Introduction : geopolitics without power politics -- From a strategy by default to a grand strategy? : in the beginning was enlargement -- The limits of enlargement : the end of certainties -- Peace, war, and confetti : an elusive security policy -- Boundaries and borderlands : from inside out? -- A crisis in the making? : the refugee crisis -- Competitive decadence? : Russia and the EU -- Conclusion : the waning geography of influence
The European Union could soon be a thing of the past. Xenophobia is rampant and commonly reflected in elections across the continent. Great Britain may hold a referendum on whether to abandon the union altogether. Spurred by anti-EU sentiments due to the euro crisis, national interests conflict with a shared vision for the future of Europe. Is it too late to preserve the union that generated unprecedented peace for more than half a century? This is no mere academic question with limited importance for America and the rest of the world. In the past decade, the EU has declined from a unified global power to a fractious confederation of states with staggering unemployment resentfully seeking relief from a reluctant Germany. If the EU collapses and the former member states are transformed again from partners into rivals, the US and the world will confront the serious economic and political consequences that follow. In a series of revealing interviews conducted by Dr. Gregor Peter Schmitz, George Soros -- a man of vast European experience whose personal past informs his present concerns -- offers trenchant commentary and concise, prescriptive advice: The euro crisis was not an inevitable consequence of integration, but a result of avoidable mistakes in politics, economics, and finance; and excessive faith in the self-regulating financial markets that Soros calls market fundamentalism inspired flawed institutional structures that call out for reform. Despite the considerable perils of this period, George Soros maintains his faith in the European Union as a model of open society. This book is a testament to his vision for a peaceful and productive Europe.
How does language affect people's response to the land they love? J.M. Arthur makes "word maps" of Australia, and through the process of lexical cartography explores the relationship between language and landscape.
How creditors came to wield unprecedented power over heavily indebted countries—and the dangers this poses to democracy The European debt crisis has rekindled long-standing debates about the power of finance and the fraught relationship between capitalism and democracy in a globalized world. Why Not Default? unravels a striking puzzle at the heart of these debates—why, despite frequent crises and the immense costs of repayment, do so many heavily indebted countries continue to service their international debts? In this compelling and incisive book, Jerome Roos provides a sweeping investigation of the political economy of sovereign debt and international crisis management. He takes readers from the rise of public borrowing in the Italian city-states to the gunboat diplomacy of the imperialist era and the wave of sovereign defaults during the Great Depression. He vividly describes the debt crises of developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s and sheds new light on the recent turmoil inside the Eurozone—including the dramatic capitulation of Greece’s short-lived anti-austerity government to its European creditors in 2015. Drawing on in-depth case studies of contemporary debt crises in Mexico, Argentina, and Greece, Why Not Default? paints a disconcerting picture of the ascendancy of global finance. This important book shows how the profound transformation of the capitalist world economy over the past four decades has endowed private and official creditors with unprecedented structural power over heavily indebted borrowers, enabling them to impose painful austerity measures and enforce uninterrupted debt service during times of crisis—with devastating social consequences and far-reaching implications for democracy.
The last time global sovereign debt reached the level seen today was at the end of the Second World War, and this shaped a generation of economic policymaking. International institutions were transformed, country policies were often draconian and distortive, and many crises ensued. By the early 1970s, when debt fell back to pre-war levels, the world was radically different. It is likely that changes of a similar magnitude -for better and for worse - will play out over coming decades. Sovereign Debt: A Guide for Economists and Practitioners is an attempt to build some structure around the issues of sovereign debt to help guide economists, practitioners and policymakers through this complicated, but not intractable, subject. Sovereign Debt brings together some of the world's leading researchers and specialists in sovereign debt to cover a range of sub-disciplines within this vast topic. It explores debt management with debt sustainability; debt reduction policies with crisis prevention policies; and the history with the conjuncture. It is a foundation text for all those interested in sovereign debt, with a particular focus real world examples and issues.
Civil Procedure: Cases and Problems, Seventh Edition by Barbara Allen Babcock, Toni M. Massaro, Norman W. Spaulding, and new co-author Myriam Gilles (the #5 most cited civil procedure scholar in the country) is the ideal casebook for the modern Civil Procedure course. With lightly-edited cases, both canonical and contemporary, and engaging hypothetical problems, the Seventh Edition of Civil Procedure: Cases and Problems promotes student understanding of modern procedure, the adversary system and alternatives, the relationship between substance and procedure, and systemic problems in access to justice. This casebook pioneered the “due process approach” to the study of procedure and is designed to create an inclusive learning environment, emphasizing the formative role of public interest litigation in modern procedural law and the voices of women and people of color in shaping the field in both practice and scholarship. It is the only major casebook on the market written by co-authors who together have received more than a dozen awards for excellence in teaching. New to the Seventh Edition: Shorter notes and materials after principal cases Updated cases and materials on personal and subject matter jurisdiction, plausibility pleading, affirmative defenses, the new proportionality requirement in discovery, and more Revised and expanded treatment of arbitration and ADR Revised and expanded treatment of MDL Revised and streamlined treatment of class action doctrine Revised and streamlined treatment of preclusion Professors and students will benefit from: Lightly-edited cases paired with thoughtful notes and questions. Concise examination of scholarship and empirical data bearing on various procedural rules Close attention to the underlying social and economic contexts in which the rules function with emphasis on the consequences for vulnerable populations Meaningful discussion of oft-marginalized topics, including: Alternative Dispute Resolution, Discovery (including e-discovery), Aggregate Litigation, Remedies, Adversary Ethics, and Trial Practice. Hypothetical problems presented in each chapter and revisited in later chapters to support in-class exercises and awareness of how phases of litigation influence each other. A casebook designed to create an inclusive classroom experience
While Excel remains ubiquitous in the business world, recent Microsoft feedback forums are full of requests to include Python as an Excel scripting language. In fact, it's the top feature requested. What makes this combination so compelling? In this hands-on guide, Felix Zumstein--creator of xlwings, a popular open source package for automating Excel with Python--shows experienced Excel users how to integrate these two worlds efficiently. Excel has added quite a few new capabilities over the past couple of years, but its automation language, VBA, stopped evolving a long time ago. Many Excel power users have already adopted Python for daily automation tasks. This guide gets you started. Use Python without extensive programming knowledge Get started with modern tools, including Jupyter notebooks and Visual Studio code Use pandas to acquire, clean, and analyze data and replace typical Excel calculations Automate tedious tasks like consolidation of Excel workbooks and production of Excel reports Use xlwings to build interactive Excel tools that use Python as a calculation engine Connect Excel to databases and CSV files and fetch data from the internet using Python code Use Python as a single tool to replace VBA, Power Query, and Power Pivot
Athens, Greece—May Day 2010. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU) were putting together the final details of a $100 billion euro rescue package for the country. The Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, had agreed to a savage package of “austerity measures” involving cuts in public spending and lower salaries and pensions. Outside, riot police were deployed as protestors gathered to fight the austerity program. A country with a history of revolution and dictatorship hovered on the brink of collapse—with the world’s financial markets watching to see if the deal cobbled together would be enough to both calm the markets and rescue the Greek economy, and with it the euro, from oblivion. In Bust: Greece, the Euro, and the Sovereign Debt Crisis, leading market commentator Matthew Lynn blends financial history, politics, and current affairs to tell the story of how one nation rode the wave of economic prosperity and brought a continent, a currency, and, potentially, the global financial system to its knees. Bust is a story of government deceit, unfettered spending, and cheap borrowing: a tale of financial folly to rank alongside the greatest in history. It charts Greece’s rise, and spectacular fall from grace, but it also explores the global repercussions of a financial disaster that has only just begun. It explains how the Greek debt crisis spread like wildfire through the rest of Europe, hitting Ireland, Portugal, Italy, and Spain, and ultimately provoking a crisis that brought the euro to the edge of collapse. And it argues that the Greek crisis is just the start of a decade of financial turmoil that will eventually force the break up of the euro, and a massive retrenchment in the living standards of all the developed economies. Written in a lively and entertaining style, Bust: Greece, the Euro, and the Sovereign Debt Crisis is an engaging and informative account of a country gone wrong and a must-read for anyone interested in world events and global economics.
