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Lusophonic

(ADJECTIVE) Portuguese-speaking; of or related to the Portuguese-speaking world
In order of population, the Lusophonic countries are Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Portugal, Guinea-Bissau, Timor-Leste, Macau S.A.R., and São Tomé e Príncipe.
by Abu Yahya May 18, 2010
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PE fund

(FINANCE) private equity fund; business entity formed to pool money provided by investors in order to buy majority stakes in existing companies. A common practice is to then "take the company private," so that it no longer has shares trading on the stock market. The company is then restructured, so that it has entirely different management practices, or a different business strategy. Afterward, the PE fund will most likely re-sell the company on the stock market in a sponsored IPO.

PE funds are usually limited partnerships (LPs), which gives them special privileges of nondisclosure; most are organized in the State of Delaware. PEF's have sponsors, or "principals," who are responsible for organizing the fund and recruiting other investors. They are never "limited liability partnerships" (LLP's); apologies to Urban Dictionary for erroneously mixing them up in my definition for "private equity fund" and "hedge fund." The difference between the two is explained there.

Among the best-known PE funds are Blackstone Group*, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR)*, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners*, Carlyle Group, Permira, Apollo Management, Providence Equity, TPG Capital, Warburg Pincus, and Cerberus. Companies marked with an asterisk (*) are publicly listed corporations; most PE funds are privately managed. The selection above includes the largest ones by capital under management.
The PE fund first appeared in the 1970's as a result of changes to ERISA. Institutional investors, usually pension funds, could be legal partners in an LP; they also required a place to park assets with very high rates of return.

In the USA, PE funds have long been sinecures for the most powerful political dynasties: the Rockefellers, the Romneys, the Bushes, and others.
by Abu Yahya September 2, 2010
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NYSE

New York Stock Exchange. The US-half of NYSE Euronext.

NYSE has been a publicly traded company since 2005; at the time of its initial public offering, it merged with Euronext and ArcaEX.

While average daily trading volume on the NYSE is typically between 3 million and 7 million shares, only about 40% of this actually trades in the iconic Wall Street building. The rest trades remotely in regional exchanges.
In a good year, about 250 billion in new capital is raised from equity issues on the NYSE.
by Abu Yahya September 28, 2010
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bill of exchange

(ECONOMICS) method of transferring wealth from a buyer to a seller, usually over long distances and under different currency systems. Requires the buyer to have an account with a banker in the other city; the buyer sends a note ordering his banker to credit the seller's account by the amount being paid.

Bills of exchange were adopted in 13th century Italy; almost as soon as they became common, traders began to use them as a speculative instrument (discounting bad ones and reselling them) or else as a sleazy method of borrowing money (by "drawing and redrawing," i.e., where two merchants in different towns agree to exchange bills of exchange with each other). "Drawing and redrawing" is analogous to the method used by college students on the 1980's of writing checks to each other every couple of days and depositing them in ATM's so their checking accounts wouldn't bounce.
A bill of exchange is a type of "negotiable instrument" (contractual form of money).

A modern form of bill would be a check.
by Abu Yahya September 7, 2010
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Shah Reza

(HISTORY OF IRAN) More accurately known as Reza Shah; founder of the Pahlavi Dynasty (1925-1979), shah (emperor) of Iran from 1925 to his ouster in 1942 (by invading British and Russian armies).

Born, 1878; died, 1944. Originally in the regular Iranian Army, when the Iranian monarchy was bankrupted he contracted out to command a cossack division for the Anglo Persian Oil Company (British Petroleum). As a result, he actually had a lot of money and was able to become the prime minister (1922), and then depose the old Dynasty, the Qejars.

As Shah, he promised to revise the hated concession to Anglo Iranian Oil Company, but they managed to stall and thwart him with the help of the International Court of Justice. As a result, he turned to the Axis Powers. When World War II broke out, he offered some help to the Germans and Italians, so the British invaded and replaced him with his son, Shah Muhammad Reza.
Shah Reza Pahlavi is often compared with Ataturk, a contemporaneous dictator of Turkey. However, Reza Shah was much more reliant on a cooperative clergy than Ataturk was.
by Abu Yahya July 17, 2010
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diminishing marginal returns

phenomenon in which greater input of effort, money, etc. yields smaller results. Crucial part of the idea is that if you're using x to get y results (where y is the thing you want). then additional input a will yield additional results b, but not in the same proportion as before.

On average, before, you put in x to get y, so your yield was y/x. But if you increase x by amount a, then your results will be y + b, where

(y + b)/(x + a) < y/x

and this will only get worse.

Diminishing marginal returns (DMR) is used to explain why the supply curve in economics slopes upward, i.e., increasing the quantity supplied requires an increased price of most things.

Sometimes DMR is more than offset by "economies of scale," which allows more of a thing to be supplied more cheaply than a small amount.
At first his flowers and treats swept her off her feet, but then he had to do more and more lavish things to please her. It was a classic case of diminishing marginal returns.
by Abu Yahya June 3, 2009
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fresh water school

*noun*, term used in economics to refer to the New Classical economics. The fresh water school was lead by Robert E. Lucas, Thomas J. Sargent, and Robert Barro; its position was that fiscal policy and monetary policy are doomed to be ineffective, since they rely on "fooling the public."

Instead, they argued that even tax cuts had no stimulus effect (in contrast to "supply side economics"), and of course they were resolutely opposed to government spending. Instead, the fresh water school maintained that a recession was caused by markets adjusting to a technology shock to create a structurally different economic system. The best thing to do was to allow the markets to restructure industry on their own.

The fresh water school was known for their support of the "rational expectations hypothesis" (REH) and "real business cycle" (RBC) theory.
But lately, a ...school of skeptics who think the Government usually just gums things up is gaining attention and influence. The skeptics are known as the "fresh water school," less for the purity of their thought than for their origins at universities along the shores of the Great Lakes.

"'Fresh Water' Economists Gain," *New York Times*, 23 July 1988
by Abu Yahya March 5, 2009
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