The Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) is one of the last remaining manual call-over stock exchanges in the world. It is a contradictory and anachronistic place, in which, each day for forty-five minutes, twenty traders haggle across wooden desks, dealing mainly in agricultural and mineral commodities. The ZSE seems to have been left behind by the rest of the world, but some argue that its traders are the unsung heroes of the Zimbabwean economy who can be credited with keeping things afloat during the extraordinary years of hyperinflation. The ZSE is soon to be renovated and its systems digitised and automated. This means that the traders will become redundant, their place in history forgotten, and the odd aesthetic of the space in which they work will be lost. Lisa King has been photographing at the ZSE since 2011. Her project is a reflection on the physical and symbolic space that it occupies in Zimbabwe. It is also a portrait of the people who participate in this rare form of exchange. Her photographs explore the anachronistic environment of the ZSE and, along with Sean Christie’s incisive essay, suggest that the ZSE is a reminder of the ways in which technology reflects transformations in socio-political landscapes. Once the ZSE has disappeared, the book … Sometimes I Make Money One Day of the Week will be one of the few documents that record and reflect on this unique, history-making space.

You will learn: * Why most Financial Advisors can't recommend physical Gold and Silver * Inflation vs. Deflation- which impacts gold more? * How to pick the best dealer?: A step- by-step guide * Spot Price Vs Actual Price * The best gold and silver to buy and hold * When to sell: the Key Ratios to watch * Back to the Gold Standard-- Who will be first: China, Russia, or. . .? * How to take Physical Possession of Gold & Silver with your 401k or IRA $$$$$$ * The Top 7 Gold Scams

Peak Oil theory is wrong, period. The book starts analyzing the repeated false prophesies bawled by both relevant personalities and inexperienced doomsayers that through the years were echoed by serious and prestigious news media, sometimes even quoted by influential heads of state. Oil production and reserves data proves that they were wrong in every instance. Year after year their calculations proved to be erroneous, but yet they still declare that the gloomy days are close. Today with a slight change in the stage design of the drama: now it is not a question of oilfields becoming exhausted, but rather that gas will soon be so expensive that only the most opulent will be able to fill their tanks. Oilfields historical production curves do not follow the "bell shaped" curve as defined by M. King Hubbert. After the steep surge of yield resulting from a discovery and later maximum withdrawal, the fall in production is not symmetrical to the rise and tends to be much flatter. Actually in most of the cases there is no defined "peak" but rather a maximum yield "plateau." The smooth diminishing rate of flow is simply results from the use of enhanced recovery techniques (EOR) employed to stimulate the surfing of oil rising from the reservoir rock in depth. The doomsters also ignore the potential of future oil discoveries in unknown or poorly explored sedimentary basins all over the world. Evaluations done by international or national organizations such as the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) are throwing new light over undiscovered thick and extensive sedimentary basins potentially endowed with substantial oil and gas resources. Drilling for oil is the basic and ultimate tool to define an oil deposit. Only a well can tell whether we are dealing with a future oilfield or a barren area. Yet, one must consider that in the last 100 years 50% of the wells drilled in the world were sunk on the US territory, that is, over a surface that makes only 6.6% of the total continental lands in the planet. This fact alone is solid evidence that the rest of the world is poorly explored. WORLD WIDE OIL EXPLORATION IS IN ITS INFANCY and many extensive sedimentary basins with potential oil resources are still unknown and awaiting for both adventurous entrepreneurs and highly experienced multinationals to bring billions of barrels up to the light. This fact together with the present reserves estimations allows us to sustain that there is oil enough to take us till the end of the century, easily surpassing the "oil depletion" prophecy that doomsayers wrongly predicted for 2005 or successive years. THIS WITHOUT CONSIDERING AT ALL THE AWESOME NEW OIL RESERVES THAT CAN BE ADDED BY THE USE OF THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY TECHNIQUES THAT ALLOW FUTURE OIL TAPPING FROM OIL SHALES AND GAS SHALES. .

This book will present a comprehensive view of the risk characteristics, risk-adjusted performances, and risk exposures of various hedge fund indices. It will distinguish itself from other books and journal articles by focusing solely on hedge fund indices and emphasizing tail risk as a predictor of hedge fund index returns. The three chapters in this short book have not been previously published.
Presents new insights about the investability and performance measurement of an investor s final portfolio

Uses most recently developed investable hedge fund indexes to revise previous analyses of indexes

Focuses on 14 distinct types of hedge fund indices with daily data from January 1994 to December 2011 "

Have you ever thought of investing in gold? Gold is one of the most stable precious metals; it is described as a protection for you and your family against financial uncertainly and inflation. This is one of the most recommended investment opportunities especially for someone who has never invested on anything before. The future for gold investments always have a golden lining since the price of the metal has increased for about three to four times its value in just a matter of a decade.

Gold has held an historical allure since the beginning of recorded history. People are willing to go to great lengths in order to obtain what they see as financial security, and gold can seem like a very safe bet. The allure of gold can defy common sense, and, in many cases, it appeals to unsophisticated investors who are driven by fear. Like the prospectors before them, many today are willing to invest in something they know little about, and the results can be dire. The market for gold can be vicious and slick; it is filled with fear-based marketing campaigns. What is needed is a guide, an honest examination of the history and the current market for gold. This book is that guide.

For the past decade, gold prices have been on a "breathtaking ascent" and have reached some of the "highest recorded summits" in modern history. Many investors speculate that these values will rise even further.

History has shown us that the strength or weakness of the global economy determines the value of this "iconic" precious metal. Rising gold prices often "coincide" with weakening currencies and economic uncertainty and act as a "compass" indicating the direction the economy is heading. Being able to read this compass is critical

Beginning with the credit crisis of 2008 and the deep recession that followed, our Treasury has engaged in "massive stimulus" programs by "borrowing and spending almost $1 trillion"""and our central bank (the Fed) has supported a "massive and unprecedented expansion" of the money supply--both threatening to weaken our currency and trigger a painful cascade of inflation.

The meteoric rise in the value of gold reflects a common, global perception that world currencies, particularly the U.S. dollar, are "under threat." When investors distrust the stability of a nation's currency--especially a currency as important to global commerce as the dollar--they look for "hard assets of true value" that can protect their hard-earned wealth. Learn how you, too, can safeguard your wealth, hedge against adversity, and diversify your portfolio through gold investing.

In this book, you will find answers to those questions on "everyone's" mind:

- Why is the price of gold increasing so quickly and dramatically?

- What do these increases tell us about the health of the overall economy?

- Can gold be a safe haven for wealth and a hedge against economic turmoil?

- What does the modern investor need to know about gold?

- Where and how can I buy or invest in gold?

During the 1990s, SSA countries initiated agricultural policy reforms to increase producer incentives and increase growth. Yet, agricultural growth rates after the reforms have been uneven. This has been attributed to lack of supporting infrastructure or the inability to respond to incentives by the smallholders. Based on ten studies, this volume provides a different framework to interpret the outcomes. First, it attributes the success of the reforms to the degree of consensus around the reform programs, which in turn, creates the institutions that can accommodate unexpected shocks. It differentiates between short run growth accelerations and sustained growth episodes. Second, it analyzes the impact of international prices which increased during the early 1990 and collapsed around 2000. Finally, it links the support institutions that evolved after the reforms back to the political economy of the stakeholders and their interests. Aksoy and Anil develop a political economy framework by bringing together the issues of consensus over the distribution of rents, role of unexpected changes, and the capabilities of institutions in handling these changes. Onal tests the of supply responses while Onal and Aksoy analyze international commodity prices and their transmission to the producers. Baffes analyzes impact of the adoption of cotton biotechnology in India and China, and the failure of SSA to also adopt. Baffes and Onal undertake a comparative study of coffee sectors in Uganda, and Vietnam which faced similar shocks. Five case studies cover cashew in Mozambique (Aksoy and Yagci), coffee and tea in Kenya (Mitchell), cashew in Tanzania (Mitchell and Baregu), tobacco in Tanzania (Mitchell and Baregu), and cotton in Zambia (Yagci and Aksoy). Results show that Agricultural policy reforms generated an immediate positive supply response. Real producer prices increased along with output. In unsuccessful cases where the short run supply response petered out, political and social consensus on the reforms was weak, and the ability to redistribute income after a negative shock was not built into the new arrangements. These products had been a major instrument for rent distribution before the reforms. The agencies could not be reformed to give greater non price support. In successful cases, there was greater consensus on the reforms program. The product was not a major rent distribution instrument and the producers were allied with the governments. Lower conflict also led to greater non price support. There was enough political and economic space for the parties to find solutions in case of shocks.

In The Futures , Forbes magazine senior writer Emily Lambert tells the rich and dramatic history of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade, the original futures market. Commodities exchanges have become some of the largest financial markets in our global economic system, yet the exchanges themselves and the speculators who run them remain largely misunderstood, as does their chief instrument: the futures contract. Lambert describes the emergence of the futures business as a kind of meeting place for gamblers and farmers that subsequently transformed into a sophisticated electronic market, one where contracts are traded at lightning-fast speeds. When Wall Street adopted the futures contract without the rules and close-knit social bonds that had made trading it in Chicago work so well, however, the effects were disastrous. But, as Lambert argues, the traditional futures market,with its written and cultural limits,can serve as a useful example of how markets ought to work, thereby becoming a tonic for our current financial ills.