Is History a Threat? (Comment)

Erick Hobsbawm (d.2012) was a Marxist historian, a professor of history at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he taught till the end of his life. Birkbeck is an evening college where most of the students belong to the working class and continue with studies to improve their educational qualifications. Conscious of the condition of students who attended his lectures after a hard day of physical labour, he devised lectures on the history of Europe to create emancipatory thought. His four books use history as a tool to comprehend present-day Europe. They are titled The Age of Capital, The Age of Industrial Revolution, The Age of Revolution and The Age of Extreme. Besides these four books, he has published a number of papers and essays that attempt to build a new historical consciousness. There are other progressive historians besides Hobsbawm who believe that history can be liberating if it is not written in the service of the rulers of the time. It is also not a static and depressing account of the past but is dynamic and constantly changing. While history tells the story of unjust rulers and the institutions they created, it also reveals how the rulers and their unjust institutions meet their end. The reign of absolute kingship where the king was considered the Viceregal God, brutal military dictatorships, and exploitative economic systems that lasted for centuries with the aim of torturing and subduing the common working people were all destroyed over time, especially when people joined forces and resisted them to gradually establish a just order.

Risk Analysis of Karachi Stock Exchange-100 Index Pre and Post 9/11.Application of Garch and its family 2014 Models Tarch, Egarch, and Garch-M

The objective of this study is to investigate the volatility of Karachi Stock Exchange before and after incident of 9/11 by applying the RKSE=log (KSEt/KSEt-1) formula to calculate the change in daily return of Karachi Stock Exchange. Three sample periods have been chosen to estimate the comparative volatility of stock market; first, (31" August, 1996-1st September, 2001), second (31st August, 2001-1st September, 2006) and third (31st August, 2006-1st September, 2011). Purpose to choose these three samples is to estimate the volatility. First sample period refers to pre 9/11 period and second sample period during 9/11 period and third sample period is after 9/11 incident. Further, purpose to include the third sample period in this study is to investigate the volatility of KSE-100 index in longer time period. GRACH (1,1) model is used to estimate the volatility, GARCH (2,0) to estimate the past information effect on current volatility, EGARCH and TRACH model are applied to investigate the leverage effect on KSE-100 index. Moreover, these models are applied separately on each sample periods. From results it is concluded that after 9/11 period is more volatile than other because in GARCH model, both ARCH term and GARCH term are significant and greater as compare to other sample periods. Similarly, GRACH (2, 0) model shows that due to past information, volatility in after 9/11 period is greater. EGARCH and TARCH model both estimate the leverage effect on stock exchange. Comparison confirms that EGARCH model is best fit on data and estimated more significant results. Value of y is negative and significant in post 9/11 period that indicates that leverage effect exists in post 9/11 period. Whereas, there is no leverage effect exists in pre 9 11 period that shows that bad news effects on volatility are more as compare to good news in market. From the results it is also concluded that period after 9/11 (31st August, 2006 - September, 2011), volatility exist in the Karachi Stock Exchange but of low magnitude.