Notting Hill Carnival was long known as a Caribbean festival, but today Londoners from many cultural backgrounds participate.

Here is a selection of photos from this year's Notting Hill Carnival posted on Flickr.

The performances and contests that make up the longest carnival in the world will continue well into March.

PM Okay. So what we're going to do now is teach Milo to skim stones.

Blogs like Uruguay Carnavalero cover the parades and competitions, re post news, and share important announcements and event schedules.

To pay for this, he had to float loans in France, putting Haiti into a state of debt.

At the same time foreigners and Uruguayans dedicate blog posts to the event, share photos, videos and thoughts on the world s longest carnival.

But the continuing success of the floating exchange rate system does not imply a smooth ride in 2011.

It undertook a small revaluation in 1969 and then let its currency float in May 1971.

The company is majority owned and fully consolidated by Orange S.A., which owns 98.92 of the shares, and 1.08 free float.

With every that day passes, the mood on the square becomes more like a daily open carnival organised by the people and for the people.

This year, Solange González Henott wrote about Uruguay s carnival in El Blog de la Ruta , a travel blog from news site Otramérica.

Girls in costume resting at the side of the street during the Notting Hill Carnival children's parade, Sunday 26 August, 2007.

Culture Saint Kitts and Nevis is known for a number of musical celebrations including Carnival (18 December to 3 January on Saint Kitts).

The site Carnaval del Uruguay , for example, provides forums and a chat room where users can discuss different aspects of carnival.

The Trinidadian influence may be strongest in Notting Hill Carnival, but the festival has always been celebrated by Londoners with roots in many other Caribbean territories.

Let s start by acknowledging that the modern system of floating exchange rates has, on the whole, acquitted itself remarkably well.

This has also shifted the burden of adjustment disproportionately onto countries with floating currencies, such as the euro and the Canadian and Australian dollar.

Whatever the ultimate economic effects of China s first modest step towards floating its currency, one has to admire its strategic brilliance.

As in J'Ouvert, the pre dawn event that opens many Caribbean carnivals, these masqueraders have covered themselves in mud Notting Hill Carnival, Sunday 26 August, 2007.

By delaying a decision to float the yuan, the authorities are merely contributing to greater instability in the Chinese economy.

In today s free market carnival, nothing seems visible unless it is scandalous and nothing is scandalous enough to be memorable.

So even though a signal may come from the same functional part of the brain, by the time the structure has been folded, its physical location is very different between individuals, even identical twins.

But what most characterizes Latin America s experience is that, despite publicly preaching the virtues of a floating rate, the authorities actively intervene in currency markets, this time in different and creative ways.

Japan was able to defeat Russia in 1905 only after a Jewish banker in New York, Jacob Schiff, helped Japan by floating bonds.

Never mind that most of the crises could have been avoided, or late least substantially mitigated, if governments had let their currencies float against the dollar, rather than adopting rigid exchange rate pegs.

In a carnival on February 2, which was attended by more than a hundred thousand people in the Republic Square in Cairo, he delivered a speech on behalf of the youth organization.

The floating exchange rate system works surprisingly well, but currency volatility and unpredictability look likely to remain an enduring constant in 2011 and beyond.

Second, floating exchange rates imply that devaluation is an automatic adjustment mechanism, so it occurs without the appearance of an explicit burden sharing choice and the accompanying potential for political gridlock.

The fans of national sides are actors in a kind of patriotic carnival, dressed in the costumes of their national stereotypes English fans as medieval knights, the Dutch in clogs, the Spanish as bullfighters.

Floating exchange rates were supposed to prevent countries from manipulating their currencies, but, by accumulating large quantities of US treasury bills, East Asian countries, especially China, kept their exchange rates artificially low.

Much of the concern over the past few years has centered on America s yawning current account and fiscal deficits, and its effort to get China to let the yuan float more freely against the dollar.

But what most characterizes Latin America s experience is that, despite publicly preaching the virtues of a floating rate, the authorities actively intervene in currency markets, this time in different and creative ways. Thus, the exchange rate regime in Latin America today is one of actively managed floating.

China s effort to hold down the value of the yuan vis à vis the dollar is thus a costly and pointless policy. By delaying a decision to float the yuan, the authorities are merely contributing to greater instability in the Chinese economy.