Author: William J. Miller

  • Maritime Administration

    An agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation assigned the task of promoting the American Merchant Marine.MARAD was established in 1950 and pursues its objective through various programs, including ports and intermodal systems development, research and development in vessel and equipment design…

  • Moratorium

    An official suspension of foreign remittances, including commercial settlements, usually as a result of a chronic negative balance of payments….

  • Laches

    A delay in the execution of a maritime LIEN (read this and related legal terms for further details). Inasmuch as maritime liens have priority by inverse order, i.e., the last lien has priority over preceding liens, a fai…

  • Derelict

    A vessel that has been abandoned at sea….

  • Committee on Banking Regulations and Supervisory Practices

    Known commonly as the Cooke Committee, a working party established under the auspices of the bank for INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS (read this and related legal terms for further details) in 1975 to seek to remedy inadequaci…

  • Centrally Planned Economy

    An economy in which basic economic decisions are made by a central planning commission or a similar state agency. Price mechanism does not determine the allocation of resources; instead the planning agency assesses resource availability and reports this to the level of government that determines pri…

  • Brandt Commission

    A group of eighteen prominent individuals from five continents, formed to explore economic relationships between industrial and developing nations and to recommend changes in those relationships with the object of accelerating development in poorer countries. Established as an unofficial working par…

  • Intermediaries

    A provision of the Interstate Commerce Act which states that in those cases where a combination of rates among intermediary points along the route would result in a freight charge lower than the through rate, a shipper may use the lower aggregated rate. This rule applies to rail and water carriers, …