Clearing houses, or CCPs, were among the very few organisations to emerge from the global financial crisis with their standing enhanced. In the chaotic aftermath of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, they successfully completed trades worth trillions of dollars in a multitude of financial instruments across listed and over-the-counter markets, and so helped avert financial Armageddon.

That success transformed the business of clearing. Governments and regulators around the world gave CCPs and the clearing services they provide a front-line role in protecting the global economy from future excesses of finance. CCPs, which mitigate risk in financial markets, responded by greatly expanding their activities, notably in markets for over-the-counter derivatives, and often in fierce competition with one another.

In "The Risk Controllers," journalist and author Peter Norman describes how CCPs operate, how they handled the Lehman default, and the challenges they now face. Because central counterparty clearing is a complex business with a long history that continues to influence decisions and structures even in today's fast changing world, "The Risk Controllers" explores the development of CCPs and clearing from the earliest times to the present.

It draws on the experiences of the people who helped to shape the business of clearing today. It sets the development of CCPs and clearing in the broader context of changes in society, politics and regulation. The book examines turning points, such as the 1987 stock market crash, that set clearing on a new path and the impact of long running trends, including the exponential growth of computer power and the ebb and flow of globalisation.

Written in non-technical language, "The Risk Controllers" provides a unique and accessible guide to CCPs and clearing. It is essential reading for clearing professionals, legislators and regulators whose job it is to take this vitally important business into the future.

""The recent crisis has, thankfully, renewed interest in the importance of central counterparties: how they can help preserve stability or, as Hong Kong showed in 1987, undermine stability if they are not super sound. Peter Norman's book places the role of clearing houses in a historical context, and explains why the financial system's plumbing matters so much. It should be read by anyone interested in building safer capital markets.""

Paul Tucker, Deputy Governor Financial Stability, Bank of England

Originally published in 1976. Slum clearance is a particularly significant process because it places the ordinary citizen in a state of extreme dependence on his local authority. The local authority not only destroys his existing environment but controls access to a replacement council house. This book highlights both the control over the life chances of individual citizens which local government can exercise and the potential impotence of citizens caught up in a complex bureaucratic process. It investigates the difficulties faced by individuals in exercising even the rights and choices which are ostensibly provided by the existing structure. The book also seeks to apply theories of urban sociology in exploring the control of access to public housing. The essential objective of this study is demystification of the administrative processes of slum clearance and rehousing through analysis of local authority bureaucracy and its impact on individuals.

Originally published in 1976. Slum clearance is a particularly significant process because it places the ordinary citizen in a state of extreme dependence on his local authority. The local authority not only destroys his existing environment but controls access to a replacement council house. This book highlights both the control over the life chances of individual citizens which local government can exercise and the potential impotence of citizens caught up in a complex bureaucratic process. It investigates the difficulties faced by individuals in exercising even the rights and choices which are ostensibly provided by the existing structure. The book also seeks to apply theories of urban sociology in exploring the control of access to public housing. The essential objective of this study is demystification of the administrative processes of slum clearance and rehousing through analysis of local authority bureaucracy and its impact on individuals.

"Plumbers and Visionaries: Securities Settlement and Europe's Financial Market" is a path-breaking account of the history and future of the securities settlement industry in Europe. Written by experienced journalist and author, Peter Norman, this book takes a look at the less visible, but nevertheless critical segment of the global capital markets, following the development of securities settlement across Europe's frontiers. It encompasses the free-wheeling days of the Eurobond market in the 1960s, through the growing integration of the European Union, to the highly regulated and efficient multi-trillion euro business securities settlement it is today.

This book is the story of a financial sector that has grown hugely in importance in the 40 years since Euroclear, now the world's premier settlement system for domestic and international securities transactions, was created to deal with a settlement crisis that threatened to smother the international capital market in its infancy.

Beginning with the settlement crisis in the Eurobond market, this book describes how Euroclear and later Cedel, its arch-rival, were founded to deal with the problem. It follows the challenges posed by cross-border settlement for a growing range of securities when most financial infrastructures operated only within national frontiers. The book demonstrates how securities settlement became an issue for public policy after the stock market crash of 1987 and how the problems of cross-border settlement moved rapidly up the European policy agenda after the euro's launch.

More than a mere history, this book engages with the people who created the modern European securities settlement industry and taps into the often entertaining memories of its founding fathers. This book also focuses on the difficulties and challenges of cross-border transactions which have been identified as hampering Europe's economic growth. It looks at the present state of the industry seeking a way forward so that the securities settlement infrastructure will better serve a single European capital market.

Daniel McBride is a wealthy restaurateur in Naples, Florida. When his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor, Harmon Hesse, is found murdered, Daniel becomes BCI's primary person of interest. Daniel was seen quarreling with Hesse shortly before the murder. Fingerprints put Daniel at the scene of the murder, and blood evidence found in Daniel's SUV link him to Hesse's DNA. While struggling to maintain his sobriety, he examines the motives of his gay business partner who's in economic crisis, a house guest who's having a steamy sexual affair with BCI's Detective Carmen Sanchez, and a wife who may be carrying on an affair while running for mayor. As Daniel transitions from suspect to defending himself on a courtroom witness stand, the past secrets of all these characters come to the fore. The trial will reveal the murderer but not before everyone confronts their darkest histories. This tale of alcohol, murder, and deception is a dramatic mystery which shows the impossibility of escaping the past. This lively book maintains a hard-boiled dialogue and taut plot. First-time author Pete Jensen drew on his own experience as a recovering alcoholic with an AA sponsor much like Harmon Hesse. He lives in Naples, Florida, and draws upon his extensive local knowledge to paint a portrait of both the glamorous and seamier edges of the city on the southern edge of the state's Gulf Coast.

The Gun That Starts the Race, alternately like a David Lynch film or an episode of The Simpsons, finds the uncanny in the everyday, surprise you, make you laugh and weep (sometimes simultaneously) with recognition at the fleeting spark of our existence. Many of these poems are like archaeological sites between the sturm und drang of people's fleeting dramas, exploring in language playgrounds recently vacated, graves recently inhabited, basements and dark corners where life and death goes on without us.From free-verse lyrics to masterful sonnets, Norman's poems weld form and content together organically. They neither baffle nor condescend. Blending an effortless style to surprising metaphors, and striking images with a restless, roving intellect, they try to get to the bottom of things, while never satisfied there it is no false bottom. Here, Bolsheviks play tennis with Marxist rules; crows, maggots, and spiders go about their business, oblivious to our sufferings; and the Mole Men of Zug break into song.In The Gun that Starts the Race, Peter Norman gives us a world that lives and breathes and endures, and of which we are only a temporary part.

Wer gelesen hat diese Zeilen, kann zwar noch keine Gedichte schreiben, aber bei allen Gelegenheiten schon mal vielf ltig reimen.

Even in her own day Anna Akhmatova was ranked as one of the great Russian poets of the century. Yet she suffered scathing attacks from the Soviet establishment, was famously denounced as ""half-nun, half-whore"", and was finally expelled from the Writers' Union. Lydia Chukovskaya, an admirer who became the poet's close friend, kept intimate diaries that reveal the day-to-day life of a passionate artist forced to endure sorrow and oppression, yet still able to create poetry and friendship. This volume contains the journals kept between the years 1938 and 1941.