"You learn dat dis world don't love negar And negar don't make for dis world " Zachariah's mother warned him when he was still a boy. Yet, poor and abominably ugly, the Jamaican fisherman grasps lovingly for life, though the worst forces of nature conspire against him. Washed far out to sea in the night, Zachariah is attacked by a hammerhead shark, scorched by the Caribbean sun, hurled about by the sea which both frightens and entices him, and confused by his own encroaching madness. In a rare weave of humor and sadness, Zachariah forces himself to reflect on his life and the strangeness of...

At the beginning of the transition process, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe faced the task of creating a functioning financial system where none had existed before. A decade later, high-level practitioners and well-known experts take stock of banking and monetary policy in the region, centring on: the governance of banks; the spread of financial crisis; and, perspectives for monetary policy and banking sector development.