Get the Summary of David M. Smick's The World Is Curved in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. "The World Is Curved" delves into the complexities of the global financial system, particularly highlighting the Great Credit Crisis of 2007-2008. David M. Smick, with his extensive background in macroeconomic advising, examines the crisis's origins, including the perplexing impact of the relatively small subprime market on the global economy. The book discusses the role of confidence and liquidity in financial stability and the challenges policymakers face in managing the turbulent sea of global capital...

David Smick keeps a low profile, but experts consider him one of the most insightful financial market strategists in the world. For more than two decades, he has conferred with central bankers (such as Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke) and advised top Wall Street executives and investors, from George Soros to Michael Steinhardt to Stan Druckenmiller. Political leaders (from Bill Bradley to Jack Kemp) have regularly sought his policy advice. The World Is Curved picks up where Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat left off, taking readers on an insider’s tour through the private offices of central bankers, finance ministers, even prime ministers. Smick reveals how today’s risky environment came to be—and why the mortgage mess is a symptom of potentially far more devastating trouble. He wrestles with the two questions on everyone’s mind: How bad could things really get in today’s volatile economy? And what can we do about it? Drawing on riveting anecdotes in language anyone can understand, Smick explains: Why the churning cauldron we call China (the next great bubble to burst) represents a powerful threat to everyone’s pocketbook How Japanese housewives have taken control of their nation’s savings, and why it matters to us How greed-driven bankers and investment bankers have put everyone’s pensions and 401(k)s at risk Why today’s “incredible shrinking central banks” may not be able to save us when the next crisis hits Why the big-money Russian, Chinese, Saudi, and Dubai sovereign wealth funds represent a tectonic shift in global financial power, away from the United States, Europe, and Japan Why the world desperately needs a “big think” financial doctrine to guide today’s dangerous ocean of money The World Is Curved is the rare book that speaks simultaneously to the Wall Street, Washington, and London elite, yet its apt storytelling shows Main Street readers how to survive in these turbulent times.

Dr. Jayshree Pandya, founder of Risk Group LLC (http://www.riskgroupllc.com), is ahead of the curve in addressing the changing global fundamentals of the emerging Global Age. Global Age, and its changing global fundamentals has brought complex, chaotic, and turbulent times for every nation—where failures at all levels have come to become self-evident, repetitive, destructive, and potentially hopeless in nature and uncertainty. Nations are caught off guard. From what is visible across nations today, the promise of progress and prosperity for all nations does not seem to have materialized in a Global Age. Instead of progress and prosperity, what is visible today is crisis and catastrophe that is overpowering and overwhelming the capability of most nations to meet their promise of progress and prosperity. Nations are in crisis. This introductory book Global Age: NGIOA @ Risk addresses the global shifts and the changing global fundamentals of Global Age, to lay out much needed foundation of an integrated NGIOA risk governance framework for the coming tomorrow. This book will make a convincing case for the far-reaching need and understanding of global risk concepts, global risk fundamentals, and risk centric integrated NGIOA governance. The integrated NGIOA risk governance approach proposed and discussed in this initiative is rational, practical, and feasible. It will help create a dynamic, vibrant, and sustainable NGIOA economy of a Global Age. This initiative is a first step towards that.

The new edition of the leading single-volume resource on designing, operating, and managing mission critical infrastructure Maintaining Mission Critical Systems in a 24/7 Environment provides in-depth coverage of operating, managing, and maintaining power quality and emergency power systems in mission critical facilities. This extensively revised third edition provides invaluable insight into the mission critical environment, helping professionals and students alike understand how to sustain continuous functionality, minimize the occurrence of costly unexpected downtime, and guard against power disturbances that can damage any organization's daily operations. Bridging engineering, operations, technology, and training, this comprehensive volume covers each component of specialized systems used in mission critical infrastructures worldwide. Throughout the text, readers are provided the up-to-date information necessary to design and analyze mission critical systems, reduce risk, comply with current policies and regulations, and maintain an appropriate level of reliability based on a facility's risk tolerance. Topics include safety, fire protection, energy security, and the myriad challenges and issues facing industry engineers today. Emphasizing business resiliency, data center efficiency, cyber security, and green power technology, this important volume: Features new and updated content throughout, including new chapters on energy security and on integrating cleaner and more efficient energy into mission critical applications Defines power quality terminology and explains the causes and effects of power disturbances Provides in-depth explanations of each component of mission critical systems, including standby generators, raised access floors, automatic transfer switches, uninterruptible power supplies, and data center cooling and fuel systems Contains in-depth discussion of the evolution and future of the mission critical facilities industry Includes PowerPoint presentations with voiceovers and a digital/video library of information relevant to the mission critical industry Maintaining Mission Critical Systems in a 24/7 Environment is a must-read reference and training guide for architects, property managers, building engineers, IT professionals, data center personnel, electrical & mechanical technicians, students, and others involved with all types of mission critical equipment.

Currently, economics and cognitive science are heavily rooted in Newtonian physics, successfully borrowing a great deal of modeling tools from it. This is a great achievement. You do not need quantum mechanics or theories of relativity to build a house or bridge. Nevertheless, no one would deny the importance of modern theoretical physics. I believe many intellectuals have realized the need to go beyond the limitations of the Newtonian tradition for means of social science research. The big question is how to do it and how to do it right. This book aims to integrate economics and cognitive science by applying theoretical physics from a modeling perspective. During the course of this book, necessary background knowledge preparations for understanding the content topics are also briefl y provided. Thus, this book is designed to be conceptually and instrumentally self-contained. Everyone interested should be able to read it.

The experts say that America's best days are behind us, that mediocre long-term economic growth is baked in the cake, and that politically, socially, and racially, the United States will continue to tear itself apart. But David Smick-hedge fund strategist and author of the 2008 bestseller The World Is Curved-argues that the experts are wrong. In recent decades, a Corporate Capitalism of top down mismanagement and backroom deal-making has smothered America's innovative spirit. Policy now favors the big, the corporate, and the status quo at the expense of the small, the inventive, and the entrepreneurial. The result is that working and middle class Americans have seen their incomes flat-lining and their American Dreams slipping away. In response, Smick calls for the great equalizer, a Main Street Capitalism of mass small-business startups and bottom-up innovation, all unfolding on a level playing field. Introducing a fourteen-point plan of bipartisan reforms for unleashing America's creativity and confidence, his forward-thinking book describes a new climate of dynamism where every man and woman is a potential entrepreneur-especially those at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. Ultimately, Smick argues, economies are more than statistical measurements of supply and demand, economic output, and rates of return. Economies are people-their hopes, fears, dreams, and expectations. The Great Equalizer is a call for a set of new paradigms that inspire and empower average American people to reimagine and reboot their economy. It is a manifesto asserting that, with a new kind of economic policy, America's best days lie ahead.

Now in a fully revised and updated edition, this balanced and clearly written text explores globalization and its impact from economic, political, social, environmental, and cultural perspectives. Providing a framework and platform for student learning, the book gives readers the tools to unravel the complexities of globalization in all its facets. Lui Hebron and John Stack note that as a hot-button term, globalization is used to describe any number of changes within, among, and between societies and states. Their goal isto reduce the noise engulfing debates and interpretations of one of the most dynamic, contested, applauded, and disparaged phenomena of the twenty-first century. Arguing that current assessments—both positive and negative—of globalization are overblown, the authors treat the dramatically changing landscapes of world politics as less a revolution than an evolution of already established structures and patterns of transnational relations. They trace how globalization has affected individuals, societies, states, and intergovernmental and supranational organizations. Making sense of a world seemingly smaller and incomprehensibly larger, simultaneously centralizing and fragmenting, Globalization: Debunking the Myths offers both an indispensableintroduction for undergraduates and a concise review for more advanced students.

Over 4,000 lawyers lost their positions at major American law firms in 2008 and 2009. In The Vanishing American Lawyer, Professor Thomas Morgan discusses the legal profession and the need for both law students and lawyers to adapt to the needs and expectations of clients in the future. The world needs people who understand institutions that create laws and how to access those institutions' works, but lawyers are no longer part of a profession that is uniquely qualified to advise on a broad range of distinctly legal questions. Clients will need advisors who are more specialized than many lawyers are today and who have more expertise in non-legal issues. Many of today's lawyers do not have a special ability to provide such services. While American lawyers have been hesitant to change the ways they can improve upon meeting client needs, lawyers in other countries, notably Great Britain and Australia, have been better at adapting. Law schools must also recognize the world their students will face and prepare them to operate successfully within it. Professor Morgan warns that lawyers must adapt to new client needs and expectations. The term "professional" should be applied to individuals who deserve praise for skilled and selfless efforts, but this term may lead to occupational suicide if it becomes a justification for not seeing and adapting to the world ahead.

This comprehensive and informed text offers a practical introduction to the workings of the global economy. Drawing on his hands-on experience in international finance and economic policy, Andrew Vonnegut clearly explains economic concepts and illustrates them with cogent case studies. He describes the global economy by combining principles of economics with investment finance, decision theory, economic history, behavioral psychology, and accounting. Within a rigorous framework that sheds light on the reasons behind international economic events and trends, he brings the people, institutions, incentives, and money flows of the global economy to life. Oriented toward professionals and students, working or intending to work in the global economy, this book fills an important void. It will be invaluable for practitioners in business, investment finance, public policy, consulting, global studies, and journalism. Providing the tools needed to understand international economics, Vonnegut enlightens readers on the people, behaviors, and institutions behind trade and investment flows in today’s globalized economies, and how they all contribute to the volatile and dynamic world we are experiencing.

Employing a light and lively writing style, the book starts with the history of central banking in England and then shifts focus to the United States, explains in detail how the Fed works, and covers the Fed's unprecedented activities to prevent the Great Recession from spiraling into the Greatest Depression. The final chapter presents a detailed scorecard for each of the Fed chairmen over the last 40 years.