Trevor Harris

Evidence for the Key Sites of Jesus

Proving Biblical Nazareth

This volume looks at Britain since 1948 – the year when the Empire Windrush brought a group of 492 hopeful Caribbean immigrants to the United Kingdom. “Post-war Britain” may still be the most common label attached to studies in contemporary British history, but the contributors to this book believe that “post-Windrush Britain” has an explanatory power which is equally useful. The objective is to study the Windrush generation and Enoch Powell’s now infamous speech not only in their original historical context but also as a key element in the political, social and cultural make-up of today’s Britain. Contributions to the book use a diversity of approaches: from the lucid, forward-looking assessment by Trevor Phillips, which opens the volume; through Patrick Vernon’s account of the legacy of Powell’s speech in Birmingham and how it inspired him to launch a national campaign for Windrush Day; to the plea from novelist and playwright Chris Hannan for a fully inclusive, national conversation to help overturn deeply ingrained prejudice in all parts of our society.

Legacy and Assessment

Windrush (1948) and Rivers of Blood (1968)

Frederic S. Mishkin

Andrew Crockett

Eugene N. White

The fifth report in this series focuses on conflicts of interest that arise when a firm combines multiple lines of business, creating multiple interests. Conflicts between research and underwriting in investment banking and between auditing and consulting in accounting firms are investigated, as are the problems that arise from rating agencies providing consulting services and from universal banks combining commercial and investment banking. In the recent stock market collapse, confidence in the financial industry was shaken by numerous scandals. Beginning with Enron in 2001, scandals brought about the demise of prominent financial figures, damaged the reputation of premiere firms and destroyed the global accounting giant Arthur Andersen. Central to this crisis was the exploitation of conflicts of interest. Research analysts at investment banks were found to be distorting information at the behest of underwriting departments eager to promote new issues. Auditors appeared to sanction misleading accounting in order to gain business for the consulting side of their firms. Policy response in the United States was quick. Large fines were levied and regulators compelled the separation of financial security function, constraining financial conglomerates. But are these new regulations and safeguards adequate protection? What costs do they impose on the industry? This fifth title in the ICMP/CEPR series of Geneva Reports on the World Economy examines the problem of conflicts of interest in the financial system. Conflicts of interest lead to a decrease in information that makes it harder for the system to provide savers wit the accurate, essential information that induces them to provide credit to borrowers. This study focuses on conflicts of interest that arise when a firm combines multiple lines of business, creating multiple interests. Conflicts between research and underwriting in investment banking and between auditing and consulting in accounting firms are investigated, as are the problems that arise from rating agencies providing consulting services and from universal banks combining commercial and investment banking. Determining the appropriate remedy for a conflict is a challenge because the elimination of conflicts may also eliminate benefits from economies of scope. This study examines five generic remedies: market discipline, regulation for increased transparency, supervisory oversight, separation of financial activities by function, and socialization of the collection and distribution of information. The authors apply this framework to assess critically the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Global Settlement between American regulators and investment banks.

What Should We Do about Them?

Conflicts of Interest in the Financial Services Industry

The oldest word in politics is “new”. The oldest word in the writing of history may well be “modern”: it is, without doubt, one of the most overworked adjectives in the English language. But the indeterminacy is perhaps just another way of saying that the difficulties raised are of a kind which simply will not go away… This collection of eight essays on aspects of modernity and modernism takes up the challenge of examining the complex, but fascinating convergence of aesthetics, politics and a quasi-spiritual dimension which is perhaps typical of British modernist thinking about modernity. This may have produced figures whom we now dismiss as eccentrics or “aesthetes”, it none the less produced figures whom many still think of as in some sense embodying the national identity: what, after all, could be more “English” than a William Morris wallpaper design? Rather than towards socialism in any of its “scientific” guises, what the British modernist approach to modernity may have been pushing at was yet another mutation of liberalism: a libertarian-humanitarian hybrid in which indigenous radical and Evangelical legacies keep scientific socialism in check, where fellowship and domesticity edge out a larger-scale, more abstract “fraternity”, and where citoyenneté or civisme give way to what George Orwell was later to define simply as “decency”.

Aspects of Modernity and Modernism

Art, Politics and Society in Britain (1880-1914)

Trevor Harris

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