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The Myth of Sisyphus is one of the most profound philosophical statements written this century. It is a discussion of the central idea of Absurdity that Camus was to develop in his novel The Outsider. Here Camus poses the fundamental question: Is life worth living? If existence has ceased to retain significance when confronted with the fragmented reality of the human condition, what then can keep us from suicide? Camus movingly argues for an acceptance of reality that encompasses revolt, passion and, above all, liberty. This volume contains several other essays, including lyrical evocations of the sunlit cities of Algiers and Oran.
As the first major collection of papers on sovereign wealth funds
and state-owned enterprises, this book provides an essential guide
to the geo-political impact of these pools of capital on global
markets. The rise of sovereign wealth funds and state-owned
enterprises represents a fundamental shift in market dynamics. The
potential fusion of political and commercial imperatives raises
unresolved geo-political questions that have been sharpened by the
vaporization of credit markets as a consequence of the global
financial crisis. State-controlled pools of capital have now
eclipsed hedge funds and private equity in terms of funds under
management, and the question of their regulation is therefore now
of utmost importance. This book highlights the interplay between
legal, corporate and policy imperatives associated with the
regulation of state capital. Including contributions from leading
practitioners, policymakers and academics, it provides an essential
guide to professionals and academics in the fields of finance and
business.
In July 2007, the then chief executive of Citigroup, Charles
Prince, captured the hubris of a market dangerously addicted to
debt: "When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be
complicated. But as long as music is playing, you have got to get
up and dance. We're still dancing." By the end of the year, Mr
Prince was forced to resign along with some of the most influential
bankers on Wall Street. Global investment houses in the United
States and Europe were forced to turn to sovereign wealth funds for
emergency funding. Their rescue comes at a significant material and
reputational price.This book investigates the origins and
implications of the securitization crisis, described by the chief
executive of ANZ as a "financial services bloodbath". Based on
extensive interviews, it offers an integrated series of case
studies drawn from the United States, the United Kingdom and
Australia. A central purpose is to not only chart what went wrong
within the investment houses and why the regulatory systems failed,
but also provide policy guidance. The book therefore combines the
empirical with the normative. In so doing, it provides a route map
to navigate one of the most significant financial and regulatory
failures in modern times.
The 2008/9 crisis in global commercial debt markets exposed glaring
deficiencies in corporate and regulatory operational and strategic
risk management systems. This collection provides an overview of
how narrow conceptions of responsibility in corporate law,
organizational practice and regulatory dynamics facilitated the
crisis. The first section revisits the debates about the role of
the corporation prompted by the publication of The Modern
Corporation and Private Property (1932). The second section
explores why the conception of enlightened shareholder interest
gained and retained potency despite demonstrable failure. The third
section explores how the interaction between the foundational
assumptions of corporate law and the (questionable) efficacy of
shareholder control framed regulatory responses to the growth of
financial capitalism. The fourth section examines ways in which
excess can be restrained by the interaction between hard law,
softer governance arrangements such as principles and, crucially,
norms.
The corporation is the most complex, adaptive, and resilient model
of organizing economic activity in history. In an era of
globalization, the transnational corporation has significant power
over society. While its rights are specified through private
ordering, and choice of jurisdictional home, in the event of
conflict of laws, the corporation's duties and responsibilities
remain contested. Notwithstanding the argument in institutional
economics that all transactions take place within governance and
legal frameworks, underpinned by a 'non-calculative social
contract,' the terms are notoriously difficult to define or
enforce. They are made more so if regulatory dynamics preclude
litigation to a judicial conclusion. This Element situates the
corporation - its culture, governance, responsibility, and
accountability - within a broader discourse of duty. In doing so,
it addresses the problem of the corporation for society and the
corporation's problem in aligning its governance to changing
community expectations of obligation.
The collapse of trust can be found across all of our institutions
but most of all in finance. This Element seeks to answer an
existential question: how to rebuild trust in distrusting times?
Integrity, responsibility and accountability must be embedded into
corporate mission statements, values and codes of conduct. Through
organisational and regulatory design across five interlocking
themes - legal, regulatory, managerial, ethical and social. What is
required is substantive rather than technical compliance; warranted
rather than stated commitment to high ethical standards; effective
deterrence strategies; enhanced accountability; and a shared
commitment to risk within negotiated, binding and enforceable
parameters.
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Personal Writings (Paperback)
Albert Camus; Translated by Justin O'Brien
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R323
R262
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'It was the discovery of the essays celebrating his childhood and
youth that altered my perception of Camus, from a thinker to a
writer whose intellectual lucidity was a product of the wealth -
the sensual immediacy and clarity - that had been heaped on his
senses' Geoff Dyer Albert Camus was born in a 'world of poverty and
sunshine' in Algeria, which would infuse all of his work. This new
collection brings together three volumes of Camus' most intimate
autobiographical writings for the first time. The Wrong Side and
the Right Side, his first book, describes his family and his early
years in a working-class neighbourhood. Nuptials rejoices in the
sensuality of sun, landscape and sea, while Summer ranges over the
cities of Algiers and Oran, nature and identity. Lyrical and
emotional, these pieces enrich our understanding of Camus and his
love of life.
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
From one of the most brilliant and influential thinkers of the
twentieth century-two novels, six short stories, and a pair of
essays in a single volume. In both his essays and his fiction,
Albert Camus (1913--1960) de-ployed his lyric eloquence in defense
against despair, providing an affirmation of the brave assertion of
humanity in the face of a universe devoid of order or meaning.
"The Plague"-written in 1947 and still profoundly relevant-is a
riveting tale of horror, survival, and resilience in the face of a
devastating epidemic. "The Fall" (1956), which takes the form of an
astonishing confession by a French lawyer in a seedy Amsterdam bar,
is a haunting parable of modern conscience in the face of evil. The
six stories of "Exile and the Kingdom "(1957) represent Camus at
the height of his narrative powers, masterfully depicting his
characters-from a renegade missionary to an adulterous wife -at
decisive moments of revelation. Set beside their fictional
counterparts, Camus's famous essays "The Myth of Sisyphus" and
"Reflections on the Guillotine" are all the more powerful and
philosophically daring, confirming his towering place in
twentieth-century thought.
The politics of business have become the business of politics.
Across the world the lesson is clear: just as too much governmental
interference leads to dysfunctional economies, left to its own
devices the market is incapable of adequate self-regulation.
The corporate malfeasance crisis in the United States has
transformed global perceptions about the efficacy of regulatory
structures in combating corrupt practices in private and public
sectors. The design of effective corporate governance structures
depends not just on internal factors but also on the
inter-relationship between various actors that constitute wider
governance: politicians, lobbyists, corporations and
regulators.
"Wall Street on Trial: " "A Corrupted State" breaks new ground
by deconstructing the systemic flaws inherent in the model itself.
It reveals that the 'rotten apple' theory, positing the problems in
corporate America as merely the result of deviancy by an individual
or a single firm, is an intellectual deceit not supported by the
facts.
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Caligula (Paperback)
Albert Camus; Adapted by Justin O'Brien
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R368
R348
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History / Characters: 18 males, 2 females
Scenery: Exterior
Caligula explores the absolutism of power and the catastrophe of
tyranny. Caesar summons his council, whose first thought is of
taxes. Very well, says Caesar, if taxes are more important than
human hearts, he may safely kill without conscience. He pursues the
logic to the bitter end. In the last scene, he is murdered, an
ending he knew was inevitable. "Has given the theatre a red hot
glow." N.Y. World Telegram & Sun.
The Oxford Handbook of the Corporation assesses the contemporary
relevance, purpose, and performance of the corporation. The
corporation is one of the most significant, if contested,
innovations in human history, and the direction and effectiveness
of corporate law, corporate governance, and corporate performance
are being challenged as never before. Continuously evolving, the
corporation as the primary instrument for wealth generation in
contemporary economies demands frequent assessment and
reinterpretation. The focus of this work is the transformative
impact of innovation and change upon corporate structure, purpose,
and operation. Corporate innovation is at the heart of the
value-creation process in increasingly internationalized and
competitive market economies, and corporations today are embedded
in a world of complex global supply chains and rising state and
state-directed capitalism. In questioning the fundamental purpose
and performance of the corporation, this Handbook continues a
tradition commenced by Berle and Means, and contributed to by
generations of business scholars. What is the corporation and what
is it becoming? How do we define its form and purpose and how are
these changing? To whom is the corporation responsible, and who
should judge the ultimate performance of corporations? By
investigating the origins, development, strategies, and theories of
corporations, this volume addresses such questions to provide a
richer theoretical account of the corporation and its contested
future.
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Committed Writings (Paperback)
Albert Camus; Translated by Justin O'Brien; Introduction by Alice Kaplan
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R320
R258
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'To create today means to create dangerously' This new collection
contains some of Camus' most brilliant political writing as he
reflects on moral responsibility and the role of the artist in the
world. Letters to a German Friend, written and published
underground during the Nazi occupation of France, was born out of
Camus' experience in the Resistance and explores what it truly
means to love your country. Reflections on the Guillotine, his
impassioned polemic against the death penalty, became a touchstone
for the movement to abolish capital punishment, while in his Nobel
speeches Camus argues that the artist must engage with dangerous
times. Together these powerful pieces express Camus' mistrust of
rigid ideologies, and his commitment to human solidarity. 'Probably
no European writer of his time left so deep a mark on the
imagination' Conor Cruise O'Brien
James M Landis - scholar, administrator, advocate and political
adviser - is known for his seminal contribution to the creation of
the modern system of market regulation in the USA. As a highly
influential participant in the politics of the New Deal he drafted
the statute which was to become the foundation for securities
regulation in the US, and by extension the founding principle of
financial market regulation across the world. He was also a complex
and in some ways tragic figure, whose glittering career collapsed
following the revelation that he had failed to pay tax for a five
year period in the 1950s. The oversight was to cost possible
elevation to the Supreme Court, forced prosecution and sentencing
in 1963 to one month's imprisonment, commuted to forced
hospitalisation, and subsequent suspension of licence to practise.
This candid and revealing book sets his life in the context of his
work as an academic, legislative draftsman, administrator and Dean
of Harvard Law School. In rescuing from history Landis's battles
and achievements in regulatory design, theory and practice, it
speaks directly to the perennial problems in financial market
regulation - how to deal with institutions deemed too big to fail,
how to regulate the sale of complex financial instruments and what
role can the professions play as gatekeepers of market integrity.
It argues that in failing to learn from the lessons of history we
limit the capacity of regulatory intervention to facilitate
cultural change, without which contemporary responses to financial
crises are destined to fail.
The Future of Financial Regulation is an edited collection of
papers presented at a major conference at the University of Glasgow
in spring 2009, co-sponsored by the Economic and Social Research
Council World Economy and Finance Programme and the the Australian
Research Council Governance Research Network. It draws together a
variety of different perspectives on the international financial
crisis which began in August 2007 and later turned into a more
widespread economic crisis following the collapse of Lehman
Brothers in the autumn of 2008. Spring 2009 was in many respects
the nadir since valuations in financial markets had reached their
low point and crisis management rather than regulatory reform was
the main focus of attention. The conference and book were
deliberately framed as an attempt to re-focus attention from the
former to the latter. The first part of the book focuses on the
context of the crisis, discussing the general characteristics of
financial crises and the specific influences that were at work this
time round. The second part focuses more specifically on regulatory
techniques and practices implicated in the crisis, noting in
particular an over-reliance on the capacity of regulators and
financial institutions to manage risk and on the capacity of
markets to self-correct. The third part focuses on the role of
governance and ethics in the crisis and in particular the need for
a common ethical framework to underpin governance practices and to
provide greater clarity in the design of accountability mechanisms.
The final part focuses on the trajectory of regulatory reform,
noting the considerable potential for change as a result of the
role of the state in the rescue and recuperation of the financial
system and stressing the need for fundamental re-appraisal of
business and regulatory models.
The global economy is yet to recover from the aftershocks of the
Global Financial Crisis (GFC). In particular many national
economies are struggling to adjust to austerity programs that are a
direct result of the toxic effects of the crisis. Governments,
regulatory agencies, international organisations, media
commentators, finance industry organisations and professionals,
academics and affected citizens have offered partial explanations
for what has occurred. Some of these actors have sought to
introduce legislative and other regulatory initiatives to improve
operational standards in capital markets. However, the exposure
post-GFC of the scandal surrounding the manipulation over many
years of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) highlighted that
the most important obstacles to counter the destructive potential
of our global finance system are normative not technical.
Regulating the culture of the finance sector is one of the greatest
challenges facing contemporary society. This edited volume brings
together leading professionals, regulators and academics with
knowledge of how cultural forces shape integrity, risk and
accountability in capital markets. The book will be of benefit not
only to industry, regulatory and academic communities whose focus
is upon financial markets and professionals. It is of value to any
person or organisation interested in how the cultural underpinnings
of the finance sector shape how capital markets actually operate
and are regulated. It is a stark lesson of history that financial
crises will occur. As national economies become ever more
inter-connected and inter-dependent under conditions of global
financial capitalism, it becomes ever more important to know how
cultural and other normative forces might be adjusted to militate
against the effects of future disasters.
James M Landis - scholar, administrator, advocate and political
adviser - is known for his seminal contribution to the creation of
the modern system of market regulation in the USA. As a highly
influential participant in the politics of the New Deal he drafted
the statute which was to become the foundation for securities
regulation in the US, and by extension the founding principle of
financial market regulation across the world. He was also a complex
and in some ways tragic figure, whose glittering career collapsed
following the revelation that he had failed to pay tax for a five
year period in the 1950s. The oversight was to cost possible
elevation to the Supreme Court, forced prosecution and sentencing
in 1963 to one month's imprisonment, commuted to forced
hospitalisation, and subsequent suspension of licence to practise.
This candid and revealing book sets his life in the context of his
work as an academic, legislative draftsman, administrator and Dean
of Harvard Law School. In rescuing from history Landis's battles
and achievements in regulatory design, theory and practice, it
speaks directly to the perennial problems in financial market
regulation - how to deal with institutions deemed too big to fail,
how to regulate the sale of complex financial instruments and what
role can the professions play as gatekeepers of market integrity.
It argues that in failing to learn from the lessons of history we
limit the capacity of regulatory intervention to facilitate
cultural change, without which contemporary responses to financial
crises are destined to fail.
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