15 results for "Business"

The Euro How a Common Currency Threatens The Future of Europe

Joseph E Stiglitz
The Nobel Prize–winning economist and best-selling author explains why saving Europe may mean abandoning the euro. When Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz posed this question in the original edition of The Euro , he lent much-needed clarity to a global debate that continues to this day. The euro was supposed to unify Europe and promote prosperity; in fact, it has done just the opposite. To save the European project, the euro may have to be abandoned. Since 2010, many of the 19 countries of Europe that share the euro currency—the eurozone—have been rocked by debt crises and mired in lasting stagnation, and the divergence between stronger and weaker economies has accelerated. In The Euro , Joseph E. Stiglitz explains precisely why the eurozone has performed so poorly, so different from the expectations at its launch: at the core of the failure is the structure of the eurozone itself, the rules by which it is governed. Stiglitz reveals three potential paths forward: drastic structural reforms, not of the individual countries, but of the eurozone; a well-managed dissolution of the euro; or a bold new system dubbed the “flexible euro.” With trenchant analysis—and brand new material on Brexit— The Euro is urgent and timely reading.
National Geographic Books 2017-11-28 448 pages

Hopes and Prospects

Noam Chomsky
In this urgent new book, Noam Chomsky surveys the dangers and prospects of our early twenty-first century. Exploring challenges such as the growing gap between North and South, American exceptionalism (including under President Barack Obama), the fiascos of Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S.-Israeli assault on Gaza, and the recent financial bailouts, he also sees hope for the future and a way to move forward - in the democratic wave in Latin America and in the global solidarity movements that suggest ''real progress toward freedom and justice.'' Hopes and Prospects is essential reading for anyone who is concerned about the primary challenges still facing the human race.
ReadHowYouWant.com 2010 544 pages

Trade Is Not a Four-Letter Word How Six Everyday Products Make the Case for Trade

Fred P. Hochberg
“A sprightly and clear-eyed testimonial to the value of globalization” ( The Wall Street Journ al ) as seen through six surprising everyday goods—the taco salad, the Honda Odyssey, the banana, the iPhone, the college degree, and the blockbuster HBO series Game of Thrones. Trade allows us to sell what we produce at home and purchase what we don’t. It lowers prices and gives us greater variety and innovation. Yet understanding our place in the global trade network is rarely simple. Trade has become an easy excuse for struggling economies, a scapegoat for our failures to adapt to a changing world, and—for many Americans on both the right and the left—nothing short of a four-letter word. But as Fred P. Hochberg reminds us, trade is easier to understand than we commonly think. In Trade Is Not a Four-Letter Word , you’ll learn how NAFTA became a populist punching bag on both sides of the aisle. You’ll learn how Americans can avoid the grim specter of the $10 banana. And you’ll finally discover the truth about whether or not, as President Trump has famously tweeted, “trade wars are good and easy to win.” (Spoiler alert—they aren’t.) Hochberg debunks common trade myths by pulling back the curtain on six everyday products, each with a surprising story to tell: the taco salad, the Honda Odyssey, the banana, the iPhone, the college degree, and the smash hit HBO series Game of Thrones . Behind these six examples are stories that help explain not only how trade has shaped our lives so far but also how we can use trade to build a better future for our own families, for America, and for the world. Trade Is Not a Four-Letter Word is the antidote to today’s acronym-laden trade jargon pitched to voters with simple promises that rarely play out so one-dimensionally. Packed with colorful examples and highly digestible explanations, Trade Is Not a Four-Letter Word is “an accessible, necessary book that will increase our understanding of trade and economic policies and the ways in which they impact our daily lives” ( Library Journal , starred review).
Simon and Schuster 2021-01-26 336 pages

The Shadow World Inside the Global Arms Trade

Andrew Feinstein
The Shadow World presents the behind-the-scenes tale of the global arms trade, exposing in forensic detail the deadly collusion that too often exists among senior politicians, weapons manufacturers, felonious arms dealers, and the military--a situation that compromises our security and undermines our democracy. Now a major PBS documentary "An authoritative guide to the business of war. Chilling, heartbreaking, and enraging."--Arundhati Roy Andrew Feinstein reveals the cover-ups behind a range of weapons deals, from the largest in history--between the British and Saudi governments---to the guns-for-diamonds deals in Africa and the current $60 billion U.S. weapons contract with Saudi Arabia. Based on pathbreaking reporting and unprecedented access to top-secret information, The Shadow World takes us into a clandestine realm that is as vitally important as it is shocking.
Macmillan 2012-11-27 696 pages

Friendly Fire How Israel Became Its Own Worst Enemy

Ami Ayalon,Anthony David
A highly decorated Israeli military officer, leader, and former director of the internal security service, Shin Bet, sees the light on what his country must do to achieve a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. In this deeply personal journey of discovery, Ami Ayalon seeks input and perspective from Palestinians and Israelis whose experiences differ from his own. As head of the Shin Bet security agency, he gained empathy for 'the enemy' and learned that when Israel carries out anti-terrorist operations in a political context of hopelessness, the Palestinian public will support violence, because they have nothing to lose. Researching and writing Friendly Fire , he came to understand that his patriotic life had blinded him to the self-defeating nature of policies that have undermined Israel's civil society while heaping humiliation upon its Palestinian neighbours. 'If Israel becomes an Orwellian dystopia,' Ayalon writes, 'it won't be thanks to a handful of theologians dragging us into the dark past. The secular majority will lead us there motivated by fear and propelled by silence.' Ayalon is a realist, not an idealist, and many who consider themselves Zionists will regard as radical his conclusions about what Israel must do to achieve relative peace and security and to sustain itself as a Jewish homeland and a liberal democracy. 'How can a staunch Zionist who was raised on one of Israel's earliest settlements and trained as a kill-or-be-killed elite commando spearhead a campaign for peace with his enemies? The answer, in Ami Ayalon's captivating narrative, is an eye-opener for Palestinians and Israelis alike.' -Sari Nusseibeh, author of Once Upon a Country- a Palestinian life , former president of the Al-Quds University, and former Palestinian National Authority representative in Jerusalem ' Ayalon's aims and accomplishments are ... undeniably impressive ... Hope finds a prominent presence in what so many think is a hopeless, endless conflict.' - Kirkus Reviews 'Ami Ayalon discusses how he came to see a two-state solution with the Palestinians as the best way to ensure Israel's security, not just through analysing numbers and statistics, but through a humanistic approach. He discusses ... how his humanist paradigm not only allowed him to see how the Palestinians' grievances and aspirations are intertwined with Israel's security, but also how he still acknowledges and sympathises with the narratives of those in Israel whom he may disagree with.' -Jonah Naghi, The Times of Israel
Scribe Publications 2020-12 320 pages

America in retreat: the new isolationism and the coming global disorder

Stephens, Bret
"A world in which the leading liberal-democratic nation does not assume its role as world policeman will become a world in which dictatorships contend, or unite, to fill the breach. Americans seeking a return to an isolationist garden of Eden--alone and undisturbed in the world, knowing neither good nor evil--will soon find themselves living within shooting range of global pandemonium." --From the Introduction In a brilliant book that will elevate foreign policy in the national conversation, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Bret Stephens makes a powerful case for American intervention abroad. In December 2011 the last American soldier left Iraq. "We're leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq," boasted President Obama. He was proved devastatingly wrong less than three years later as jihadists seized the Iraqi city of Mosul. The event cast another dark shadow over the future of global order--a shadow, which, Bret Stephens argues, we ignore at our peril. America in Retreat identifies a profound crisis on the global horizon. As Americans seek to withdraw from the world to tend to domestic problems, America's adversaries spy opportunity. Vladimir Putin's ambitions to restore the glory of the czarist empire go effectively unchecked, as do China's attempts to expand its maritime claims in the South China Sea, as do Iran's efforts to develop nuclear capabilities. Civil war in Syria displaces millions throughout the Middle East while turbocharging the forces of radical Islam. Long-time allies such as Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, doubting the credibility of American security guarantees, are tempted to freelance their foreign policy, irrespective of U.S. interests. Deploying his characteristic stylistic flair and intellectual prowess, Stephens argues for American reengagement abroad. He explains how military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan was the right course of action, foolishly executed. He traces the intellectual continuity between anti-interventionist statesmen such as Henry Wallace and Robert Taft in the late 1940s and Barack Obama and Rand Paul today. And he makes an unapologetic case for Pax Americana, "a world in which English is the default language of business, diplomacy, tourism, and technology; in which markets are global, capital is mobile, and trade is increasingly free; in which values of openness and tolerance are, when not the norm, often the aspiration." In a terrifying chapter imagining the world of 2019, Stephens shows what could lie in store if Americans continue on their current course. Yet we are not doomed to this future. Stephens makes a passionate rejoinder to those who argue that America is in decline, a process that is often beyond the reach of political cures. Instead, we are in retreat--the result of faulty, but reversible, policy choices. By embracing its historic responsibility as the world's policeman, America can safeguard not only greater peace in the world but also greater prosperity at home. At once lively and sobering, America in Retreat offers trenchant analysis of the gravest threat to global order, from a rising star of political commentary.
Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 2015 269 pages

Predicting Politics

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
To predict likely policy developments around the world over the next thirty years, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses game theoretic models as described in Predicting Politics. The tools used in this book have found wide application in business and in the development of significant American foreign policy initiatives over the years. The author uses data from 1948 to show the ability of models to predict the end of the Cold War. He then turns to data from 1980 for about one hundred countries and simulates future states of the world, especially with regard to further democratization. In the process he shows strong evidence that the burst of democratization that occurred at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s was predictable based on replicable data known in 1980. While delving into rather gloomy predictions about likely developments in Russia and China's domestic affairs, he offers a novel explanation for the failure of Russia to attract more investment and to achieve the higher growth rates commonly associated with democratic government. Although Russia is certainly more democratic in an absolute sense today than it was in 1980, it has fallen farther behind the rest of the world in terms of democratization and so lacks the comparative advantages of property rights, rule of law, and transparent governance that are essential for attracting investment. Bueno de Mesquita shows how policy situations and game theoretical analyses can explain the past, illuminate the present, and forecast future events. At the same time he provides the tools necessary for others to create their own rigorous estimates of future foreign policies.
Ohio State University Press 2002 170 pages

Creating Social Trust in Post-Socialist Transition

J. Kornai,B. Rothstein,S. Rose-Ackerman
Beneficial social and economic exchange relies on a certain level of trust. But trust is a delicate matter, not least in the former socialist countries where illegitimate behaviour by governments made distrust a habit. The chapters in this volume analyze the causes and the effects of the lack of social trust in post-socialist countries. The contributions originated in the Collegium Budapest project on Honesty and Trust: Theory and Experience in the Light of the Post-Socialist Transition. A second volume entitled, Building a Trustworthy State in Post-Socialist Transition , is being published simultaneously.
Palgrave Macmillan 2015-12-23 252 pages

The Origins of Jeffersonian Commercial Policy and Diplomacy

Doron S. Ben-Atar
Very few Americans regretted seeing Thomas Jefferson leave the White House in the winter of 1809. The man who led the Republican party from opposition to power and who overwhelmingly defeated Charles C. Pinckney in 1804 had had a disastrous second term. The military stalemate in Europe with Napoleon controlling the continent and the Royal Navy ruling the seas ushered the Franco-British war into a new phase of blockades and counter-blockades with both sides raiding neutral American shipping. The administration responded by prohibiting all American exports to the belligerents. The Embargo brought the booming American economy to a screeching halt, and as economic distress grew resentment over the measure spread from merchants to farmers and mechanics.The Origins of Jeffersonian Commercial Policy and Diplomacy examines the evolution of Jefferson's commercial ideas and policies from his days as a young revolutionary to his presidency. It analyzes the way in which Jefferson worked out his conflicting approaches to commerce not only as a thinker but also as a policy maker. It examines the tensions between rejecting commerce altogether as a threat to republican virtue, and promoting commerce as a necessary vehicle for the maintenance of American prosperity. It traces Jefferson's life-long commitment to the policy of commercial coercion and places American policy in the context of the global competition between England and France. Without deviating from the narrative format, Professor Ben-Atar reflects on a variety of contested issues in early American historiography, from the debate over eighteenth-century republicanism to the birth of American foreign policy.
Palgrave Macmillan UK 1993-01-01 261 pages

Turkey Terrorism, Civil Rights, and the European Union

Yonah Alexander,Edgar H. Brenner,Serhat Tutuncuoglu Krause
How do democratic societies maintain the balance between civil rights and security while continuing the fight on global terrorism? This work raises this issue and presents one country, Turkey, and its struggle to implement laws to combat terrorism and comply with the European Unione(tm)s civil rights standards. A collection of materials that reflects the legal responses in combating terrorism is an essential volume in any academic and professional collection as it provides a case-specific reference point in the fields of EU politics, law, and international relations. Turkey contains translations, contextual notes, and explanations from the editors of over 112 Turkish and EU documents ranging from martial law, PKK terror, Turkey-EU relations, human rights, and Turkish reforms. This resource book enables the reader to gauge Turkeye(tm)s prospects for success in establishing an effective government that at the same time protects the rights of the individual. This book will prove a valuable source for students and researchers of international politics, international relations and security studies.
Routledge 2014-04-28 24 pages

Fueling the Future How the Battle Over Energy is Changing Everything

Andrew Heintzman,Evan Solomon
From trips to the market to lighting entire cities, power is pivotal to the simplest of everyday necessities. Wars are fought over it, the planet is polluted by it, but now its price has become too high. Are we capable of shifting to cleaner, safer, more reliable sources of energy? Fueling the Future gathers the best and brightest minds in the field Ñ thinkers like Jeremy Rifkin, L. Hunter Lovins, and Allison MacFarlane Ñ and uses their collective wisdom to tackle this pressing question from several angles. The experts predict what a world without oil, which is estimated to run out in 50 years, would be like. What new energy alternatives are available? The use of hydrogen and fuel cells is examined, with surprising conclusions. Fresh, efficient prose makes the experts' controversial answers readable and engaging, as well as thought provoking.
House of Anansi 2005 406 pages

Is NAFTA Constitutional?

Bruce Ackerman,David Golove
By a vote of 61 to 38, the Senate joined the House in declaring that "Congress approves...the North American Free Trade Agreement." The vote was virtually unnoticed, since the real battle over NAFTA was in the House. But there is a puzzle here. The President, the Framers assure us, "shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur." Whatever happened to the Treaty Clause? Bruce Ackerman and David Golove tell the story of the Treaty Clause's being displaced in the twentieth century by a modern procedure in which the House of Representatives joins the Senate in the process of consideration, but simple majorities in both Houses suffice to commit the nation. This is called the Congressional-Executive Agreement, and is a response to a sea change in public opinion during and after World War II. This agreement substituted for a failed constitutional amendment that would have required all treaties to be approved by majorities in both Houses rather than by two-thirds of the Senate. The modern Congressional-Executive Agreement was self-consciously developed in order to make formal constitutional amendment unnecessary. So, is NAFTA constitutional? This book is reprinted from the Harvard Law Review .
Harvard University Press 2013-10 129 pages