Schleiermacher and Otto on religion : a reappraisal

An interpretation of the work of Schleiermacher and Otto recently offered by Andrew Dole, according to which these two thinkers differed over the extent to which religion can be explained naturalistically, and over the sense in which the supernatural can be admitted, is examined and refuted. It is argued that there is no difference between the two thinkers on this issue. It is shown that Schleiermacher's claim that a supernatural event is at the same time a natural event does not invite, but rather forecloses the possibility of, a naturalistic explanation of the event. It is further demonstrated that Otto, like Schleiermacher, denied the existence of supernatural events interpreted as events that infringe the laws of nature

The Suffolk Bank and the Panic of 1837

The Suffolk Bank in Boston is well known as having been the clearinghouse for virtually all the banknotes that circulated in New England between 1836 and 1858. An examination of 19th century bank balance sheets shows that during and after the U.S. banking Panic of 1837, this private commercial bank also provided some services that today are provided by central banks. These include lending reserves to other banks (providing a discount window) and keeping the payments system operating. Because of Suffolk's activities, banks in New England fared better than banks elsewhere during the Panic of 1837. And after the panic, when much of the United States suffered a prolonged economic slowdown, New England fared better than the rest of the country, at least partly because of Suffolk’s central bank-like activities.Bank notes ; Banks and banking - History

Lessons from a laissez-faire payments system: the Suffolk Banking System (1825-58)

A classic example of a privately created interbank payments system was operated by the Suffolk Bank of New England (1825–58). Known as the Suffolk Banking System, it was the nation’s first regionwide net-clearing system for bank notes. While it operated, notes of all New England banks circulated at par throughout the region. Some have concluded from this experience that unfettered competition in the provision of payments services can produce an efficient payments system. But another look at the history of the Suffolk Banking System questions this conclusion. The Suffolk Bank earned extraordinary profits, and note-clearing may have been a natural monopoly. There is no consensus in the literature about whether unfettered operation of markets with natural monopolies produces an efficient allocation of resources. ; Reprinted in Quarterly Review, Fall 2002 (v. 26. no. 4)Suffolk Banking System ; Payment systems

In order to form a more perfect monetary union

Why did states agree to a U.S. Constitution that prohibits them from issuing their own money? This article argues that two common answers to this question—a fear of inflation and a desire to control what money qualifies as legal tender—do not fit the facts. The article proposes a better answer: a desire to form a viable monetary union that both eliminates the variability of exchange rates between various forms of money and avoids the seigniorage problem that otherwise occurs in a fixed exchange rate system. Supporting evidence is offered from three periods of U.S. history: the colonial period (1690–1776), the Revolutionary War (1776–83), and the Confederation period (1783–89). This article is adapted from a chapter prepared for a forthcoming book, Varieties of Monetary Reforms: Lessons and Experiences on the Road to Monetary Union, edited by Pierre Siklos, to be published by Kluwer Academic Publishers.Banks and banking - History ; Money theory

Lessons from a laissez-faire payments system: the Suffolk Banking System, 1825-58

Suffolk Banking System ; Banks and banking - History ; Payment systems ; Banks and banking - New England ; Clearinghouses (Banking)

Criminal Justice and Arab-Americans

Since September 11, 2001, Middle Eastern Americans have been the target of vilification and ostracization by a large part of the American Community as a result of heightened public fear of terrorism. How has this impacted the relation between criminal justice and Arab-Americans

Performance of a single fuel-vaporizing combustor with six injectors adapted for gaseous hydrogen

The combustor was operated over a range of inlet-air pressures from 5.3 to 24.0 inches of mercury absolute and inlet-air reference velocities from 60 to 100 feet per second. The combustion efficiencies obtained with the six configurations varied from about 65 to 95 percent for a combustor temperature-rise range of 200 degrees to 1400 degrees F. At a temperature rise of 1200 degrees F (near-rated engine conditions), the spread in efficiencies of the six configurations was about 5 percent. Efficiencies in the range of 65 to 85 percent were obtained at operating conditions beyond the burning range of conventional jet fuels. A fuel-injector configuration that fed only gaseous hydrogen fuel into the standard liquid-fuel-vaporizing tubes generally gave the highest efficiencies. This configuration minimizes the possibility of combustion in the fuel-vaporizing tubes and could be easily adapted to the full-scale engine combustor

A Nonlinear Super-Exponential Rational Model of Speculative Financial Bubbles

Keeping a basic tenet of economic theory, rational expectations, we model the nonlinear positive feedback between agents in the stock market as an interplay between nonlinearity and multiplicative noise. The derived hyperbolic stochastic finite-time singularity formula transforms a Gaussian white noise into a rich time series possessing all the stylized facts of empirical prices, as well as accelerated speculative bubbles preceding crashes. We use the formula to invert the two years of price history prior to the recent crash on the Nasdaq (april 2000) and prior to the crash in the Hong Kong market associated with the Asian crisis in early 1994. These complex price dynamics are captured using only one exponent controlling the explosion, the variance and mean of the underlying random walk. This offers a new and powerful detection tool of speculative bubbles and herding behavior.Comment: Latex document of 24 pages including 5 eps figure