An Outline of a Progressive Resolution to the Euro-area Sovereign Debt Overhang: How a Five year Suspension of the Debt Burden Could Overthrow Austerity

The present study puts forward a plan for solving the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area (EA) in line with the interests of the working classes and the social majority. Our main strategy is for the European Central Bank (ECB) to acquire a significant part of the outstanding sovereign debt (at market prices) of the countries in the EA and convert it to zero-coupon bonds. No transfers will take place between individual states; taxpayers in any EA country will not be involved in the debt restructuring of any foreign eurozone country. Debt will not be forgiven: individual states will agree to buy it back from the ECB in the future when the ratio of sovereign debt to GDP has fallen to 20 percent. The sterilization costs for the ECB are manageable. This model of an unconventional monetary intervention would give progressive governments in the EA the necessary basis for developing social and welfare policies to the benefit of the working classes. It would reverse present-day policy priorities and replace the neoliberal agenda with a program of social and economic reconstruction, with the elites paying for the crisis. The perspective taken here favors social justice and coherence, having as its priority the social needs and the interests of the working majority

Red cell distribution width and mortality in acute heart failure patients with preserved and reduced ejection fraction.

Elevated red blood cell distribution width (RDW) is a valid predictor of outcome in acute heart failure (AHF). It is unknown whether elevated RDW remains predictive in AHF patients with either preserved left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) ≥50% or reduced LVEF (<50%). Prospective local registry including 402 consecutive hospitalized AHF patients without acute coronary syndrome or need of intensive care. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality (ACM) at 1 year after admission. Demographic and clinical data derive from admission, echocardiographic examinations (n = 269; 67%) from hospitalization. The Cox proportional hazard model including all patients (P < 0.001) was adjusted for age, gender, and RDW quartiles. Independent predictors of 1-year ACM were cardiogenic shock (HR 2.86; CI: 1.3-6.4), male sex (HR 1.9; CI: 1.2-2.9), high RDW quartile (HR 1.66; CI: 1.02-2.8), chronic HF (HR 1.61; CI: 1.05-2.5), valvular heart disease (HR 1.61; CI: 1.09-2.4), increased diastolic blood pressure (HR 1.02 per mmHg; CI: 1.01-1.03), increasing age (HR 1.04 by year; CI: 1.02-1.07), platelet count (HR 1.002 per G/l; CI: 1.0-1.004), systolic blood pressure (HR 0.99 per mmHg; CI: 0.98-0.99), and weight (HR 0.98 per kg; CI: 0.97-0.99). A total of 114 patients (28.4%) died within the first year; ACM of all patients increased with quartiles of rising RDW (χ(2) 18; P < 0.001). ACM was not different between RDW quartiles of patients with reduced LVEF (n = 153; χ(2) 6.6; P = 0.084). In AHF with LVEF ≥50% the probability of ACM increased with rising RDW (n = 116; χ(2) 9.9; P = 0.0195). High RDW is associated with increased ACM in AHF patients with preserved but not with reduced LVEF in this study population

Wide-angle elastic scattering and color randomization

Baryon-baryon elastic scattering is considered in the independent scattering (Landshoff) mechanism. It is suggested that for scattering at moderate energies, direct and interchange quark channels contribute with equal color coefficients because the quark color is randomized by soft gluon exchange during the hadronization stage. With this assumption, it is shown that the ratio of cross sections $R_{\overline{p} p/ p p}$ at CM angle $\theta = 90^0$ decreases from a high energy value of R_{\pbar p / pp} \approx 1/2.7, down to R_{\pbar p / pp} \approx 1/28, compatible with experimental data at moderate energies. This sizable fall in the ratio seems to be characteristic of the Landshoff mechanism, in which changes at the quark level have a strong effect precisely because the hadronic process occurs via multiple quark scatterings. The effect of color randomization on the angular distribution of proton-proton elastic scattering and the cross section ratio $R_{np/pp}$ is also discussed.Comment: 18 pages, latex2e, 4 uuencoded figures, include

New anomalous trajectory in Regge theory

We show that a new Regge trajectory with \alpha_{f_1} (0) \approx 1 and slope \alpha_{f_1}'(0) \approx 0 explains the features of hadron-hadron scattering and photoproduction of the rho and phi mesons at large energy and momentum transfer. This trajectory with quantum numbers P = C = +1 and odd signature can be considered as a natural partner of the Pomeron which has even signature. The odd signature of the new exchange leads to contributions to the spin-dependent cross sections, which do not vanish at large energy. The links between the anomalous properties of this trajectory, the axial anomaly and the flavor singlet axial vector f_1 (1285) meson are discussed.Comment: 20 pages, REVTeX, 8 figures (9 eps files), version to appear in Phys. Rev.

The KLN Theorem and Soft Radiation in Gauge Theories: Abelian Case

We present a covariant formulation of the Kinoshita, Lee, Nauenberg (KLN) theorem for processes involving the radiation of soft particles. The role of the disconnected diagrams is explored and a rearrangement of the perturbation theory is performed such that the purely disconnected diagrams are factored out. The remaining effect of the disconnected diagrams results in a simple modification of the usual Feynman rules for the S-matrix elements. As an application, we show that when combined with the Low theorem, this leads to a proof of the absense of the $1/Q$ corrections to inclusive processes (like the Drell-Yan process). In this paper the abelian case is discussed to all orders in the coupling.Comment: 27 pages, LaTeX, 14 figure

Dijet Rapidity Gaps in Photoproduction from Perturbative QCD

By defining dijet rapidity gap events according to interjet energy flow, we treat the photoproduction cross section of two high transverse momentum jets with a large intermediate rapidity region as a factorizable quantity in perturbative QCD. We show that logarithms of soft gluon energy in the interjet region can be resummed to all orders in perturbation theory. The resummed cross section depends on the eigenvalues of a set of soft anomalous dimension matrices, specific to each underlying partonic process, and on the decomposition of the scattering according to the possible patterns of hard color flow. We present a detailed discussion of both. Finally, we evaluate numerically the gap cross section and gap fraction and compare the results with ZEUS data. In the limit of low gap energy, good agreement with experiment is obtained.Comment: 37 pages, Latex, 17 figure