Introduction: The dynamics of ideas

Abstract

Participants in today's financial markets confront a sea of data. While the availability of market data has benefits it also creates problems, notably those relating to questions of meaning, judgement and intervention: how to make sense of these flows – how to see the ‘market’, its futures, and thus act pre-emptively. Over more recent years financial organizations have been turning to new technologies of representation, in particular the design and application of visualization software in an effort to enable better visual imagination of and interaction with markets as they unfold in real time. ‘What you see is what you risk’ in many respects captures the thinking or at least the desire underlying the employment of the latest visualization software. The more powerful one's vision the better able one is to participate in increasingly complex financial markets, at least in theory.

Based on recent interviews with those involved in developing and using the latest visualization software within some of the key markets of global finance, and developing the influential work of Daniel Beunza and David Stark, and Karin Knorr Cetina, in particular, this paper adopts a cultural-economy-of-finance perspective to examine the implications of these new techniques of representation. The paper argues that the latest visual turn within finance should be afforded a more central position in the study of contemporary financial market practices.     

The Climbié Inquiry - Context and Critique

The inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié was portrayed as the most wide-ranging inquiry into failure to protect a child. It was instrumental in the development of the new safeguarding agenda and joined-up children's services in the Children Act 2004. Both its process and outcome appear to fit with New Labour's agenda for joined-up government. A social constructionist analysis reveals it as a narrower project which ignored key issues and failed to make links between government policy, the law, and local authority action. Three issues -i) parental responsibility, ii) treating intra-family child abuse as a crime, and Hi) local authorities' responsibilities for family support -exemplify the inquiry's restrictive approach and the impossibility of joined-up services if central government seeks to retain authority without taking responsibility. Despite its success in changing policy, the Climbie Report shows again the inadequacy of such inquiries as a basis for reform.     

PROTECTING YOUTH PLACED IN UNLICENSED,UNREGULATED RESIDENTIAL “TREATMENT” FACILITIES

Throughout the country, there is considerable inconsistency in how states regulate residential treatment programs for youth. In states with little oversight, the health and safety of youth are unprotected and they may be subject to substandard treatment, rights violations, and/or abuse. Three initiatives to address this issue are reported: (1) an Internet survey of youth who are former residents, (2) a four‐state pilot study of how states regulate and monitor residential programs, and (3) a bridge‐building conference between residential treatment providers and mental health leaders. Recommendations address the next steps for lawmakers, lawyers, judges, mental health and education professionals, and parents.     

Soviet Electric Power After Chernobyl': Economic Consequences and Options

A review of the role of nuclear power in Soviet electricity production and of economic and design factors that may have contributed to the accident at the Chernobyl' Atomic Power Station sets the stage for analysis of its economic and other impacts on the USSR and Eastern Europe. The paper outlines methods for estimating direct costs stemming from lost generating capacity, agricultural output, and plant infrastructure; clean-up and relocation; and medical care. Longer-term costs in the form of environmental and public health problems, reexamination of energy development strategies, and effects on international trade will be greater but more difficult to determine. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 027, 124, 723.