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December 30, 2008
The euro marks its 10th birthday on New Year's day at a perilous moment in global finance. But if popular culture is any guide to underlying economic reality, the currency of Europe's monetary union is in good shape. When a corrupt businessman pays his conspirators in Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond film, he uses euros because, as one of the counterparties notes, "the dollar isn't what it once was. The cost of war."
Europe's single currency was born out of tension. Its eventual launch on January 1 1999 was spurred by the foreign exchange turmoil that hit the continent in the early years of that decade, when speculative flows almost broke up the previous "fixed but adaptable" exchange rate mechanism. The choice, says Barry Eichengreen, European economic history expert at the University of California, Berkeley, was either a return to floating currencies or to press ahead with monetary union: "It became pretty clear what needed to be done."
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Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the insights of geopolitical experts and investors, the authors examine this nation’s adversity-driven culture to answer this question and offer prescriptions for a global economy on the rebound.
In Forces of Fortune, Vali Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world—a new business-minded middle class—that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia E. Sweig presents a remarkably accessible portrait of Cuba's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years, including its internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
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