Meltzer's History of the Federal Reserve and the evolution of central banking.
The only limit to a commercial bank's ability to discount is the limit to good commercial paper.... Such paper springs from self-clearing transactions.... It is the duty of the banker to discount freely for his customer in a crisis or panic.... The only limit ... is the limit to...

African Americans and mortgage lending discrimination.
Background The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) of 1975 made it easier to address the issue of discrimination by requiring lending institutions to document mortgage lending patterns. The concern, at the time, was that banks were not providing adequate credit in certain inner-city neighborhoods. Data was now...

The World Bank on land policies: a west African look at the World Bank Policy Research Report.
After an intense preparation lasting more than two years, after four regional workshops (in Hungary, Cambodia, Uganda, and Mexico), and an electronic conference at the beginning of 2003, the World Bank recently published its Policy Research Report, Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction (Deininger 2003). The...

Raising funds: Salt Spring Island gives national currency a run for its money.
A NUMBER of communities around the world are taking control of their local economies by creating their own currencies. These currencies focus on local control, helping revitalize communities by circulating money within the community rather than allowing wealth to flow out. Since alternative currencies can only be spent locally,...

The euro facing other moneys.
My attitude toward the euro could make me fair game for President Truman's complaint about not finding a one-armed economist. On the one hand and on the other, I'll hasten over the familiar pros and cons. I'll spend more time on the political centralization that the euro seems to...

Preventing banking crises in the future: lessons from past mistakes.
Almost every country -- large or small, developed or developing, free market or planned, free enterprise or socialistic, democratic or authoritarian, western or eastern, northern or southern -- has experienced serious banking (depository institution) problems in recent years.(1) Few countries have escaped unscathed. The cost of resolving these problems...

Banks Make the Most of Convergence.
Banks Make the Most of Convergence By John Pearce Convergence practices among larger banks usher in higher security performance. In many organizations, the critical functions of information technology and physical security often operate independently of one another--unaware of each other's strengths and weaknesses,...

Globalization, the Palestinian Economy, and the "Peace Process".
ALTHOUGH GLOBALIZATION IS AN INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON, ITS EFFECTS ARE experienced differently in advanced capitalist countries (the center) and in "developing" countries (the periphery). Thus, while Western capitalist countries benefit from the liberalization of trade, access to expanded markets, and free movement of capital and goods (though not labor power),...

Our money: can money ever serve the needs of people and the environment - instead of the other way round? James Robertson suggests ways in which it could.
I HAVE a dream. The money system is ours, the people's. It is competently designed to enable us to exchange things which we need but cannot each provide for ourselves. It is efficiently and fairly managed for us by responsible professionals who respect people and the environment. ...

Can the Scandinavian model adapt to globalization?
GLOBALIZATION AND GLOBALISM have become popular buzz words during the past decade. Although the trends they describe have a lengthy history, the terms are a catch-all for the acceleration of the international economic, political, social, and cultural interdependence after the Cold War. In good times, globalization is frequently hailed...