Mercedes Marcó del Pont
Mercedes Marcó del Pont is an Argentine economist and lawmaker appointed President of the Central Bank of Argentina on February 3, 2010. Mercedes Marcó del Pont was raised in the northside of Buenos Aires; the Marcó del Pont family first arrived in what today is Argentina in 1785 from Catalunya, became prominent in commerce. She took an interest in politics in her teens, became affiliated with the centrist Integration and Development Movement, a party whose platform focused on support for import substitution industrialization and foreign direct investment, she enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires, earned a degree in Economics in 1982. She joined CLACSO, the Latin American Social Sciences Council, in 1984, was a teaching assistant at her alma mater's School of Economics, taught a specialized course in the discipline for members of the Sanitation Workers' Federation in 1985, she was accepted as a Master's Degree candidate at Yale University's Economic Growth Center, earned her postgraduate in International and Development Economics in 1987.
Returning to Argentina, she was a senior researcher for the Development Research Foundation, a think tank founded by Octavio Frigerio. She entered public service in 1989 as chief advisor on petrochemical industry policy for the Economy Ministry's Planning Secretariat, following her departure, was named Director of FIDE in 1991, she served over the next decade as a consultant on statistics and investment incentive policies for the city of Buenos Aires, for the provinces of Buenos Aires and Misiones. She authored a number of papers on the local effects of globalization, on the 1992 Brady Plan for foreign debt reduction, on the Convertibility Plan for exchange rate stabilization, on the labor market, among other topics. Marcó del Pont married Jorge Cafferata, a prominent local psychiatrist, had three children. Teaching at the National University of Lomas de Zamora between 1999 and 2002, she joined developmentalist economist Aldo Ferrer and other University of Buenos Aires academics in Plan Fénix, which advocated a more balanced globalization.
Marcó del Pont was chief policy advisor for Production Minister José de Mendiguren, authored a book, Crisis y Reforma Económica, in 2004. She was elected to the Lower House of Congress on the Front for Victory ticket in the 2005 mid-term elections, she seconded Education Minister Daniel Filmus on the federal district's FPV party list for elections to the Senate in 2007. A supporter of shaping monetary policy to advance economic and employment growth, in March 2008 she was named President of state-owned Banco Nación, the largest commercial bank in Argentina. Following controversy surrounding President Cristina Kirchner's decision to earmark foreign exchange reserves to retire high-interest government bonds, Central Bank President Martín Redrado's exit in January 2010, Marcó del Pont was named President of the Central Bank of Argentina on February 3. Argentine Central Bank Plan Fénix
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, sometimes referred to as Britain, is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world; the Irish Sea lies between Great Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world, it is the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017. The UK is constitutional monarchy; the current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 1952, making her the longest-serving current head of state.
The United Kingdom's capital and largest city is London, a global city and financial centre with an urban area population of 10.3 million. Other major urban areas in the UK include Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire conurbations, Greater Glasgow and the Liverpool Built-up Area; the United Kingdom consists of four constituent countries: England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Their capitals are London, Edinburgh and Belfast, respectively. Apart from England, the countries have their own devolved governments, each with varying powers, but such power is delegated by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which may enact laws unilaterally altering or abolishing devolution; the nearby Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not part of the UK, being Crown dependencies with the British Government responsible for defence and international representation. The medieval conquest and subsequent annexation of Wales by the Kingdom of England, followed by the union between England and Scotland in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, the union in 1801 of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There are fourteen British Overseas Territories, the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, encompassed a quarter of the world's land mass and was the largest empire in history. British influence can be observed in the language and political systems of many of its former colonies; the United Kingdom is a developed country and has the world's fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It has a high-income economy and has a high Human Development Index rating, ranking 14th in the world, it was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The UK remains a great power, with considerable economic, military and political influence internationally, it is sixth in military expenditure in the world. It has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946.
It has been a leading member state of the European Union and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. The United Kingdom is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Council of Europe, the G7, the G20, NATO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Trade Organization; the 1707 Acts of Union declared that the kingdoms of England and Scotland were "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain". The term "United Kingdom" has been used as a description for the former kingdom of Great Britain, although its official name from 1707 to 1800 was "Great Britain"; the Acts of Union 1800 united the kingdom of Great Britain and the kingdom of Ireland in 1801, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Following the partition of Ireland and the independence of the Irish Free State in 1922, which left Northern Ireland as the only part of the island of Ireland within the United Kingdom, the name was changed to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Although the United Kingdom is a sovereign country, Scotland and Northern Ireland are widely referred to as countries. The UK Prime Minister's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to describe the United Kingdom; some statistical summaries, such as those for the twelve NUTS 1 regions of the United Kingdom refer to Scotland and Northern Ireland as "regions". Northern Ireland is referred to as a "province". With regard to Northern Ireland, the descriptive name used "can be controversial, with the choice revealing one's political preferences"; the term "Great Britain" conventionally refers to the island of Great Britain, or politically to England and Wales in combination. However, it is sometimes used as a loose synonym for the United Kingdom as a whole; the term "Britain" is used both as a synonym for Great Britain, as a synonym for the United Kingdom. Usage is mixed, with the BBC preferring to use Britain as shorthand only for Great Britain and the UK Government, while accepting that both terms refer to the United K
Guido Sandleris
Guido Sandleris is an Argentine economist. He succeeded Luis Caputo as the president of the Central Bank of Argentina in September 2018. Sandleris was born to a middle-class Jewish family in Argentina, he holds a doctorate in economics from Columbia University. He taught Economics at Torcuato di Tella University. Before taking charge of the Central Bank of Argentina in September 2018, he served as Secretary of Economic Policy of the Ministry of Finance of the Argentine Nation. In charge of the Central Bank of Argentina, it implemented a new monetary policy scheme as of October 1, 2018, which included a plan to contract the monetary base based on high rates. ) to avoid the flight of pesos to the dollar, which would deepen the recession in which the country is located. In the first month of application of the established "exchange zone", the dollar had fallen 11.83% to 36.98 pesos. By the end of November of the same year, the value of the dollar again reached 40 pesos. In December 2018, it issued a regulation that makes control of money laundering more flexible, so the Central Bank announced that it will stop demanding money laundering reports of operations suspected of money laundering, the relaxation of tax evasion controls.
And money laundering. This measure was criticized by former Central Bank Director Pedro Biscay who said that "relaxing the system thus facilitates tax evasion and the use of foreign exchange operations to channel money of any crime. Inter-American Investment Corporation, Ex-Officio AlternateMember of the Board of Governors International Monetary Fund, Ex-Officio Alternate Member of the Board of Governors World Bank, Ex-Officio Alternate Member of the Board of Governors Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, World Bank Group, Ex-Officio Alternate Member of the Board of Governors
Balance of trade
The balance of trade, commercial balance, or net exports, is the difference between the monetary value of a nation's exports and imports over a certain period. Sometimes a distinction is made between a balance of trade for goods versus one for services; the balance of trade measures a flow of imports over a given period of time. The notion of the balance of trade does not mean that exports and imports are "in balance" with each other. If a country exports a greater value than it imports, it has a trade surplus or positive trade balance, conversely, if a country imports a greater value than it exports, it has a trade deficit or negative trade balance; as of 2016, about 60 out of 200 countries have a trade surplus. The notion that bilateral trade deficits are bad in and of themselves is overwhelmingly rejected by trade experts and economists; the balance of trade forms part of the current account, which includes other transactions such as income from the net international investment position as well as international aid.
If the current account is in surplus, the country's net international asset position increases correspondingly. A deficit decreases the net international asset position; the trade balance is identical to the difference between its domestic demand. Measuring the balance of trade can be problematic because of problems with recording and collecting data; as an illustration of this problem, when official data for all the world's countries are added up, exports exceed imports by 1%. This cannot be true, because all transactions involve an equal credit or debit in the account of each nation; the discrepancy is believed to be explained by transactions intended to launder money or evade taxes and other visibility problems. For developing countries, the transaction statistics are to be inaccurate. Factors that can affect the balance of trade include: The cost of production in the exporting economy vis-à-vis those in the importing economy. In export-led growth, the balance of trade will shift towards exports during an economic expansion.
However, with domestic demand-led growth the trade balance will shift towards imports at the same stage in the business cycle. The monetary balance of trade is different from the physical balance of trade. Developed countries import a substantial amount of raw materials from developing countries; these imported materials are transformed into finished products, might be exported after adding value. Financial trade balance statistics conceal material flow. Most developed countries have a large physical trade deficit, because they consume more raw materials than they produce. Many civil society organisations claim this imbalance is predatory and campaign for ecological debt repayment. Many countries in early modern Europe adopted a policy of mercantilism, which theorized that a trade surplus was beneficial to a country, among other elements such as colonialism and trade barriers with other countries and their colonies; the practices and abuses of mercantilism led the natural resources and cash crops of British North America to be exported in exchange for finished goods from Great Britain, a factor leading to the American Revolution.
An early statement appeared in Discourse of the Common Wealth of this Realm of England, 1549: "We must always take heed that we buy no more from strangers than we sell them, for so should we impoverish ourselves and enrich them." A systematic and coherent explanation of balance of trade was made public through Thomas Mun's 1630 "England's treasure by foreign trade, or, The balance of our foreign trade is the rule of our treasure"Since the mid-1980s, the United States has had a growing deficit in tradeable goods with Asian nations which now hold large sums of U. S debt that has in part funded the consumption; the U. S. has a trade surplus with nations such as Australia. The issue of trade deficits can be complex. Trade deficits generated in tradeable goods such as manufactured goods or software may impact domestic employment to different degrees than do trade deficits in raw materials. Economies which have savings surpluses, such as Japan and Germany run trade surpluses. China, a high-growth economy, has tended to run trade surpluses.
A higher savings rate corresponds to a trade surplus. Correspondingly, the U. S. with its lower savings rate has tended to run high trade deficits with Asian nations. Some have said. Russia pursues a policy based on protectionism, according to which international trade is not a "win-win" game but a zero-sum game: surplus countries get richer at the expense of deficit
Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve System is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of financial panics led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises. Over the years, events such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Great Recession during the 2000s have led to the expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System; the U. S. Congress established three key objectives for monetary policy in the Federal Reserve Act: maximizing employment, stabilizing prices, moderating long-term interest rates; the first two objectives are sometimes referred to as the Federal Reserve's dual mandate. Its duties have expanded over the years, also include supervising and regulating banks, maintaining the stability of the financial system, providing financial services to depository institutions, the U. S. government, foreign official institutions.
The Fed conducts research into the economy and provides numerous publications, such as the Beige Book and the FRED database. The Federal Reserve System is composed of several layers, it is governed by the presidentially appointed board of Federal Reserve Board. Twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, located in cities throughout the nation and oversee owned commercial banks. Nationally chartered commercial banks are required to hold stock in, can elect some of the board members of, the Federal Reserve Bank of their region; the Federal Open Market Committee sets monetary policy. It consists of all seven members of the board of governors and the twelve regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents, though only five bank presidents vote at a time. There are various advisory councils. Thus, the Federal Reserve System has both private components, it has a structure unique among central banks, is unusual in that the United States Department of the Treasury, an entity outside of the central bank, prints the currency used.
The federal government sets the salaries of the board's seven governors. The federal government receives all the system's annual profits, after a statutory dividend of 6% on member banks' capital investment is paid, an account surplus is maintained. In 2015, the Federal Reserve earned net income of $100.2 billion and transferred $97.7 billion to the U. S. Treasury. Although an instrument of the US Government, the Federal Reserve System considers itself "an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by the Congress, the terms of the members of the board of governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms." The primary motivation for creating the Federal Reserve System was to address banking panics. Other purposes are stated in the Federal Reserve Act, such as "to furnish an elastic currency, to afford means of rediscounting commercial paper, to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States, for other purposes".
Before the founding of the Federal Reserve System, the United States underwent several financial crises. A severe crisis in 1907 led Congress to enact the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. Today the Federal Reserve System has responsibilities in addition to ensuring the stability of the financial system. Current functions of the Federal Reserve System include: To address the problem of banking panics To serve as the central bank for the United States To strike a balance between private interests of banks and the centralized responsibility of government To supervise and regulate banking institutions To protect the credit rights of consumers To manage the nation's money supply through monetary policy to achieve the sometimes-conflicting goals of maximum employment stable prices, including prevention of either inflation or deflation moderate long-term interest rates To maintain the stability of the financial system and contain systemic risk in financial markets To provide financial services to depository institutions, the U.
S. government, foreign official institutions, including playing a major role in operating the nation's payments system To facilitate the exchange of payments among regions To respond to local liquidity needs To strengthen U. S. standing in the world economy Banking institutions in the United States are required to hold reserves—amounts of currency and deposits in other banks—equal to only a fraction of the amount of the bank's deposit liabilities owed to customers. This practice is called fractional-reserve banking; as a result, banks invest the majority of the funds received from depositors. On rare occasions, too many of the bank's customers will withdraw their savings and the bank will need help from another institution to continue operating. Bank runs can lead to a multitude of economic problems; the Federal Reserve System was designed as an attempt to prevent or minimize the occurrence of bank runs, act as a lender of last resort when a bank run does occur. Many economists, following Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, believe that the Federal Reserve inappropriately refused to lend money to small banks during the bank runs of 1929.
Because some banks refused to clear checks from certain other banks during times of economic uncertainty, a check-clearing system was created in the Federal Reserve System. It is described in
Amado Boudou
Amado Boudou is an Argentine businessman and politician who served as the Vice President of Argentina from 2011 to 2015. He was Minister of the Economy from 2009 to 2011. In August 2018, following a lengthy investigation, he was convicted of corruption, he was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison, banned for life from holding public office. Amado Boudou was born in Buenos Aires, in 1962, his father named Amado, was born to a French immigrant from Aveyron named Aimé, this became a nickname for both. He was raised in the ocean-front city of Mar del Plata and enrolled in the National University of Mar del Plata, where he received a degree in economics, in 1986. Boudou attended graduate courses in economics and was awarded a master's degree in economics by a private institution, the Argentine Macroeconomic Studies Center, well-known locally for its support of neo-liberal and free market policies. Boudou was brought in as a salesman by Venturino Ehisur S. A.. Following his role in securing a number of lucrative hospital contracts for the company, he was named general manager in 1992 of their government contracts office.
The company closed, when one of its top municipal clients terminated the contract in 1995. He co-founded Ecoplata S. A. another sanitation services firm, acted as its project manager. He married Daniela Andriuolo in 1993. Boudou entered public service in 1998, when he was named to the Comptroller's Office of the National Social Security Administration by Economy Minister Roque Fernández, in February 2001, he was named that office's general manager; the election of Justicialist Party candidate Juan Pablo de Jesús as Mayor of the sea-side La Costa District resulted in Boudou's appointment as Finance Secretary for the popular resort district, which the policy maker accepted. The Finance Secretary subscribed to the 2005 Federal Housing Plan promulgated by President Néstor Kirchner, a decision which made La Costa eligible for 486 low-income housing units; the contract, awarded to local builder Cantera FC in May 2005 for nearly US$10 million, was followed by Boudou's return to the ANSES, in January 2006.
The Cantera FC contract resulted in an administrative debacle, when the builder abandoned the works in June 2007, having by received over US$7 million in payments. Returned to the ANSES by its Director, Sergio Massa, Boudou was named its Financial Director, oversaw the voluntary conversion of several million private pension accounts to the ANSES' aegis when this choice was made available in December 2006, he was appointed its Director in October 2008, after Massa's promotion to the powerful post of Presidential Cabinet Chief. Boudou's appointment coincided with President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's controversial decision to transfer loss-plagued private pension funds' assets of nearly US$30 billion to the ANSES, citing the cost of subsidizing 77% of the funds' beneficiaries and the effects of the international crisis on the government's ability to obtain financing. Following the ruling Front for Victory's defeat in the June 2009 mid-term elections, Economy Minister Carlos Rafael Fernández tendered his resignation to the President, effective 7 July, was replaced by the ANSES Director.
Fallout from the international, 2008 financial crisis forced the left-wing Argentine government of President Cristina Kirchner to seek domestic financing for growing public spending, as well as for foreign debt service obligations. These policies and ongoing capital flight put further pressure on the Central Bank's ability to finance debt service obligations, the president ordered a US$6.7 billion account opened at the Central Bank for the latter purpose in December 2009, implying the use of the Central Bank's foreign exchange reserves, drawing direct opposition from the institution's President, Martín Redrado. Boudou presented a debt swap package on 3 May 2010, for the holders of over US$18 billion in bonds who did not participate in the 2005 Argentine debt restructuring prepared by former Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna; these holdouts include numerous vulture funds which had eschewed the 2005 offer, had instead resorted to the courts in a bid for higher returns on their defaulted bonds.
These disputes had led to a number of liens against central bank accounts in New York and, indirectly, to reduced Argentine access to international credit markets. In October 2010 Boudou compared Candelaria de la Sota and Martín Kanenguiser, journalists from Clarín and La Nación, with the people cleaning the gas chambers during the Holocaust. Kanenguiser requested clarification, his attack was condemned by the FOPEA, members of the legislature, the DAIA. The DAIA accused him of trivializing the holocaust, Congressman Eduardo Amadeo demanded his resignation; the Economy Minister announced his bid for the office of Mayor of Buenos Aires in December 2010 as a candidate in the Front for Victory primaries ahead of the 2011 race.
Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance was a period of Italian history that began in the 14th century and lasted until the 17th century. It peaked during the 15th and 16th centuries, spreading across Europe and marking the transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity; the French word renaissance means "Rebirth" and defines the period as one of cultural revival and renewed interest in classical antiquity after the centuries labeled the Dark Ages by Renaissance humanists. The Renaissance author Giorgio Vasari used the term "Rebirth" in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters and Architects but the concept became widespread only in the 19th century, after the works of scholars such as Jules Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt; the Renaissance began in Tuscany, was centred in the city of Florence. Florence, one of the several city-states of the peninsula, rose to economic prominence by providing credit for European monarchs and laying down the groundwork for capitalism and banking; the Renaissance spread to Venice, heart of a mediterranean empire and in control of the trade routes with the east since the participation in the crusades and the voyages of Marco Polo, where the remains of ancient Greek culture were brought together and provided humanist scholars with new texts.
The Renaissance had a significant effect on the Papal States and Rome rebuilt by Humanist and Renaissance popes, who were involved in Italian politics, in arbitrating disputes between competing colonial powers and in opposing the Reformation. The Italian Renaissance is best known for its achievements in painting, sculpture, music, philosophy and exploration. Italy became the recognized European leader in all these areas by the late 15th century, during the Peace of Lodi agreed between Italian states; the Italian Renaissance peaked in the mid-16th century as domestic disputes and foreign invasions plunged the region into the turmoil of the Italian Wars. However, the ideas and ideals of the Italian Renaissance endured and spread into the rest of Europe, setting off the Northern Renaissance. Italian explorers from the maritime republics served under the auspices of European monarchs, ushering the Age of discovery; the most famous among them are Christopher Columbus who sailed for Spain, Giovanni da Verrazzano for France, Amerigo Vespucci for Portugal, John Cabot for England.
Italian scientists such as Falloppio, Galileo, played a key role in the scientific revolution and foreigners such as Copernicus and Vesalius worked in Italian universities. Various events and dates of the 17th century, such as the conclusion of the European Wars of Religion in 1648, have been proposed for the end of the Renaissance. Accounts of Renaissance literature begin with the three great poets of the 14th century: Dante Alighieri and Boccaccio. Famous vernacular poets of the Renaissance include the renaissance epic authors Luigi Pulci, Matteo Maria Boiardo, Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso. 15th-century writers such as the poet Poliziano and the Platonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino made extensive translations from both Latin and Greek. In the early 16th century, Castiglione laid out his vision of the ideal gentleman and lady in The Book of the Courtier, while Machiavelli cast a jaundiced eye on "la verità effettuale della cosa"—the actual truth of things—in The Prince, composed, in humanistic style, chiefly of parallel ancient and modern examples of Virtù.
Historians of the period include Machiavelli himself, his friend and critic Francesco Guicciardini and Giovanni Botero. The Aldine Press, founded by the printer Aldo Manuzio, active in Venice, developed Italic type and portable printed books that could be carried in one's pocket, as well as being the first to publish editions of books in Ancient Greek. Venice became the birthplace of the Commedia dell'Arte. Italian Renaissance art exercised a dominant influence on subsequent European painting and sculpture for centuries afterwards, with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Giotto di Bondone, Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesca, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Perugino and Titian; the same is true for architecture, as practiced by Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, Andrea Palladio, Bramante. Their works include, to name only a few, the Florence Cathedral, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, as well as several private residences; the musical era of the Italian Renaissance was defined by the Roman School and by the Venetian School and the birth of Opera in Florence.
In philosophy, thinkers such as Galileo, Giordano Bruno and Pico della Mirandola, emphasized naturalism and humanism, thus rejecting dogma and scholasticism. By the Late Middle Ages, the former heartland of the Roman Empire, southern Italy were poorer than the North. Rome was a city of ancient ruins, the Papal States were loosely administered, vulnerable to external interference such as that of France, Spain; the Papacy was affronted when the Avignon Papacy was created in southern France as a consequence of pressure from King Philip the Fair of France. In the south, Sicily had for some time been under foreign domination, by the Arabs and the Normans. Sicily had prospered for 150 years during the Emirate of Sicily and for two centuries during the Norman Kingdom and the Hohenstaufen Kingdom, but had declined by the late
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