Inspired Finance

By tracing an arc of thought and action from both historical and religious figures up through modern microfinance practitioners, Looft illustrates the many ways religious inspiration continues to remain at the crux of international economic development–while raising compelling questions around God and Mammon working together to help the poor.

When you hear the word retirement, you probably don't imagine yourself scrambling to pay your bills in your golden years. But for too many Americans, that's the fate that awaits unless they take steps now to plan for the future. Whether you're twenty five and starting your first job or fifty five and watching the career clock start to wind down, today is the day to get serious about your retirement. In Retire Inspired, Chris Hogan teaches that retirement isn't an age; it's a financial number an amount you need to live the life in retirement that you've always dreamed of. With clear investing concepts and strategies, Chris will educate and empower you to make your own investing decisions, set reasonable expectations for your spouse and family, and build a dream team of experts to get you there. You don't have to retire broke, stressed, and working long after you want to. You can retire inspired!

Predicting the future for financial gain is a difficult, sometimes profitable activity. The focus of this book is the application of biologically inspired algorithms (BIAs) to financial modelling. In a detailed introduction, the authors explain computer trading on financial markets and the difficulties faced in financial market modelling. Then Part I provides a thorough guide to the various bioinspired methodologies – neural networks, evolutionary computing (particularly genetic algorithms and grammatical evolution), particle swarm and ant colony optimization, and immune systems. Part II brings the reader through the development of market trading systems. Finally, Part III examines real-world case studies where BIA methodologies are employed to construct trading systems in equity and foreign exchange markets, and for the prediction of corporate bond ratings and corporate failures. The book was written for those in the finance community who want to apply BIAs in financial modelling, and for computer scientists who want an introduction to this growing application domain.

The present volume is dedicated to Marek Musiela, an eminent scholar and practitioner who is perhaps best-known for his important contributions to problems of derivative pricing, theory of term structure of interest rates, theory of defaultable securities and other topics in modern mathematical finance. It includes 25 research papers by 47 authors, established experts and newcomers alike, that cover the whole range of the "hot" topics in the discipline. The contributed articles not only give a clear picture about what is going on in this rapidly developing field of knowledge but provide methods ready for practical implementation. They also open new prospects for further studies in risk management, portfolio optimization and financial engineering.

Whether you're already well-to-do or just beginning to build a nest egg, this book will help you to make smart financial choices based on what's important to you ...

By tracing an arc of thought and action from both historical and religious figures up through modern microfinance practitioners, Looft illustrates the many ways religious inspiration continues to remain at the crux of international economic development–while raising compelling questions around God and Mammon working together to help the poor.

The Sinews of Habsburg Power explores the domestic foundations of the immense growth of central European Habsburg power from the rise of a permanent standing army after the Thirty Years' War to the end of the Napoleonic wars. With a force that grew irregularly in size from around 25,000 soldiers to as many as half a million in the War of the Sixth Coalition, the Habsburg monarchy participated in shifting international constellations of rivalry from western Europe to the Near East and in some two dozen, partly overlapping armed conflicts. Raising forces of such magnitude constituted a central task of Habsburg government, one that ultimately required the cooperation of society and its elites. The monarchy's composite-territorial structures in the guise of the Lower Austrian Estates — a leading representative body and privileged corps — formed a vital, if changing, element underlying Habsburg international success and resilience. With its capital at Vienna, the archduchy below the river Enns (the historic designation of Lower Austria) was geographically, politically, and financially a key Habsburg possession. Fiscal-military exigency induced the Estates to take part in new and evolving arrangements of power that served the purposes of government; in turn the Estates were able in previously little-understood ways and within narrowing boundaries to preserve vital interests in a changing world. The Estates survived because they were necessary, not only thanks to their increasing financial potency, but also because they offered a politically viable way of exacting ever-larger quantities of money, men, and other resources from local society. These circumstances would persist as ruling became more regularized, formalized, and homogenized, and as the very understanding of the Estates as a social and political phenomenon was evolving.