In the year 1671, Holland lay calm and peaceful in the sunshine, her land interlaced with bright canals and dotted with shiny windmills and covered with the gay flower-beds of ever-toiling prosperous burghers. But peace-loving Holland was beset by hostile neighbours, and beneath the untroubled exterior, her government was corrupted by sinister rivalries, both political and personal ...
Added by: arcadius | Karma: 2802.10 | Fiction literature | 13 March 2011
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The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" is a piece of short fiction by Mark Twain. Hadleyburg enjoys the reputation of being an “incorruptible” town known for its responsible, honest people that are trained to avoid temptation. However, at some point the people of Hadleyburg manage to offend a passing stranger, and he vows to get his revenge by corrupting the town.The stranger's plan centers around a sack of gold (worth around $40,000) he drops off in Hadleyburg at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Richards, to be given to a man in the town who purportedly gave him some life-changing advice (and 20 dollars in a time of need) long ago.
ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism
Why are we in such a financial mess today? There are lots of proximate causes: over-leverage, global imbalances, bad financial technology that lead to widespread underestimation of risk. But these are all symptoms. Until we isolate and tackle fundamental causes, we will fail to extirpate the disease. ECONned is the first book to examine the unquestioned role of economists as policy-makers, and how they helped create an unmitigated economic disaster.
