The LayerLibraryManager makes your layer standard library management effortless. It comes from years of experience in Autodesk® AutoCAD® and it is one of the AutoCAD Productivity tools developed by www.cadmanagertools.com.
2. Makes the Layer standard library management effortless by organizing your layer standards in discipline specific directory structure.
3. Overwrite the existing layer properties with the correct layer properties from the standard layer library.
4. Search and remove the duplicate layer names from the layer library.
5. Supports Windows 32/64 bit with AutoCAD 2013 to AutoCAD 2019 and verticals.
I use this app all the time. Works very well for the multi client systems switch between. Only gripe is I wish it was updated to lastest version earlier. I'd be very happy to pay for this app.
Hi I have my own layers from cad standard, is it possible to import existing layers to the library.
Thank you for your review comments and the Hyphen(-) and Underscore(_) letters at the begining of the layer name is used to sub-divide the layer list catagory and as far as know there is no CAD standard that allows layer name with prefix of "-----" or "_____" but if you would like to have such name for some reason then try adding anyother allowed special charactor or one space in front of the "-" or "_" would work.
Thank you for your review comments and the Hyphen(-) and Underscore(_) letters at the begining of the layer name is used to sub-divide the layer list catagory and as far as know there is no CAD standard that allows layer name with prefix of "-----" or "_____" but if you would like to have such name for some reason then try adding anyother allowed special charactor or one space in front of the "-" or "_" would work.
Helps separate layers from our different disciplines. Had a program similar to this so creating the files wasn't hard. to start from scratch you can just highlight your standard layers in autocad and paste them into your editor.


Is Sustainable-Labeled Seafood Really Sustainable? Industry demand for the "sustainable seafood" label, issued by the Marine Stewardship Council, is increasing. But some environmentalists fear fisheries are being certified despite evidence showing that the fish population is in trouble — or when there's not enough information to know the impact on the oceans.
Can consumers feel confident they're helping the oceans when buying "certified sustainable" fish?
Capt. Art Gaeten holds a blue shark that was caught during a research trip in Nova Scotia. Scientists are studying the impact of swordfish fishing methods on the shark population.
Part one of a three-part series by Daniel Zwerdling and Margot Williams.
Rebecca Weel pushes a baby stroller with her 18-month-old up to the seafood case at Whole Foods, near ground zero in New York. As she peers at shiny fillets of salmon, halibut and Chilean sea bass labeled "certified sustainable," Weel believes that if she purchases this seafood, she will help protect the world's oceans from overfishing.
But some leading environmentalists have a different take: Consumers like Weel are being misled by a global program that amounts to "greenwashing" — a strategy that makes consumers think they are protecting the planet, when actually they are not.
At Whole Foods, the seafood counter displays blue labels from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), an international, nonprofit organization. The MSC is a prime example of an economic trend: Private groups, not the government, are telling consumers what is good or bad for the environment. The MSC says its label guarantees that the wild seafood was caught using methods that do not deplete the natural supply. It also guarantees that fishing companies do not cause serious harm to other life in the sea, from coral to dolphins.
The idea is spreading fast throughout the food industry. Megachains like Target, Costco and Kroger are selling seafood with the MSC label. McDonald's says you are munching on "certified sustainable" wild Alaskan pollock every time you eat a Filet-O-Fish sandwich. The fast-food company has used MSC-certified fish since 2007 in the U.S., and as of February, they are putting the MSC logo on their fish sandwich boxes.
Poll results from a recent survey of 3,000 Americans, conducted on behalf of NPR, by Truven Health Analytics. Questions were asked — in general — about sustainable seafood and labeling.
Consumers like Weel say the labels help them feel better about the products they buy. "I want to feel that I'm doing the right thing," says Weel, a pediatrician, as her 4 ½-year-old daughter bolts into the vegetable aisle in neon-colored boots. When Weel shops for seafood, she says, she wants to make choices "that will help preserve the wild fish populations in the oceans."
Executives at Whole Foods say they are helping consumers do exactly that, by pledging in recent years to sell as many MSC-certified products as possible. Seafood is the last major food that people catch in the wild, and "we can't just go out and find more fish to catch," says Carrie Brownstein, global seafood quality standards coordinator for Whole Foods.
Brownstein cites a 2012 United Nations report that warned that almost 30 percent of the world's wild fisheries are "overexploited," and more than 57 percent of wild fisheries are "at or very close" to the limit.
Other groups have devised ranking systems for seafood. The Monterey Bay Aquarium labels products like a traffic light — green, yellow or red — to urge shoppers to buy or avoid a particular fish. The Blue Ocean Institute has a similar system. The MSC reports it has labeled roughly 8 percent of the global seafood catch, worth more than $3 billion. That makes it the most widespread and best-known rating scheme around the world.
A recent survey of 3,000 Americans, conducted on behalf of NPR, suggests that a majority of consumers want to feel good about the seafood they buy. The poll by Truven Health Analytics found that almost 80 percent of the people who eat seafood regularly said it is "important" or "very important" that their seafood is sustainably caught.
If they buy MSC-labeled seafood, they may be paying a premium. Brownstein says Whole Foods charges more for some of its seafood labeled "certified sustainable," although she wouldn't give numbers. Some fishing industry executives told NPR that they are getting roughly 10 percent more for their MSC-labeled products than for seafood that's not certified sustainable.
"We would prefer they didn't use the word sustainable," says Gerry Leape, an oceans specialist at the Pew Environment Group, one of the major foundations working on oceans policies. Leape has supported the MSC for more than a decade as a member of its advisory Stakeholder Council.
But he and other critics say that the MSC system has been certifying some fisheries despite evidence that the target fish are in trouble, or that the fishing industry is harming the environment. And critics say the MSC system has certified other fisheries as sustainable even though there is not enough evidence to know how they are affecting the environment.
When a customer sees the MSC's sustainable label at the supermarket, "the consumer looks at the fish and says, 'Oh, it has the label on it, it must be sustainable,' " Leape says. "And in some fisheries that the MSC has certified, that's not necessarily the case."
Biologist Susanna Fuller, co-director of marine programs at Canada's Ecology Action Centre, agrees. "We know ... that blue stamp doesn't mean that you're sustainable," she says. When asked if consumers should choose MSC-labeled seafood, Fuller pauses. "It's a gamble," she says.
Still, even the MSC's sharpest critics say they support the broad ideas behind the organization and its stated goals.
"Originally I thought it was a good idea," says Jim Barnes, director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a network of dozens of environmental groups around the world. "The world needed something like this to help steer consumer decisions, and so I wasn't against it at all at the beginning. And I'm not totally against it now." But Barnes worries that the MSC is straying from its mission and needs a dramatic overhaul. "It can be a force for good. If it continues on the path that it's on, however, and doesn't solve a lot of these issues that have been raised," he says, "I don't think it will be."
The MSC was born because of a crisis.
Michael Sutton, one of its founders, says that he and his colleagues dreamed up the idea after the cod industry collapsed off the Nova Scotia coast in 1992. Cod fishing had been the foundation of the region's economy and culture, worth an estimated $700 million each year. But when the cod population plunged to a fraction of previous levels, the Canadian government banned cod fishing — putting thousands of people out of work.
Rupert Howes is CEO of the Marine Stewardship Council. "We want to see the global oceans transformed onto a sustainable basis," he tells NPR.
"It was so bad in some of these coastal communities, the government had to send in suicide-prevention teams," recalls Sutton, who was then vice president of the World Wildlife Fund. "We were not only trashing our marine environment, but we were ruining the character of coastal communities that had existed on fisheries for centuries," Sutton says.
Sutton and other environmental advocates, and many scientists, warned that the cod collapse taught the world a sobering lesson: Government agencies that were supposed to monitor and regulate fishing were often doing a lousy job. Cod weren't the only fish in trouble. Studies showed that populations of major species like swordfish, marlin and tuna were plunging too. "So we needed to do something drastic," Sutton says.
He and colleagues decided to convince industry executives that protecting the oceans would also protect their bottom line. Sutton made a pilgrimage to the Unilever conglomerate, then one of the largest producers of frozen seafood — including fish sticks.
"My pitch to Unilever was, 'The future of their frozen fish business is at stake,' " Sutton remembers. "Overfishing is not only bad for the environment, but it's really bad for business, because it means that they're not going to have fish in the future the way they have them today."
Unilever and the World Wildlife Fund joined hands in 1997, and set up the MSC. Unilever eventually sold its seafood subsidiary and left the program, but the founding partner left its mark: From the day the MSC opened its doors in London, it has been a balancing act between industry and the environment.
Today, the MSC has more than 100 employees worldwide, including about 60 at its headquarters in a renovated building down the street from St. Paul's Cathedral.
"MSC has a global vision," says Rupert Howes, the organization's chief executive officer. "We want to see the global oceans transformed onto a sustainable basis."
Swordfish from Canada are marked with a label from the Marine Stewardship Council at a Whole Foods in Washington, D.C. The MSC says its label means the fish were caught by a sustainable fishery, but critics says it's not always so clear.
Here's the MSC's basic idea: Executives of a growing number of food companies want to be "green." Some genuinely want to protect the environment; others may be mainly seeking a marketing edge. But when it comes to seafood, those executives don't have the time or knowledge to figure out which fishing companies are plundering the ocean and which ones are doing a good job. So the MSC does the work for them.
The MSC does not certify fisheries itself. Instead, a fishery that wants the label hires one of roughly a dozen commercial auditing companies to decide whether its practices comply with the MSC's definition of "sustainable." The MSC's standard for sustainability includes dozens of items, but they're designed to assess whether the population of a fishery's target species is healthy; if the fishing practices don't cause serious harm to other life in the sea — including by accidentally catching other animals, which is called bycatch; and if the fishery has good management. If the commercial auditors give the fishery a passing score, then the fishery gets the right to use the blue "Certified Sustainable Seafood" label. It can be a long and expensive process. Some certifications have taken years, and the fisheries have paid the auditing firms up to $150,000 or more.
Howes says that when a store sells MSC-certified seafood, the label announces to consumers, "We care where our fish comes from." He adds that as a growing number of food companies sell MSC-labeled seafood, executives of fisheries that don't have it are motivated to join the program. That catalyzes "real and lasting change in the way the oceans are fished," Howe says.
During the MSC's first decade, there wasn't much demand for sustainable seafood by the U.S. food industry, and the MSC "almost went bankrupt," Sutton says. And that put the spotlight on the MSC's financial model.
The way that executives structured it, MSC's budget comes partly from foundation grants. But some revenue comes from the licensing fees that MSC charges businesses for the right to sell seafood with the MSC label. So as long as many supermarket chains were not promoting it, the MSC wasn't getting much money.
Then, in 2006, everything changed. The MSC and its supporters had sent a series of delegations to Bentonville, Ark., world headquarters of Wal-Mart. The delegations helped convince Wal-Mart executives to promise that all the seafood they sell in the U.S. would be MSC-certified by 2012.
"We had to get Wal-Mart," Sutton says. "The significance of their commitment, of course, is that once Wal-Mart made a commitment to the Marine Stewardship Council, every other major retailer had to follow suit, because none of them wanted to be less progressive than Wal-Mart." Sure enough, other discount chains promised to go sustainable, too. "Overnight, the demand far outstripped the supply," says Sutton, "and so the suppliers had to catch up."
Since Wal-Mart made its pledge in 2006, the MSC system has certified seven times as many fisheries as it did during the same period before, according to NPR's analysis. Still, the MSC system has not been able to certify enough seafood for Wal-Mart to meet its 2012 deadline, according to Bob Fields, a senior buyer for Wal-Mart and Sam's Club.
The explosion in sales of MSC-labeled products at leading chain stores has transformed the organization's finances. The year that Wal-Mart pledged to promote MSC-labeled seafood, the MSC received most of its income from foundation grants — 75 percent, according to the MSC annual report. Meanwhile, it received only 7 percent of its income from label licensing fees.
Today, those licensing fees generate more than half of the MSC's revenue.
And since Wal-Mart executives embraced sustainable seafood, the MSC has also received millions of dollars in grant money from the Walton Family Foundation, which was created by Wal-Mart's founder and is governed by his descendants. The Walton Family Foundation has become one of the MSC's largest donors, according to financial reports. The director of the foundation's environment programs, Scott Burns, served on the MSC's board of directors before he went to Walton.
Critics say that the day Wal-Mart embraced sustainable seafood, it was a blessing for the MSC system — and a curse. The critics charge that the MSC system has compromised its standards to keep up with the booming demand from Wal-Mart and other chains that followed suit. Fuller, of the Ecology Action Centre, says she has watched the MSC system "struggling with meeting the demands of the system that they helped create ... They have ended up having to lower the bar."
When ocean specialist Daniel Pauly, a fisheries professor at the University of British Columbia, talks about the MSC today, he sounds dispirited. Pauly took part in early meetings in London that helped create the MSC and now says he has lost faith in the system. "The MSC is doing the business of the business community," Pauly says, not the environment.
Some environmentalists and scientists say if you want to understand why they're losing faith in the MSC, look at the battle over certifying Canadian swordfish. Next time you buy swordfish at a store like Whole Foods, it might come from a controversial fishery off the coast of Nova Scotia.
Fishermen have known for ages that when they go swordfishing in some parts of the Atlantic, they will accidentally catch sharks — lots of sharks, says Steve Campana, who runs the Canadian government's Shark Research Laboratory, near Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Steve Campana runs the Canadian Shark Research Laboratory. He works to tag sharks with satellite transmitters to find out how long they survive after being caught and released.
When NPR caught up with Campana one morning, he and his research crew were heading into the Atlantic on a 34-foot trawler, the Dig It. They were planning to attach sophisticated satellite transmitters to blue sharks.
"On average, from what we've seen over the years, the swordfishermen catch about five blue sharks for every one swordfish," Campana said, holding onto a metal strut as the Dig It bounced through the waves. Add it up, studies suggest, and Canada's long-line swordfish boats — so named because they typically let out 30 or 40 miles of fishing line, dangling more than 1,000 hooks — accidentally catch tens of thousands of sharks every year.
This touches on one of MSC's three fundamental rules, even though studies show swordfish are plentiful. The second rule says that a fishery is not sustainable if it does not maintain "the integrity of ecosystems" — which means, in part, that it's not sustainable if there is too much bycatch.
The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, which is funded and appointed by the Canadian government, has warned that the main kinds of sharks that swordfishermen accidentally catch are "threatened" or "endangered" or "of special concern."
Swordfishermen generally release the sharks. But there had been few studies on what happens to those sharks after fishermen let them off the hooks — until Campana and his colleagues came along. About six years ago, they started tagging sharks with satellite transmitters before fishermen set them free.
Shark charter operator Art Gaeten (right) and recreational shark fisherman Shawn Knowles struggle to hold a blue shark in position while shark biologist Anna Dorey attaches a satellite tag to its back. Researchers say about five blue sharks are caught for every one swordfish. Scientists are trying to determine what happens to the sharks after they are released.
During one outing, the crew showed how they do it: They snagged a 5-foot blue shark on a hook baited with mackerel, reeled it in, and then pinned the thrashing shark against the boat's broad, flat railing. They jabbed a satellite transmitter, which looks like a turkey baster with a barb on one end, into the shark's leathery skin.
And then they let the shark go, the transmitter protruding like an unsightly growth. The device is equipped with a computer chip that records data every 10 seconds, including where the shark goes, how deep it goes, and how long it stays there. After about 10 months, the tube pops off the shark and floats to the surface, beaming all the information via satellite to Campana. When the transmitter shows that a shark went to the deepest part of the sea and just stayed there, Campana knows when and where the shark died.
Campana and his colleagues published some of their first findings based on these studies in July 2009, in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series. Their studies showed that up to 35 percent of the sharks caught by swordfish boats die, either right on the hook or within days after the fishermen set them free. The findings suggested that Canadian swordfish boats accidentally kill almost two sharks for every swordfish they catch.
Campana says that when you put these findings in context, it is troubling. Other studies suggest that the populations of major kinds of sharks in the North Atlantic have plunged as much as 40 to 60 percent in just the past few decades. "Any time you see consistent declines like that, and the fact that all of these large sharks seem to have declined all over the world," Campana says, "it's just a worrisome pattern."
The president of Canada's swordfish industry, the Nova Scotia Swordsfishermen's Association, dismisses Campana's conclusions. Campana's report on shark deaths could not have come at a worse time for Canada's swordfish industry. Only months before the report was published, the association, which catches most of Canada's commercial swordfish, had applied to the MSC for certification. The industry sells much of its swordfish to Whole Foods and other stores in the U.S.
Those conclusions "were not close to what the industry felt was reality," Troy Atkinson, president of the association, says while sitting in his store, crammed with giant spools of plastic fishing line and boxes of heavy metal hooks. He runs the main business that supplies equipment to Canada's swordfishing fleet.
"We're sometimes portrayed as a bunch of cowboys out to harvest the last buffalo," he says. "We're portrayed as some of the worst in the world. And it's just not correct."
Atkinson cites reports by other researchers that conclude that the population of blue sharks off the coast of Canada is healthy – especially reports by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), which represents dozens of governments whose nations fish the Atlantic. So, Atkinson says, Canada's swordfishermen could catch and kill even more sharks without hurting the environment.
Other studies suggest the evidence is contradictory, and that scientists don't know for sure what is happening to sharks across the Atlantic. For example, the optimistic ICCAT researchers whom Atkinson cites acknowledge that their conclusions are "highly uncertain" because they're based on unproven assumptions and incomplete data. However, studies showing that blue sharks have sharply declined focus on a limited region.
So scientists and environmentalists were dumbfounded in early 2012 when the MSC system decided that Canada's swordfish industry can use the label "Certified Sustainable Seafood."
"That is absolutely the kind of fishery that should not be certified," says Leape of Pew Environment Group. "That fishery is outrageous."
Certifying Canadian swordfish "is the worst thing they can do, says Fuller, of the Ecology Action Centre. "That is not at all the way it should go."
The Ecology Action Centre and dozens of other environmental groups denounced the MSC. The groups said in a letter to the MSC system that roughly 10 percent of Canada's swordfish are caught with harpoons — a method environmentalists support because there is hardly any bycatch. But the long-line boats that supply most of the swordfish catch a "staggering" number of sharks, as the environmentalists put it. "Certifying [Canada's long-line swordfish boats] compromises the credibility of the MSC," the groups warned, "and the sustainable seafood movement as a whole."
Additional studies and information on sustainable fishing and labeling.
Howes, from the MSC, disagrees. He says the controversy over Canadian swordfish "illustrates a key feature of the MSC program, which is the fact that the program is premised on science and evidence. That fishery has met the MSC standard."
The analysts who evaluated the fishery for the MSC system agreed that the swordfish boats do kill large numbers of sharks. They acknowledged that the optimistic studies on sharks that the swordfish industry cites are uncertain, but they concluded that the weight of evidence suggests it is "highly likely" there are plenty of blue sharks left in the sea. The analysts also stressed that, by all accounts, other countries kill far more sharks than Canada's swordfishermen do. So, they said, Canada causes only a small part of the bycatch problem.
"We are not saying that shark bycatch doesn't matter," says Howes. "What we're saying implicit within the labeling of that fishery is, the shark bycatch of that unique individual certified fishery is safe. It's within ecological limits."
Barnes, of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, says the controversy over Canadian swordfish illustrates why the booming demand for sustainable seafood actually threatens to hurt the movement more than help it. "The bottom line is that there are not enough truly sustainable fisheries on the earth to sustain the demand," Barnes says. "The retailers and wholesalers all want access to this kind of label because they're trying to ... make money with their consumers. There's nothing wrong with that; that's how the world works."
But Barnes charges that the MSC is labeling some fisheries as sustainable — even when they are not — partly to fill the seafood counters at Wal-Mart and other large chains. "I'm not down on Wal-Mart at all, don't get me wrong," he says. "But to get on line with big chains as your goal leads you down a path that I don't think the originators of the MSC intended."
Howes could hardly disagree more. "If you really want to contribute to the transformation of our economic systems more generally, you've got to engage with the big guys. And therefore, I absolutely welcome Wal-Mart's commitment," he says. "That will drive change."
Howes continues: "Will that overload the MSC system? No."
He argues that there's no way the MSC could label problem fisheries sustainable just to satisfy demand, because, he says, the certifiers evaluate each fishery based only on scientific evidence. But he adds, "We want to see oceans fished sustainably forever. We're not going to achieve that by becoming a small niche organization that engages with a handful of perfect fisheries."
Researcher Barbara Van Woerkom contributed to this story.


Kraken is expanding our rapidly scaling product and UX team comprised of talented, experienced and passionate rockstars at the center of the design, technology and finance industries. We are creating the most advanced and sophisticated cryptocurrency trading and investment products in the world while relishing every moment along the way. Join the revolution alongside pioneers and thought leaders of the crypto movement!
Note: This role is based in San Francisco.
At Kraken we are customer-focused, user-centered and data-driven. We are searching for an experienced and meticulous Interaction Designer who embodies UCD and will design innovative and intuitive trading and investment products for all of our market segments and personas. You will be collaborating with our talented multidisciplinary Interaction (UX) / Visual (UI) Designers, UX Researcher, Product Managers, Content Strategist, Frontend Developers and stakeholders to help Identify UX problems and hypothesize solutions based on thorough research; create UX artifacts including flow diagrams of user journeys, task flows and information architecture, wireflows, layouts in low fidelity wireframes, prototypes, everything up to high fidelity. Big plus if you also excel in Visual Design; most of our product designers are generalists. conduct usability tests to validate your designs; iterate and refine based on insights and KPIs. In a globally distributed company, we value collaboration and communication; we have regular team collaboration and brainstorming sessions, Google Venture Design Sprints, and weekly 1:1s. Also cross-functional team members and executive stakeholders are just a Slack message away happy to give feedback and learn from research insights.
TL;DR: We need a collaborative, highly-motivated, process-oriented self-starter with an eye for seamless and effortless interaction design and best practices. Competitive salaries, amazing perks, remote work and travel opportunities, beautiful HQ office, stock incentives, flexible hours, and open PTO policy make Kraken a great place to work. If you value having a seat at the table and want to make a big impact on the design and direction of product development at one of the top crypto exchanges in the world, this role is for you.


Q and A: What could the 'Brexit' referendum mean for Canada?
On Thursday, residents of the United Kingdom are voting in a referendum on whether Britain should leave or remain in the European Union.
Jack Mintz, president’s fellow at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, spoke to Postmedia about what the potential implications of the so-called Brexit referendum might be for Canada.
The prime minister called this referendum, although he supports staying in the European Union, so this is a bit of a make-or-break event for him alone, because if he loses the referendum, or even if it comes close, there will be a lot of pressure on him to resign.
The leave side has done, I think, much better than what people expected, and I think there’s a couple of reasons for that: I think one is some of the benefits of the European Union people haven’t felt in a strong way. . . And then no question the immigration issue has had a huge impact on a portion of the population.
Then those people that want to stay part of the European Union say, ‘look, we’ve had pretty significant economic benefits being part of the European Union and we should stay in it for that reason.’ So that’s what it’s really come down to in terms of the debate.
What could some of the implications be for Canada if Britain does vote to leave the EU?
On the economic side, a number of companies have set up shop in Britain, particularly in banking and in the financial sector, with access to the rest of Europe. So this, depending on what happens, may or may not be a big issue to them.
As far as Canadian businesses, the Westons own Selfridges of London, and there are Canadian banks operating there. First, there will probably be a worry the pound may fall. And anytime there’s risk and anxiety, it makes it harder for investment and things like that, so that will hurt the European economies and some of the companies. But in the longer run, after things kind of cool down and people get their minds back, we’ll see how everything will prevail. But the biggest loser, if anyone’s going to be a loser in all this on the economic side, will be the United Kingdom, not Canada or the United States — in fact, if anything, it will make us more competitive than Europe.
We have the European Free Trade Agreement — that might give us new access that we haven’t had before, so that actually could be a good thing, not a bad thing.
How could this change the future of U.K. and EU politics?
If it’s a close vote in Britain, there may be a concern about what is it we’re doing wrong that we can actually get one of our most important members wanting to leave — and if there’s other parts of Europe, like France, that could end up in a very similar type debate.
I think it says something about the European Union, and they may need to think more about how to get their act together as a union.
How significant is this referendum from a historic standpoint?
I think it depends on the outcome on Thursday. If it’s a wide margin for staying . . . then that might put an end to debate about this issue for quite a long time.


CHICAGO.- Artist Peter Doig is famous for somewhat strange landscape paintings that fetch millions of dollars, but he has disowned one particular desert scene.
Is he telling the truth, or trying to hide from an embarrassing past? A US federal judge in Chicago will decide.
The unusual case is stirring up the art world, and experts say it could set a dangerous standard that would leave artists at risk for costly settlements. "The specifics of this case are pretty unusual," said Matthew Biro, a professor of modern and contemporary art at the University of Michigan.
"It could definitely set a precedent," he said, "If Doig loses this case, what would stop other collectors who feel they have found a multi-million-dollar painting to find backing to sue artists to agree to it?"
Amy Whitaker, a professor of art business at New York University, expressed concern about the burden of proof. "There's somehow an implication in the lawsuit itself that the artist is responsible for guaranteeing the value" of an artwork, Whitaker said. "That is in no way shape or form the responsibility of the artist."
Fletcher says he remembers being impressed by one of Doige's paintings of a desert landscape in golden hues -- an acrylic painting on linen. He bought it for $100 in the hopes of keeping Doige from going back to selling drugs.
Decades later, a friend saw the painting hanging in Fletcher's home and said it was in fact the work of Peter Doig, whose creations can command $10 million at auction.
"There can be no question that the disputed painting was painted by the hand of Peter M. Doig," Bartlow wrote in a report to the court. Bartlow, who is a co-plaintiff in the case, said his decision was based on "several idiosyncratic forms" attributable to Doig's paintings, such as the "color and texture of the paint."
Fletcher and Bartlow tried to auction the painting, but were thwarted when Doig denied having painted it. They asked Doig to provide proof by offering details of his whereabouts between 1976 and 1978 -- the time period when they say the sale occurred. No proof was forthcoming, they say.
Their attorneys suggested Doig's denials may be rooted in embarrassment over his imprisonment. They have claimed he has a history of lying about his past.
As proof, Fletcher's lawyers have pointed to a number of intriguing similarities between the Peter Doige that Fletcher knew and the artist Peter Doig. They said both Doige and Doig had been in Canada in the 1970s and the artist Doig has previously admitted to LSD use.
"Three of his famous paintings, 'Windowpane,' 'Blotter,' and 'Orange Sunshine,' bear titles that are street names for varieties of LSD," attorney William Zieske wrote in a court filing.
He said he has never met Fletcher and that he was never jailed in Canada. His lawyers say police records back up the latter claim.
Artistically, his representatives claimed that Doig did not begin painting on canvas until 1979, "well after this work was made." Doig's lawyers even tracked down a Peter Doige in Canada -- also a painter -- who died in 2012 and who had in fact be jailed there in the 1970s. They claim he is the Doige that Fletcher met.
The deceased man's student identification card from 1976, submitted to the court, includes a picture of him bearing a strong resemblance to the artist Doig.
Unable to find a resolution and deciding there was enough evidence from the plaintiffs, US District Court Judge Gary Feinerman accepted the case for trial, taking place in a Chicago courtroom.


An American pressure campaign on Ecuador over its protection of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange paid off Thursday morning as British authorities arrested the Australian national on behalf of the United States for alleged computer hacking.
The Department of Justice announced that Assange would be extradited to the U.S. and charged with crimes in connection to Chelsea Manning's theft in 2010 of classified information that Wikileaks published to the web.
Since early 2017, the U.S. has been prodding Ecuador to cut ties with Assange, who had been living in the nation's embassy in London for nearly five years.
It sweetened the pot in February, when a collection of global financial institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, that have their headquarters in Washington awarded Ecuador $10.2 billion in rescue loans.
Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, elected in February of 2017, said in a Thursday morning video that Assange, who became an Ecuadorian citizen last year, was being stripped of asylum privileges because of the hostility he showed his host nation.
'Today, I announce that the discourteous and aggressive behavior of Mr. Julian Assange, the hostile and threatening declarations of its allied organization, against Ecuador, and especially, the transgression of international treaties, have led the situation to a point where the asylum of Mr. Assange is unsustainable and no longer viable,' he said.
Moreno allowed U.K authorities to arrest Assange, terminating an agreement that his predecessor, Rafael Correa, struck with the anti-secrecy organization's founder.
Donald Trump praised Wikileaks as a candidate for its release of a tranche of embarrassing emails it released that would damage his general election opponent, Hillary Clinton.
'This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove,' he said at an October 2016 rally.
A news organization has since revealed that the president's son, Don Jr., communicated with Wikileaks the month prior. Wikileaks tried to get the Trump son to leak documents such as his father's taxes and influence foreign policy by asking that Assange be appointed Australian ambassador to the United States.
Most of the messages from Wikileaks were ignored, but the communication was enough to put the president's son in congressional investigators' cross-hairs.
Early on in President Trump's tenure, the administration signaled that Assange would not find refuge in the United States.
U.S. authorities accused Wikileaks of working with Russia to interfere in the election that put Trump in office.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a close ally of the president's, signaled that the Trump administration had its sights on Assange in an April 2017 speech.
'It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,' Pompeo, who was the nation's spy chief at the time and is now the top U.S. diplomat, said.
'Julian Assange and his kind are not the slightest bit interested in improving civil liberties or enhancing personal freedom,' Pompeo said, setting U.S. policy on Wikileaks.
Moreno had just been elected in Ecuador, providing a new opportunity for the United States to have Assange extradited for computer hacking charges that predate Trump's election.
Those charges were sealed by prosecutors until Thursday, when DOJ said it would move to extradite him.
American lawmakers have also pressured the Trump administration to take action against Assange, who is also accused of engaging in a conspiracy with Russia to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.
Senate Democrats urged Vice President Mike Pence to take up the subject with Moreno during a trip to Ecuador in June of 2018.
Pence spoke to Moreno about Assange during the visit and the leaders agreed to continue talking about the subject, U.S. officials said at the time of the visit.
A little over five months later U.K. authorities arrested Assange in London.
DOJ said in a Thursday morning statement that he was being extradited to the U.S. for his allegedly participation in a conspiracy with Manning to break into Defense Department computers and steal classified material that Wikileaks published on its website.
Former President Barack Obama commuted Manning's sentence on his way out of the White House in January 2017. It was one of the more controversial exercises of clemency by a U.S. president. And even members of Obama's party had wanted Assange to face more forceful consequences for part in hacking and leaking schemes.
Neither the White House nor a spokesperson for Pence returned requests from DailyMail.com on Thursday morning for comment on the Assange's arrest and the Trump administration's involvement.
President Trump would later claim that he knew 'nothing' about Assange or Wikileaks and the foreign national's prosecution would be handled by the Justice Department.
Trump in 2017 said that he did not 'support or unsupport' the organization's release of Clinton campaign emails and he is 'not involved' in the administration's pursuit of Assange.
United States Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican but a regular critic of the Trump administration, highlighted the complex, geopolitical nature of the arrest in a Thursday tweet.
He said that Assange was a 'wicked tool' of Russian intelligence and deserved to rot in prison in a statement.
'This arrest is good news for freedom-loving people. Julian Assange has long been a wicked tool of Vladimir Putin and the Russian intelligence services. He deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison,' the Nebraska lawmaker said.
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton celebrated the arrest, as well. He is one of Trump's most reliable backers in the legislative body.
Democratic lawmakers went a step further and noted Trump's Wikileaks cheerleading when it suited him.
A lawyer for Assange did not respond to a request for comment, but she accused Ecuador on Wednesday of spying for the Trump administration.
Wikileaks attorney Jennifer Robinson said that Ecuadorian government was secretly filming Assange, presumably for the U.S. government.
Robinson said Thursday, outside the courthouse where police took Assange for an initial hearing, that the arrest is a threat to press freedom everywhere.
'This sets a dangerous precedent for all media organizations and journalists in Europe and elsewhere around the world. This precedent means that any journalist can be extradited for prosecution in the Unites States for having published truthful information about the United States,' she said.


Given that Tasmania's Hydro storages are at record lows, can the Government give some idea to Tasmanian anglers and visiting anglers of the effect on freshwater fish stocks?
The Inland Fisheries Service is, as always, responding professionally to the dry conditions to manage our world‑renowned inland trout fishery for anglers and the environment, now and in the future. Popular inland recreational fisheries at Great Lake, Woods Lake, Lake Echo and Lake Burbury have all experienced low lake levels. Boat‑based angling has been hampered by these conditions.
The Great Lake, for example, fished well through most of the season 2015-16. However, by the middle of summer all of the major designated boat ramps at Swan Bay, Tods Corner, Cramps Bay, Brandum Bay and Haddens Bay were closed due to low lake levels. The Boundary Bay low level ramp has been the main boat access point since then. Other fisheries in Hydro Tasmania catchments in the Central Highlands, continue to fish well, with Bronte, Dee, Penstock and Little Pine lagoons the most popular. These fisheries are all expected to continue to be reliable for the coming 2016-17 season.
Other Hydro storages remain largely unaffected by the dry conditions and the Inland Fisheries Service is encouraging anglers to try new waters that they have not traditionally fished in the past. Fisheries at Lake St Clair and Lakes Rosebery and Macintosh are examples of relatively under‑utilised fisheries. Many of our rivers are also still fishing well, notably the Meander, Mersey, Leven and Tyenna rivers.
Tasmania experienced low levels in storages in the drought leading up to 2009 and whilst boat ramp access was restricted on several waters, the fisheries recovered and continued to produce good numbers of quality fish. Most of the trout fisheries currently experiencing low lake levels, other than Great Lake and Lake Gordon, are expected to approach normal levels by next season with average winter rainfall.
The Inland Fisheries Service is closely monitoring the environment and productivity of the trout fishery in Great Lake to inform its fishery management strategies for the 2016-17 season and beyond. At this stage, some impact to the trout fishery in Great Lake is expected as a consequence of the dewatering of weed beds that has occurred this year.
The Inland Fisheries Service is working closely with Hydro Tasmania to monitor changes to weed beds and the lake ecosystem including invertebrates, native fish and the recreational trout fishery.


America's Muslims aren't married to either political party. They are looking for a presidential candidate who is willing to deliver to a community whose faith is too often used by political strategists to fan the flames of fear.
In 2000, a national Muslim umbrella group endorsed Republican George W. Bush for president. In 2004, the endorsement went to Democrat John Kerry. Exit polls conducted in the crucial battleground states of Florida and Ohio showed 95 percent and 86 percent respectively of Muslim voters casting their ballot for Kerry.
Studies of American Muslim voters conducted by The Pew Research Center (in 2007) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (in 2006 and 2008) reveal an interest in issues common to many Americans and a strong shift in political allegiance.
Muslims are highly concerned about education, civil rights and liberties in America, health care policies, jobs and the economy, relations with the Muslim world and immigration. Muslims also believe that anti-Americanism in the Muslim world is a serious problem, and that anti-Muslim prejudice in our nation is a threat to American Muslims.
Interestingly, a large majority of the community is more conservative than the general American public, with 59 percent believing the government should do more to protect morality in society.
In the past, Muslims traditionally leaned Republican after finding a common set of ethical values, such as opposition to abortion. Today, Muslims are 49 percent Democrat, 36 percent independent and 8 percent Republican. This shift away from the GOP has been precipitous. As recently as 2006, a full 17 percent of Muslims self-identified as Republican.
So who will Muslims vote for this November? As we say, "Allahu Alim,” God knows best.
Sen. Obama is the only current presidential candidate known to have had a one-on-one meeting with an American Muslim leader during this election cycle. Many Muslims empathize with him as he is attacked for being "Muslim,” which is erroneous since he is Christian. However, many were concerned when he recently told American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference attendees, "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” Current U.S. policy does not recognize Israel's claim to the city, the eastern part of which is occupied territory according to international law.
Muslim groups recently welcomed Sen. McCain's decision to reject the endorsement of Rod Parsley, pastor of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, Ohio, who has referred to Islam as an "anti-Christ religion” and has expressed support for "seeing this false religion (Islam) destroyed.” Muslims also welcomed McCain's October 2007 comments, "I admire Islam. There's a lot of good principles in it.” They were less sure when moments later he added that despite this positive impression, he would prefer a Christian as president.
America's Muslims as an organized community are new to our national political dialogue, but they already know that a smile and a photograph are easy to get from any politician. What they are looking for is substantive delivery on promises made.
Hashmi is executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.


Does anyone have any information regarding dining reservations?
I spent countless hours trying to get my tickets for a September trip. I went on the site and it redirected me to what seems to be China's pay pal service or something of that sort, it has me fill out my card info on there. Every time it says that my card CVC number is incorrect. So I called and booked my hotel stay just fine. But when I would go to book the tickets on the phone, that also didn't work. Anyone run into this problem? Im using two different Visa Cards, does Mastercard work better? Any help would be so helpful!
I'm glad to see others are in the same boat with not being charged, I thought I was the only one! When I booked my hotel on the 28th it didn't ask if I wanted 2 double beds or a king, did anyone else have this issue too? When I called she said I would have to ask day of.
Has anyone run into this issue? We purchase our hotel reservations and park tickets the first day on March 28th. The charges have not shown up on our credit card. We called our credit card company and they said it's been too long and if SDL puts it through now they wouldn't accept it. We called the reservation number and the cast member I spoke with told me she can't charge us again and that they will honor the park tickets and reservation since we have a confirmation number, it seems so sketchy to me.
I have the same issue, but it didn't bother me until I saw your post.
But now that you mention it... Well, I'll try to call reservation center tomorrow morning (I live in France, so I won't be able to do it sooner) and see what kind of answer I'll have. I'll let you know !
After reading here your post, I check my bank and ....I have the same situation with my Toy Story Hotel reservation: no charge yet! I called SD and my reservation is fine. I check my statement and there is no charge yet. I contacted the bank and at the beginning they told me there was no charge but they ask me to wait while they contacted Visa.. and the Bank Manager ( is a USA Bank) told me: YES! VISA has an approved charge from Shanghai Disneyland and when she game me the amount... BINGO... It was same amount of my reservation!.. =) So, she told me to wait, that transaction could take several days but was approved for the merchant ( This case SH), specially since is in China and its monetary regulations, but sooner or later that charge will appear in my statement, so I believe this could be the same situation for those who have this case. =) Try to contact your bank manager and check with the provider ( Visa o Master Card).
to process the charges. I am sure the charges are coming it just might take awhile.
I also was never charged for tickets. The charges are no longer pending. I'm not particularly concerned though, I wouldn't put much effort in pursuing it if they have confirmed your reservations. There may be a chance you'll be charged upon check-in if they don't process the charge now.


Paul Krugman, What happened to Asia?
It seems safe to say that nobody anticipated anything like the current crisis in Asia. True, there were some Asia skeptics - including myself - who regarded the claims of an Asian economic miracle as overstated, and argued that Asia was bound to run into diminishing returns eventually. And some people - again including myself - raised warning flags a year or two before the Thai crisis, noting that the current account deficits of Southeast Asian countries were as high as or higher than those of Latin America in 1994, and arguing that Asian economies had no special immunity to financial crises. But even pessimists expected something along the lines of a conventional currency crisis followed by at most a modest downturn, and we expected the longer-term slowdown in growth to emerge only gradually. What we have actually seen is something both more complex and more drastic: collapses in domestic asset markets, widespread bank failures, bankruptcies on the part of many firms, and what looks likely to be a much more severe real downturn than even the most negative-minded anticipated.
Also surprising has been the vulnerability of some (but not all) of the Asian economies to crisis contagion. The commonality of experience among the "MIT" economies (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand) may perhaps be understandable in terms both of their direct linkages and the extent to which they are exporting competing products. But South Korea is both far away from Southeast Asia - with minor direct economic linkages - and structurally quite different, having long since graduated from the highly labor-intensive products that still dominate MIT exports. How, then, did Southeast Asia's crisis infect Korea - indeed, how did "bahtulism" apparently mutate into an even more virulent strain by the time it reached Northeast Asia?
As is all too often the case, we find ourselves playing theoretical catchup - trying, after the fact, to develop a framework for thinking about events that have already happened. Yet this is by no means a pointless exercise. For one thing, this crisis is still unfolding at the time of writing, and policy is being made on the fly; any clarity we can bring to the discussion is bound to be helpful. Moreover, while this crisis did not play exactly in the way posited by standard currency crisis models, nonetheless those models were helpful in providing at least a first-pass framework for both understanding and policy formation - and those who knew those models were better forecasters than those who did not. The point is that while any model we may make of the 1997 Asian crisis will surely miss some crucial features of the next crisis to come along, it will still be helpful.
Anyway, enough apologies. The purpose of this paper is to sketch out a framework for understanding the nature of the Asian crisis. (It is an informal version of a more technical companion piece, Krugman 1998). I will argue that in order to make sense of what happened to Asia, it is necessary to adopt an approach quite different from that of traditional currency crisis theory. Of course Asian economies did experience currency crises, and the usual channels of speculation were operative here as always. However, the currency crises were only part of a broader financial crisis, which had very little to do with currencies or even monetary issues per se. Nor did the crisis have much to do with traditional fiscal issues. Instead, to make sense of what went wrong we need to focus on two issues normally neglected in currency crisis analysis: the role of financial intermediaries (and of the moral hazard associated with such intermediaries when they are poorly regulated), and the prices of real assets such as capital and land.
The paper is in five parts. The first part lays out the basic hypothesis in an informal way. The second part briefly reviews the standard analysis of the problem of moral hazard in financial intermediaries, then shows how it can lead to over-investment at the aggregate level. The third part shifts focus to asset pricing, showing how moral hazard can lead to over-pricing of assets; in the fourth part we then show how, with some plausible assumptions about government behavior, a moral-hazard regime with overpriced assets can become vulnerable to financial crises. A final section asks how reasonable a picture this is of the Asian crisis.
Most international economists, myself included, initially viewed Asia's economic travails through the lens of conventional currency-crisis theory. This theory focuses mainly, sometimes exclusively, on the exchange rate - other asset prices are left in the background. What generates a crisis in this conventional theory? In the canonical "first-generation" crisis models (Krugman 1979; Flood and Garber 1984), a government with persistent money-financed budget deficits was assumed to use a limited stock of reserves to peg its exchange rate; this policy would, of course, ultimately be unsustainable - and the attempts of investors to anticipate the inevitable collapse would generate a speculative attack on the currency when reserves fell to some critical level. In "second-generation" models (Obstfeld 1994, 1995) policy is less mechanical: a government chooses whether or not to defend a pegged exchange rate by making a tradeoff between short-run macroeconomic flexibility and longer-term credibility. The logic of crisis then arises from the fact that defending a parity is more expensive (e.g., requires higher interest rates) if the market believes that defense will ultimately fail; as a result, a speculative attack on a currency can develop either as a result of a predicted future deterioration in fundamentals, or purely through self-fulfilling prophecy.
Despite the usefulness of these models in making sense of many historical crises, however, it has become increasingly clear that they miss important aspects of the unfolding crisis in Asia. Of course, every crisis is different - but the Asian crises seem to have differed from the standard story in several fundamental ways.
First, none of the fundamentals that drive "first-generation" crisis models seems to have been present in any of the afflicted Asian economies. On the eve of crisis all of the governments were more or less in fiscal balance; nor were they engaged in irresponsible credit creation or runaway monetary expansion. Their inflation rates, in particular, were quite low.
Second, although there had been some slowdown in growth in 1996, the Asian victims did not have substantial unemployment when the crisis began. There did not, in other words, seem to be the kind of incentive to abandon the fixed exchange rate to pursue a more expansionary monetary policy that is generally held to be the cause of the 1992 ERM crises in Europe. (And of course the aftermath of devaluation has involved dramatic economic contraction, not expansion).
Third, in all of the afflicted countries there was a boom-bust cycle in the asset markets that preceded the currency crisis: stock and land prices soared, then plunged (although after the crisis they plunged even more).
Finally, in all of the countries financial intermediaries seem to have been central players. In Thailand a crucial role was played by so-called "finance companies" - nonbank intermediaries that borrowed short-term money, often in dollars, then lent that money to speculative investors, largely but not only in real estate. In South Korea more conventional banks were involved, but they too borrowed extensively at short term and lent to finance what in retrospect were very speculative investments by highly leveraged corporations.
What all of this suggests is that the Asian crisis is best seen not as a problem brought on by fiscal deficits, as in "first-generation" models, nor as one brought on by macroeconomic temptation, as in "second-generation" models, but as one brought on by financial excess and then financial collapse. Indeed, to a first approximation currencies and exchange rates may have had little to do with it: the Asian story is really about a bubble in and subsequent collapse of asset values in general, with the currency crises more a symptom than a cause of this underlying real (in both senses of the word) malady.
So what would a true account of the Asian crisis look like? Let me propose the following story: The problem began with financial intermediaries - institutions whose liabilities were perceived as having an implicit government guarantee, but were essentially unregulated and therefore subject to severe moral hazard problems. The excessive risky lending of these institutions created inflation - not of goods but of asset prices. The overpricing of assets was sustained in part by a sort of circular process, in which the proliferation of risky lending drove up the prices of risky assets, making the financial condition of the intermediaries seem sounder than it was.
Is this the full story of the Asian crisis? Surely not, and in the last section of this paper I discuss some other possible aspects. But the moral hazard/asset bubble view seems a strong contender for a leading role, and it is certainly worth laying out how it might work.
It has long been known that financial intermediaries whose liabilities are guaranteed by the government pose a serious problem of moral hazard. The U.S. savings and loan debacle is the classic example: because depositors in thrifts were guaranteed by FSLIC, they had no incentive to police the lending of the institutions in which they placed their money; since the owners of thrifts did not need to put much of their own money at risk, they had every incentive to play a game of heads I win, tails the taxpayer loses.
The Asian situation is considerably more murky. In general, creditors of financial institutions did not receive explicit guarantees from the governments. However, press reports do suggest that most of those who provided Thai finance companies, South Korean banks, and so on with funds believed that they would be protected from risk - an impression reinforced by the strong political connections of the owners of most such institutions. In practice, moreover, these beliefs seem to have been for the most part validated by experience (at least at time of writing). For example, depositors in all Thai finance companies were protected; in some cases those who had merely lent them money were not, but these cases were exceptional, so that as a general rule the finance companies did in fact turn out to have guaranteed liabilities. Similarly, while South Korea may have the legal right to declare private bank debts a private issue and let default happen, in practice bank debt was at time of writing well along in the process of being nationalized.
As a first approximation, then, it does not seem too far off to think of Asian economies pre-crisis as having in existence a class of financial intermediaries that, like U.S. thrifts, were able to raise money at safe interest rates but lend that money at premium rates to finance speculative investments.
It is a familiar point that such intermediaries then have an incentive not merely to undertake excessively risky investments, but to pursue investments with low expected returns as long as they have "fat right tails" - that is, the owner of a guaranteed intermediary likes investments that could yield high returns if he gets lucky, even if there is also a strong possibility of heavy losses.
The logic of moral hazard for guaranteed intermediaries can be illustrated with a simple numerical example, suggested by Milgrom and Roberts (1992, 470-476). Table 1 shows the options facing the owner of a financial intermediary who has raised $100 million from guaranteed creditors. I assume for simplicity that he is not required to put up any capital of his own, and that he can walk away from the institution at no personal cost if it goes bankrupt.
There are assumed to be two alternative investments available. One yields a known present value of $107 million; the other will yield $120 million if conditions are favorable, but only $80 million if they are not. I also suppose that the "good state" and the "bad state" are equally likely, so that the expected returns on this risky investment are $100 million.
Clearly, even a risk-neutral investor should prefer the safe asset in this case. However, the owner of the financial intermediary knows that while he can capture the excess returns in the good state, he can walk away from the losses in the bad state. So if he chooses the safe investment he gains a sure 7; but if he chooses the risky investment he gains 20 in the good state, loses nothing in the bad state, for an expected gain of 10. Thus his incentive is to choose the risky investment, even though it has a lower expected return. And this distortion of investment decisions produces a deadweight social loss: the expected net return on the invested capital falls from $7 million to zero.
This story about how moral hazard distorts investment is, as already indicated, familiar. It is perhaps a less familiar proposition that over-guaranteed and under-regulated intermediaries can lead to excessive investment by the economy as a whole (although this point has been emphasized by McKinnon and Pill (1996)).
where u is a random variable, introducing some uncertainty into the investment decision. Let me also for simplicity assume that this is a small open economy, able to borrow at a fixed world interest rate - and that the real interest rate is zero. (It is possible to redefine units so as to make this true in any case).
Now let us introduce guaranteed financial intermediaries. As in the example in Table 1, I suppose that these intermediaries embody a very stark form of moral hazard: their liabilities are guaranteed, but their owners need not put up any capital, and can simply walk away if their institutions fail. Let me also make two further assumptions. First, I assume that there are many actual or potential intermediaries, so that they will compete away any economic profits. Second, I will simplify matters by assuming that intermediaries can directly own capital. In reality, even in Asia banks and bank-like institutions generally lend money rather than buying capital assets outright. However, lending to a very highly leveraged firm engaged in risky investment - especially a firm that is part of an industrial group that has effectively established a controlling interest in the lending institution (see Amsden 1989) - is de facto very much like buying the capital directly.
All capital ends up being purchased by guaranteed intermediaries. This is an extreme result, but it does capture the tendency of Asian businesses to become extremely leveraged by Western standards.
Investment is pushed up to the point where R = 1 in the most favorable possible circumstance - that is, given the maximum possible value of u. Again, this is an extreme result, but it does capture the obvious tendency of Asian firms toward over-optimistic investment.
Let me introduce a term for the kind of investment behavior predicted by a model with competition among intermediaries subject to extreme moral hazard. In economic models we normally think of investors as responding to expected values of the relevant variables. In the sort of model I am proposing, however, the owners of intermediaries will instead focus on what we might call Pangloss values: the values that variables would take on if it turns out that we live in what is (from their point of view) the best of all possible worlds.
So suppose, for example, that A = 2, B = 0.5, and u has an equal probability of equalling 0 or 1. The undistorted level of investment would set K = 2.5. However, if there are moral-hazard-prone financial intermediaries, they will drive out equity investment and push up the capital stock to 3. This excessive investment will lower expected welfare, because the increased return in the favorable state will not offset the increased losses in the unfavorable state.
It may also be worth noting that this is the sort of distortion whose consequences can easily be made worse by globalization. Suppose that this country did not have access to the world capital market - suppose, for example, that it had to rely on a fixed supply of domestic savings, unresponsive to the interest rate. Then the excessive investment demand generated by the intermediaries would not in fact lead to excessive investment - all that it would do is drive up the interest rate. Offering such an economy access to the world capital market might then, in classic "second-best" fashion, actually make the economy worse off by allowing moral hazard in the financial sector to translate into real excess capital accumulation.
In the example above, I implicity assumed that the supply of capital goods was perfectly elastic, so that all of the increase in investment demand due to financial excess translated into an increase in the actual volume of investment. In fact, of course, Asian economies experienced a noticeable boom-bust cycle not only in investment but also or even especially in asset prices. Presumably this reflected the fact that assets were in imperfectly elastic supply. So let us now go to the other extreme and consider a model in which the supply of assets is completely inelastic, and in which intermediaries therefore have their impact not on quantities but on prices.
The easiest way to do this is to imagine that the only available asset is land, which cannot be either created or destroyed. Again, let us initially consider a two-period model. In the first period investors bid for land, setting its price. In the second period they receive rents, which are uncertain at the time of bidding.
A numerical example is sufficient to make the point here. Suppose that the rent on a unit of land could be either 25, with a probability of 2/3, or 100, with a probability of 1/3. Risk-neutral investors would then be willing to spend (2/3)H25 + (1/3) H100 = 50 for the rights to that land.
But now suppose that there are financial intermediaries, once again able to borrow at the world interest rate (again normalized to zero) because they are perceived as being guaranteed. And also as before, we assume that owners need not put any of their own money at risk, but that competition among the intermediaries eliminates any expected economic profit.
The result is obvious: intermediaries will be willing to bid on the land, based not on the expected value of future rent but on the Pangloss value - in this case 100. So all land will end up owned by intermediaries, and the price of land will be double what it would be in an undistorted economy.
Does the one-shot nature of this game affect the results? At first it might seem that it does not. Suppose that we turn from a two-period to a three-period economy, again with random land rents of 25 and 100 with probabilities 2/3 and 1/3 in both the second and third periods. And let us continue to assume a zero interest rate (which is now more than a mere normalization, but still makes no essential difference to the results). In an undistorted economy we can solve backwards for the price. The expected rent in period 3, and therefore the price of land purchased at the end of period 2, is 50. The expected return on land purchased in period 1 is therefore the expected rent in period 2 (50) plus the expected price at which it can be sold (also 50), for a first-period price of 100. This is also, of course, the total expected rent over the two periods. (In this example, the price of land declines over time, from 100 to 50, even in the undistorted case. This is merely an artifact of the finite horizon and should simply be regarded as a baseline).
It seems, then, that the multi-period version of the model, in which part of the return to investment depends on the future prices of assets, makes no real difference to the distortion of those prices imposed by guaranteed intermediaries. However, this result changes in a dramatic way once we allow for the possibility of changes in the financial regime - that is, if we believe that moral hazard may be a sometime thing.
What about the price of land in the first period? Investors now face two sources of uncertainty: they do not know whether the rent in the second period will be high or low, and they do not know whether the price of land in the second period will reflected expected values or Pangloss values. However, as long as there is competition among intermediaries in the first period, the price of land will once again be driven to a level that reflects the most favorable possible outcome: rents of 100 and a price of 100. So even though this is now a multi-period world in which everyone knows that disintermediation and a decline in asset prices is possible, current asset prices are still set as if that possibility does not exist!
Now let us get to the really interesting part: examining what happens when the change in regime is endogenous.
This suggests that a more or less realistic way to model the determination of implicit guarantees is to suppose that they are available only until they have had to be honored (or more generally until honoring them has turned out to be sufficiently expensive - the criterion used in Krugman 1998). In the context of our three-period example, this criterion can be stated alternatively as the proposition that creditors of financial intermediaries will be bailed out precisely once.
In short, our stylized little model appears to generate a story about self-fulfilling financial crises, in which plunging asset prices undermine banks, and the collapse of the banks in turn ratifies the drop in asset prices.
The severity of the crisis given a lack of strong adverse shocks, and the spread of the initial crisis to countries that seemed to have few economic links with the initial victims.
We now have an admittedly primitive but still illuminating way to make sense of these paradoxes. The reason that traditional measures of vulnerability did not signal a crisis is that the problem was off the government's balance sheet: the underlying policy mistake was, like the guarantees that created the S&L fiasco, not part of the government's visible liabilities until after the fact. The boom-bust cycle created by financial excess preceded the currency crises because the financial crisis was the real driver of the whole process, with the currency fluctuations more a symptom than a cause. And the ability of the crisis to spread without big exogenous shocks or strong economic linkages can be explained by the fact that the afflicted Asian economies were in a sort of "metastable" state in any case - highly vulnerable to self-fulfilling pessimism, which could and did generate a downward spiral of asset deflation and disintermediation.
It is all very neat, and therefore surely too neat. In the final section of this paper, then, let us state some qualifications to the story.
Any attempt to develop a simple model of a complex economic issue raises the question of what has been left out. I am aware of five main issues whose absence from the model bothers my reality sense.
First, the model assumes that financial intermediation serves no useful purpose, that it is a pure rent-seeking device. This assumption helps focus on the problem of moral hazard, but may miss an important aspect of financial crises. Mishkin (1992) has argued forcefully that financial crises have such severe effects on growth precisely because they disrupt the productive activities of financial intermediaries.
Second, the one-sector, one-asset nature of the model abstracts from an important aspect of moral hazard, recognized only in my first example: the bias in the type of investment undertaken. (Indeed, standard discussions of moral hazard in lending focus on the type, not the quantity). In practice at least some of the Asian crisis was associated with unwise investments (office towers, auto plants) rather than with excessive investment per se.
Third, a striking feature of the actual experience has been large changes in relative prices. Even if monetary factors are not really crucial, the huge real depreciations that have been associated with the crises in Asian countries are probably an important aspect of the story; among other things, they probably play a crucial role in explaining why the financial crises produce such large declines in output.
Fourth, this model makes an extreme assumption for analytical simplicity: intermediaries do not invest any capital of their own, nor (because of free entry) do they have any "franchise value". This produces the extremely useful simplifying result that the intermediaries care only about Pangloss values, allowing us to bypass what might otherwise be a complex analysis of option values. The price of this simplification is that the model predicts that intermediaries will "almost always" require a bailout, since competition pushes them to the point where they do not earn economic profits in any state of the world, and cover their costs only in the most favorable possible state. An obvious next step is to bite the bullet and try to model moral hazard when the owners of intermediaries do have something to lose.
Finally, it is clearly wrong to blame all of the overinvestment and overvaluation of assets in Asia on domestic financial intermediaries. After all, private individuals - and foreign institutional investors - did buy stocks and even real estate in all the economies now in crisis. This suggests that other kinds of market failure, notably "herding" by investors, still have some explanatory role to play.
This model, then, is only a preliminary effort. Nonetheless, it does tell a story that seems to bear some resemblance both to the runup to the Asian crisis and to the mechanics of that crisis when it took place. If this story is right in its essentials, those of us who have been trying to make sense of that crisis in terms of conventional currency-crisis models have been on the wrong track: the Asian crisis may have been only incidentally about currencies. Instead, it was mainly about bad banking and its consequences.
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"Credible liberalizations and international capital flows: the overborrowing syndrome", in T. Ito and A.O. Krueger, eds., Financial Deregulation and Integration in East Asia. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
"Anatomy of a Financial Crisis." Journal of Evolutionary Economics. 2:115-30.
"The logic of currency crises." Cahiers Economiques et Monetaires. 43:189-213.


Is the Zoom cable modem approved for my service provider?
Before installing your cable modem, please read this.
You need to connect the cable modem to a cable modem service that uses any of the popular DOCSIS standards – 3.0, 2.0, or 1.1. If you need to get cable modem service, please speak with your cable service provider.
Your cable service provider will need to know your modem's MAC ADDRESS and may need the account number of your cable service. Your MAC Address is printed on a label on the bottom or side of your modem and is called CM MAC (or RF MAC). Your account number can be found on your bill, or you can call your service provider to get your account number. You need to provide this information when you order cable modem service, or when calling the cable company after installing your modem, or by filling out the account setup web page that may appear when you first connect your cable modem to your provider’s network. You may also be asked for your cable modem's model name and number. If you need the modem's serial number, you can find it near the MAC address on the label.
Disconnect the coaxial cable from the old cable modem and connect it to your Zoom modem. If the coaxial cable has a screw-on connector, turn the connector clockwise when tightening the cable onto the Zoom cable modem.
If there’s an Ethernet cable plugged into the old cable modem, unplug the Ethernet cable from the old cable modem and plug it into the Zoom cable modem’s LAN jack.
Connect the Zoom power cube between the Zoom cable modem and a live power jack. DO NOT use your old cable modem’s power cube on your Zoom cable modem. If your cable modem’s Power Button is not already pressed in, press the button in to turn on your cable modem.
Go to "Now that your cable modem is connected, do this.” below.
You have a cable TV cable ("coaxial cable”) with a male connector on the end that isn’t connected to anything. This cable may be coming out of a wall or connected to a cable TV jack.
There’s a cable TV jack in your wall. You can connect a cable TV "coaxial cable” between that jack and your cable modem. You may have a coaxial cable, possibly one that came with a cable modem starter kit from your cable service provider. If you don’t have a coaxial cable, you can get one at most electronics stores. You want one with a screw-in male F connector at each end, with a length that works for your installation.
If you don’t have an available cable TV cable or wall jack, use a coaxial "T adapter” or "splitter” available from most electronics retailers. Make sure you get one designed for cable modems and/or cable TV. The splitter should at least support frequencies up to 1000 MHz. (This may be identified as 5 MHz to 1 GHz or 5-1000 MHz.) Supporting up to 2.3 GHz (2300 MHz) is even better if you ever want to use MoCA adapters, which can carry a router signal from one part of your home to another over the coaxial cable. Coax splitters typically have one female IN jack and two female OUT jacks. You can disconnect a live cable from your TV set-top box and screw it into the IN jack of the splitter. Then connect one coaxial cable from an OUT jack to your TV set-top box and another coaxial cable from the other OUT jack to your cable modem. You can see that this approach uses one splitter and 2 additional coaxial cables, each of which has male connectors on each end. Some electronics retailers carry the Zoom Cable Modem Connection Kit which has an excellent splitter and 2 coaxial cables packaged together at a reasonable price. You can also purchase splitters and coaxial cable separately if you prefer to do that, perhaps because you need a special length of coaxial cable.
Connect the supplied Ethernet cable between the cable modem’s yellow LAN jack and a computer’s Ethernet jack. We recommend that you do this even if you later plan to connect the cable modem to a router.
Connect the Zoom power cube or cord between the Zoom cable modem and a live power jack. If your cable modem has a Power Button or Power Switch, make sure the cable modem is turned on.
It normally takes 5 to 30 minutes to establish an Internet link the first time a cable modem connects to a cable service provider. This allows the cable modem to connect to the appropriate channels for communication. You’ll see the DS, US, and Online modem lights on your cable modem flashing until the Online light stays steady green to signal success.
After the cable modem connects to your cable service provider, open your Web browser on the computer that’s connected to your cable modem. Then refresh the screen or try to go to a Web site. Many service providers, including Comcast, typically bring your browser to a registration page. In that case, follow the instructions on this registration page to register your modem.
Comcast Users Only: If the activation page does not appear please go to www.xfinity.com/internetsetup to activate your modem.
If no registration page appears after following the browser instructions above, you need to call your cable company to register your modem. Below is a list of some major cable service providers’ phone numbers to call if you need to activate your cable modem. Note that this list is subject to change.
Once your cable modem is registered either online or through a conversation with someone at your cable service provider, your service provider will provision your cable modem service. Typically this takes less than 5 minutes, but in some cases this may take up to 30 minutes to complete.To check that your cable modem is working, open your browser and go to a familiar Web site. If it works, Congratulations! Installation is complete for a single PC. If your cable modem is NOT working, please see the troubleshooting tips for help.


Which is why I'm sharing my favorite comfort soup. Whether I'm sick, or just looking for an easy soup to make, I will always choose some good ol' chicken noodle soup. Sometimes I'll go spiral egg noodles. Sometimes, I'll stick with the traditional spaghetti-ish egg noodles. If I'm really feeling nostalgic, I'll whip out my grandmother's homemade egg noodle recipe.
For what it's worth, typing this up is making me want to whip up a batch of soup right now! So, I'm going to cut to the chase and give you the recipe.
Before we even get started, I'm going to let you know this is a two-part process. First you need to make the chicken stock (broth). Then you need to make the soup.
- You'll need to cut apart the whole chicken. Be sure to cut off the breast and thighs. Cut apart wings and back.
- Place the chicken - breast, thighs, wings, bones and all, into a soup kettle.
- Dice the celery, carrots, and onions.
- Add celery, carrots, onions, rosemary, thyme, and water to soup kettle.
- Slowly bring ingredients to a boil over medium heat.
- Once boiling, reduce heat to a simmer.
- Simmer uncovered for 3 hours.
- Carefully remove chicken and set aside to cool for 20 minutes or until cool enough to handle.
- Once cool, remove meat from bones. Cut the pieces of meat - breasts and things included, into 1/4" cubes, and set aside.
- Using a strainer or cheesecloth, strain the broth from the remaining contents.
NOTE: As the meat and bones cook, a foamy cover will form across the surface. Use a ladle or spoon to occasionally skim foam from the kettle. As the broth cools, additional fat may accumulate on the surface of the broth. Skim and remove as necessary.
Congratulations! You have chicken broth - and cubed chicken meat. This will be helpful for your chicken noodle soup.
- Place the cubed chicken and chicken broth into a large saucepan.
- Dice the celery, carrots, and onion and add them to the saucepan.
- Add all but the egg noodles to the saucepan.
- Heat over medium heat to boiling.
- Reduce heat and simmer 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Add egg noodles and continue to simmer until carrots and noodles are tender.
Now that I've written all of this up, I think I'm going to go take a break so I can go buy some chicken and vegetables to make a batch of soup myself!


What is the most important information I should know about nevirapine?
Your blood will need to be tested often during the first few months you are taking nevirapine.
Nevirapine can cause severe or fatal liver problems. Stop taking this medicine and call your doctor at once if you have: nausea, loss of appetite, upper stomach pain, tiredness, fever, unexplained muscle pain or weakness, dark urine, clay-colored stools, or jaundice (yellowing of the skin or eyes).
Nevirapine may also cause severe or life-threatening skin reactions. Stop taking nevirapine and get emergency medical help if you have: a fever, swelling in your face or tongue, skin pain, or a rash that spreads and causes blistering and peeling.
Nevirapine is an antiviral medicine that prevents human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from multiplying in your body.
Nevirapine is used to treat HIV, the virus that can cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Nevirapine is not a cure for HIV or AIDS, and should not be used to prevent HIV.
Nevirapine oral solution (liquid) is for use in adults and children as young as 15 days old. Nevirapine extended-release tablets are for use in adults and children who are at least 6 years old.
Nevirapine may also be used for purposes not listed in this medication guide.
What should I discuss with my healthcare provider before taking nevirapine?
You should not use this medicine if you are allergic to nevirapine, or if you have moderate to severe liver disease.
It is not known whether this medicine will harm an unborn baby. However, nevirapine may be more likely to cause liver damage in a pregnant woman. Tell your doctor if you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. HIV can be passed to your baby if you are not properly treated during pregnancy. Take all of your HIV medicines as directed to control your infection.
Nevirapine can make birth control pills less effective. Ask your doctor about using a non-hormonal birth control (condom, diaphragm with spermicide) to prevent pregnancy.
Follow all directions on your prescription label. Your doctor may occasionally change your dose. Do not use this medicine in larger or smaller amounts or for longer than recommended. Starting with a low dose can reduce your risk of skin reactions.
Nevirapine must be given in combination with other antiviral medications and it should not be used alone.
While using nevirapine, you will need frequent blood tests (especially during the first 18 weeks of treatment).
Use nevirapine regularly to get the most benefit. Get your prescription refilled before you run out of medicine completely.
If you have not taken nevirapine for 7 days in a row, call your doctor before you start taking the medicine again. You may need to start with a lower dose.
What should I avoid while taking nevirapine?
What are the possible side effects of nevirapine?
Nevirapine can cause life-threatening effects on the liver, especially in women. Call your doctor at once if you have any of these liver symptoms while taking nevirapine: nausea, loss of appetite, upper stomach pain, tiredness, fever, unexplained muscle pain or weakness, dark urine, clay-colored stools, or jaundice (yellowing of the skin or eyes).
Nevirapine may also cause severe or life-threatening skin reactions. Stop taking this medicine and get emergency medical help if you have: a fever, sore throat, swelling in your face or tongue, burning in your eyes, skin pain, and a red or purple skin rash that spreads and causes blistering and peeling. This type of reaction is a medical emergency.
What other drugs will affect nevirapine?
This list is not complete and many other drugs can interact with nevirapine. This includes prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal products. Give a list of all your medicines to any healthcare provider who treats you.
Your pharmacist can provide more information about nevirapine.
Copyright 1996-2017 Cerner Multum, Inc. Version: 19.01. Revision date: 4/16/2017.


Section A: different types of business information, their purposes and sources. In this section of the handbook I should address the following tasks: Task 1 - Outline the different types of business information used by the organisation (p1) Task 2 - Describe the purposes of the information you have outlined in task 1 (p1) Task 3 - Describe the sources of the information you have described in task 1 (p1) Types of information Example Description Purpose Source Verbal/oral Face to face and telephone Team meeting Planning on how to improve in the company and activities to be done Human resource department Written Letter Report Writing to plan an appointment to discuss issues about the company Informing future developments on how to improve the company financially Finance department Screen-based TV Computer Advertisement Communication sales promotion Marketing Web-based Internet Website Informing future development and communication sales promotion Finance and marketing department. Multimedia Web pages Magazine Bill boards Fliers Posters Financial accounts, Monthly magazines Inviting support for activities. Updating information Strategic development Finance department Government Electronic methods of communicating business information In this section of the handbook I should describe the electronic methods of communication which is used by the organisation to communicate business information clients/customers. Task 1 - Using examples identify the types of electronic methods which the organisation uses to communicate business information to different clients (p7). Task 2 - Identify the target audiences of the electronic communication (p7). Task 3 - Describe the reason why the organisation has used the types of communication (p7). Email - emails provide new product information, a target audience could be customers, staff, suppliers, shareholders and even the general population. E-mail has become the primary means for delivering short text messages within organisations that are networked. As e-mail between organisations becomes more common, the medium will increasingly take the place of fax, particularly as whole documents can be sent as e-mail attachments. ...read more.
Domino's pizza targets at every age group, starting from a young age. The best way to advertise their product was to make it worldwide and providing it in different areas where millions of people will be likely to see it and feel interested. They used television, online websites and other social networks (facebook, twitter). The advert draws people closer to them and helps viewers realise who they were, the mistakes they've made in the past and ways they have chosen to better themselves and improve the company The advert is quite memorable as it's quite entertaining as they are not just talking but show pictures of how they make the pizza as well as ways they've made it in the past which is an improvement, help their customers gain more interest in their products. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH5R56jILag Section G Part 1 I will be writing a report in which explains the steps the organisation has taken to comply with the above law and regulation. Data Protection Act Give brief description of what it says How Tesco complies with Data protection Act Tesco follows the steps of the data protection act by keeping any personally identifiable private data, without the explicit informed consent of the individual consumers, and then they should not be so fearful about responding to the guardian journalists legitimate subject data access requests. Tesco, and their rivals, data gathering retention and profiling policies must be made transparent to the public. So Tesco makes sure that all information is kept confidential. Customers' information may be passed to and used by all Tesco companies. We will never pass your personal information to anyone else, except where we are required or permitted to do so by law, for any successors in title to our business and suppliers that process information on our behalf both in the UK and abroad. We may also use and disclose information in aggregate (so that no individual customers are identified) ...read more.
This method is used as it is fast because the customers can call in at any time and can call from anywhere, it would be a private conversation as the customers information will be kept confidential unless needed for a valuable reason. M2 In this section I will be analysing the legal, ethnical and operational issues in relation to the use of the business information. Legal Issues There are many parts in the legal issues which are: * The issues of privacy * Consideration/feelings * Misleading * Falsehood * The right of the public to know. The issues of privacy are the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal them selectively. The reason why this is a legal issue is because people should be able to be confident when there confidential things are being put out to the public. Privacy gives them an opportunity to prevent people from seeing certain things if the person doesn't wish to show it to people but to keep to themselves. The area that Health & Safety covers is extremely extensive when you take into account the diversity of the industries where each one has specific Health & Safety issues. Businesses are usually considered to have low risk when it concerns electrical hazards but it still is one of the main causes of personal injury and fire. With the more machinery and equipment that the business have in the premises, the risk increases but for now, Businesses will just consider the office with the common electrical equipment of, say, computers, fax machines, fans, etc. There is no way of eliminating such dangers as it is entirely down to how the user operates the equipment with respect to the potential dangers that can occur from miss-use. It is therefore your responsibility to make sure that all electrical equipment (including power points) is maintained so that the risk of injury is low. ...read more.
Much of this ignores the specification as the information is too general and not related to a particular business. At other times the writer is really not thinking through what they are writing and has not done sufficient research.
first phase is better to start an advertising campaign which must be well prepared in order to touch the Asian customers because this kind of advertising implies huge costs but in the case of a success the reward will compensate the efforts.
Stakeholders in Tescos and Cancer Research.
How much will donors care if charities get more clear, especially about what's important/what they achieve? Some may not care too much, as long as a rumour doesn't come out that will destroy their trust. But some will, especially the High Impact part of donors.
Tesco use online surveys on a regular basis through their website and through email. Whilst browsing the Tesco website you may be asked to kindly take part in a survey or you may receive an email asking you to take part.
their web based information give a more understanding about their organisation by creating clear indication what their website is.
It?s big so people look at it while they are walking pass it. Anyone who steps in to the place the first they do is they look at it. It?s eye catchy. It is short and easy for people to read.
An advantage of using notes it that it can help save time as well as reminding member of staffs efficiently and tell their employees/staff on upcoming events/activities The disadvantage of notices is that it can create a waste of paper and a mess when they are too many notes accumulating in one place all at once.
Farmers markets have also been impacted by changing Social and working patterns, this is because some people like freshly grown produce and therefore go to the farmers markets. This means farmers ensure that the produce is fresh from the day before for the customers to purchase.