Alma mater
Alma mater is an allegorical Latin phrase for a university, school, or college that one attended. In US usage it can mean the school from which one graduated; the phrase is variously translated as "nourishing mother", "nursing mother", or "fostering mother", suggesting that a school provides intellectual nourishment to its students. Fine arts will depict educational institutions using a robed woman as a visual metaphor. Before its current usage, alma mater was an honorific title for various Latin mother goddesses Ceres or Cybele, in Catholicism for the Virgin Mary, it entered academic usage when the University of Bologna adopted the motto Alma Mater Studiorum, which describes its heritage as the oldest operating university in the Western world. It is related to alumnus, a term used for a university graduate that means a "nursling" or "one, nourished". Although alma was a common epithet for Ceres, Cybele and other mother goddesses, it was not used in conjunction with mater in classical Latin. In the Oxford Latin Dictionary, the phrase is attributed to Lucretius' De rerum natura, where it is used as an epithet to describe an earth goddess: After the fall of Rome, the term came into Christian liturgical usage in association with the Virgin Mary.
"Alma Redemptoris Mater" is a well-known 11th century antiphon devoted to Mary. The earliest documented use of the term to refer to a university in an English-speaking country is in 1600, when the University of Cambridge printer, John Legate, began using an emblem for the university's press; the device's first-known appearance is on the title-page of William Perkins' A Golden Chain, where the Latin phrase Alma Mater Cantabrigia is inscribed on a pedestal bearing a nude, lactating woman wearing a mural crown. In English etymological reference works, the first university-related usage is cited in 1710, when an academic mother figure is mentioned in a remembrance of Henry More by Richard Ward. Many historic European universities have adopted Alma Mater as part of the Latin translation of their official name; the University of Bologna Latin name, Alma Mater Studiorum, refers to its status as the oldest continuously operating university in the world. Other European universities, such as the Alma Mater Lipsiensis in Leipzig, Germany, or Alma Mater Jagiellonica, have used the expression in conjunction with geographical or foundational characteristics.
At least one, the Alma Mater Europaea in Salzburg, Austria, an international university founded by the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2010, uses the term as its official name. In the United States, the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, has been called the "Alma Mater of the Nation" because of its ties to the country's founding. At Queen's University in Kingston and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, the main student government is known as the Alma Mater Society; the ancient Roman world had many statues of the Alma Mater, some still extant. Modern sculptures are found in prominent locations on several American university campuses. For example, in the United States: there is a well-known bronze statue of Alma Mater by Daniel Chester French situated on the steps of Columbia University's Low Library. An altarpiece mural in Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library, painted in 1932 by Eugene Savage, depicts the Alma Mater as a bearer of light and truth, standing in the midst of the personified arts and sciences.
Outside the United States, there is an Alma Mater sculpture on the steps of the monumental entrance to the Universidad de La Habana, in Havana, Cuba. The statue was cast in 1919 by Mario Korbel, with Feliciana Villalón Wilson as the inspiration for Alma Mater, it was installed in its current location in 1927, at the direction of architect Raul Otero. Media related to Alma mater at Wikimedia Commons The dictionary definition of alma mater at Wiktionary Alma Mater Europaea website
1998–2002 Argentine great depression
The 1998–2002 Argentine Great Depression was an economic depression in Argentina, which began in the third quarter of 1998 and lasted until the second quarter of 2002. It immediately followed the 1974–1990 Great Depression after a brief period of rapid economic growth; the depression, which began after the Russian and Brazilian financial crises, caused widespread unemployment, the fall of the government, a default on the country's foreign debt, the rise of alternative currencies and the end of the peso's fixed exchange rate to the US dollar. The economy shrank by 28 percent from 1998 to 2002. In terms of income, over 50 percent of Argentines were poor and indigent. By the first half of 2003, however, GDP growth had returned, surprising economists and the business media, the economy grew by an average of 9% for five years. Argentina's GDP exceeded pre-crisis levels by 2005, Argentine debt restructuring that year were resumed payments on most of its defaulted bonds. Bondholders who participated in the restructuring have been paid punctually and have seen the value of their bonds rise.
Argentina repaid its International Monetary Fund loans in full in 2006, but had a long dispute with the 7% of bond-holders left. In April 2016 Argentina came out of the default when the new government decided to repay the country's debt, paying the full amount to the vulture/hedge funds. Argentina's many years of military dictatorship had caused significant economic problems prior to the 2001 crisis during the self-styled National Reorganization Process in power from 1976 to 1983. A right-wing executive, José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, was appointed Economy Minister at the outset of the dictatorship, a neoliberal economic platform centered around anti-labor, monetarist policies of financial liberalization was introduced. Budget deficits jumped to 15% of GDP as the country went into debt for the state takeover of over $15 billion in private debts as well as unfinished projects, higher defense spending, the Falklands War. By the end of the military government in 1983, the foreign debt had ballooned from $8 billion to $45 billion, interest charges alone exceeded trade surpluses, industrial production had fallen by 20%, real wages had lost 36% of their purchasing power, unemployment, calculated at 18%, was at its highest point since the 1929 Great Depression.
Democracy was restored in 1983 with the election of President Raúl Alfonsín. The new government intended to stabilize the economy and in 1985 introduced austerity measures and a new currency, the Argentine austral, the first of its kind without peso in its name. Fresh loans were required to service the $5 billion in annual interest charges and when commodity prices collapsed in 1986, the state became unable to service this debt. During the Alfonsin administration, unemployment did not increase, but real wages fell by half to the lowest level in fifty years. Prices for state-run utilities, telephone service, gas increased substantially. Confidence in the plan, collapsed in late 1987, inflation, which had averaged 10% per month from 1975 to 1988, spiraled out of control. Inflation reached 200 % for the month in July 1989. Amid riots, Alfonsín resigned five months before the end of his term. After a second bout of hyperinflation, Domingo Cavallo was appointed Minister of the Economy in January 1991.
On 1 April, he fixed the value of the austral at 10,000 per US dollar. Australs could be converted to dollars at banks; the Central Bank of Argentina had to keep its US dollar foreign-exchange reserves at the same level as the cash in circulation. The initial aim of such measures was to ensure the acceptance of domestic currency because after the 1989 and 1990 hyperinflation, Argentines had started to demand payment in US dollars; this regime was modified by a law that restored the Argentine peso as the national currency. The convertibility law reduced inflation preserved the value of the currency; that raised the quality of life for many citizens, who could again afford to travel abroad, buy imported goods or ask for credit in dollars at traditional interest rates. The fixed exchange rate reduced the cost of imports, which produced a flight of dollars from the country and a massive loss of industrial infrastructure and employment in industry. Argentina, still had external public debt that it needed to roll over.
Government spending remained too high, corruption was rampant. Argentina's public debt grew enormously during the 1990s without showing that it could service the debt; the IMF kept extending its payment schedules. Massive tax evasion and money laundering contributed to the movement of funds toward offshore banks. A congressional committee started investigations in 2001 over accusations that Central Bank Governor Pedro Pou, a prominent advocate of dollarization, members of the board of directors had overlooked money laundering within Argentina's financial system. Clearstream was accused of being instrumental in this process. Other Latin American countries, including Mexico and Brazil faced economic crises of their own, leading to mistrust of the regional economy; the influx of foreign currency provided by the privatization of state companies had ended. After 1999, Argentine exports were harmed by the dev
Economics
Economics is the social science that studies the production and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents. Microeconomics analyzes basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, firms and sellers. Macroeconomics analyzes the entire economy and issues affecting it, including unemployment of resources, economic growth, the public policies that address these issues. See glossary of economics. Other broad distinctions within economics include those between positive economics, describing "what is", normative economics, advocating "what ought to be". Economic analysis can be applied throughout society, in business, health care, government. Economic analysis is sometimes applied to such diverse subjects as crime, the family, politics, social institutions, war and the environment; the discipline was renamed in the late 19th century due to Alfred Marshall, from "political economy" to "economics" as a shorter term for "economic science".
At that time, it became more open to rigorous thinking and made increased use of mathematics, which helped support efforts to have it accepted as a science and as a separate discipline outside of political science and other social sciences. There are a variety of modern definitions of economics. Scottish philosopher Adam Smith defined what was called political economy as "an inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations", in particular as: a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people... to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue for the publick services. Jean-Baptiste Say, distinguishing the subject from its public-policy uses, defines it as the science of production and consumption of wealth. On the satirical side, Thomas Carlyle coined "the dismal science" as an epithet for classical economics, in this context linked to the pessimistic analysis of Malthus. John Stuart Mill defines the subject in a social context as: The science which traces the laws of such of the phenomena of society as arise from the combined operations of mankind for the production of wealth, in so far as those phenomena are not modified by the pursuit of any other object.
Alfred Marshall provides a still cited definition in his textbook Principles of Economics that extends analysis beyond wealth and from the societal to the microeconomic level: Economics is a study of man in the ordinary business of life. It enquires how he uses it. Thus, it is on the one side, the study of wealth and on the other and more important side, a part of the study of man. Lionel Robbins developed implications of what has been termed "erhaps the most accepted current definition of the subject": Economics is a science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses. Robbins describes the definition as not classificatory in "pick out certain kinds of behaviour" but rather analytical in "focus attention on a particular aspect of behaviour, the form imposed by the influence of scarcity." He affirmed that previous economists have centred their studies on the analysis of wealth: how wealth is created and consumed. But he said that economics can be used to study other things, such as war, that are outside its usual focus.
This is because war has as the goal winning it, generates both cost and benefits. If the war is not winnable or if the expected costs outweigh the benefits, the deciding actors may never go to war but rather explore other alternatives. We cannot define economics as the science that studies wealth, crime and any other field economic analysis can be applied to; some subsequent comments criticized the definition as overly broad in failing to limit its subject matter to analysis of markets. From the 1960s, such comments abated as the economic theory of maximizing behaviour and rational-choice modelling expanded the domain of the subject to areas treated in other fields. There are other criticisms as well, such as in scarcity not accounting for the macroeconomics of high unemployment. Gary Becker, a contributor to the expansion of economics into new areas, describes the approach he favours as "combin assumptions of maximizing behaviour, stable preferences, market equilibrium, used relentlessly and unflinchingly."
One commentary characterizes the remark as making economics an approach rather than a subject matter but with great specificity as to the "choice process and the type of social interaction that analysis involves." The same source reviews a range of definitions included in principles of economics textbooks and concludes that the lack of agreement need not affect the subject-matter that the texts treat. A
Néstor Kirchner
Néstor Carlos Kirchner Jr. was an Argentine politician who served as President of Argentina from 2003 to 2007 and as Governor of Santa Cruz from 1991 to 2003. Ideologically a Peronist and social democrat, he served as President of the Justicialist Party from 2008 to 2010, with his political approach being characterised as Kirchnerism. Born in Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Kirchner studied law at the National University of La Plata, he met and married Cristina Fernández at this time, returned with her to Río Gallegos at graduation, opened a law firm. Commentators have criticized him for a lack of legal activism during the Dirty War, an issue he would involve himself in as president. Kirchner ran for mayor of Río Gallegos in 1987 and for governor of Santa Cruz in 1991, he was reelected governor in 1999 due to an amendment of the provincial constitution. Kirchner sided with Buenos Aires provincial governor Eduardo Duhalde against President Carlos Menem. Although Duhalde lost the 1999 presidential election, he was appointed president by the Congress when previous presidents Fernando de la Rúa and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá resigned during the December 2001 riots.
Duhalde suggested that Kirchner run for president in 2003 in a bid to prevent Menem's return to the presidency. Menem won a plurality in the first round of the presidential election but, fearing that he would lose in the required runoff election, he resigned. Kirchner took office on 25 May 2003. Roberto Lavagna, credited with the economic recovery during Duhalde's presidency, was retained as minister of economy and continued his economic policies. Argentina repaid the International Monetary Fund; the National Institute of Statistics and Census intervened to underestimate growing inflation. Several Supreme Court judges resigned while fearing impeachment, new justices were appointed; the amnesty for crimes committed during the Dirty War in enforcing the full-stop and due-obedience laws and the presidential pardons were repealed and declared unconstitutional. This led to new trials for the military. Argentina increased its integration with other Latin American countries, discontinuing its automatic alignment with the United States dating to the 1990s.
The 2005 midterm elections were a victory for Kirchner, signaled the end of Duhalde's supremacy in Buenos Aires Province. Instead of seeking reelection, Kirchner stepped aside in 2007 in support of his wife, Cristina Fernández, elected president, he participated in the unsuccessful Operation Emmanuel to release FARC hostages, was narrowly defeated in the 2009 midterm election for deputy of Buenos Aires Province. Kirchner was appointed Secretary General of UNASUR in 2010, he and his wife were involved in the 2013 political scandal known as the Route of the K-Money. Kirchner died of cardiac arrest on 27 October 2010, received a state funeral. Kirchner was born Néstor Carlos Kirchner Jr. on 25 February 1950, in Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, a federal territory at the time. His father, Néstor Carlos Kirchner Sr. met the Chilean María Juana Ostoić by telegraphy. They had three children: Néstor and María Cristina. Néstor was part of the third generation of Kirchners living in the city; as a result of pertussis, he developed strabismus at an early age.
When Kirchner was in high school he considered becoming a teacher, but poor diction hampered him. Kirchner moved to La Plata in 1969 to study law at the National University. During this period, the decline of the Argentine Revolution, the return of former president Juan Perón from exile, the election of Héctor Cámpora as president, his resignation and the election of Perón, the beginning of the Dirty War had led to severe political turmoil. Kirchner joined the University Federation for the National Revolution, a political student group whose relationship with the Montoneros guerrillas is a matter of debate. Kirchner was not a leader of the group, he was present at the Ezeiza massacre, in which right-wing Peronist snipers opened fire on a celebration of Juan Perón's return at the Ezeiza International Airport. He was present at the expulsion of Montoneros from Plaza de Mayo. Although Kirchner met many members of the Montoneros, he was not a member of the group. By the time the Montoneros were outlawed by Perón, he had left FURN.
In 1974 Kirchner met Cristina Fernández, three years his junior, they fell in love. They were married after a courtship limited to six months by the political turmoil in the country. At the civil ceremony, Kirchner's friends sang the Peronist song "Los Muchachos Peronistas", he graduated a year returned to Patagonia with Cristina, established a law firm with fellow attorney Domingo Ortiz de Zarate. Cristina joined the firm in 1979. By the time of Kirchner's graduation and move to the Patagonia, Juan Perón had died, his vice president and wife Isabel Martínez de Perón had become president. Isabel Perón had been unseated by a coup d'état; the Kirchners worked for banks and financial groups which filed foreclosures, since the Central Bank's 1050 ruling had raised mortgage loan interest rates. And acquired 21 real-estate lots for a low price when they were about to be auctioned, their law firm defended. Forced disappearances were common during the Dirty War, but unlike other lawyers of the time the Kirchners never signed a habeas corpus.
Julio César Strassera, prosecutor in the
Fernando de la Rúa
Fernando de la Rúa is an Argentine retired politician of the Radical Civic Union who served as President of Argentina from December 10, 1999, to December 21, 2001. De la Rúa was born in Córdoba, he was elected senator in 1973 and unsuccessfully ran for the office of Vice President as Ricardo Balbín's running mate the same year. In 1993, he was re-elected senator in 1983 and 1993, as deputy in 1991, he unsuccessfully opposed the pact of Olivos between President Carlos Menem and party leader Raúl Alfonsín, which enabled the 1994 amendment of the Argentine Constitution and the re-election of Menem in 1995. De la Rúa was the first chief of government of Buenos Aires to be elected by popular vote, a change introduced by the amendment of the Constitution, he expanded the Buenos Aires Underground, adding new stations to Line D, starting the expansion of Line B, establishing Line H. He established the city's first bicycle path. In 1999, De la Rúa was elected President after running on the Alliance ticket, a political coalition of the UCR and the Frepaso.
He was opposed by the Peronist unions and his Vice President Carlos Álvarez resigned after denouncing bribes in the Senate. The economic crisis that began during Menem's administration worsened and by the end of 2001 led to a banking panic; the government established the Corralito to limit bank withdrawals. De la Rúa called a state of emergency during the December 2001 riots, he resigned on December 20, the Congress appointed a new President. As of April 2016, he is facing legal proceedings. Fernando de la Rúa is the son of Antonio De la Rúa, he married a Buenos Aires socialite, Inés Pertiné, in 1970. De la Rúa became involved in politics at a young age, he was elected senator in the March 1973 general elections, defeating the Peronist Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo. He was the only politician from the Radical Civic Union who could defeat the Peronist candidate in his administrative division; the elected president Héctor José Cámpora and his vice president resigned a few months leading to the call to new elections.
Ricardo Balbín ran for president in the September general elections, with De la Rúa as his running mate for the post of vice president. The UCR was defeated by Juan Perón by a landslide. De la Rúa was removed from the Congress during the 1976 Argentine coup d'état, he worked as a lawyer for the firm Bunge y Born. The National Reorganization Process ended in 1983. De la Rúa intended to run for president but lost in the primary elections of the UCR to Raúl Alfonsín, elected in the general election. De la Rúa ran for the post of senator instead, he ran for re-election as senator in 1989 but, despite of his electoral victory, the electoral college voted for the Peronist Eduardo Vaca. De la Rúa was elected deputy in 1991 and returned to the senate in 1993. President Carlos Menem, elected in 1989, wanted to amend the constitution to allow him to run for re-election in 1995, opposed by the UCR. Alfonsín signed the Pact of Olivos with Menem. De la Rúa led the opposition to the pact within the UCR, but Alfonsín prevailed in the internal dispute.
This damaged the relationship between both leaders, but helped the party to retain a number of radicals who were against the pact. De la Rúa could not prevent the 1994 amendment of the Argentine Constitution; as a result, Menem was re-elected in 1995. The UCR finished third in the elections for the first time, being surpassed by the Frepaso, a new party composed by former Peronists; the constitutional amendment gave autonomy to the city of Buenos Aires, allowing it to sanction local laws and elect its own mayor, appointed by the president of the nation. De la Rúa was the first mayor elected in this manner. During his term of office he created or reformulated several institutions to fit the new status of the city, as required by the national constitution and the approved Constitution of Buenos Aires. De la Rúa worked on the expansion of the Buenos Aires Underground; the first stations of the extended Line D, Olleros and José Hernández, were opened in 1997, Juramento was opened in 1999, Congreso de Tucumán in 2000.
He started the works to extend the Line B. Carlos Menem started to transfer the control and financing of the underground system to the city, but the 2001 economic crisis halted the process; the former mayor Domínguez intended to expand the Pan-American Highway into Saavedra, but the project met widespread opposition. De la Rúa reformulated the project and built an avenue instead of a highway, accepted; the avenue was named Roberto Goyeneche. He restarted a project to build the Cámpora Highway linking Dellepiane Avenue with the Riachuelo, established the first non-recreational bikeway in Buenos Aires at Avenida del Libertador; the Pact of Olivos diminished the electoral strength of the UCR. Both parties united in a political coalition, the Alliance, which defeated the PJ in the 1997 midterm elections, it was the PJ's first national defeat since 1985. The parties held open primary elections for the 1999 presidential elections. De la Rúa stood for the UCR; the Frepaso candidate was Gr
Inter-American Development Bank
The Inter-American Development Bank is the largest source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean. Established in 1959, the IDB supports Latin American and Caribbean economic development, social development and regional integration by lending to governments and government agencies, including State corporations; the IDB has four official languages: English, French and Spanish. Its official names in the other three languages are as follows: In all three other languages the Bank uses the acronym "BID". At the First Pan-American Conference in 1890, the idea of a development institution for Latin America was first suggested during the earliest efforts to create an inter-American system; the IDB became a reality under an initiative proposed by President Juscelino Kubitshek of Brazil. The Bank was formally created on April 8, 1959, when the Organization of American States drafted the Articles of Agreement establishing the Inter-American Development Bank; the Bank is owned by 48 sovereign states, which are its members.
Only the 26 borrowing countries are able to receive loans. Borrowing: Argentina, The Bahamas, Belize, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Suriname and Tobago, Venezuela Non-borrowing: Austria, Canada, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Korea, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States; the IDB is the largest multilateral source of financing for the Latin America and the Caribbean region. The IDB makes loans to the governments of its borrowing member countries at standard commercial rates of interest, has preferred creditor status, meaning that borrowers will repay loans to the IDB before repaying other obligations to other lenders such as commercial banks; the IDB is governed by its Board of Governors, a 48-member body who meets once a year. In March 2010, reunited in Cancun, the Board of Governors of the Bank agreed on a $70 billion capital increase, along with full debt forgiveness for Haiti, its poorest member country, devastated by an earthquake that had destroyed its capital, Port-au-Prince, two months before.
The group called off its 2019 meeting in Chengdu, China after China refused to grant an official visa to economist Ricardo Hausmann, Venezuela's representative designated by opposition leader Juan Guaidó. Guaidó and the National Assembly he leads are recognized and supported by the majority of the countries in the Americas, including the Lima Group; as of March 2019, China continues to recognize controversial Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. The developing countries that borrow from the IDB are the majority shareholders, therefore control the majority of the decision-making bodies of the Bank; each member's voting power is determined by its shareholding: its subscription to the Bank's ordinary capital. The United States holds 30 percent of the Bank's shares, while the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean combined hold 50.02 percent but with another 20% from Europe the US can veto decisions. This arrangement is unique in that the developing member countries, as a group, are the majority shareholders.
Though this arrangement was first viewed as risky, it is believed by some that strict peer pressure prevents the borrowers from defaulting when under severe economic pressure. In March 2015, the Bank updated its Institutional Strategy for 2010-2020; the document says that to transform Latin American and the Caribbean'into a more inclusive and prosperous society, three main development challenges must be addressed: social exclusion and inequality, low productivity and innovation, limited economic integration." Moreover, the document says that "these three challenges are inter-related and certain overarching issues cut across them that public policies need to address: gender equality and diversity. The IDB's Education Division works in partnership with 26 borrowing countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to ensure that children and adolescents exercise their right to a quality education, achieve their potential, reverse the cycle of poverty. Given that education is a key to development and a prerequisite for a genuine equality of opportunity, given its strategic importance to the region, the IDB has an Education Initiative that focuses its research and projects in three main areas: Early Childhood Development, School to Work Transition and Teacher Quality.
The IDB supports readiness to learn interventions so that children can have access to quality programs within the region. Among the projects in this area are the Regional Project on Child Development Indicators, which provides high quality, policy-relevant, regionally comparative data on the situation of young children and their families; these data will allow countries to benchmark progress on childhood development both within their borders and in the region, thus facilitating policy dialogue between governments on how to best address the needs of young children and their families. Participating countries include Argentina, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Paraguay; the IDB participates in the Support for a Seamless Education System Program in Trinidad and Tobago, which aims to improve the quality of early childhood care and primary education, the Alliance for Children Initiative, an initiative that seeks to foster collaboration between governments, civil society and the private sector to support inn
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship is the Argentine government ministry which oversees the foreign relations of Argentina. The Ministry's Department of Worship has several directorates; the Registry Directorate maintains the National Register of Religions, which compiles the mandatory registrations of all churches and religious communities, other than those of the Catholic Church. The Directorate General for Catholic Worship, is the main liaison for the government of Argentina with the Catholic Church, by far the largest religious body in Argentina, it maintains relations with the archbishops, the bishop's conference and with the various monastic orders. The department awards individuals and organizations that, through their work, have encouraged rich ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. Foreign relations of Argentina List of Foreign Ministers of Argentina Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship
