· 2011
John Restin, Frank Smith, Russ Johnson, and Wade Ross were brought together by the Kennedy campaign. Now they are all Kennedy loyalists and beginning to live the life they have always wanted. Things change when they find out that John F. Kennedy is slowly dying from a concealed health problem. With his death, all of JFK's work and the men's hopes would go down the drain. That is, unless they make him die a hero. Wade has no doubt that assassinating Kennedy is the best plan. Russ isn't so sure. If everyone isn't in agreement, the plan will be shot down. Wade can't take that risk. Russ would have to die. Once the obstacles are eliminated, Wade begins a foolproof plan to assassinate JFK. He would need to make sure his name never came up at all; the blame would have to be on someone else. Lee Harvey Oswald is the perfect scapegoat. Succeeding in the assassination gives Wade a sense of accomplishment, and he feels more satisfied than ever before. He knows that it's just a matter of time before he kills again. When Wade reads about Martin Luther King Jr.'s planned Poor People's Campaign march on Washington, Wade knows it is time again. The black civil rights movement isn't finished; if King leads another movement, the civil rights movement will die from lack of leadership. Martin Luther King Jr. would have to die. Robert F. Kennedy might know too much. He would have to die too. It doesn't take long for Wade's friends, Frank and John, to catch on. Their knowledge threatens his very existence. Will Wade succeed in killing them too, or can someone put a stop to Wade's madness? What will happen to the Five Honorable Men?
In her Epilogue entitled "What Is His Greatness?", Ola Elizabeth Winslow stated in the first serious modern biography of Jonathan Edwards: "In a word, it is the greatness of one who had a determining art of initiating and directing a popular movement of far-reaching consequence, and who in addition, laid the foundations for a new system of religious thought, also of far-reaching consequence." After two and a half centuries since Edwards's death, Winslow's statement is undoubtedly true, and perhaps, more so now than ever. The recovery of Edwards pioneered by Perry Miller, Ola Winslow, and Thomas Schafer, among others, has become what is often referred to as an "Edwards renaissance," and has been made even more popular among lay people by John Piper, Stephen Nichols, and the like. Since the free online access of The Works of Jonathan Edwards by Yale University, dozens of books, and articles, as well as numerous dissertations, each year are written to seek a facet of Edwards's "greatness," and thus as an exemplar of his continued "far-reaching consequence." Jonathan Edwards, more than any other pre-revolutionary colonial thinker, grappled with the promises and perils of the Enlightenment. Organized by John T. Lowe and Daniel N. Gullotta, Jonathan Edwards within the Enlightenment brings together a group of young and early career scholars to present their propping the life, times, and theology of one of America's greatest minds. Many of these subjects have been seldom explored by scholars while others offer new and exciting avenues into well covered territory. Some of these topics include Edwards' interaction with and involvement in slavery, colonialism, racism, as well as musings on gender, populism, violence, pain, and witchcraft.
· 2011
Ruth knocked on the door and stuck her head in to announce that Abel wanted him on the radio. He said into the mic, 'Go ahead, Abel.' 'Jim, you ain't gonna believe this. You better come on out as soon as you can. No, don't wait. Come now.' Even over the air, Abel's voice sounded urgent. Fowler could not account for it, but he had an uneasy feeling in his stomach.Three bodies are found in an abandoned culvert, one dead less than seventy-two hours and the others deteriorated into skeletons. Chief Fowler, a novice in the small southern town of Roackeville, realizes he doesn't have the experience to solve the case. Rather than risk turning it over to another agency and getting left out of the loop, Fowler turns to Richard Lett. Lett, a retired federal agent, is hesitant to help with the case. What if he has to face those dark places he's avoided for so long? Lett's sense of obligation to bring a murderer to justice wins over, and he signs on to solve the case. In a small town divided by economic status and race, tensions run high between law enforcement and potential suspects. The investigation takes more twists and turns than Fowler or Lett bargained for, and they can't help but wonder if the mysteries behind the murders will ever be revealed. Can Fowler and Lett break the social ties to solve the case? Will the intricate web of deeply buried secrets ever be untangled? Discover the mystery behind The Quarter Dollar.
· 1995
This paper surveys markets for corporate debt securities in the major industrial countries and the international markets. The discussion includes a comparison of the sizes of the markets for various products, as well as the key operational, institutional, and legal features of primary and secondary markets. Although there are some signs that debt markets may be emphasized in the future by some countries, it remains true that North American debt markets are the most active and liquid in the world. The international debt markets are, however, growing in importance. The paper also investigates some of the reasons for the underdevelopment of domestic bond markets and the consequences of firms shifting their debt financing needs from banks to securities markets.
This paper argues that recent movements in closed-end emerging markets funds present a strong challenge to the leading explanations of the behavior of closed-end country fund prices. In particular, closed-end funds dedicated to Mexico and other Latin American stock markets developed large premia after the December 1994 devaluation of the Mexican peso and the subsequent financial crisis. The so-called “investor sentiment hypothesis” could explain these events only by suggesting that investors became very optimistic about emerging markets stocks, and especially Mexican stocks; this possibility seems unlikely given the facts surrounding the devaluation. We argue instead that a sensible explanation for recent dynamics of closed-end country funds is that investors in these funds are loss-averse, implying that they do not want to realize paper losses on their closed-end fund shares. This works to put a drag on the downward movement in closed-end fund prices.
This paper identifies factors that contributed to the development and effectiveness of debt securities markets in the major advanced economies. Government securities markets have benefited from their international orientation—debt management is most effective when it is independent of monetary and exchange rate policies; and financial infrastructures should be patterned on the standards of liquidity, transparency, issuing and trading efficiency, and tax treatment. The same degree of consensus does not exist for corporate debt securities markets. The paper identifies six regulatory and market-created factors that help explain why the U.S. corporate debt market has flourished, while corporate debt securities markets elsewhere have only recently begun to develop.
Models of “contagion” rely on market imperfections to explain why adverse shocks in one asset market might be associated with asset sales in many unrelated markets. This paper demonstrates that contagion can be explained with basic portfolio theory without recourse to market imperfections. It also demonstrates that “Value-at-Risk” portfolio management rules do not have significantly different consequences for portfolio rebalancing and contagion than other rules. The paper’s main conclusion is that portfolio diversification and leverage may be sufficient to explain why investors would find it optimal to sell many higher-risk assets when a shock to one asset occurs.