2001 President's Award of the Social Science History Association In the Shadows of State and Capital tells the story of how Ecuadorian peasants gained, and then lost, control of the banana industry. Providing an ethnographic history of the emergence of subcontracting within Latin American agriculture and of the central role played by class conflict in this process, Steve Striffler looks at the quintessential form of twentieth-century U. S. imperialism in the region--the banana industry and, in particular, the United Fruit Company (Chiquita). He argues that, even within this highly stratified industry, popular struggle has contributed greatly to processes of capitalist transformation and historical change. Striffler traces the entrance of United Fruit into Ecuador during the 1930s, its worker-induced departure in the 1960s, the troubled process through which contract farming emerged during the last half of the twentieth century, and the continuing struggles of those involved. To explore the influence of both peasant activism and state power on the withdrawal of multinational corporations from banana production, Striffler draws on state and popular archives, United Fruit documents, and extensive oral testimony from workers, peasants, political activists, plantation owners, United Fruit administrators, and state bureaucrats. Through an innovative melding of history and anthropology, he demonstrates that, although peasant-workers helped dismantle the foreign-owned plantation, they were unable to determine the broad contours through which the subsequent system of production--contract farming--emerged and transformed agrarian landscapes throughout Latin America. By revealing the banana industry's impact on processes of state formation in Latin America, In the Shadows of State and Capital will interest historians, anthropologists, and political scientists, as well as scholars of globalization and agrarian studies.
In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power
by Alfred W. McCoyFor a decade America&’s share of the global economy has been in decline. Its diplomatic alliances are under immense strain, and any claim of moral leadership has been abandoned. America is still a colossus, possessing half the world&’s manufacturing capacity, nearly half its military forces, and a formidable system of global surveillance and covert operations. But even at its peak it may have been sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Is it realistic to rely on the global order established after World War II, or are we witnessing the changing of the guard, with China emerging as the world&’s economic and military powerhouse? America clings to its superpower status, but for how much longer?
In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power (Dispatch Books)
by Alfred W. McCoyThe award-winning historian delivers a &“brilliant and deeply informed&” analysis of American power from the Spanish-American War to the Trump Administration (New York Journal of Books).In this sweeping and incisive history of US foreign relations, historian Alfred McCoy explores America&’s rise as a world power from the 1890s through the Cold War, and its bid to extend its hegemony deep into the twenty-first century. Since American dominance reached its apex at the close of the Cold War, the nation has met new challenges that it is increasingly unequipped to handle.From the disastrous invasion of Iraq to the failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, fracturing military alliances, and the blundering nationalism of Donald Trump, McCoy traces US decline in the face of rising powers such as China. He also offers a critique of America&’s attempt to maintain its position through cyberwar, covert intervention, client elites, psychological torture, and worldwide surveillance.
In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism, and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India
by Alpa ShahIn the Shadows of the State suggests that well-meaning indigenous rights and development claims and interventions may misrepresent and hurt the very people they intend to help. It is a powerful critique based on extensive ethnographic research in Jharkhand, a state in eastern India officially created in 2000. While the realization of an independent Jharkhand was the culmination of many years of local, regional, and transnational activism for the rights of the region's culturally autonomous indigenous people, Alpa Shah argues that the activism unintentionally further marginalized the region's poorest people. Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research in Jharkhand, she follows the everyday lives of some of the poorest villagers as they chase away protected wild elephants, try to cut down the forests they allegedly live in harmony with, maintain a healthy skepticism about the revival of the indigenous governance system, and seek to avoid the initial spread of an armed revolution of Maoist guerrillas who claim to represent them. Juxtaposing these experiences with the accounts of the village elites and the rhetoric of the urban indigenous-rights activists, Shah reveals a class dimension to the indigenous-rights movement, one easily lost in the cultural-based identity politics that the movement produces. In the Shadows of the State brings together ethnographic and theoretical analyses to show that the local use of global discourses of indigeneity often reinforces a class system that harms the poorest people.
In the Shadows: True Stories of High-Stakes Negotiations to Free Americans Captured Abroad
by Ellis Henican Mickey BergmanA top negotiator in countless high-stakes missions to free Americans captured abroad and held in the world's scariest prisons takes readers inside the dramatic and shadowy world of international hostage rescue. Brittney Griner, Danny Fenster, Otto Warmbier, Trevor Reed, Paul Whelan, Kenneth Bae…When an American citizen is unjustly imprisoned overseas, that&’s when Mickey Bergman&’s phone starts to ring. Who else are their desperate loved ones supposed to call? Mickey and his tight team of savvy negotiators at the Richardson Center for Global Engagement are the go-to rescuers of last resort, carrying on the high-stakes, round-the-world mission of master negotiator Bill Richardson. Mickey and his team do what U.S. government officials are often unable or unwilling to do: sit down with America&’s toughest adversaries and find creative ways to bring our people home. That's life In the Shadows. This is the heart-pounding story of these urgent negotiations, what it&’s like to climb inside the minds of some of the world&’s most notorious strongmen, where the clear divisions between good and evil are replaced by a thousand shades of gray. The hard work is done far from the glare of media publicity. The negotiations don&’t follow traditional diplomatic rules. As innocent Americans sit behind bars in hellhole foreign prisons, Mickey and his colleagues stop at nothing to get our people home. And these cases almost never go as smoothly as they should, as the independent negotiators navigate between U.S. government officials and some of the world&’s most headstrong leaders. And as soon as one American is freed, Mickey is off on another dicey mission to Moscow, Caracas, Naypyidaw, Pyongyang, or some other complex foreign capital. These painstaking campaigns require creative thinking, hardball pressure tactics, excruciating patience, and a genuine sense of compassion for the anxious families whose lives are thrown into turmoil when a loved one is imprisoned abroad. In Mickey Bergman's own words, In the Shadows tells the hidden story of these high-drama rescue campaigns. The crafty negotiating strategies. The strong-willed foreign leaders. The emotional rollercoaster of being responsible for innocent American lives. The exhilaration when another American is released from a foreign prison—and the terrible letdown when a promising effort hits another maddening roadblock. Mickey recounts his unique relationship with his mentor, the late, great Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico, ambassador to the United Nations and legendary negotiator. He shares the wrenching closeness he develops with the desperate families he serves, who often have nowhere else to turn. He offers a detailed account of his one-on-one interactions with Washington&’s top power players, both Democrats and Republicans, and some of the world&’s most isolated and misunderstood heads of state. For readers who want the full, searing story of these life-or-death rescue missions and the fascinating people behind them, it&’s all In the Shadows. As Mickey Bergman and New York Times bestselling author Ellis Henican make clear on every page, international diplomacy isn&’t just for government officials anymore.
In the Skin of a Jihadist: A Young Journalist Enters the ISIS Recruitment Network
by Anna Erelle Erin PotterThe riveting personal story of a young French journalist who goes undercover and gets dangerously close to a key member of ISISOn Facebook, "Mélodie"--a twenty-year-old convert to Islam living with her mother and sister in Toulouse--meets Bilel, a French-born, high-ranking militant for the Islamic State in Syria. Within days, Bilel falls in love with Mélodie, and Skypes her repeatedly, urging her to come to Syria, marry him, and do jihad.But "Mélodie" is actually Anna Erelle, a Paris-based journalist investigating the recruitment channels of the Islamic State, whose digital propaganda constitutes one of its most formidable and frightening weapons, successfully mobilizing increasing numbers of young Europeans. In this mesmerizing true story, Erelle chronicles her intense monthlong relationship with Bilel--who turns out to be none other than the right-hand man of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of ISIS. Impatient for Mélodie to join him, Bilel tells her that, according to an imam he has consulted, they are already all but married, and will be officially when she arrives in Syria. As she embarks on the final, most perilous stage of her investigation, Mélodie leaves for Amsterdam to begin her journey to the Middle East. But things go terribly wrong.A gripping and often harrowing inquiry into the factors that motivate young people to join extremist causes, In the Skin of a Jihadist is a page-turner that helps us better understand the appeal of extremism.
In the Society of Fascists: Acclamation, Acquiescence, and Agency in Mussolini’s Italy
by Giulia Albanese Roberta PergherIt has been a commonplace in Italian scholarship that Fascism enjoyed its long tenure not through terror but because of widespread popular consensus. By contrast a recent wave of research has reintroduced the notion of 'totalitarianism' to discussions of Mussolini's regime yet often without testing the degree of active participation or opposition. So what was the relationship between Fascists and followers, party and people? Bringing together young Italian scholars many appearing for the first time in English engaged in new research on both elites and ordinary people, this volume offers a wide-ranging, in-depth analysis of Italian society's involvement in Fascism. "
In the Spirit of Critique: Thinking Politically in the Dialectical Tradition (SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)
by Andrew J. DouglasFocusing on the critical postures of Hegel, Marx, and a series of twentieth-century intellectuals, including Sartre, Adorno, and C. L. R. James, this book explores what dialectical thinking entails and how such thinking might speak to the lived realities of the contemporary political moment. What is revealed is not a formal method or a grand philosophical system, but rather a reflective energy or disposition—a dialectical spirit of critique—that draws normative sustenance from an emancipatory moral vision but that remains attuned principally to conflict and tension, and to the tragic uncertainties of political life. In light of the unique challenges of the late-modern age, as theorists and citizens struggle to sustain an active and coherent critical agenda, In the Spirit of Critique invites serious reconsideration of a rich and elusive intellectual tradition.
In the Storms of Transformation: Two Shipyards between Socialism and the EU (German and European Studies #56)
by Andrew Hodges Philipp Ther Ulf Brunnbauer Piotr Filipkowski Stefano Petrungaro Peter WegenschimmelIn the 1990s, states in what would become the eastern edge of the European Union transformed their political systems and economies, leaving state socialism behind for liberal democracies and free markets. In the ensuing decades, two shipyards that were once the pride of their cities – in Gdynia, Poland, and Pula, Croatia – went bankrupt, unable to withstand global competition. Through an interdisciplinary study of these two shipyards, In the Storms of Transformation brings together a team of researchers to re-evaluate the shift from state socialism to market capitalism and offer a new periodization. With perspectives from social anthropology, sociology, and business history, the book argues that this transformation began with the oil crisis of the early 1970s and ended with EU accession – in 2004 in Poland and in 2013 in Croatia – highlighting the EU competition laws and global competition that pushed the shipyards into bankruptcy and diminishing the role of the revolutions of 1989. In the Storms of Transformation bridges local labour history with global market forces, going beyond prevalent narratives of loss and nostalgia or successful neoliberal change to offer a novel and nuanced reading of post-communist transformation and its contradictions.
In the Struggle: Scholars and the Fight against Industrial Agribusiness in California
by Daniel J. O'Connell Scott J. PetersA call to action in an ongoing battle against industrial agricultureFrom the early twentieth century and across generations to the present, In the Struggle brings together the stories of eight politically engaged scholars, documenting their opposition to industrial-scale agribusiness in California. As the narrative unfolds, their previously censored and suppressed research, together with personal accounts of intimidation and subterfuge, is introduced into the public arena for the first time. In the Struggle lays out historic, subterranean confrontations over water rights, labor organizing, and the corruption of democratic principles and public institutions. As California’s rural economy increasingly consolidates into the hands of land barons and corporations, the scholars’ work shifts from analyzing problems and formulating research methods to organizing resistance and building community power. Throughout their engagement, they face intense political blowback as powerful economic interests work to pollute and undermine scientific inquiry and the civic purposes of public universities.The findings and the pressure put upon the work of these scholars—Paul Taylor, Ernesto Galarza, and Isao Fujimoto among them—are a damning indictment of the greed and corruption that flourish under industrial-scale agriculture. After almost a century of empirical evidence and published research, a definitive finding becomes clear: land consolidation and economic monopoly are fundamentally detrimental to democracy and the well-being of rural societies.
In the Swarm: Digital Prospects (Untimely Meditations #3)
by Byung-Chul HanA prominent German thinker argues that—contrary to “Twitter Revolution” cheerleading—digital communication is destroying political discourse and political action. The shitstorm represents an authentic phenomenon of digital communication.—from In the SwarmDigital communication and social media have taken over our lives. In this contrarian reflection on digitized life, Byung-Chul Han counters the cheerleaders for Twitter revolutions and Facebook activism by arguing that digital communication is in fact responsible for the disintegration of community and public space and is slowly eroding any possibility for real political action and meaningful political discourse. In the predigital, analog era, by the time an angry letter to the editor had been composed, mailed, and received, the immediate agitation had passed. Today, digital communication enables instantaneous, impulsive reaction, meant to express and stir up outrage on the spot. “The shitstorm,” writes Han, ”represents an authentic phenomenon of digital communication. ”Meanwhile, the public, the senders and receivers of these communications have become a digital swarm—not a mass, or a crowd, or Negri and Hardt's antiquated notion of a “multitude,” but a set of isolated individuals incapable of forming a “we,” incapable of calling dominant power relations into question, incapable of formulating a future because of an obsession with the present. The digital swarm is a fragmented entity that can focus on individual persons only in order to make them an object of scandal. Han, one of the most widely read philosophers in Europe today, describes a society in which information has overrun thought, in which the same algorithms are employed by Facebook, the stock market, and the intelligence services. Democracy is under threat because digital communication has made freedom and control indistinguishable. Big Brother has been succeeded by Big Data.
In the Time of the Tyrants: Panama, 1968-1990
by Richard M. Koster Guillermo Sanchez BorbonAn eyewitness account of how Panama, since 1968, has fallen victim to a line of military dictators who have fattened on the misery of a country once democratic and prosperous. The authors, an American novelist and a Panamanian journalist, were actors in the drama of Panama as well as observers. They tell the story of how the darkness fell on Panama, how the tyrants, from Omar Torrijos to Manuel Noriega, became creatures of the secret government of the United States, and were supported long after their true nature was known. It is the story of those tyrants killed, those they corrupted and those who were brave enough to stand up to them.
In the Tracks of Marx’s Capital: Debates in Marxian Political Economy and Lessons for 21st Century Capitalism (Palgrave Insights into Apocalypse Economics)
by Sungur Savran E. Ahmet TonakThis book provides an accessible introduction to Marx’s seminal work Capital and explores the core ideas of Marxian political economy relevant for modern day economies. The first part gives an overview of Capital based on the authors’ original thinking in the methodology of Capital. The second part discusses the application of these ideas to some understudied questions of measuring profit on alienation, the rate of exploitation, the reconstruction of input-output tables, and the role of the welfare state and social wage. The third part sets forth new research in Marxian analysis in the 21st century, facing the challenges brought about by digital labor and the deep crisis of the global economy. The last part discusses the Marxism/Neo-Ricardianism controversy.
In the Twilight of Revolution: The Political Theory of Amilcar Cabral (Routledge Library Editions: Political Thought and Political Philosophy #39)
by Jock McCullochFirst published in 1983. Amilcar Cabral was one of Africa’s leading revolutionary figures. Universally recognised as the founding father at the independent state of Guiné-Bissau, he was also the first truly important political thinker to have emerged from Africa’s two decades of revolution. This book was the first publication to present a critical analysis of his standing as a political theorist. Born in 1925 in the then Portuguese colony of Guiné, Cabral devoted his life to the liberation of his people from colonialism and was instrumental in founding the PAIGC, the African Party for the Independence of Guiné and Cape Verde. He was assassinated early in 1973, but the PAIGC continued his task and Guiné-Bissau gained independence in September 1973. Guiné’s revolution came late, but it was a genuine revolution and, like all revolutions, was accompanied by a theory of its own. That theory is found in the writings of Cabral. In this study Jack McCulloch explains that, because of the conjunction of a number of historical factors, the revolution in Guiné assumed an importance for out of proportion to the size or economic significance of the country, and shows that consequently Cabral’s theory has come to have an historical significance of its own. This account of Cabral’s political theory demonstrates clearly that the effect of Cabral’s career was to help bring down the last of the great colonial empires in Africa and, in the realm of theory, to dismantle the central shibboleths of African socialism.
In the Valley of Mist
by Justine Hardy"If there is a paradise on earth, it is definitely here and only here," said the early seventeenthcentury Mughal Emperor Jehangir when describing the Kashmir Valley. This is a place that has always inspired poetry and war: the Kashmir Valley has been fought over for centuries. Tensions there exploded yet again in 1989, and since then it has been embedded in constant conflict -- every facet of militant and fundamentalist extremism having already exhibited its horrible results long before September 11, 2001.
In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia's Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825-1861
by W. Bruce LincolnThe first decade of Alexander II's reign is known in Russian history as the Era of the Great Reforms, a time recognized as the major period of social, economic, and institutional transformation between the reign of Peter the Great and the Revolution of 1905. Coming directly after the notoriously repressive last decade of the Nicholas era, the appearance of such dramatic reform has led scholars to seek its causes in dramatic events. Surely some great, even cataclysmic, force must have driven Alexander II and his advisers to initiate what appears to be such an astonishing change in policy. In their search for the origins of these Great Reforms, historians generally have focused upon two phenomena. <P><P>The first of these was Russia's defeat in the Crimean War by a relatively small, ineptly commanded Allied expeditionary force. The second was the serf revolts, which increased dramatically in the 1850s. From these events, most historians have concluded that the economic failings of serfdom, the problem of preserving domestic peace, and the need to restore Russia's tarnished military prestige were the major forces that convinced Alexander II's government to embark upon a new reformist path. <P><P>As Lincoln's examination of the long-unstudied Russian archival evidence shows, there are good reasons to question whether such crises of policy and failings of Russia's servile economy impelled Alexander II and his advisers along a previously uncharted reformist path after the Crimean War. Further, Lincoln argues that the Great Reform legislation simply was too complex and required sophisticated knowledge about the Empire's economic, administrative, and judicial affairs to have been formulated in the brief half-decade after the war's end.
In the Wake
by Lisa Kron"Funny, moving, and undeniably sexy. The heady blend of smart dialogue and characters. . .makes it a candidate to be the Angels in America of the Bush II decade."-San Francisco Chronicle"The two works [Angels in America and In the Wake] use a volatile chapter in American history as background in their exploration of how the sociopolitical maladies of an age play out in the personal conduct of characters."- Charles McNulty, Los Angeles TimesLisa Kron, author of Broadway's Well and the OBIE-winning solo show 2.5 Minute Ride, has taken on the big question of our country's character. On the Thanksgiving after the controversial 2000 election, political junkie Ellen gathers with family and friends in her cramped New York apartment. But she soon discovers-with an unexpected passionate encounter-that ideas about America and our own selves are not as fixed as they once seemed. A play with plenty of humor and passion to go with its politics, Kron's work premiered last year at Berkeley Rep and Los Angeles' Center Theater Group, and debuted at The Public Theater in New York this fall.Lisa Kron's plays have been performed on Broadway, off-Broadway, and around the world. She is a founding member of the award-winning theater group The Five Lesbian Brothers, and teaches playwriting at Yale University.
In the Wake of the Crisis
by Joseph Stiglitz Michael Spence David Romer Olivier BlanchardIn 2011, the International Monetary Fund invited prominent economists and economic policy makers to consider the brave new world of the post-crisis global economy. The result is a book that captures the state of macroeconomic thinking at a transformational moment. The crisis and the weak recovery that has followed raise fundamental questions concerning macroeconomics and economic policy. For instance, to what extent are financial markets efficient and self-correcting? How crucial is low and stable inflation for growth and the real stability of the economy? How strong is the case for open capital markets? Too often, the standard models provided insufficient guidance on how to respond to the unprecedented situations created by the crisis. As a result, policy makers have been forced to improvise. What to do when interest rates reach the zero floor? How best to provide liquidity to segmented financial institutions and markets? How much to use fiscal policy starting from high levels of debt? These top economists discuss future directions for monetary policy, fiscal policy, financial regulation, capital account management, growth strategies, and the international monetary system, and the economic models that should underpin thinking about critical policy choices. Among the new realities they consider are the swing of the pendulum toward regulation; the need for new theoretical approaches, incorporating advances in agency theory, behavioral economics, and understanding of credit markets and finance based on theories of imperfect information; and the importance for macroeconomic policy to target not just inflation but also output and financial stability.
In the Wake of the Crisis: Leading Economists Reassess Economic Policy
by Joseph Stiglitz Michael Spence David Romer Olivier BlanchardIn 2011, the International Monetary Fund invited prominent economists and economic policy makers to consider the brave new world of the post-crisis global economy. The result is a book that captures the state of macroeconomic thinking at a transformational moment. The crisis and the weak recovery that has followed raise fundamental questions concerning macroeconomics and economic policy. For instance, to what extent are financial markets efficient and self-correcting? How crucial is low and stable inflation for growth and the real stability of the economy? How strong is the case for open capital markets? Too often, the standard models provided insufficient guidance on how to respond to the unprecedented situations created by the crisis. As a result, policy makers have been forced to improvise. What to do when interest rates reach the zero floor? How best to provide liquidity to segmented financial institutions and markets? How much to use fiscal policy starting from high levels of debt? These top economists discuss future directions for monetary policy, fiscal policy, financial regulation, capital account management, growth strategies, and the international monetary system, and the economic models that should underpin thinking about critical policy choices. Among the new realities they consider are the swing of the pendulum toward regulation; the need for new theoretical approaches, incorporating advances in agency theory, behavioral economics, and understanding of credit markets and finance based on theories of imperfect information; and the importance for macroeconomic policy to target not just inflation but also output and financial stability.
In the Walled Gardens: A Novel
by Anahita FirouzThough they have not seen each other in twenty years, the moment that Reza lays eyes on Mahastee at a concert of classical Persian music in the gardens of Bagh Ferdaus, he knows it is she. But the love they shared as children, climbing the plum trees around Mahastee's country home, is not so simple anymore. Married to a man she has grown to despise, Mahastee feels trapped by the privileged society she has grown up in. Reza, whose father once worked for Mahastee's aristocratic family, has become a revolutionary, leading clandestine meetings in the shadowy underworld of Tehran. The disappearance of a friend's son leads Mahastee out of the safety of her world and into the dangerous currents running through Tehran. When she learns the truth about the missing boy, she glimpses for the first time the violence that underpins her life. As Mahastee's volatile love for Reza gains momentum, the political situation becomes even more explosive, driving Reza further underground and leading Mahastee to a moment of truth and decision - from which she can never return.--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved