The Great Escapism

'Flight to Africa begins'

Marius flees to Africa.

Sophal Ear Escaping the Khmer Rouge

A loud noise will get your fight or flight response going.

The sudden escape didn't go unnoticed online.

I believe that capital flight will increase substantially.

It's part of the fight and flight mechanism, that when an animal is frightened think of a deer.

Even so, Selama had to convince her sister that running away was worth the risk.

Still, quitting without making personal improvements feels like running away.

Labor Day rally teargassed in Besiktas, Istanbul, on May 1, 2013.

Yet New York remained a dream, so foreign and distant that I never imagined I would have the chance to compare illusion with reality.

My eventual escape to New York had nothing to do with tourism.

A significant reason is believed to be the steady flight of intellectuals from Iraq, which seems obvious, but is difficult to measure.

But these agonizing pictures represent only the symptoms of an underlying and largely unreported malady capital flight.

It is extremely difficult to estimate capital flight, both because the data are insufficient and because it is tough to distinguish capital flight from normal diversification.

Capital flight is most likely to be sparked by uncertainty regarding good governance, political stability, civil liberties, accountability, property rights, and corruption. Sound economic policies, sustainable economic growth, and adequate rates of return on investment tend to reverse capital flight.

In the worst case, they will be hit by a new vicious circle of panic and bank runs, also derailing the incipient European recovery.

Capital flight is most likely to be sparked by uncertainty regarding good governance, political stability, civil liberties, accountability, property rights, and corruption.

But, in the case of Avatar , the power of American filmmaking has for once been directed toward American self knowledge rather than American escapism.

Italy s armada of Guardia di Finanza boats would hardly forestall a massive exodus of wealth if Italians see a sizable wealth tax coming.

The only effective response is counter cyclical capital account management discouraging foreign borrowing during economic upswings and preventing capital flight during downswings.

One sight that still freezes the blood in my veins is running from the Ustashes who were capturing little girls and then brutalizing them.

Capital flight, meanwhile, stems from free transfer of profits, debt payments, and the propensity of the elite to exile their assets.

Not for the sake of our health, though it's often presented that way, but because it's an escape from the human anthill.

Now the valley of Siddim was full of tar pits and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and they fell there, and those who remained fled to the hills.

One can copy movements and motor acts without understanding their meaning. This happens when a flock of geese suddenly takes flight from a lake, blindly following the flock's first frightened member.

And this is a real underestimated, under appreciated health hazard not just because it harms our hearing, which it obviously does, but it actually initiates the fight or flight response.

The result has been a lethal combination of currency convertibility, skyrocketing interest rates, low inflation, and free capital movement, which merely fuels speculation and capital flight.

In 2009 2010, the European Bank Coordination Initiative known informally as the Vienna Initiative helped to avert a systemic crisis in developing Europe by stopping foreign owned parent banks from staging a catastrophic stampede to the exits.

Capital flight provides creditors with the resources they need to finance additional loans to the countries from which these resources originated in the first place a scheme known as round tipping or back to back loans.

Never mind that the central bank is not responsible for Russia s troubles the run on the ruble, the recession, and the flare up of inflation and that using interest rates to prevent capital outflows always fails.

As coalition forces were routing the Iraqi army in February 1991, President George H.W. Bush encouraged the Iraqi people to take matters into their hands to force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside.

The answer appears to be that there is nobody in the financial centers of New York, London, Tokyo, Frankfurt, and Hong Kong who thinks it is their business to bet on a future flight from the dollar.

Hong Kong s government, led by the HKMA, launched an unprecedented intervention, buying up local shares to defeat the speculators, but failed to stop the stampede by global investors, including conservative pension and mutual funds.

If capital flight resumes, it will quickly snowball if President Putin fails to convince people that the Yukos affair is an isolated case.

In that context, raising the interest rate sharply makes sense, and officials may be hoping that the hike will stem capital outflows despite the risk that the decision, if interpreted as being aimed at defending the currency, could have the opposite effect.

Moreover, every dollar added to a country's total debt generated 3 to 4 cents of extra capital flight per year in subsequent years, implying that capital flight was partly a response to the deteriorating economic environment associated with rising debt burdens.