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.

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 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.

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.

At the height of the 1990s boom, Jack Grubman, one of the most successful analysts in Wall Street proclaimed 'what used to be conflicts of interest are now synergies'. This myopia contributed dramatically to the elevation of a culture in which greed was deified, oversight denigrated and misfeasance justified. Since the fall of the markets and the implosion of confidence in the American corporate business model, one man has proved instrumental in deconstructing the rhetoric of the 1990s: Eliot Spitzer, the combative Attorney General of New York. In the process, his innovative application of state law has reconfigured the governance of Wall Street.

Over the past three years the pursuit of transparency and accountability in the structure of the markets has propelled Spitzer to the forefront of regulatory policy. His investigations into tainted analyst research, the mutual funds industry, the governance of the New York Stock Exchange and the insurance industry have focused attention not just on corrupted individuals but also the complicity of the financial structure itself. Spitzer exploited the inherent conflicts of interest to the full, forcing regulators to adopt a much more proactive approach and creating a national platform for his own wider political ambitions. Now holding the Democratic nomination for the Governorship of New York, Spitzer has begun a path for higher national office.

This groundbreaking book features exclusive access with many of the key actors in these changes to the governance of Wall Street. It examines how Eliot Spitzer exploited gaps in the regulatory framework to capture the corporate reform agenda and explores the implications of his actions on policy formation and recalibration.

Key incidents include: changing the terms of reference governing analyst research; the defenestration of Dick Grasso's tenure over the NYSE (which is now being heard in state court in New York); and the battles for control between the former Chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission, Harvey Pitt, and Spitzer.

The book details not only the contested, contingent and interdependent connections between the American political and financial systems but reveals how Spitzer's manipulation of those connections have proved instrumental in enhancing his own wider political ambitions.

'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

'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.

Madeleine is the story of a great writer's marriage, a deeply disturbing account of Andre Gide's feelings towards his beloved and long-suffering wife. It was a relationship which Gide exalted-he termed it the central drama of his existence-yet deliberately shrouded in mystery. This was no ordinary marriage. Madeleine Rondeaux, two years older than her cousin Andre Gide, became his wife after Gide's first visit to Algeria. In his Journal, Gide refers to her as Emmanuele or as Em. Only in this book, published a few months after his death, does Gide call her by her real name and painfully reveal the nature of their life together. All of Gide's vast work may be viewed as a confession, impelled by his need to write what he believed to be true about himself. In Madeleine this act of confession reaches a crowning point. It is a complex tale by a complex man about a complex relationship. "Ranks among the masterpieces of Gide's vibrating prose. It is also the most tragic personal document to have emanated from Gide's pen."-New York Times.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.