ZEMSTVOS
The local self-government bodies in rural districts of tsarist Russia, which were set up in
the central gubernias (“provinces”) of the country in 1864. The Zemstvos were dominated
by the local nobility and were restricted to handling only local economic and welfare issues,
such as hospitals, road building, insurance, gathering statistics, etc. They were under the
control of the governors of the gubernias and the Ministry of the Interior which could veto any
decisions they found to be undesirable.
ZEN or ZEN BUDDHISM
[To be added...]
ZENO of Elea (fl. c. 450 BCE)
[To be added...]
See also:
Philosophical doggerel about
Zeno.
ZIFF, Paul (1920-2003)
American bourgeois philosopher of the analytic or
“linguistic” school. Did significant work in the areas
of semantics and aesthetics. His most important book was Semantic
Analysis (1960). In the last chapter of that work he explains in careful detail why the
meaning of the important word ‘good’ should be considered to be “answering
to certain interests”.
See also:
Philosophical doggerel about Ziff.
ZOMBIE
A term rapidly spreading in use in the U.S. in late 2008 and early 2009 for a company
or bank which is one of the “living dead”, i.e., a company which is either already
insolvent, or else which will soon become so, and which will
therefore go bankrupt before long. (See also below.)
ZOMBIE BANK
A bank that for the time being appears to be healthy and operating
normally, but which is actually insolvent, and which will
eventually collapse (and either go bankrupt or be bailed out by the government). ‘Insolvent’
means having liabilities greater than the reasonable market value of the assets held. But the
trouble is that 1) the real market value of assets in turbulent economic times is difficult
to determine, and 2) the real market value of assets can rapidly drop when the
asset bubble of which they are a part suddenly pops. This is
what has been happening to banks and other financial institutions since the sub-prime mortgage
housing bubble began to pop in late 2007.
Although only 25 banks failed in the U.S. in
2008, and “only” another 100 had failed by mid-October of 2009, in February 2009 an expert in
this sphere estimated that as many as 1,000 more banks may fail over the next 3 to 5 years.
(And even that number may prove sanguine!) Thus at present there are a great many, and
actually a rapidly growing number of zombie banks in the U.S. and around the world.
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