Growth Within Bounds

In 1997 the State of California Legislature created the Commission on Local Governance for the 21st Century to review current statutes &, where appropriate, recommend revisions to the laws that govern city, county, and special district boundary changes. Over a period of 16 months, the Commission held 25 days of public hearings, received over 100 recommendations, and had nearly 90,000 visits to the commission's website. Based upon this extensive input and deliberations on the information received, the Commission has issued this report, which concludes with a strategic plan for its implementation by the California Legislature. Illustrated.

Boundaries are healthy and necessary parts of life and ministry. Staying in Bounds provides straight-talk guidance to ministers and other leaders of churches and faith-based organizations on the what, why, and how of relational boundaries. Provides guidance on identifying, implementing, and enforcing healthy boundaries, with a special focus on ministry settings. The author develops the concept of boundaries from psychological and theological perspectives, discusses the benefits of boundaries, and then explains the importance of healthy boundaries in the church.

In his previous books, The Bill from the China Shop and China and America: A Time of Reckoning, Charles Dumas was the first to identify the existence and potential impact of the Eurasian Savings Glut - most importantly how it would push US mortgage borrowing to excess, precipitating the global credit crisis. As we now strive to rescue the international financial system, he points to uncomfortable truths about the conflicts ahead. The US has reverted to debt-driven growth (this time, government debt), and its economic benefit is waning while the risk increases. China is veering back to export-led growth and large surpluses, increasingly at others' expense. Europe is squeezed between them, and the fixed-rate euro system is creating a subsidiary set of extreme imbalances: the Mediterranean cannot expand demand, while north-central Europe will not expand it. Globally, the choice may soon be between serially degrading US federal credit or putting up trade barriers. The first would undermine the world financial system, but the second would damage world trade, at huge expense to real incomes everywhere. Globalisation Fractures confronts the inherent conflicts as issues to be urgently addressed. This is the battleground upon which the future of the global economy will be determined.

Using in-depth analysis of power relations, material changes and developments in ideologies, this essential text provides an accessible and student friendly historical introduction to the changing relations between states. The subjects covered include long term trends relating to war, the changing balance of power, decolonisation, the European system and the Cold War. This volume is essential reading for all those interested in the history of International Relations in the twentieth century.