Regional currencies and regional monetary zones in Latin America : what prospects ?

This paper aims at drawing lessons from Keynes's plan presented at the Bretton Woods conference, in order to help improving current regional monetary agreements in Latin America. Some promoters of the Bank of the South and the New Financial Architecture in Latin America are proposing to implement a regional clearing system designed to allow a multilateral offsetting of the liabilities and assets generated in the reciprocal transactions of member countries in words that the British economist certainly would not have denied. This system would be very different from current regional payments aggreements that maintain an implicit reference to the US dollar as reserve or payment currency.regional monetary zone ; monetary agreements ; Latin America

Macroeconomía cuántica: Un homenaje a Bernard Schmitt

Bernard Schmitt, the founder of quantum macroeconomics, died on 26 March 2014. His legacy concerns the discovery of the logical laws of monetary macroeconomics and extends to the explanation of the origin and nature of economic and financial crises. Starting from a novel conception of bank money, he was able to show that economics is founded on true macroeconomic laws, which take the form of logical identities. This paper is a brief and necessarily incomplete introduction to the main themes of Schmitt's macroeconomic analysis. It ranges from the distinction between money and income that lies at the hearth of his theory of the circuit, to the investigation of inflation and unemployment as pathological manifestations of a macroeconomic disorder, to the groundbreaking discovery of the mechanism of duplication leading to the formation of sovereign debt.Bernard Schmitt, fundador de la macroeconomía cuántica, falleció el 26 de marzo de 2014. Su legado concierne al descubrimiento de las leyes lógicas de la macroeconomía monetaria y se extiende a la explicación del origen y la naturaleza de las crisis económicas y financieras. Partiendo de una novedosa concepción del dinero bancario fue capaz de mostrar que la economía se basa en auténticas leyes macroeconómicas que toman la forma de identidades lógicas. El presente artículo es una breve y necesariamente incompleta introducción a los aspectos principales del análisis macroeconómico de Schmitt. Oscila entre la distinción entre dinero e ingresos, en la que recae el eje de su teoría del circuito, hasta el estudio de la inflación y del desempleo como manifestaciones patológicas de un trastorno macroeconómico, pasando por el revolucionador descubrimiento del mecanismo de duplicación, que llevó a la creación de la deuda soberan

Once in a summer: Fall history of the JaH 073 strewn field, Sultanate of Oman

Modeling of a prehistoric fall can be successful if a strewn field is very well documented and coordinates, masses, and shapes of all individual stones are recorded. In combination with meteoroid mass and wind model constraints, a detailed scenario of the atmospheric passage is obtained for the ~20 9 6 km-sized JaH 073 L6 strewn field in Oman. The wide mass ranges from 52.2 kg to <1 g together with the large number of ~3500 stones offer the statistical basis to reconstruct the trajectory and the fragmentation sequence. The size of the meteoroid, constrained by noble gas analyses, corresponds to an initial mass of about 12 t at atmospheric entry using an L-chondrite bulk density of 3400– 3500 kg m-3. Assuming typical ablation behavior, these data are compatible with an entry velocity of 20±3 km s-1. The best model fit is achieved for a serial fragmentation scenario starting at an altitude of ~34 km and showing a main fragmentation at 26 km. A resolved event seems to have occurred at 22 km, followed by a more diffuse fragmentation at 19 km. The vertical trajectory angle is calculated at 43 ± 2° and the azimuth at 329 ± 1°. The position of numerous outlying meteorites in the strewn field can only be reproduced by repeated fragmentation with cumulated transverse velocities from explosive events. The wind model adopted from modern data fits surprisingly well and indicates summer monsoon with strong easterly winds during the fall event, consistent with paleoclimatic data

A new perspective on the significance of the Ranotsara shear zone in Madagascar

The Ranotsara shear zone in Madagascar has been considered in previous studies to be a >350-km-long, intracrustal strike-slip shear zone of Precambrian/Cambrian age. Because of its oblique strike to the east and west coast of Madagascar, the Ranotsara shear zone has been correlated with shear zones in southern India and eastern Africa in Gondwana reconstructions. Our assessment using remote sensing data and field-based investigations, however, reveals that what previously has been interpreted as the Ranotsara shear zone is in fact a composite structure with a ductile deflection zone confined to its central segment and prominent NW-SE trending brittle faulting along most of its length. We therefore prefer the more neutral term "Ranotsara Zone”. Lithologies, tectonic foliations, and axial trace trajectories of major folds can be followed from south to north across most of the Ranotsara Zone and show only a marked deflection along its central segment. The ductile deflection zone is interpreted as a result of E-W indentation of the Antananarivo Block into the less rigid, predominantly metasedimentary rocks of the Southwestern Madagascar Block during a late phase of the Neoproterozoic/Cambrian East African Orogeny (c. 550-520Ma). The Ranotsara Zone shows significant NW-SE striking brittle faulting that reactivates part of the NW-SE striking ductile structures in the flexure zone, but also extends along strike toward the NW and toward the SE. Brittle reactivation of ductile structures along the central segment of the Ranotsara Zone, confirmed by apatite-fission track results, may have led to the formation of a shallow Neogene basin underlying the Ranotsara plain. The present-day drainage pattern suggests on-going normal fault activity along the central segment. The Ranotsara Zone is not a megascale intracrustal strike-slip shear zone that crosscuts the entire basement of southern Madagascar. It can therefore not be used as a piercing point in Gondwana reconstruction

Investigation of flow fields within large scale hypersonic inlet models

Analytical and experimental investigations were conducted to determine the internal flow characteristics in model passages representative of hypersonic inlets for use at Mach numbers to about 12. The passages were large enough to permit measurements to be made in both the core flow and boundary layers. The analytical techniques for designing the internal contours and predicting the internal flow-field development accounted for coupling between the boundary layers and inviscid flow fields by means of a displacement-thickness correction. Three large-scale inlet models, each having a different internal compression ratio, were designed to provide high internal performance with an approximately uniform static-pressure distribution at the throat station. The models were tested in the Ames 3.5-Foot Hypersonic Wind Tunnel at a nominal free-stream Mach number of 7.4 and a unit free-stream Reynolds number of 8.86 X one million per meter

The role of the Ranotsara Zone in southern Madagascar for Gondwana correlations

The Precambrian basement of southern Madagascar was reworked at high-grade metamorphic conditions during the East African Orogen (EAO of Stern, 1994) that formed during assembly of Gondwana in late Neoproterozoic/early Paleozoic times. At the end of the EAO, Madagascar is generally thought to be sandwiched between southern India and eastern Africa. Constraints on its paleoposition are often inferred from similarities in structural features on now dispersed continental fragments, in particular high-strain zones. Major zones with (sub)vertical foliation planes can be traced over hundreds of kilometres in southern Madagascar and have been interpreted as major vertical ductile shear zones (e.g. Windley et al. 1994; Martelat, 1998). The NW–SE trending Ranotsara Zone (dashed rectangle in Fig. 1) is regarded as an intracrustal mega strike-slip shear zone with a sinistral sense of shear that formed at the end of the Proterozoic (e.g. Nicollet, 1990; de Wit et al., 2001). A large number of studies have used the Ranotsara Zone to propose Gondwana reconstructions. The Ranotsara Zone has been correlated with various ductile shear zones in southern India, e.g. with the Bhavani Shear Zone or the Moyar Shear Zone (Katz & Premoli, 1979), the Palghat-Cauvery Shear Zone (de Wit et al., 1995), the Karur-Kamban- Painavum-Trichur Shear Zone (de Wit et al., 2001; Ghosh et al. 2004) or with the Achankovil Shear Zone (Windley et al., 1994; Martelat, 1998). Within Madagascar, the Ranotsara Zone has been correlated along strike with the more N–S trending Bongolava Zone in central-western Madagascar (Hottin 1976), and the Bongolava- Ranotsara Zone has been further traced into the Surma Shear Zone (Windley et al. 1994) and its along-strike continuation, the Aswa Shear Zone in eastern Africa (Müller 2000). Chetty (2003) suggested that the Ranotsara Zone is not only a mega shear zone, but also a terrane boundary separating a region with Archean crust to the north from a region with Neoproterozoic crust to the south. Our remote sensing and field studies of southern Madagascar indicate that the Ranotsara Zone is neither a major terrane boundary nor an intracrustal mega strike-slip shear zone and therefore can not be used as a ‘piercing point’ in Gondwana reconstructions...conferenc