Petromania
Petromania

Author: Daniel O'Sullivan

Publisher: Harriman House Limited

Published: 2009-09-30

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 190665977X

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The spike in the oil price to almost $150 per barrel in summer 2008 was the last great excess of the crazed noughties bull markets, staged even as stock markets crumbled worldwide. Contrary to entrenched establishment opinion still embraced by many, 'Petromania' proves this oil price blowout was a classic speculative bubble, but driven primarily by new modes of financial speculation. Demolishing widespread, oft-repeated but incorrect arguments that such trade in paper barrels cannot move oil prices, 'Petromania' details how this financialisation of the oil markets meshed with other trends to create a moment that saw investment banks and hedge funds collectively wield more power over the price of black gold than OPEC or any multinational oil company. It also shows how regulatory blindness to the 'dark matter' of modern finance caused so many to confuse fantasy with reality for so long. 'Petromania' matters not just because fortunes were won and lost in oil's dizzying ascent and crash, but because this bubble spelled misery for ordinary people worldwide, destabilised developing world governments, and delayed interest rate cuts desperately needed to address the ongoing global recession. 'Petromania' matters because while all eyes are on the crippled banking system, we risk ignoring valuable lessons about twenty-first century markets from this other great boom-and-bust - even as the forces that blew the bubble are once again at work. And 'Petromania', this tale of black gold, dark matter and paper barrels, is written by one of the few commentators who correctly called the bubble before it burst.

The Paradox of Plenty
The Paradox of Plenty

Author: Terry Lynn Karl

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1997-10-10

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 0520207726

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In these countries, dependence on petroleum leads to disproportionate fiscal reliance on petrodollars and public spending, at the expense of statecraft.

Oil and Modern World Dramas
Oil and Modern World Dramas

Author: Alireza Fakhrkonandeh

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-03-31

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 1000845923

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The first to focus on the (re-)presentations of oil in dramatic literature, theatre, and performance, Oil and Modern World Dramas is a pioneering volume in the emerging field of Oil Literatures and Cultures, and the more established field of World Literatures. Through close analysis, Fakhrkonandeh demonstrates how these dramatic works depict oil, both in its perceived nature and character, as an overdetermined matter/sign/object: a symbol (of freedom, autonomy, speed, wealth, modernity, enlightenment), a commodity, a social-cultural agent, a social relation, and a hyper-object. This book is also distinguished by its innovative and critically manifold conceptual framework, positing the petro-literatures and petro-cultures an inextricable part of a global network. Oil and Modern World Dramas not only demonstrates how the chosen works of petro-drama manifest these concepts in their social-political vision, aesthetics and historical-ontological dynamics, but also reveals how they deploy such assemblage-based approaches both as a cartographical means and aesthetic method for exposing the systemic (Capitalocenic) nature of petro-capitalist exploitation, and as means of proposing ways of resistance and producing alternative modes of subjectivity, community, relationality, and economy.

Transitional Morphology
Transitional Morphology

Author: Elisa Mattiello

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-12-31

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1009168282

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Based on corpus data, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of a morphological phenomenon in Modern English, Combining Forms (CFs).

Anxiety Culture
Anxiety Culture

Author: John P. Allegrante

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2024-11-12

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1421450364

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A collection of timely essays on the rising wave of anxiety in culture. The twenty-first century is characterized by uncertainty: from catastrophic climate change to the accelerating pace of technological change, societies around the world are gripped by anxiety about the future. In Anxiety Culture, editors John Allegrante, Ulrich Hoinkes, Michael Schapira, and Karen Struve bring together a distinguished group of international scholars to examine the forces that increase anxiety as a phenomenon beyond solely individual experiences of clinical anxiety to pervade global culture. These trenchant essays examine our culture of anxiety across diverse avenues of society. Covering fears related to climate change, populist and extremist movements around the world, gun violence, artificial intelligence, and more, contributors also examine how anxiety is expressed in literature and the media and how a culture of anxiety affects policymaking. Chapters are organized into five sections: disciplinary perspectives on anxiety, climate change and the environment, population health and social well-being, migration, and technology. There's room for hope, however. Contributors provide pragmatic recommendations for coping with anxiety culture in public education, governments, and NGOs. Anxiety Culture is a unique attempt to define this condition and an indispensable resource for those seeking stability in an unstable age, providing a set of conceptual and practical narratives for navigating both existing and emergent planetary challenges. Contributors: Kristina Allgoewer, Bryndis Asgeirsdottir, John Baldacchino, Christine Blaettler, Michel Bourban, Dominic Boyer, Eva J. Daussà, Nicholas Freudenberg, Monica van der Haagen-Wulff, Kelsey Hudson, Karena Kalmbach, Emmanuel Kattan, Markus Lemmens, Eric Lewandowski, Raphaël Liogier, Roman Marek, Christian Martin, Paul Mecheril, Angelika Messner, Caine C. A. Meyers, Julie Mostov, Dirk Nabers, Frauke Nees, Konrad Ott, Sonali Rajan, Julie Reshe, Bàrbara Roviró, Renata Selecl, Inga Dora Sigfusdottir, Frank Stengel, Ingibjorg Eva Thorisdottir, Maren Urner, Iris Wieczorek, Zhao Xudong, Liya Yu

The Paradox of Plenty
The Paradox of Plenty

Author: Terry Lynn Karl

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1997-10-10

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780520918696

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The Paradox of Plenty explains why, in the midst of two massive oil booms in the 1970s, oil-exporting governments as different as Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria, Algeria, and Indonesia chose common development paths and suffered similarly disappointing outcomes. Meticulously documented and theoretically innovative, this book illuminates the manifold factors—economic, political, and social—that determine the nature of the oil state, from the coherence of public bureaucracies, to the degree of centralization, to patterns of policy-making. Karl contends that oil countries, while seemingly disparate, are characterized by similar social classes and patterns of collective action. In these countries, dependence on petroleum leads to disproportionate fiscal reliance on petrodollars and public spending, at the expense of statecraft. Oil booms, which create the illusion of prosperity and development, actually destabilize regimes by reinforcing oil-based interests and further weakening state capacity. Karl's incisive investigation unites structural and choice-based approaches by illuminating how decisions of policymakers are embedded in institutions interacting with domestic and international markets. This approach—which Karl dubs "structured contingency"—uses a state's leading sector as the starting point for identifying a range of decision-making choices, and ends by examining the dynamics of the state itself.

The Vega Factor
The Vega Factor

Author: Kent Moors

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-04-12

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1118077091

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How oil volatility is affecting the global political scene, and where the oil market is heading The world is rapidly moving towards an oil environment defined by volatility. The Vega Factor: Oil Volatility and the Next Global Crisis takes an in-depth look at the most important topics in the industry, including strategic risk, why traditional pricing mechanisms will no longer govern the market, and how the current government approaches have only worsened an already bad situation. Details the industry's players, including companies, traders, and governments Describes the priorities that will need to be revised, and the policies needed to achieve stability Explains how today's oil market is fundamentally different from the pre-crisis market Oil prices affect everyone. The Vega Factor explains the new international oil environment of increasing consolidation and decreasing competition, and reveals how consumers and investors can navigate price volatility and new government policies.

Grassroots Politics and Oil Culture in Venezuela
Grassroots Politics and Oil Culture in Venezuela

Author: Iselin Åsedotter Strønen

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-09-01

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 3319595075

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This book is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book presents an ethnographic study of how grassroots activism in Venezuela during the Chávez presidency can be understood in relation to the country's history as a petro-state. Taking the contested relationship between the popular sectors and the Venezuelan state as a point of departure, Iselin Åsedotter Strønen explores how notions such as class, race, state, bureaucracy, popular politics, capitalism, neoliberalism, consumption, oil wealth, and corruption gained salience in the Bolivarian process. A central argument is that the Bolivarian process was an attempt to challenge the practices, ideas, and values inherited from Venezuela's historical development as an oil-producing state. Drawing on rich ethnographic material from Caracas' shantytowns, state institutions, as well as everyday life and public culture, Strønen explores the complexities and challenges in fostering deep social and political change.

Industrial Policy in Eastern Europe
Industrial Policy in Eastern Europe

Author: J.M. Van Brabant

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 9401107920

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This volume in essence continues my recent contributions towards building up a better understanding of the wide range of obstacles besetting the transitions away from administrative planning in the former communist regimes in the eastern part of Europe. It is self-contained, however. As such, it specifically addresses issues revolving around how best to govern economies, and indeed societies more generally, that are undergoing fundamental structural transfor mation, and whether industrial policy can facilitate progressing with the vexing transformations that will have to be enacted over a protracted period of time. Because of the bewildering variety of hindrances that the managers of the transition have been confronted with, many of which were not even contem plated when the programs were first designed, regaining a measure of good governance, including notably good economic governance, is critical in formu lating a positive pOlitical economy of transition. Arguably most critical is steering the processes of destruction and creation-not 'creative destruction' in the Schumpeterian sense. In some cases, this requires reallocating decom missioned resources, both capital and labor, to new activities. Changing rules on the utilization of existing assets is evidently at the core of what the transi tion towards market-based economic systems should be all about Very often, however, this requires establishing new economic activities from domestic and foreign savings.