The important energy requirements for the desalination process impose especially in autonomous and decentralized plants supplied by Renewable Energy Sources (RES). In this paper, five alternative energy generation topologies of Reverse Osmosis desalination process are evaluated. The proposed topologies assessed in terms of economic, environmental, technological and societal indices are compared using multi-criteria analysis, namely the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment of Evaluations (PROMETHEE). Ranking of topologies resulted in the selection of direct connection and hybrid configuration as optimum solutions. In case economic priorities prevail diesel generation should also be considered.
Virtual currencies are online payment systems that may function as real currencies but are not issued or backed by central governments. As demonstrated by recent events, virtual currencies present regulators with significant challenges. On May 23, 2013, the U.S. federal government brought an indictment against the operators of Liberty Reserve, a popular virtual currency, charging the operators with money laundering and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. The same month, the Government Accountability Office ("GAO") made public a report exploring the potential tax-compliance risks associated with virtual currencies and economies. Legislators have also taken particular interest in one type of virtual currency-Bitcoin. On August 13, 2013, the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security announced plans to start an inquiry aimed at establishing a regulatory framework for Bitcoin. This short Essay describes the mechanisms by which "cryptocurrencies"-a subcategory of virtual currencies-could replace tax havens as the weapon-of-choice for tax-evaders. I argue that it is reasonable to expect this shift to occur in the foreseeable future due to the contemporary convergence of two unrelated, yet parallel, processes. The first process is the increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies, of which Bitcoin is the most widely recognized example. Unlike other virtual currencies that are associated with the existence of a virtual economy-usually in computer games-cryptocurrencies "function as a unique currency with [their] own free-floating exchange." Over the past three years, Bitcoin gradually gained the confidence of consumers, retailers, and service providers, and it is now effectively functioning as a currency in the real world. In fact, in August 2013, Bitcoin was officially recognized as a legal form of tender in Germany. Only two weeks earlier, a federal judge ruled that for purposes of U.S. securities regulation, Bitcoin is indeed "money."
Cryptocurrencies are digital alternatives to traditional governmentâissued paper monies. Given the current state of technology and skepticism regarding the future purchasing power of existing monies, why have cryptocurrencies failed to gain widespread acceptance? I offer an explanation based on network effects and switching costs. In order to articulate the problem that agents considering cryptocurrencies face, I employ a simple model developed by Dowd and Greenaway (1993) (Dowd, K., and D. Greenaway. âCurrency Competition, Network Externalities, and Switching Costs: Towards an Alternative View of Optimum Currency Areas.â The Economic Journal , 103(420), 1993, 1180â89). The model demonstrates that agents may fail to adopt an alternative currency when network effects and switching costs are present, even if all agents agree that the prevailing currency is inferior. The limited success of bitcoinâalmost certainly the most popular cryptocurrency to dateâserves to illustrate. After briefly surveying episodes of successful monetary transition, I conclude that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are unlikely to generate widespread acceptance in the absence of either significant monetary instability or government support. ( JEL E40, E41, E42, E49)
We maintain that the crypto-currency bitcoin is a practical application of what is termed âmemoryâ in the monetary economics literature. After reviewing the theoretical literature on money and memory, we offer a brief overview of the bitcoin protocol and argue that, like memory, bitcoin functions as a public record-keeping device. Finally, we provide evidence that â in line with the standard theoretical account of memory â bitcoin use has soared as the expected cost of storing traditional monies increased.
ďťżA bona fide currency functions as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account, but bitcoin largely fails to satisfy these criteria. Bitcoin has achieved only scant consumer transaction volume, with an average well below one daily transaction for the few merchants who accept it. Its volatility is greatly higher than the volatilities of widely used currencies, imposing large short-term risk upon users. Bitcoinâs daily exchange rates exhibit virtually zero correlation with widely used currencies and with gold, making bitcoin useless for risk management and exceedingly difficult for its owners to hedge. Bitcoin prices of consumer goods require many decimal places with leading zeros, which is disconcerting to retail market participants. Bitcoin faces daily hacking and theft risks, lacks access to a banking system with deposit insurance, and it is not used to denominate consumer credit or loan contracts. Bitcoin appears to behave more like a speculative investment than a currency.
Authentication is a process by which an entity, which could be a person or intended computer, establishes its identity to another entity. In private and public computer networks including the Internet, authentication is commonly done through the use of logon passwords. Knowledge of the password is assumed to guarantee that the user is authentic. Internet business and many other transactions require a more stringent authentication process. The aim of this paper is to propose two authentication schemes based on general non-commutative rings. The key idea of the schemes is that for a given non-commutative ring; one can build polynomials on additive structure and takes them as underlying work structure. By doing so, one can implement authentication schemes, one of them being zero-knowledge interactive proofs of knowledge, on multiplicative structure of the ring. The security of the schemes is based on the intractability of the polynomial symmetrical decomposition problem over the given non-commutative ring.
VĂctor B. Penchaszadeh, Francisco A. Leone, Mario Rovere
The modern health system of Argentina was developed in 1945-1955, a period of economic bonanzacharacterized by industrialization, rapid urbanization and activist labor organizations. During the ensuingyears it evolved in three sectors: public, social security and private, with separate services, populationcoverage and funding. While the national Ministry of Health is nominally responsible for general healthpolicies and regulations, overseeing the general operation of health services, designing preventive medicineprograms and negotiating the coverage and fees of health insurance plans, it has in fact very low leverage toenforce decisions in the provinces, which are autonomous, as well as in the social security and private sectors,which are weakly regulated if at all. While the health workforce, medical facilities and level of spending areacceptable, the fragmentation and segmentation of the system render it highly inequitable and inefficient.During the 1980s and 1990s, the health system has experienced further transformations, as neoliberalpolicies took hold in the country and dictated a reduction of state involvement in social services in favor ofprivatization and decentralization of health care. The result has been increased fragmentation, inequity andinefficacy, as health care is increasingly prey to the economic interests of private corporations (insuranceand pharmaceutical industries), trade union bureaucracies and the medical professional and technologyestablishments. The expectation of popular sectors of society are that progressive polices recently enactedby Congress, and being implemented in the fields of education, retirement pensions and the media, will befollowed with much needed public health policies based on equity and efficiency.
Open access
Public Health in Brazil
Healthcare Policy and Management
Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life
We propose an electronic payment protocol for typical customer-merchant relations which does not require a trusted (signed) payment descriptor to be sent from the merchant to the customer. Instead, the destination "account" number for the payment is solely created on the customer side. This eliminates the need for any encrypted or authenticated communication in the protocol and is secure even if the merchant's online infrastructure is compromised. Moreover, the payment transaction itself serves as a timestamped receipt for the customer. It proves what has been paid for and who received the funds, again without relying on any merchant signatures. In particular, funds and receipt are exchanged in a single atomic action. The asymmetric nature of the customer-merchant relation is crucial. The protocol is specifically designed with bitcoin in mind as the underlying payment system. Thereby, it has the useful benefit that all transactions are public. However, the only essential requirement on the payment system is that "accounts" are arbitrary user-created keypairs of a cryptosystem whose keypairs enjoy a homomorphic property. All ElGamal-type cryptosystems have this feature. For use with bitcoin we propose the design of a deterministic bitcoin wallet whose addresses can be indexed by clear text strings.
Governments have traditionally censored drug-related information, both in traditional media and, in recent years, in online media. We explore Internet content regulation from a drug-policy perspective by describing the likely impacts of censoring drug websites and the parallel growth in hidden Internet services. Australia proposes a compulsory Internet filtering regime that would block websites that âdepict, express or otherwise deal with matters of⌠drug misuse or addictionâ and/or âpromote, incite or instruct in matters of crimeâ. In this article, we present findings from a mixed-methods study of online drug discussion. Our research found that websites dealing with drugs, that would likely be blocked by the filter, in fact contributed positively to harm reduction. Such sites helped people access more comprehensive and relevant information than was available elsewhere. Blocking these websites would likely drive drug discussion underground at a time when corporate-controlled âwalled gardensâ (e.g. Facebook) and proprietary operating systems on mobile devices may also limit open drug discussion. At the same time, hidden Internet services, such as Silk Road, have emerged that are not affected by Internet filtering. The inability for any government to regulate Tor websites and the crypto-currency Bitcoin poses a unique challenge to drug prohibition policies.
Cette thèse cherche Ă savoir si la mĂŠthode dĂŠcentralisĂŠe, officiellement mise en avant dans la gestion des crises de la dette souveraine depuis leur origine, est non seulement rĂŠalisable, mais ĂŠgalement efficace en termes de rĂŠpartition ĂŠquitable du fardeau de la dette. Nous dĂŠfinissons en effet un processus de restructuration efficace comme une procĂŠdure de courte durĂŠe (infĂŠrieure Ă un an) et qui respecte les besoins des deux parties prenantes au contrat. Si du cĂ´tĂŠ des crĂŠanciers, la dĂŠcote ne doit pas ĂŞtre abusive, du cĂ´tĂŠ du dĂŠbiteur, la dette doit redevenir soutenable, au sens Ă la fois ĂŠconomique et social du terme. Le terrain d'analyse des processus de renĂŠgociation de la dette se concentre exclusivement sur les ĂŠconomies d'AmĂŠrique Latine, dans la mesure oĂš elles reprĂŠsentent les dĂŠbiteurs ayant enregistrĂŠ le plus grand nombre de dĂŠfauts au cours de l'histoire. Ă travers une mĂŠthode pluridisciplinaire, nous dĂŠfendons finalement la thèse selon laquelle l'ĂŠchec des diffĂŠrents processus de restructuration est directement subordonnĂŠ Ă l'iniquitĂŠ du partage du fardeau de la dette, laquelle fait suite Ă un dĂŠsĂŠquilibre des pouvoirs de nĂŠgociation inhĂŠrente au cadre de gestion dĂŠcentralisĂŠe. Notre posture macroĂŠconomique et notre dĂŠmarche inductive induisent un cadre d'analyse socio-ĂŠconomique, lequel fait appel Ă un approfondissement historique, en termes d'ĂŠconomie politique, mais ĂŠgalement Ă une ĂŠtude basĂŠe sur la psychologie sociale. La thèse est structurĂŠe autour de deux parties, elles-mĂŞmes subdivisĂŠes en deux chapitres. La première partie s'attache Ă comprendre les origines et les modalitĂŠs de prĂŠvention et de gestion des crises, ainsi que leurs ĂŠchecs. Elle conjugue de fait l'observation empirique et les soubassements thĂŠoriques de la dĂŠcentralisation. De fait, le premier chapitre fait ĂŠtat, au vu de la double responsabilitĂŠ Ă l'Ĺuvre dans le dĂŠclenchement et l'enlisement dans la crise, de l'ĂŠchec de la mĂŠthode dĂŠcentralisĂŠe sur le long terme. En effet, non seulement la dĂŠcentralisation apparaĂŽt inapplicable, puisqu'une tierce partie est systĂŠmatiquement contrainte d'intervenir, mais elle ne permet pas non de plus de rĂŠpartir ĂŠquitablement les coĂťts de la crise. Le second chapitre cherche consĂŠcutivement Ă comprendre pourquoi ce processus de restructuration est nĂŠanmoins maintenu. L'ĂŠconomie politique de la dĂŠcentralisation montre alors que le choix entre la rĂŠgulation et le ÂŤ laissez-faire Âť ne tient pas tant Ă des critères d'efficacitĂŠ ĂŠconomique qu'Ă des considĂŠrations idĂŠologiques et politiques. La deuxième partie de cette thèse propose symĂŠtriquement des pistes de rĂŠflexion afin de pallier les principaux ĂŠcueils relevĂŠs lors des diffĂŠrents ĂŠpisodes de dĂŠfaut et de restructuration. Ainsi, si le troisième chapitre rĂŠpond au second, le quatrième fait ĂŠcho au premier. En effet, le troisième chapitre montre que la dĂŠcentralisation ne peut aboutir en raison non seulement de ses ĂŠcueils techniques, mais surtout de la nature des deux parties au contrat. L'immunitĂŠ souveraine ayant ĂŠtĂŠ relativisĂŠe dans les deux premiers chapitres, il s'agit ici d'analyser le fonctionnement des marchĂŠs selon une mĂŠthode alternative au concept d'efficience. C'est la raison pour laquelle nous faisons appel aux prĂŠceptes de Keynes (1936) et de son analyse en termes psychosociaux, que nous approfondissons au travers du courant de la finance comportementale. Une telle ĂŠtude rĂŠvèle ainsi l'incapacitĂŠ des crĂŠanciers Ă s'organiser de bonne foi, laquelle reprĂŠsente pourtant la condition sine qua non de la rĂŠalisation et de l'efficacitĂŠ de la mĂŠthode dĂŠcentralisĂŠe. Par consĂŠquent, le dernier chapitre de ce travail conclue sur la nĂŠcessitĂŠ d'un revirement en faveur d'une approche plus centralisĂŠe, laquelle inclut une tierce partie neutre, compĂŠtente et institutionnalisĂŠe.
In the months following his death on 20 August, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has been eulogized and demonized in equal measure. But his policies, and the transformational paradigm on which they were based, have rarely been elucidated. While alive, Meles was equally indifferent to praise and blame. To those who acclaimed Ethiopia's remarkable economic growth, he would ask, do they understand that his policies completely contradicted the neo-liberal Washington Consensus? To those who condemned his measures against the political opposition and civil society organizations, he demanded to know how they would define democracy and seek a feasible path to it, in a political economy dominated by patronage and rent seeking? Meles did not hide his views, but neither did he ever fully present his theory of the âdemocratic developmental stateâ to an international audience. Over nearly 25 years, I was fortunate to be able to discuss political economy with him regularly, including critiquing his incomplete and unpublished master's dissertation. During this time, his thinking evolved, but his basic principles and sensibilities remained constant. World leaders have lauded Meles' economic achievements without acknowledging their theoretical basis. Human rights organizations have decried his political record as though he were a routine despot with no agenda other than hanging on to power. Reviewing his writings on the developmental state, this essay shows the unity of his theory and practice. Meles had the quiet certitude of someone who had been tested â and seen his people tested â to the limit. Along with his comrades in arms in the leadership of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), he had looked into the abyss of collective destruction, and his career was coloured by the knowledge that Ethiopia could still go over that precipice. Many times during sixteen years of armed struggle in the mountains of northern Ethiopia against the then-military regime led by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, Meles had close personal brushes with death. In 1988, he and other central committee members avoided a likely-fatal aerial bombing by just twenty minutes after their hideout was betrayed by a spy and Ethiopian fighter-bombers targeted it. Later that year, he was taken gravely ill with malaria and was evacuated to hospital in Khartoum â one of the very few times he left the field during the entire armed struggle. As Meles crossed the border back into Ethiopia, I met him for the first time, and we began the first of our seminars on political economy. As dusk fell, still recuperating in his pyjamas, Comrade Meles climbed aboard a creaky Soviet Zil truck, captured from the Ethiopian army. All travel was at night, to avoid the MiGs, and we bumped our way along rocky tracks, first through the forested lowlands, camping out during daylight hours under trees next to a dry riverbed. Such was the itinerant life of the TPLF leadership. The next night our truck rumbled up a road cut through the mountainside by the guerrillas, with hairpins so tight that our truck had to make three-point turns. We spent the next day in caves at the TPLF's temporary headquarters in a mountain called Dejena, and the next nightfall I watched as an apparently uninhabited hillside gave forth a battalion of men, a dozen trucks and a tank, all of them completely obscured by camouflage until that moment. The TPLF had turned concealment into science. The discomfort of the journey was less memorable than the travelling discussion group of Comrade Meles, Comrade Seyoum (head of TPLF foreign relations and later Ethiopia's longest-serving Foreign Minister), a dozen fighters, a representative from a European agricultural assistance agency, and myself. I learned quickly that the most necessary attribute of a guerrilla fighter is functioning without sleep. Meles was a voracious consumer of information and analysis, and a tireless questioner. We discussed perestroika in the USSR, theories of people's liberation warfare, the imperfections of grain markets, and, above all, peasant survival strategies during drought. At one point we met a hunter on the track and Meles spent an hour discussing with him the importance of conserving endangered species. Meles was a convinced Marxist-Leninist, pragmatic but certain that the way of life of the Ethiopian peasants had to change or die. Having just completed my doctoral dissertation on famine survival strategies in Sudan, I tried to convince him that rural people were best served by diversified livelihoods, and that pastoral nomadism was an effective adaptation to the vagaries of life in a drought-prone ecosystem. He did his best to convince me that traditional livelihoods were doomed to stagnation and that Ethiopian peasants had to specialize in farming, trade, or livestock rearing. The abiding impression left by Meles and the TPLF leadership was that their theory and practice were deeply rooted in the realities of Ethiopia, and that they would succeed or fail on their terms and no others. The TPLF had convinced the people, and that was all that mattered. They did not measure their record or their policies against external standards; on the contrary, they evaluated outside precepts against their own experience and logic. It was a refreshing, even inspiring, dose of intellectual self-reliance. Meles was unflinchingly optimistic about the prospects for the armed struggle and assured me that the Tigrayan guerrillas, until a few months previously confined to the hills and the borderlands with Sudan, would penetrate as far south as Shewa, the Amhara heartland just a hundred miles from the capital Addis Ababa, within a year. I did not take his promise seriously (neither did any other non-Ethiopian). But he was correct, and within two and a half years, the TPLF â now a member of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition â achieved the remarkable feat of capturing the capital city. The EPRDF took Addis Ababa on 28 May 1991, amid international predictions that Ethiopia would go the way of Somalia, where guerrillas had overrun Mogadishu just four months earlier. On 31 May, government salaries and pensions were due. They were paid on time. Police were back on the street within days. During the next 21 years, Meles often looked as though he was camping out in the palace. He moved into his predecessor's semi-subterranean bunker home in the sprawling grounds of the old palace of the Emperor Menelik, and took over Mengistu's spacious but damp modernist executive office. The artwork scarcely changed over the next two decades, the carpets just once. Meles was not interested in the trappings of power, only in what could be done with it. From the outset, what needed to be done was to conquer poverty. From his early days in the field through to his last years as an international statesman, Meles was absolutely consistent in this aim. Ethiopia's overriding national challenge was to end poverty, and in turn this needed a comprehensive, theoretically rigorous practice of development. Marxism-Leninism was, for him, not a dogma but a rigorous method for assembling evidence and argument, to be bent to the realities of armed struggle and development. When the TPLF first administered âliberatedâ territories in the 1970s, it took a conventional leftist line, tried to regulate trade and moneylending, and failed. The Front responded by adjusting its policies to encourage the local petit bourgeoisie in the villages and small towns it controlled. When the great famine of 1984â5 struck, the TPLF took the strategic decision to make feeding the peasantry its priority, even at the expense of losing ground to the enemy. Meles was primus inter pares in the EPRDF's collective leadership and chief economic theoretician. In an episode made famous by Joseph Stiglitz,1 Meles objected to the IMF position that international assistance was too unpredictable to be incorporated into national budget planning purposes, with the absurd consequence that national spending on infrastructure, health, and education could not be increased in line with foreign aid flows. Meles produced arguments and data and forced the Bretton Woods Institutions to rethink. Meles inverted Kissinger's dictum that holding office consumes intellectual capital rather than creating it. He was always learning, reading, debating, and writing, and while he never abandoned the fundamental principles forged in the field, his views evolved greatly. After 1991, he studied for a degree in Business Administration at the Open University (graduating first in his class) and subsequently a Masters in Economics at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, under the supervision of the former Minister of Development Cooperation, Jan Pronk. He never finished his thesis due to the outbreak of war with Eritrea in 1998, but the draft manuscript, âAfrican Development: Dead Ends and New Beginningsâ, was the justification and blueprint for a âdemocratic developmental stateâ. Excerpts are available online with the intriguing disclaimer: âThe author is the Prime Minister of Ethiopia. The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Government.â2 Some of his analysis is also contained in a chapter in a recent collection edited by Akbar Noman and others.3 The war with Eritrea not only interrupted Meles' studies but provoked the most bitter dissension within the EPRDF. Meles was accused of having been soft on Eritrea and blind to Eritrean preparations for war, and subsequently for stopping the war once Ethiopia had expelled the invader from occupied territory. The internal party debate then took an ideological turn that seems to outsiders to be oddly anachronistic, replete with references to Bonapartism and the âKulak lineâ. Meles clearly stated that there should be no confusion that the EPRDF's mission was to build a capitalist state. He further stated that rent seeking and patronage within the ruling party posed the key dangers to this objective, and they needed to be thoroughly stamped out. Meles' adversaries accused him of selling his revolutionary soul to imperialism and serving Eritrea at the expense of Ethiopia. Meles won by the skin of his teeth â just two votes in the Central Committee of the TPLF. His rivals then walked out and Meles seized the moment to consolidate his power. The next decade was to be his chance both to hone and to implement his theory of âdemocratic developmentalismâ. One may disagree with Meles' thesis or argue that he failed to implement it properly. But without question it represents a serious attempt to develop, and apply, an authentically African philosophy of the goals and strategies of development. He explained the background to me. âFor the first ten years after we took over,â he said, âwe were bewildered by the changes. The New World Order was very visible and especially so in this part of the world. The prospect of an independent line appeared very bleak. So we fought a rearguard action not to privatize too much.â4 Meles was doubly constrained: internally the EPRDF was regressing, rehearsing its rhetoric but practising what Meles came to dub pervasive âsocially wasteful rent seeking.â5 But after emerging from the fractious debates of 2000â1, Meles had the upper hand, at the same time as international thinking shifted away from the neo-liberal demand for a non-interventionist ânight-watchmanâ state towards recognizing the need for a capable state to lead development. Meles agreed with the neo-liberals that the âpredatory stateâ of Africa's first post-colonial decades was one dead end, but argued that allowing the market to rule was a second dead end. âYou cannot change a rent-seeking political economy just by reducing the size and role of the state. The neo-liberal paradigm does not allow for technological capacity accumulation, which lies at the heart of development. For that, an activist state is needed, that will allocate state rents in a productive manner.â6 South Korea and Taiwan were Meles' favourite examples of developmental states that succeeded by subverting neo-liberal dogma. China's rise provided something else: by challenging American dominance it made space for alternatives. In his thesis he wrote, âthere has to be more political space for experimentation in development policy than has been the case so far in Africa ⌠The international community has a role in creating such a space by tolerating development paradigms that are different from the orthodoxy preached by it. Africans have to demand and create such a spaceâ (p. 39). Meles' starting point was that Ethiopia (and indeed Africa as a whole) lacked comparative advantage in any productive field. He laid out his case in one discussion we held.7 âAfrican workers produce textiles at nine times the price of the Chinese.â Similarly, African foodstuffs could not compete in international markets. âIn these circumstances, the best way to make money is through rent: natural resource rent, aid rent, policy rent. So the private sector will be rent-seeking not value creating, it will go for the easy way and make money through rent.â8 In reaction to this, Ethiopia postponed private land ownership and kept state control of the financial sector and telecoms. The argument continued, âIf the state guides the private sector, there is a possibility of shifting to value creation â it needs state action to lead the private sector from its preference (rent seeking) to its long-term interest (value creation). So the state needs autonomy.â9 The government should choose when and how to partner with the private sector (an example was developing Ethiopia's leather industry) and should invest in education and research. Meles clearly identified the challenge of development as primarily a political one: it is necessary to master the technicalities of economics, but essential not to let them become a dogma that masters you. It is the politics of the state that unlocks development. The âdevelopmental stateâ should, he argued, be obsessed with value creation, making accelerated and broad-based growth a matter of national survival. If Ethiopia could sustain its growth levels â which have been running at close to 10 percent per annum for most of the last decade â it could achieve middle-income status and escape from its trap. To succeed in this, a third element was needed, namely the hegemony of developmental discourse, in the Gramscian sense that it is an internalized set of assumptions, not an imposed order. Meles liked to give the example of corrupt customs officials in Taiwan, who exacted bribes worth 12 percent of the value of imports of consumer goods, while not demanding bribes on imported capital goods, illustrating how value creation had been internalized in this way â so that even the thieves followed the norm. African countries might have the trappings of human rights and democracy, but, he said, âthere is no sustainable democracy in a society characterized by pervasive rent seeking. We need value creation to be dominant for there to be a foundation of democracy, for politics to be more than a zero sum game, a competition to control state rents.â Worse, he added, âI am convinced that we will cease to exist as a nation unless we grow fast and share our growth.â10 Thus far, I found Meles' case compelling, though I questioned if it were possible to create a common mindset of value creation in a country as vast and diverse as Ethiopia, in such a short period. Was there not a danger that a theory, however sophisticated, would degenerate into a set of dogmas parroted by party cadres who scarcely understood the meaning of âpervasive rent seekingâ but who knew the rewards of loyally following the party line? Meles' response was that the EPRDF had indeed neglected political education and party organization for years, which explained the 2000â1 internal crisis and the poor performance in the 2005 elections, including being out in the he argued, a of leaders was he was the party at all and, above all, his policies were had the recent economic growth and the in and â and this, he said, would the country in the next in Meles' paradigm was a theory of He if a developmental state was to be about growth, it would have to build the capital that is for its It would have to out patronage and rent seeking. are the very same that create the for politics that is from (p. Meles condemned as and that, in a poor developing political and would become patronage rather than the for a political and sustainable development. He a in which for which one could best the state. states could in Meles argued, provided that they the hegemony of value creation, were from the private sector, stamped out rent seeking and and policy for to developmental state could be but in Africa's diverse was a Ethiopia's and Meles his preference was to have two of which for developmental but in their the would be a dominant party or dominant such as or in In the Ethiopian he wrote, peasant is the of a developmental His this them the chance of for alternatives. Meles' to democracy and human rights was all of a with his He said, developmental has done its it will its own to be by a or he argued, what meaning did civil and political rights have in a of or political Development and a state were for human and Ethiopia needed to these or this is a serious argument that serious In early I Meles he had been so about his He that he should not Ethiopia's by a personal intellectual agenda that would be to from his and he that his which had been just a few years were common and that as the time for him to office at the elections, he to his dissertation and 25 years Meles was indifferent to and argument that failed to his own and was that would their own and that would him when I Meles what he would his he was in those who his government as or and only the question of was in It would be he said, that question could be Meles also that the intellectual of the theoretical of his and that analysis to what he called the African state, characterized by a political was just of Meles' writings are in the to that Meles was a that his unpublished to out the less of his intellectual
Fiscal decentralization is an important influence factor on the autonomy of local government. To the extent in which a local government benefits from amounts and transfers from the central government, it depends on it and has a reduced capacity to make decisions about the services they provide to citizens, local autonomy being limited. Even if the legal framework for decentralization was created in Romania, we still can not talk about a high degree of financial autonomy of local governments. Further, significant amounts from the state budget are transferred to local budgets to cover local expenses. Moreover, despite consistent efforts to implement the decentralization process, there is a series of imbalances, especially in smaller territorial administrative units that are clearly disadvantaged both in terms of financial capacity to finance themselves through local taxes and duties, and especially in terms of the low absorption capacity of European funds. In general, in Romania, the degree of financial autonomy differs nationally from the city level and from the village level.
New Public Management (NPM) is considered as a global paradigm emerging in response to economic, institutional, political, and ideological changes.Many attempts to define the New Public Management have been made and there are several definitions of this notion, referring to the implementation of management ideas from business and private sector into the public services.Over the past few years, Romania has been facing a great challenge as it has to enhance its public management for achieving the European standards and values of transparency, predictability, accountability, adaptability and efficiency. The necessity of a modern administration at European standards exists both at the level of the citizen, and at the level of institutions delivering public services.According to the provisions of its last stand-by arrangement with IMF, Romania placed emphasis on restoring medium- and long-term sustainability and paved the way for future growth. Structural reforms were a large component of the program, including tax administration, pensions, public wages and employment, and social benefits, improving public sector efficiency, as well as enhancing the business environment. Since 2009 a public financial management structure was introduced for multi-year budgeting while limiting intra-year budget revisions. Fiscal rules were introduced on spending, public debt and primary deficit, and a framework for managing guarantees and other contingent liabilities was approved. Local public finance law was amended to bolster fiscal discipline and limit risks from local governments.Thus, presently, the legal framework envisages the use of new instruments and structures to support local administration authorities to increase their administrative capacity in order to perform in accordance with their new authority and thereby increases the quality of the already decentralized public services.The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) ' the total quality management tool was introduced in Romania, public institutions acknowledging the need for change and improvement, the importance of people'(tm)s involvement within the organization'(tm)s self-assessment process, the importance of measuring the results, objectives prioritization, the need to assume responsibility for the identified improvement actions, as well as the need to share knowledge and experience.Most of the Romanian public institutions apply the diagnosis obtained through CAF implementation as a solid ground to develop and implement their Multi-annual Modernizing Strategies, thus assuring the sustainability of the results accomplished so far.Concluding, we consider that the changes incurred and the significant transformation of Romanian public services include important elements of NPM.
In the past thirty years, a series of plans have been developed by successive Brazilian governments in a continuing effort to maximize the nation's resources for economic and social growth. This planning history has been quantitatively rich but qualitatively poor. The disjunction has stimulated Professor Mello e Souza to address himself to the problem of national planning and to offer some criticisms of Brazilian planning experience. Though political instability has obviously been a factor promoting discontinuity, his criticisms are aimed at the attitudes and strategic concepts which have sought to link planning to national goals and administration. He criticizes the fascination with techniques and plans to the exclusion of proper diagnosis of the socio-political reality, developing instruments to coordinate and carry out objectives, and creating an administrative structure centralized enough to make national decisions and decentralized enough to perform on the basis of those decisions. Thus, fixed, quantified objectives abound while the problem of functioning mechanisms for the coordinated, rational use of resources has been left unattended. Although his interest and criticism are focused on the process and experience of national planning, he recognized variation in the level and results of Brazilian planning. National plans have failed due to faulty conception of the function of planning. Sectorial plans, save in the sector of the petroleum industry under government responsibility, ha e not succeeded in overcoming the problems of formulation and execution thereby repeating old technical errors. Planning for the private sector has a somewhat brighter history due to the use of Grupos Executivos which has enabled the planning process to transcend the formalism and tradition-bound attitudes of the regular bureaucracy. Regional planning offers two relatively successful experiences, Sudene and the strategy of the regionally oriented autarchy. Thus, planning history in Brazil is not entirely black but a certain shade of grey. The major part of the article, however, is devoted to a descriptive analysis of the national planning experience. The plans included in this analysis are: The Works and Equipment Plan (POE); The Health, Food, Transportation and Energy Plan (Salte); The Program of Goals; The Trienal Plan of Economic and Social Development; and the Plan of Governmental Economic Action (Paeg). Using these five plans for his historical experience the author sets out a series of errors of formulation and execution by which he analyzes that experience. With respect to formulation, he speaks of a lack of elaboration of programs and projects, of coordination among diverse goals, and of provision of qualified staff and techniques. He mentions the absence of the definition of resources necessary to the financing of the plan and the inadequate quantification of sectorial and national goals due to the lack of reliable statistical information. Finally, he notes the failure to coordinate the annual budget with the multi-year plans. He sees the problems of execution as beginning in the absence of coordination between the various sectors of the public administration, the failure to develop an operative system of decentralization, the absence of any system of financial and fiscal control over execution, the difficulties imposed by the system of public accounting, and the absence of an adequate program of allocation for the liberation of resources. He ends by pointing to the failure to develop and use an integrated system of political economic tools in a mode compatible with the objective of the plans. The body of the article analyzes national planning experience in Brazil using these lists of errors as rough model of criticism. Several conclusions emerge from this analysis with regard to planning in Brazil and in developing countries, in general. Plans have generally been of little avail in Brazil because of the lack of a continuous, bureaucratized (in the Weberian sense) planning organization set in an instrumentally suitable administrative structure and based on thorough diagnoses of socio-economic conditions and problems. Plans have become the justification for planning. Planning has come to be conceived as a rational method of orienting the process of decisions through the establishment of a precise and quantified relation between means and ends. But this conception has led to a planning history rimmed with frustration, and failure, because of its rigidity in the face of flexible and changing reality. Rather, he suggests a conception of planning which understands it "as a rational process of formulating decisions about the policy, economy, and society whose only demand is that of managing the instrumentarium in a harmonious and integrated form in order to reach explicit, but not quantified ends". He calls this "planning without plans": the establishment of broad-scale tendencies through diagnosis whose implementation is carried out through an adjustable, coherent instrumentarium of political-economic tools. Administration according to a plan of multiple, integrated goals is a sound procedure if the nation's administrative machinery contains the technical development needed to control the multiple variables linked to any situation of socio-economic change. Brazil does not possess this level of refinement and any strategy of planning relevant to its problems must recognize this. The reforms which have been attempted fail to make this recognition as is true of the conception of planning informing the Brazilian experience. Therefore, unworkable plans, ill-diagnosed with little or no supportive instrumentarium or flexibility have been Brazil's legacy. This legacy seems likely to continue until the conception of planning comes to live in the reality of Brazil.
Alexander TobĂłn, Mauricio LĂłpez GonzĂĄlez, Jenifer GonzĂĄlez
Fiscal decentralization process in Colombia has led to significant achievements in the financial management of municipalities, which can be followed using some main indicators. This article presents the fiscal performance of the municipality of Medellin through aggregated fiscal indicators and the estimation of two econometric models of sensitivity for investment expenditure and tax income. It is concluded that, although the municipality presents a healthy fiscal state, there is evidence for fiscal laziness and relaxation phenomena between 1998 and 2009 that can be justified by the increasing dependency of non-tax revenues. Š 2012 Universidad ICESI. Publicado por Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved. Financas e gestao publica local na Colombia: no caso das Financas no municipio de Medellin
Xiao Qiang Guo, Li Hong Li, Cui Ling Luo, Yi Shuo Shi
The Bit Commitment (BC) is an important basic agreement in cryptography . The concept was first proposed by the winner of the Turing Award in 1995 ManuelBlum. Bit commitment scheme can be used to build up zero knowledge proof, verified secret sharing, throwing coins etc agreement.Simultaneously and Oblivious Transfer together constitute the basis of secure multi-party computations. Both of them are hotspots in the field of information security. We investigated unconditional secure Quantum Bit Commitment (QBC) existence. And we constructed a new bit commitment model â double prover bit commitment. The Quantum Bit Commitment Protocol can be resistant to errors caused by noise.
Fan and Lv (2012) have convincingly argued that China's public debt, including borrowings by local governments, is relatively small and manageable. They have also correctly pointed out that over the last 10 years, while debt owed by local governments has surged, the government's contingent liabilities, which take into account the need to use public funds to bail out state-owned banks with large nonperforming loans, have declined sharply. I have little disagreement with Fan and Lv's conclusions, and my comments, which cover four major issues, are meant to clarify some details. My first comment relates to centralization versus decentralization. Fan and Lv argue that China has a centralized fiscal system (de jure) based on the facts that top local officials are appointed by the central authority, tax revenues largely accrue to the central government, and the central government monopolizes the right to issue debt to the public. However, some economists have argued that China has a decentralized system (de facto) based on the facts that local government expenditures are very large relative to the central government expenditure, formula-based equalization transfers are relatively small, revenues from land sales make up a large share of total local government revenues, and borrowing by local government âfinancing platformsâ helps to fund infrastructure projects. Even if we accept that China has a centralized fiscal system, based on the case of Japan, which has a centralized fiscal system but is running one of the largest budget deficits in the world, I still have some doubts about whether centralization necessarily means fiscal prudence (small budget deficits and public debt) as argued by Fan and Lv. There is also a debate over whether decentralization favors economic growth. On the pro side, fiscal decentralization promotes competition among local governments, and it acts as a major force of economic development in China. On the con side, fiscal decentralization fragments the national market, encourages local protectionism, induces duplicated investment, and, hence, negatively affects economic growth. Second, I would put more emphasis on land prices and pension liabilities as major determinants of fiscal balances and, thus, the size of the public debt. A fall in land prices affects the fiscal position of local governments in the following two ways. On the one hand, it leads to a decline in their revenue, since proceeds from land sales are a major source of revenue for local governments. On the other hand, some local government financing platforms involved in property development (if not speculation) using funds borrowed from banks may have difficulty servicing those loans. Pension liabilities relating to urban workers under the previous pension regime, the so-called legacy costs, are estimated to range from 82% to 130% of 2008 gross domestic product (GDP), depending on assumptions made (World Bank and Development Research Center of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, 2012). Ultimately, this obligation will have to be paid down through fiscal resources and should be counted as part of the government's contingent liabilities. Third, I think more attention should be paid to the future trends of revenues and expenditures when discussing fiscal sustainability. On the revenue side, growth in fiscal revenues is expected to slow down as the pace of China's economic growth declines due to demographic changes and to the diminishing advantage of backwardness as China approaches the stage of an advanced economy. On the expenditure side, there is a pressing need to further increase spending on education, health, social protection, and environmental protection. Part of these incremental expenditures could be met through a reallocation of spending away from infrastructure investment. Finally, I agree with the view expressed by the World Bank and Development Research Center of the State Council of the People's Republic of China (2012) that enhancing fiscal sustainability in China calls for raising revenues by further reforms in the following six directions: (i) higher taxes or prices on energy, water, natural resources, and pollution; (ii) raising state-owned enterprise dividend payments to the general budget; (iii) further mobilizing personal income taxes, which make up only 1% of China's GDP compared with an average of about 6% in high-income countries; (iv) enhancing the taxation of motor vehicles and pricing of parking and congestion; (v) enhancing property taxes; and (vi) auctioning public resources such as bandwidth user rights, franchises for public utilities, and exploitation rights for natural resources. These measures should improve not only fiscal sustainability but also improve equity and efficiency for the Chinese economy as a whole.
In recent years, our clean coal technology made some breakthrough by means of introduction, digestion, and innovation. But compared with the developed countries, the use of clean coal technology in our country is not common for the unsound policies and standards, the lack of market mechanism, insufficient capital investment, decentralize of trade management and so on. We can effectively promote the development of clean coal technology, promote our country's energy consumption to transform extensive to intensive consumption and gradually realize a coordinated development between the energy, economy and environment by completing the relevant policies, laws and regulations of technology, finance, taxation, environmental protection, perfecting the independent innovations and technology admittance mechanism, increasing financial investment, encouraging private investment and setting up specialized standard managing and setting body of clean coal technology.
In this essay, Foucault's concept âof other spacesâ â or, heterotopia â is used to examine the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in the context of systemic crisis. Neoliberalism is marked by innovations that amplify and accelerate contradictions, unfolding the false utopia of finance capitalism. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) helped hyper-financialize the economy, enrich banksters and extend inequalities. Conversely, high-tech developments allow for decentralized decision-making and more direct democracy, paralleling the ethics of OWS. New ICTs compress TimeSpace, opening doors for empathic connections, generating conditions for elevation of collective superstructural consciousness. This paper explores how these conditions create â and are recreated by â heterotopic spaces. Drawing on Foucault's method of heterotopology we throw light on the potential of OWS to prefigure another world, analyzing endeavors to promote cooperative autonomy, and raise consciousness in and through mediated environments, always contested, ever in flux, and inevitably over-(but never pre-)determined.
In early 2000 the city of Quito, Ecuador, established the Water Protection Fund (FONAG) to provide sustainable financing for the management and conservation of surrounding watersheds. FONAG was innovative in that it pioneered the use of trust funds in a voluntary, decentralized mechanism for financing watershed conservation. Since then, at least 15 similar water funds have been created or are under development in the Northern Andes, seven of which are in Ecuador. Ecuador's later water funds share many similarities with FONAG, but there are also important differences. This paper analyzes the evolution of Ecuador's water trust funds since the creation of FONAG and related changes in community-level watershed management. It does so by comparing the development and effects-todate of two of the most-recent Ecuadorian water funds: the Fund for Pramo Management and Fight Against Poverty in Tungurahua (FMPLPT) and the Regional Water Fund (FORAGUA). After defining the water trust fund model, the paper provides an overview of the FMPLPT and FORAGUA. It then compares these newer funds with FONAG to identify several trends in the financing of watershed conservation within Ecuador.
Man Ho Au, Willy Susilo, Yi Mu, Sherman S. M. Chow
Dynamick-times anonymous authentication (k-TAA) schemes allow members of a group to be authenticated anonymously by application providers for a bounded number of times, where application providers can independently and dynamically grant or revoke access right to members in their own group. In this paper, we construct a dynamick-TAA scheme with space and time complexities ofO(log(k)) and a variant, in which the authentication protocol only requires constant time and space complexities at the cost ofO(k) -sized public key. We also describe some tradeoff issues between different system characteristics. We detail all the zero-knowledge proof-of-knowledge protocols involved and show that our construction is secure in the random oracle model under theq-strong Diffie-Hellman assumption andq-decisional Diffie-Hellman inversion assumption. We provide a proof-of-concept implementation, experiment on its performance, and show that our scheme is practical.
The paroxysms of economic pain through which the world has been suffering for the past four years offer any number of possible vectors for analysisâfrom economic theory, to public policy, to sociology, to international affairs. An examination of the economic crisis through any of these lenses would reveal a great deal both about how we've come to be here, and how we might (or might not) find our way out of it. The âGreat Recessionâ is almost unique in modern political economics: a large-scale, catastrophic global economic meltdown, which may well persist for some time to come.1There have, of course, been other economic crises, recessions of greater or lesser duration, as well as global crises, such as the so-called âAsian Fluâ of the mid-1990s, but the Great Recession has come to be so named because its impact has been unlike anything the world has experienced since the 1930s (see Krugman 2008; Reich 2010; Stiglitz 2010). And given the increasingly interconnected and codependent nature of the global economic system, the negative effects of this downturn are affecting a much greater proportion of the world's population than the Great Depression. The reverberations continue, as we see in the ongoing European financial crisis; but the epicenter of the earthquake, in September of 2008, was the result of a conscious set of decisions and policies that led inexorably to a wide-scale economic meltdown. And the singular characteristic of that set of decisions and policies was the belief that economics had surpassed the realm of the merely human, to become a transcendent mode of thought, capable of near-omniscience regarding human actions and their consequencesâIssac Asimov's âpsychohistoryâ come to life, and given breath at Princeton and the University of Chicago.2This moment of economic crisis has intersected with another moment, one of renewed interest in the thought of Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr's wide-ranging intellectual curiosity touched frequently on questions of ethics and economics, particularly during the period of his own economic crisis in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash. Niebuhr's insights during that period, which formed the core of what came to be known as his âChristian realistâ approach to issues of Christianity and public morality, have something to say to us as we grapple with the questions of justice, economics, and social reform in the wake of the 2008 collapse.In the aftermath of the economic crisis, and in response to its ongoing depredations, two mass movements (each boasting greater or lesser degrees of authenticity) have emerged on the American stage. The first, dubbed the âTea Partyâ movement, emerged as a reaction to policies pursued by both the Bush and Obama administrations to solve the financial crisisâin particular, by offering relief to the banking and mortgage industries. Strongly libertarian in its ideological motivation, and often rooted in a particular vision of small government, states' rights, and nationalism, this movement directed its hostility primarily toward the Obama administration, seeing in many of its policies the roots of an incipient totalitarianism.3At root, the Tea Party's ideology is a reaction to what it sees as an overreaching federal government, which is believed to have caused the financial crisis of 2008 by coddling irresponsible and unreliable home buyers on the one hand and subsidizing a venal and corrupt culture of Wall Street traders on the other (see Berlet 2011). There is a vital streak of middle-class resentment that runs through the Tea Party movement, which sees itself as representing âordinaryâ Americans who work hard, pay their debts, and don't ask for government handouts.4 Demographically, it is predominantly white, male, and older (Ashbee 2011, 159â60). From the perspective of its adherents, the financial crisis was the result of government redistribution of wealth to the underserving, either in the form of social services and subsidies for the poor or in the form of bailouts to the financial industry (158). Additionally, there is a strong theme of personal antipathy toward Barack Obama and doubt about the legitimacy of his presidency (157).While it is difficult to pinpoint one branch of the Tea Party movement that could be said to speak for the whole, the movement does seem to coalesce around a set of general principles and positions. One concise expression of these positions is illustrated by the âContract from Americaâ (2009; not to be confused with the 1990s' Republican Party âContract with Americaâ). The document begins with an expression of a set of very broad principles, encapsulated as âIndividual Liberty,â âLimited Government,â and âEconomic Freedom,â and then moves on to a set of specific agenda items including requiring all federal legislation to include a statement of constitutional authority requiring a balanced budget amendment, a cap on government spending, and a repeal of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.What is particularly striking about this agenda, given the Tea Party's claim to be a reform movement emerging from outside of the corrupt infrastructure of both political parties, is the virtual identity of its agenda with that of the libertarian wing of the Republican party.5 This is not to suggest that the Tea Party necessarily works well with the Republican establishment. On the contrary, as Edward Ashbee observes: The Tea Party movement is largely drawn from independent conservatives or âdebrandedâ Republicans. The clashes between the movement and the Republican âestablishmentâ around some of the institutional arrangements that govern the party and structure electoral processes have added to the anger and rage that the movement feels towards the Obama administration. (2011, 164) Nevertheless, rather than embodying a movement of the politically disaffected, the Tea Party looks much more like a set of organizations designed to co-opt and appropriate the genuine disaffection of many American voters and channel that disaffection toward the standard issue Republican policy goalsâif not necessarily toward the Republican party itselfâat least in economic matters.6 Its ability to do this largely relies on the coupling of legitimate economic grievances in the wake of the financial crisis with an essentially libertarian economic philosophy, heavily seasoned with class and racial resentment (Bertlet 2011, 13â14).The second movement, which has come to be known as the âOccupy Wall Streetâ or â99%â movement, emerged in the summer of 2011 as a direct challenge to the perceived oligarchy controlling the key policy makers in both political parties.7 The Occupy Wall Street movement's origins can be traced to a campaign by editors of the magazine AdBusters, who sought to capitalize on the Tahrir square protests in Egypt to launch a similar movement of nonviolent resistance in the United States. The target of the protest was, as they saw it, the corporate manipulation of democratic institutions (Schwartz 2011).Spreading quickly via social media, the initial Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan gave rise to an expanding circle of protests around the United States, and ultimately around the world. While inspired by the AdBusters appeal, the participants in the Occupy protests did not organize themselves around any set of leaders or institutions, but rather strongly and self-consciously resisted such formal organizational trappings, refusing for the most part to even offer any demands or proposals. Rather, they organized around a widely shared sentiment of a fundamental conflict between the interests of the â99%,â those disenfranchised and excluded from genuine participation in the institutions and structures of governance, and the â1%,â the very wealthy and powerful who have the ears of the president, the Congress, and the economic institutions of society.The refusal to issue demands or to propose particular policies was to a large extent rooted in the belief among many of the protest participants that the ultimate solution to this conflict was to destroy capitalism root and branch, replacing it with ⌠something. What that something might be was, of course, never specified. And the organizational structure of the Occupy protests was such that it almost by definition couldn't be specified, since the kind of consensus required to develop plans for genuine alternatives was to the organizational of what was may a and movement was 2011). social in the of among movements in from around the world. And any participants and small out in a from to public to both and the of 2011, the Occupy protests had to a as the and of the in the financial of many of the of the was with to the protests the and their ability to in large in many the to and on their to they with and that in some led to This is in striking to the Tea Party which both more in and more and to the that in some the the for this in may have been from the perspective of policy it that the of the two in the Tea Party directed its primarily toward political institutions, seeing the of the social as the root of the economic crisis, the Occupy movement directed its anger primarily at economic institutions, seeing and as an of the of the Occupy movement sought to the from particular and sought to itself as an way of as a in modern way of that in to both the economic and political of oligarchy and that they have come to social life, both in the United and the world. There was, in the Occupy movement, a about human social that was in both its organizational structure and its the Tea Party a form of social and resentment in both its and is a of two two strongly movements that have emerged in response to a genuine and both as to the Great ultimately to offer a of either the or the to the economic While of the rooted in very and political principles, both the to both the and the for that are emerging from the moment at is in this way that Reinhold Niebuhr's thought can offer The of the past years has his the public but in to issues of policy and the of the United in the international is not for that one of the key of the has been his of American which the of an American of its own in with the Niebuhr's touched on many of social life, and much of his was given to the of questions of economic in the of the Great of the from that period, with his of human and political life, can offer some possible for a response to the Great many the Great Recession those that are at the of Niebuhr's The Great Recession came about as the result of and on the part of the political and economic who to the and of the and for a life, in to themselves at the time those for a and to for the very they themselves and they to a financial that for those who had the least in the of the the for the mortgage crisis all the themselves from the of their actions through the of (see 2011, a given by on the crisis in the mortgage had been to the on to because the at in the thought they ⌠they all and the for an the of it for Wall Street to their mortgage and ultimately the The ⌠was that most of the participants had much more to the than to the was a of economic and the was the was in had at an and the global financial was on the of 2011, The of the time is in the of a who the financial The is about to the ⌠in the of all these necessarily all of the of those And of course, the did the was never to a that could for any of time in the but to a structure that would the financial services industry to home for it could And this structure was designed to a the to the with the own And the of their in as the banking industry was out to the of was to be to in to in the that they would the of who in of the do they the and it in the of that the financial in the a at in an for the how about their the have to their own as the come is don't of any but the and and to even they are not the or the most with the in to these heavily by American the banking and financial services industry has from the economic of the of the through the period of economic downturn since that the crisis has two movements as similar and as the Tea Party and the Occupy a similar set of at in his own of the from that period, often heavily by is of the of both political and economic in on the of an The political in any is by the which the most of it be economic or the ability to the processes of the the is to to this of an in itself as the government, a and a of it is to the of the of the to its and it The either itself to be or at to the that it either by some or by an of the to the of in and to the of the The ability of a to its political on the of its claim to government and the of to that the Great and the financial crisis from in which economic to claim a of for their of political for their own (see 2010). the intellectual of a of economic and political policy makers has been the of a at by to both and of the since a all the in wealth to the of the past years has been for (see during of and it was to this course, many did during that period, and many came to themselves to be as they their and the of their by and in the aftermath of and increasingly economic crises, in the crisis of September 2008, it was possible to such a that in small to the that both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street the of and the of perceived social with even the and the to a great for as as the could be that a market could not all of us to with of economic it the interests of those who themselves by of the of at the of the great of participants in the that in the of a ideology of the had to be rooted in a vision of both the of human in the social and a of its genuine in response to by to and then claim for an that an industry that such social be as a of for the of the social of our This is a for our of libertarian financial The us is how we may to the of our in to between economic on the one and those that offer ultimately social on the is to of some of the in Niebuhr's work that are of in the of the ongoing financial crisis, and to what they may as we in the of emerging from to Niebuhr's was the of as a in all human social his was an not of human for While may have themselves the to rise their and are for the of human and to the of those of and that form the root of social Niebuhr's of is particularly given the in the to the financial it in The and of There is a of in which the human its and and itself all does not the and of its and itself to be the of its own the of its own and of its own The is in an form in all human but it to greater among those and who have a more than of social to the which to the of either the or some of human and is the for which has as its The does not and for more in to itself does not itself as or or and to its in nature and in The financial crisis is a of the that the of and can do it is that in large on the of of between those with great and those with our is to our own at the of such as large the to the is the of of to the and the toward is much to to more than anything to a movement for financial one that traders for and that they have a financial in the in the of their The ability to become by around with or even for the has us a set of among the most Niebuhr's of the of with the of is the human to that or one has in is the result of own work and the suffering of is never the result of or but is and the result of their own that this is fundamental to the of in The of the and are by and The and conscious of their interests with general interests and ⌠is in the of The are more than is that can be in of the of by that it something to the of the of are greater than could be the of is to the of of the that and that general interests are the they The of this in their own is the belief that the are to for their own the other hand it has been the of to the for the of and then to of what they have been the to was illustrated in the of the Tea Party movement, the by on the of the in that the government was by for policies to their and that the government the to those who can the of the was by many of the traders on the which is given their for the that it was the government and the home buyers who for the crisis, rather than traders who had of such as to be to a in The that these are what the of in the never the for and his the core of is the that it is a to us from the of our own the that those like to the what they to that the crisis was but their their of course, both and there are of from those on the political as its and refusal to many have Occupy Wall Street as a and set of it is possible that the refusal to is rooted in the of in a very many Wall Street traders to their own in the The belief that one even is on the and of the is not a of but of the it be that what and the Tea to is a of legitimate The of by out and was a very issue in the aftermath of the And the has been in a way by the Occupy as the government was on part an this us to another the of the of a economic the of the it is possible to one that is to a greater or lesser in which the and the of are shared in a is not at all that this has been given the it in our political the on economic in the Occupy movement has the for the about this the to such questions be One that form of can be in is because the of are to the which they are the of any particular in the of on the interests and at in the to it. be in What the Occupy movement can be given for is the about what the demands of be the both in the United and While one may at some of the more of social in the Occupy these protests the for the about that was to the of the And this was from by the political of the to and including Barack of Niebuhr's most are at the of with which was during the as this was by to be rooted in and of with the of the human particularly regarding questions of class interest and social While many for the of the poor and a to a more and they believed that the way to do so was through the of rather than through the of in An of The of the to the of to is a of and The that to by the of and that as well as to that that do so than but that the the which is to the has not it but that it has and more that the of the is not in but the to to the and this to the by are politically as as they are the had had and more its approach to the political would have been and to the social never the between and the of an seem to that even in the there is a in his which the that is in his this form of in a political which ultimately that movements for reform and and that the in a that the to in the of even a and could a of in political by specific policies designed to can these of Christianity by the of political that have been at the of much of the Occupy Wall Street all of the movement's its and refusal to any specific demands or it be by one or the other political a the ability to genuine policy agenda to it for political or economic institutions to to or to many of Occupy Wall there to be interest in genuine social reform than in their own fundamental in to the corrupt institutional of government and economic such of may be they ultimately the political and economic structures the movement and the in would be to ask how such a set of one on a more than one who is to a genuine policy even with the of the political and economic with the of a set of social for those who have been by the of the economic While an in us of our for it ultimately the and become politically those who the more of it is to grapple with the of the political and economic as they find theme has to do with the between and the of This is a of which Reinhold was given the of many during the to the of or that the in never their because they are Rather, be through the of by the form of has to with the of the of social and political in on the of an that in political a of is to that even the most political policy to of a conflict of and of interests in which is because are a does not the root of conflict which is to be in the corporate of as the and nature of is not something in human a and more social a more social be to all of and conflict in human This has been one of the of the Occupy Wall Street movement its in a of and has that it has not been to for the of specific policy many of the movement, this has been as a and the it has to the that the of the the Occupy movement has about economic and oligarchy on the movement's ability to itself the the of its and its refusal to with questions of the of its ultimate was a that the Tea Party either quickly or from the The Tea Party was on by powerful political who saw in the ideological of the Tea Party an to themselves or their own a the Tea Party very quickly both among in government is not given that they merely the of the to as well as financial and may be of the Occupy movement to such of out of a not to be such come with a very strong at the of the the movement have been a in the the political to legitimate for social an that can the of in the of a more more and more for the in on the of an of the American class of his become conscious of its and its a to the of and to develop a This of and and is may be for this that a such as the are to have to the The class may many its ultimate because its social has not become and because its is either in or in intellectual ultimately to be we from the Great Recession a more and or and what these two protest movements in that The small toward economic experienced in may us that reform is or that we to with the of the financial services the market may so to and the economic and we do not deal with the of what for the of a we find much time has in the of the another economic The is not but and we the and political to to the of the financial crisis there is to that we be to do so in the