- Inspired by a True Story That Changed the World from the Director of Vantage Point.Set in South Africa, 1985, this is a gripping and sophisticated political thriller full of intriguing and unexpected heroes. While the country is under siege, sanctions are biting, Mandela s imprisonment is an international cause celebr , and the ANC guerrilla terrorist attacks are escalating. Every day the country
Greece isn't the only country drowning in debt. The Debt Supercycleâ€"when the easily managed, decades-long growth of debt results in a massive sovereign debt and credit crisisâ€"is affecting developed countries around the world, including the United States. For these countries, there are only two options, and neither is goodâ€"restructure the debt or reduce it through austerity measures.
Endgame details the Debt Supercycle and the sovereign debt crisis, and shows that, while there are no good! choices, the worst choice would be to ignore the deleveraging resulting from the credit crisis. The book:
-
Reveals why the world economy is in for an extended period of sluggish growth, high unemployment, and volatile markets punctuated by persistent recessions
-
Reviews global markets, trends in population, government policies, and currencies
Around the world, countries are faced with difficult choices. Endgame provides a framework for making those choices. Q&A with Authors John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper
 |
| Author John Mauldin |
!
What is the debt supercycle? Ove! r a peri od of about sixty years, debt levels grew faster than incomes. This increase in debt became particularly pronounced in the 1980s, 90s and finally went parabolic after the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to 1% after the Nasdaq crash. The increase in debt was not just a US phenomenon. As interest rates fell structurally with the fall in inflation from 1982 onwards, people took on more debt because it became more manageable. However, by 2008 the burden of debt became too much to bear and the debt supercycle came to an end. People started deleveraging and banks started collapsing due to low levels of capital and large losses from loans people couldn't pay back.
How does the sovereign debt crisis play into this? The rapid contraction in debt levels due to default and deleveraging lead to a fall in economic activity as people started saving and cutting spending. Governments immediately stepped in and backed bank debt with expli! cit guarantees. Governments also started borrowing and spending to transfer money to the private sector, for example via unemployment insurance. So in a very real sense, private borrowing was replaced with public borrowing. Debt was added onto more debt. Rather than free itself of debt, the system now has more debt. The sovereign debt crisis is the recognition that most of this debt will not be paid back, and governments are making promises to pay debt and other obligations, for example general spending and pensions, that they simply lack the ability to fulfill.
What is the impact of the end of the debt supercycle?  |
| Author Jonathan Tepper |
Th! e end of the debt supercycle and the beginning of the sovereig! n debt c risis present problems and challenges for investors and governments. Governments will need to either 1) inflate, 2) default or 3) devalue, which is similar to inflate. That is the way governments have historically dealt with too much debt. Some countries will experience deflation and others inflation, depending on what choices governments make. Currently governments have only bad and worse choices. Let's hope they can choose wisely.
What do you predict for the next ten years? Central banks globally have shown a predisposition to print money to solve problems. We forsee rising inflation in many parts of the world, reductions in real income as people lose purchasing power due to higher food and fuel prices and more macroeconomic volatility. Some countries that do not control their own money supply or are running pegs may experience deflation as they are forced to delever and cannot increase the money supply to counteract t! he weight of deleveraging.
You cite the events in Greece as an example of a country continuing to run massive deficits. Is there an example of a country making a better choice? The UK is making some of the right steps to control spending, but even the UK could be more draconian. In nominal and real terms, government spending in aggregate will not be cut in the UK. Also, Iceland has made positive steps by defaulting on its debt effectively. Default is a good way to cure too much debt.
Endgame is acclaimed biographer Frank Brady’s decades-in-the-making tracing of the meteoric ascentâ€"and confounding
descentâ€"of enigmatic genius Bobby Fischer. Only Brady, who met Fischer when the prodigy was only 10 and shared with him some of his most dramatic triumphs, could have written this book, which has much to say about the nature of American celebrity and the distorting effects of fame. Drawing from Fischer f! amily archives, recently released FBI files, and Bobby’s own! emails, this account is unique in that it limns Fischer’s
entire lifeâ€"an odyssey that took the Brooklyn-raised chess champion from an impoverished childhood to the covers of
Time, Life and
Newsweek to recognition as “the most famous man in the world†to notorious recluse.
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At first all one noticed was how gifted Fischer was. Possessing a 181 I.Q. and remarkable powers of concentration, Bobby memorized
hundreds of chess books in several languages, and he was only 13 when he became the youngest chess master in U.S. history.  But his strange behavior started early. In 1972, at the historic Cold War showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he faced Soviet champion Boris Spassky, Fischer made headlines with hundreds of petty demands that nearly ended the competition.
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It was merely a prelude to what was to come.
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Arriving back in the United States to a hero’s welcome, Bobby was mobbed wherever he wentâ€"a figure as exoti! c and improbable as any American pop culture had yet produced. No player of a mere “board game†had ever ascended to such heights. Commercial sponsorship offers poured in, ultimately topping $10 millionâ€"but Bobby demurred. Instead, he began tithing his limited money to an apocalyptic religion and devouring anti-Semitic literature.Â
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After years of poverty and a stint living on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, Bobby remerged in 1992 to play Spassky in a multi-million dollar rematchâ€"but the experience only
deepened a paranoia that had formed years earlier when he came to believe that the Soviets wanted him dead for taking away “their†title. When the dust settled, Bobby was a wanted manâ€"transformed into an international fugitive because of his decision to play in Montenegro despite U.S. sanctions. Fearing for his life, traveling with bodyguards, and wearing a long leather coat to ward off knife attacks, Bobby lived the life of a celebrity fugi! tive â€" one drawn increasingly to the bizarre. Mafiosi, Naz! is, odd attempts to breed an heir who could perpetuate his chess-genius DNAâ€"all are woven into his late-life tapestry.
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And yet, as Brady shows, the most notable irony of Bobby Fischer’s strange descent â€" which had reached full plummet by 2005 when he turned down yet
another multi-million dollar paydayâ€"is that despite his incomprehensible behavior, there were many who remained fiercely loyal to him. Why that was so is at least partly the subject of this bookâ€"one that at last answers the question: “Who
was Bobby Fischer?â€
Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2011: There may be no one more qualified than Frank Brady to write the definitive biography of Bobby Fischer. Brady's
Profile of a Prodigy (originally published in 1969) chronicled the chess icon's early years, a selection of 90 games, and (in later editions) his 1972 World Championship match with Boris Spassky. With
Endgame, published two years after Fi! scher's death, Brady's on-and-off proximity to Fischer lends new depth to the latter's full and twisted life story. Though Fischer's pinnacle artistry on the chessboard may often be discussed in the same breath with his eventual paranoia and outspoken anti-Semitism, the particular turns and travels of his post-World Championship years (half his life) lend his story most of its vexing oddity: the niggling insistence on seemingly arbitrary conditions for his matches, the years on the lam after flagrantly disregarding U.S. economic sanctions, his incarceration in Japan, his eventual citizenship and quiet demise in Iceland. All told, Fischer's life was like none other, and told through the lens of Brady's personal familiarity and access to new source material, results in an utterly engaging read. --
Jason Kirk Guest Reviewer: Dick Cavett
Dick Cavett is the host of “The Dick Cavett Showâ€---which aired on ABC from 1968 to 1975 and on public television from 1977 to 1982---Dick Cavett is the author, most recently, of
Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets. The co-author of
Cavett (1974) and
Eye on Cavett (1983), he has also appeared on Broadway in
Otherwise Engaged and
Into the Woods, and as narrator in
The Rocky Horror Show, and has made guest appearances in movies and on TV shows including
Forrest Gump and
The Simpsons. His column appears in the Opinionator blog on
The New York Times website. Mr. Cavett lives in New York City and Montauk, N.Y.
Even if you don’t give a damn about chess, or Bobby Fischer, you’ll find yourself engrossed by Frank Brady‘s book about Fische! r, which reads like a novel.
The facts of Bobby’s life (I knew him from several memorable appearances on “The Dick Cavett Show†on both sides of the Big Tournament) are presented in page-turner fashion. Poor Bobby was blessed and cursed by his genius, and his story has the arc of a Greek tragedy---with a grim touch of mad King Lear at the end.
The brain power and concentrated days and nights Bobby spent studying the game left much of him undeveloped, unable to join conversations on other subjects. Later in his life, unhappy with his limited knowledge of things beyond the chess board, he compensated with massive study---applying that same hard-butt dedication to other fields: politics, classics, religion, philosophy and more. He found a hide-away nook in a Reykjavic bookstore---barred from his homeland, Iceland had welcomed him back---where he read in marathon sessions. (After he was recognized, he never went back to his cozy cul de sac.)
In ! Brady’s telling the high drama of the Spassky match quickens! the pul se; the contest that made America a chess-crazed land was seen by more people than the Superbowl. People skipped school and played sick in vast numbers, glued to watching Shelby Lyman explain what was happening. The fanaticism was worldwide. The match was seen as a Cold War event, with the time out of mind chess-ruling Russian bear vanquished.
Arguably the best known man on the planet at his triumphant peak, Bobby is later seen in this account riding buses in Los Angeles, able to pay his rent in a dump of an apartment only because his mother sent him her social-security checks. The details of all this are stranger than fiction, as is nearly everything in the life of this much-rewarded, much-tortured genius.
I liked him immensely, knowing only the tall, broad-shouldered, athletically strong and handsome six-foot-something articulate and yes, witty, youth that Bobby was before the evil times set in, with deranged anti-Semitic outbursts and other mental strange! ness preceding his too early end at age 64.
I can’t ever forget the moment on the show when in amiable conversation I asked him what, in chess, corresponded to the thrill in another sort of event; like, say, hitting a homer in baseball. He said it was the moment when you “break the other guy’s ego.†There was a shocked murmur from the audience and the quote went around the world.
Frank Brady’s Endgame is one of those books that makes you want your dinner guests to go the hell home so you can get back to it.
The long-awaited companion piece to Derrick Jensen's immensely popular and highly acclaimed works A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make Believe. Accepting the increasingly widespread belief that industrialized culture inevitably erodes the natural world, Endgame sets out to explore how this relationship impels us towards a revolutionary and as-yet undiscovered shift in strategy. Building on a series of simple! but increasingly provocative premises, Jensen leaves us hopin! g for wh at may be inevitable: a return to agrarian communal life via the disintegration of civilization itself.
Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969; his literary output of plays, novels, stories and poetry has earned him an uncontested place as one of the greatest writers of our time. Endgame, originally written in French and translated into English by Beckett himself, is considered by many critics to be his greatest single work. A pinnacle of Beckett’s characteristic raw minimalism, it is a pure and devastating distillation of the human essence in the face of approaching death.
Greece isn't the only country drowning in debt. The Debt Supercycleâ€"when the easily managed, decades-long growth of debt results in a massive sovereign debt and credit crisisâ€"is affecting developed countries around the world, including the United States. For these countries, there are only two options, and neither is goodâ€"restructure the debt or reduce it! through austerity measures.
Endgame details the Debt Supercycle and the sovereign debt crisis, and shows that, while there are no good choices, the worst choice would be to ignore the deleveraging resulting from the credit crisis. The book:
Reveals why the world economy is in for an extended period of sluggish growth, high unemployment, and volatile markets punctuated by persistent recessions
Reviews global markets, trends in population, government policies, and currencies
Around the world, countries are faced with difficult choices. Endgame provides a framework for making those choices. Q&A with Authors John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper
|
| Author John Mauldin | !
What is the debt supercycle? Over a period of about sixty years, debt levels grew faster than incomes. This increase in debt became particularly pronounced in the 1980s, 90s and finally went parabolic after the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to 1% after the Nasdaq crash. The increase in debt was not just a US phenomenon. As interest rates fell structurally with the fall in inflation from 1982 onwards, people took on more debt because it became more manageable. However, by 2008 the burden of debt became too much to bear and the debt supercycle came to an end. People started deleveraging and banks started collapsing due to low levels of capital and large losses from loans people couldn't pay back.
How does the sovereign debt crisis play into this? The rapid contraction in debt levels due to default and deleveraging lead to a fall in economic activity as people started saving and cutting s! pending. Governments immediately stepped in and backed bank debt with explicit guarantees. Governments also started borrowing and spending to transfer money to the private sector, for example via unemployment insurance. So in a very real sense, private borrowing was replaced with public borrowing. Debt was added onto more debt. Rather than free itself of debt, the system now has more debt. The sovereign debt crisis is the recognition that most of this debt will not be paid back, and governments are making promises to pay debt and other obligations, for example general spending and pensions, that they simply lack the ability to fulfill.
What is the impact of the end of the debt supercycle? |
| Author Jonathan Tepper |
The end of the debt supercycle and the beginning of the sovereign debt crisis present problems and challenges for investors and governments. Governments will need to either 1) inflate, 2) default or 3) devalue, which is similar to inflate. That is the way governments have historically dealt with too much debt. Some countries will experience deflation and others inflation, depending on what choices governments make. Currently governments have only bad and worse choices. Let's hope they can choose wisely. What do you predict for the next ten years? Central banks globally have shown a predisposition to print money to solve problems. We forsee rising inflation in many parts of the world, reductions in real income as people lose purchasing power due to higher food and fuel prices and more macroeconomic volatility. Some countries that do not control their own money supply or are running pegs may experience deflation as! they are forced to delever and cannot increase the money supply to counteract the weight of deleveraging. You cite the events in Greece as an example of a country continuing to run massive deficits. Is there an example of a country making a better choice? The UK is making some of the right steps to control spending, but even the UK could be more draconian. In nominal and real terms, government spending in aggregate will not be cut in the UK. Also, Iceland has made positive steps by defaulting on its debt effectively. Default is a good way to cure too much debt. Greece isn't the only country drowning in debt. The Debt Supercycleâ€"when the easily managed, decades-long growth of debt results in a massive sovereign debt and credit crisisâ€"is affecting developed countries around the world, including the United States. For these countries, there are only two options, and neither is goodâ€"restructure the debt or reduce it ! through austerity measures. Endgame details the Debt Su! percycle and the sovereign debt crisis, and shows that, while there are no good choices, the worst choice would be to ignore the deleveraging resulting from the credit crisis. The book:Reveals why the world economy is in for an extended period of sluggish growth, high unemployment, and volatile markets punctuated by persistent recessions
Reviews global markets, trends in population, government policies, and currencies
Around the world, countries are faced with difficult choices. Endgame provides a framework for making those choices.Whereas Volume 1 of Endgame presents the problem of civilization, Volume 2 of this pivotal work illustrates our means of resistance. Incensed and hopeful, impassioned and lucid, Endgame leapfrogs the environmental movement's deadlock over our willingness to change our conduct, focusing instead on our ability to adapt to the impending ecological revolution.To end a history of World War II at VE Day is to leave! the tale half told. While the war may have seemed all but over by Hitler's final birthday (April 20), Stafford's chronicle of the three months that followed tells a different, and much richer, story.
ENDGAME, 1945 highlights the gripping personal stories of nine men and women, ranging from soldiers to POWs to war correspondents, who witnessed firsthand the Allied struggle to finish the terrible game at last. Through their ground-level movements, Stafford traces the elaborate web of events that led to the war's real resolution: the deaths of Hitler and Mussolini, the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau, and the Allies' race with the Red Army to establish a victors' foothold in Europe, to name a few. From Hitler's April decision never to surrender to the start of the Potsdam Conference, Stafford brings an unprecedented focus to the war's "final chapter."
Narrative history at its most compelling! , ENDGAME, 1945 is the riveting story of three turbulent month! s that t ruly shaped the modern world.
A new town, a new school, a new start. That's what fourteen-year-old Gray Wilton believes as he chants, "It's gonna be better, gonna be better here." But it doesn't take long for Gray to realize that nothing's going to change--there are bullies in every school, and he's always their punching bag. Their brutal words, physical abuse, and emotional torture escalate until Gray feels trapped in a world where he has no control, no support systems, and no way out--until the day he enters the halls of Greenford High School with his father's semiautomatic in hand.
Award-winning novelist Nancy Garden, author of the groundbreaking novel Annie on My Mind, once again goes out on a limb, this time to show readers the cruelty of bullying and the devastating effects it can have.
Set in South Africa, 1985, this is a gripping and sophisticated political thriller full of intriguing and unexpected heroes. While the country is under! siege, sanctions are
biting, Mandela's imprisonment is an international cause celebré, and the ANC guerrilla terrorist attacks are escalating. Every day the country is more ungovernable as it plunges towards the apocalypse of a race war.
In saner moments everyone knows the vile apartheid regime is doomed but will the transition to democracy be peaceful or bloody? Working for P.W. Botha as a somewhat Machiavellian Head of Intelligence, Doctor Neil Barnard opens furtive talks with Nelson Mandela who is still in prison. But lesser known are the secret talks that take place in the unlikely setting of a rural English manor house, arranged by a British businessman and sponsored by a mining company seeking to secure its own future in South Africa.
Both sides have everything to win or to lose, including their own lives. The stakes are immense, the secrecy imperative.
But while influential Afrikaners sit down face to face with their fiercest enemies from t! he ANC, led by future President Thabo Mbeki, Botha learns of t! he UK ta lks.
If the demise of apartheid is inevitable he intends to control the endgame by employing the tactics of divide and rule. Dr. Barnard must wring as many concessions out of
Mandela as he can whilst instructing the Afrikaners to do the same with the ANC in the UK then play one against the other.
Against all the odds, through volatile discussion, intrigue and breakthroughs, they achieve the unimaginable - a precious arena of frail trust between the two warring parties.
In the current climate of the expression war on terror, this inspiring film has never had more relevance.The fall of a corrupt political regime can begin with something as simple as a conversation; such is the lesson offered by Endgame, a talky but frequently compelling UK TV production that benefits from a strong cast led by William Hurt. The conversation in question is the end of apartheid in South Africa circa 1985, and the two sides are the African National Congress, as repr! esented by its director of information, Thabo Mbeki (the always-appealing Chiwetel Ejiofor), and the growing anti-apartheid movement among white Afrikaners, including Dr. Will Esterhuyse (William Hurt). Bringing them together is Michael Young (Jonny Lee Miller), the public affairs chief of a Brit firm with regional holdings that require political stability to flourish. Much of the film's drama centers on the verbal sparring between Ejiofor and Hurt, though a secondary set of conversations, between imprisoned civil rights leader Nelson Mandela (the marvelous Clarke Peters from The Wire and Damages) and government intelligence man Dr. Niel Barnard (Mark Strong, Sherlock Holmes), delivers more ominous overtones. Director Pete Travis (Vantage Point) attempts to goose the suspense to hyperbolic levels with rapid-fire edits and camera angles meant to suggest documentary-style coverage, but these only distract from the film's chief virtue: its performan! ces, and particularly those of Hurt (which earned a Satellite ! Award no mination) and Ejiofor (which garnered a Golden Globe nod). Those who prefer their TV dramas on a more intimate scale will appreciate the craftsmanship of the work here; the DVD includes interviews with Travis, Hurt, Miller, writer Paula Milne, and producer David Aukin. --Paul Gaita
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This anthology is a thorough introduction to classic literature for those who have not yet experienced these literary masterworks. For those who have known and loved these works in the past, this is an invitation to reunite with old friends in a fresh new format. From Shakespeare s finesse to Oscar Wilde s wit, this unique collection brings together works as diverse and influential as The Pilgrim s Progress and Othello. As an anthology that invites readers to immerse themselves in the masterpieces of the literary giants, it is must-have addition to any library.Take a trip to last century's Alaska through Muir's clean, easy-going, enthusiastic prose. He wrote the way he took pictures, with insight, at! tention, care and genuine feeling. It's a lovely look into a beautiful land and its inhabitants the way it used to be, told in a flowing narrative that is far less rushed than contemporary travel tales.In this sweeping epic of the northernmost American frontier, James A. Michener guides us across Alaska’s fierce terrain, from the long-forgotten past to the bustling technological present, as his characters struggle for survival. The exciting high points of Alaska’s story, from its brutal prehistory, through the nineteenth century and the American acquisition, to its modern status as America’s thriving forty-ninth state, are brought vividly to life in this remarkable novel: the gold rush; the tremendous growth and exploitation of the salmon industry; the discovery of oil and its social and economic consequences; the difficult construction of the Alcan Highway, which made possible the defense of the territory in World War II. A spellbinding portrait of a human communi! ty struggling to establish its place in the world,
Alaska trace s a bold and majestic history of the enduring spirit of a land and its people.
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