Crisis Zero

From Chris Rylander, author of the breakout hit Fourth Stall saga, comes the third book in the Codename Conspiracy series—an incredibly funny and clever mash-up of middle grade school story and spy adventure, perfect for fans of Gordon Korman. There is a computer program so unspeakably powerful that its mere existence is unknown to all but the most senior government agents. This computer program is capable of controlling every aspect of communication, transportation, and defense on the planet. This computer program must never fall into the wrong hands or civilization as we know it will be utterly destroyed. This computer program is in North Dakota. Carson Fender, aka the retired Prank Master, aka Agent Zero, aka the all-in-one World's Greatest Hero and World's Greatest Screwup, must protect this program, codenamed Exodus. He is paired once again with his best friend, Danielle, aka Agent Atlas. Together, they must expose an enemy agent working from inside their school—an enemy agent with the mandate to stop at nothing to help secure Exodus. Can Zero and Atlas foil this enemy before it is too late? Carson's final mission will test his loyalty, smarts, and courage as never before.

Written and pencilled by Dan Jurgens (CONVERGENCE, THE NEW 52: FUTURES END) and inked by Jerry Ordway (THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN), ZERO HOUR chronicles the discovery by DC's greatest heroes of a tidal wave of temporal disruption, as they band togheter to combat chronal chaos. When all of his family and friends were killed by the attack of a super-villain, the once heroic Green Lantern went insane and became the immensely powerful Parallax. Hoping to save his loved ones, the mad Hal Jordan decided to recreate the universe by unraveling time. Now as realities and time lines converge, dinosaurs walk the Earth again, deceased heroes are resurrected, and half the population has suddenly vanished. With Parallax on the verge of success, Superman, Batman, Robin, Flash, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and the rest of the world's heroes must find a way to stop their former comrade or cease to be as all existence ends. This volume collects stories from SHOWCASE '94 #8-9 and ZERO HOUR: CRISIS IN TIME #4-0.

Answers the calls of grassroots communities pressing for integration and increased education funding with a complete rethinking of school discipline In the era of zero tolerance, we are flooded with stories about schools issuing draconian punishments for relatively innocent behavior. One student was suspended for chewing a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun. Another was expelled for cursing on social media from home. Suspension and expulsion rates have doubled over the past three decades as zero tolerance policies have become the normal response to a host of minor infractions that extend well beyond just drugs and weapons. Students from all demographic groups have suffered, but minority and special needs students have suffered the most. On average, middle and high schools suspend one out of four African American students at least once a year. The effects of these policies are devastating. Just one suspension in the ninth grade doubles the likelihood that a student will drop out. Fifty percent of students who drop out are subsequently unemployed. Eighty percent of prisoners are high school drop outs. The risks associated with suspension and expulsion are so high that, as a practical matter, they amount to educational death penalties, not behavioral correction tools. Most important, punitive discipline policies undermine the quality of education that innocent bystanders receive as well—the exact opposite of what schools intend. Derek Black, a former attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, weaves stories about individual students, lessons from social science, and the outcomes of courts cases to unearth a shockingly irrational system of punishment. While schools and legislatures have proven unable and unwilling to amend their failing policies, Ending Zero Tolerance argues for constitutional protections to check abuses in school discipline and lays out theories by which courts should re-engage to enforce students’ rights and support broader reforms.

Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: Macroeconomic stability and rapid export growth were the two key elements in starting the virtuous circles of high rates of accumulation, efficient allocation, and strong productive growth that formed the basis for East Asia s success. (World Bank, 1993). Public perception of the Asian economies could hardly have shifted more since that time. Currency depreciation, rising corporate bankruptcy, bank failures, and sovereign bonds downgraded to junk bond status ended the euphoria in Asian emerging markets . Almost overnight, the reputation of the Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) in East and South East Asia deteriorated from a model of efficient development to an example of worst crony capitalism . Politicians, rating agencies, and investors were caught off guard by the development of the Asian financial crisis. During the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum (APEC) in November 1997, U.S. President Bill Clinton referred to the financial crisis in Asia as merely a few small glitches in the road . Moody s and Standard and Poor s had upgraded the Philippines long term debt rating a few months earlier and downgraded the affected economies only when the crisis persisted for more than three months. Com-paring Thailand s situation to Mexico s economy prior to the peso crisis 1994-1995, the Morgan Stanley star analyst Barton Biggs wrote in January 1997: Thailand s problems are cyclical, not secular. Thailand is not Mexico in late1994. [..]On the numbers, Thailand qualifies for the euro and is healthier than Germany . The optimism seemed warranted by a history of high growth in the Asian countries. Before the outbreak of the crisis, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand had experienced uninterrupted growth of more that 5 percent of GDP per year for almost two decades. The economic profession also experienced its Waterloo in Asia. Economists not only failed to predict the crisis; they also failed to recognize the vulnerability of the region. Paul Krugman (1994) in his now famous article in Foreign Affairs was the only well-known economist to doubt the sustainability of rapid growth in East and Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, even he did not predict this kind of collapse, but rather a gradual economic slowdown of growth. Despite the initial confusion among economists, academic discussion about the Asian financial crisis quickly crystallized around two different explanations of the crisis. One explanation [...]

Italy’s deep-rooted structural problems resulted in an unsatisfactory productivity performance and a dismal growth over the last 15 years. The global financial crisis has exacerbated these long-standing weaknesses, taking a heavy toll on Italy’s economy. With output back to its end-2001 level, Italy’s output losses associated with the crisis have been, thus far, about 132 billion of 2000 euro (around 10 percent of precrisis 1998 - 2004 real GDP). About three quarters of these losses are estimated to be due to a shortfall in potential output. Potential output is not expected to rebound to its precrisis trend over the medium term, even though growth is projected to do so within the next two years. In the short-run, the decline in output is mainly accounted for by a collapse in productivity; in the medium term, employment and capital are also likely to be affected, with implications for the longer-term growth and fiscal outlook.

Masterwork on Crisis Communication and Reputation Risk Selected as One of "30 Best Business Books of 2013" Jim Lukaszewski -- nationally recognized PR expert, executive coach, often called America's Crisis Guru, and noted by Corporate Legal Times as one of "28 experts to call when all hell breaks loose" -- advises exactly what to do, what to say, when to say it, and when to do it, while the whole world is watching.The book is endorsed by the Business Continuity Institute. In this industry-defining book on crisis management and leadership recovery, Lukaszewski jump-starts the discussion by clearly differentiating a crisis from other business interruptions and introduces a concept rarely dealt with in crisis communication and operational response planning: managing the victim dimension of crisis. Delivered in his straight-talking style and backed with compelling case studies, Lukaszewski On Crisis Communication is your guide to preparing for a crisis and the explosive visibility that comes with it. Using case studies, examples and templates, he explains how to build a crisis management plan and how to put it into action in the real world of media scrutiny, social media, activists, and litigation. Lukaszewski distills four decades of experience into 10 chapters of field-tested how-to's, practical tools, tips, charts, checklists, forms, and templates and teaches you:How crises create victims;To avoid the toxicity of silence;To overcome the abusive, intrusive and coercive behavior of bloviators, bellyachers, back-bench bitchers, the media, activists and critics;To drive attorneys to settle instead of litigate;Apology is the atomic energy of empathy;Simple, sensible, sincere, constructive, positive techniques to reduce contention and to succeed!Chapter learning objectives; discussion questions; case studies; real-life examples; and glossary facilitate college and professional development classroom use.

An examination of Liquidity Crunch in triggering and characterizing financial crises. Since the subprime mortgage crisis that began in 2007, advanced economies have felt a nagging sense of insecurity. In parallel, the profession has witnessed phenomena that are alien to mainstream macroeconomic models. Financial crises are systemic, occurring simultaneously in different economies. In this book, Guillermo Calvo focuses on liquidity factors as a commonality in financial crises. Specifically, he examines the role of “liquidity crunch” in triggering crises. He also identifies a fundamental (but overlooked) idea in Keynes's General Theory, termed by Calvo the price theory of money, to rationalize the resiliency of the U.S. dollar when other dollar-backed assets suffered a devastating liquidity crunch. Calvo shows that a sharp focus on liquidity reveals some characteristics of liquid assets that are easy to miss otherwise. He argues for liquidity's centrality, presenting what he calls the Liquidity Approach. He shows that simple extensions of standard monetary models help rationalize the implications of the liquidity crunch, and then examines slightly more technical models that highlight liquidity issues. He explores the empirical effects of liquidity crunch by studying systemic sudden stops (of capital inflows), presuming that they are triggered by liquidity crunch-type phenomena.

Where might the next systemic financial crisis come from? And how do we achieve financial stability in a poly crisis world? This book addresses macroeconomic factors, crypto assets, non-bank financial institutions and regulated financial service providers, keeping in mind that each sector can interact with the others to produce a cluster of risks with compounding effects.