Explanation of Nuremberg Defense

Welfare Reformation essays

Welfare Reformation essays This week we offered a plan to end welfare as we know it-a plan that will encourage personality and help strengthen our families through tougher child support, more education and training, and an absolute requirement to go to work after a period of time. -Bill Clinton, radio address, 6/18/94 The welfare system is in deep distress. From the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the current reigning of Bill Clinton, many a bills have been brought for to reform it. Originally, Roosevelt established the system as a type of government stripend to financially challenged individuals; however, it was not intended to act as a dependent income for them (Tucker 45). Even though many changes have been made over the past three years, it has not made much of an impact on the problems at hand (Pear). Officials discovered that many welfare recipients misuse the benefits. Studies have shown that the welfare system should begin by providing job placement, ending benefits for illegitimacy, and educating the young. First, the aspect of job placement is directly related to the misuse of welfare. In order to succeed at rising employment rates, current wages have to increase dramatically. A welfare check ranges form $5.53 to $17.50 an hour; in a like manner, minimum wage is less than an hourly welfare check (Tilly 8). People desire the higher money of a welfare check to that of a low-paying job (Tweedie 117; Tanner 18). This dependency on receiving the check causes many problems not just with the current generation, but future generations will also be similarly affected. These children are acquiring the habits of their parent or parents, thus creating a permanent underclass (Tucker 45). Economic incentives for staying on welfare should be abolished. People should no longer be allowed to remain on the system for extended periods of time. In accordance with the lesser incentives, the government should place more emphasis on rai...

A Strategic Plan for Personal Development Research Paper

A Strategic Plan for Personal Development - Research Paper Example Though the general notion is to think that leadership and power are synonymous, to me what Martin Luther King Jr. said makes more sense, â€Å"I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right, and that is good† (as cited in Ng, 2012, p.88). I look up to Gandhi as a model in this respect though I can in no way put a claim to achieve the level of his leadership legacy. It is important for my quest to find a leadership model that combines business or politics with personal integrity, that I learn what kind of a leader Gandhi was. As put by Nair (2010), â€Å"Gandhi wore no resplendent uniform, commanded no armies, and held no government position,† yet he had a whole nation behind him, ready to respond to his every uttered word (p.2). All this was achieved through non-violent means, which is nothing less than a miracle. Renowned leadership expert, Karl Moore has observed two key leadership qualities in Gandhi and added that they are also what many leaders of today lack- â€Å"leadership by example† and â€Å"persistence† (2011). It is the high standard of leadership practiced by Gandhi that I would like to set as my notion of perfect leadership, and aspire to at least work towards it with the self-reassurance that Gandhi was also an ordinary human being like I am. I believe, towards building and maintaining a peaceful world, which is day by day becoming a distant mirage, I owe this quest to myself, my future generations, and to my society. I envisage finding a high standard of leadership using the model of Gandhi as my idealized and ultimate paradigm. As a path for traveling in this direction, it is necessary that I seek the support of already evolved and well-defined paradigms for leadership. The leadership qualities that I look forward to cultivate include an ability to lead from the forefront yet walk with the group, exercise power where necessary yet make that power emerge from a common will, a vision of a world that is a more equal and just society, and the willingness to let others grow and become leaders themselves. Given the present situation where idealism looks good on paper but is mocked when it becomes real, I understand that it is a quite challenging task ahead of me. To make creative use of the scholarship on leadership that has been built by great academicians and visionaries, will be the best possible option for me to begin with. Hence I searched for theories, paradigms and models put forth by scholars in the field in an attempt to locate a paradigm that genuinely moves me and synchronizes with my vision of leadership. The paradigms that I found to be having the closest potential to achieving my end are, transformational, transactional and servant leadership paradigms. This is also in view of the fact that Gandhian model of leadership has been already described as transformational and transactional (Moore, 2011). Before I go deeper into the rele vance of these paradigms for me, I need to consider some definitions of leadership. Academic definitions go as follows: â€Å"

Sales Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Sales Management - Essay Example In the company worked as brand manager and promoted last year. The position parallel to him is vacant. Keren French sr. manager national sales having 5 years of experience in the company is looking after account management of major clients. Just below her she has appointed Rick fire as national sales manager of Canada operations directly reporting to her for the last one year in the company. Prior to this assignment Rick was working with a small company for the last 6 months. Rick fire as energetic, enthusiastic and young man always trying to look after opportunities to grow has been performed well in last one year with relationship management with the client Zellengers. For that he has been appreciated and offered training and career enhancement prospects. But being an over ambitious person he set his target and seeing the opportunities in alternative channel development he came with a proposal for the product "Freshner" which has the monopoly in the market. He wants to create an alternative channel with sports apparel and sport goods (SASG) chain. Though he has not been assigned the job but on his own he talked with Les about the proposal just without any details. The actual problem starts here. His proposal has not been paid proper response and he feels disheartened. Due to his ambitions he talked to Keren his immediate boss who again sent him to Les. Les again told him to wait for the results from U.S. market. Now he approached to Dave with strong re commendation of Keren. Due to that pressure Les called him but again he was not with complete proposals. After 2 weeks he again met with LES with proposals and researched information and les paid proper attention to him and signaled him to go ahead. But again he has never involved les directly in the project and just provided him the overview of the progress through e-mails. Prior to last meeting before contract has to be executed Les willingly asked for participation. Rick wanted to appraised the complete situation before final meeting but only managed to talk just prior to meeting and the objection raised by Les about pricing which has been an important issue because stores are selling at $4.99 where as SASG has been priced $5.99 and the experience of US has not been good for the company. So it has to be properly answered. So in the last presentation before contract being executed Les objected on the price issue and the client became susceptible to execute the contract and it has opened up the problem that existed in the sales management team at the top level. The main problem which has been told by Les that Rick is not a team player and pursuing his personal agenda to promote himself keeping behind the companies long term goals, objectives and relationship with their clients. While Rick thought that Les has spoiled his efforts due to his rivalry and inherent autocratic behaviour. He was very near to strike a good deal for the company but Les spoiled the whole effort. So it is the problem of two personality types one who willing to perform on any situation not taking the overall view about the deal seriously and trying to implement his own agenda while the other one having more experience in the field like to build long term relationship with client and before considering any contract wants to involve whole team and to discuss all the issues thoroughly. Analysis: Going through the whole case study it has been quite evident that top

Management of Human Resources Class Discussion wk2 Assignment

Management of Human Resources Class Discussion wk2 - Assignment Example The engaging of the Human Resource to the external environment is more challenging as they have to cover more area than the usual internal environment capacity that they are familiar with. Meeting external responsibilities means more time, more resources, and more responsibilities as it is an expansive area that requires more attention to be able to handle the environment more efficiently. These will ensure a smooth transition and cooperation in making the relevant adjustment to the organizational structure response to external issues (Mabey, 2012).Taking the first step to deal with the issues is better than waiting the problem to catch up with the organization. Engaging in the external issues gives an insight and understanding of the environment the organization is existing in and how to prepare for the impacts that will cause either positive or negative. The economic globalization and political landscape has completely transformed the shape of the current Human Resource management. The competition is high, and one wrong move can destroy the whole organization (Noe, 2006). The Human Resource has to be keen on political matters because they are very sensitive and might affect the entire organization either negatively or positively The Human Resource has to engage a Rights Dispute for employees who are hired in unfair labor conditions.The Human Resource has to file a complaint with the relevant authority that will protect him from whistleblowers.The Human Resource has to exercise their legal rights as an employee by contacting OSHA immediately because the complaint must be filed within the legal time limits.These are to ensure that the company follows the stipulated laws that are laid down for favorable conditions of the workers (Gilbert,

Bond Pricing and Interest Rates

Bond Pricing and Interest Rates Bond Pricing And The Term Structure Of Interest Rates: A New Methodology For Contingent Claims Valuation We read the paper Bond pricing and the term structure of interest rates by Heath, Jarrow, and Morton. Their paper presents a theory for valuing contingent claims under a stochastic term structure of interest rates. The methodology takes as given an initial forward rate curve and a family of potential stochastic processes for its subsequent movements. A no arbitrage condition restricts this family of processes yielding valuation formulae for interest rate sensitive contingent claims which do not explicitly depend on the market prices of risk. In relation to the term structure of interest rates, arbitrage pricing theory has two purposes. The first is to price all zero coupon (default free) bonds of varying maturities from a finite number of economic fundamentals, called state variables. The second, is to price all interest rate sensitive contingent claims, taking as given the prices of the zero coupon bonds. The primary contribution of this paper, however, is a new methodology for solving the second problem, i.e., the pricing of interest rate sensitive contingent claims given the prices of all zero coupon bonds. The methodology is new because (i) it imposes its stochastic structure directly on the evolution of the forward rate curve, (ii) it does not require an inversion of the term structure to eliminate the market prices of risk from contingent claim values, and (iii) it has a stochastic spot rate process with multiple stochastic factors influencing the term structure. The model can be used to consistently price (and hedge) all contingent claims (American or European) on the term structure, and it is derived from necessary and (more importantly) sufficient conditions for the absence of arbitrage. The Difference Between Duration And Maturity In Bonds Based on the article: Bond Price Volatility and Term to Maturity: A generalized Re-specification Most investors and especially we who are taking the course Fixed Income Securities are familiar with the bonds maturity. The article wants to illustrate why we cant just rely on the length of maturity when estimating how volatile the price for a certain bond is. As we have read before during the course, there is a common and accepted thumb rule that tells us that for a given change in yields, the price change for the bond will be greater the longer the term to maturity is. Therefore I first of all want to highlight the difference between the duration and maturity. Firstly I will have a short explanation of these two terms and further I will continue this paper by explain some important parts from the article. When it comes to maturity, we all know the maturity is the point in time when the investor receives back the principal. We also know that a bond will increase in value, that is, the price of the bond will increase, if the interest on the market decrease and vice versa. From this statement above, it may be clear that the longer maturity, the more changes in the interest rates can be waited and the more volatile the bond price will be. The duration of a bond will show how sensitive a bonds price is to changes in the interest rate. Its a measurement for how much the bond price will change due to a one percentage change in the interest rate on the market. Duration of 7 means for instance that if the interest rate raises by one percentage means that the price of the bond will fall 7 percentages. The duration is simply the weighted average amount of time that it takes for the investor to be repaid all cash that is both the coupon payments and the end, principal payment. Therefore the duration will always be less than the maturity, except for zero-coupon bonds where they will be equal. These two properties are important when it comes to duration: The first one is that the longer the maturity, the higher the duration. The second one is that the lower the coupon payment the higher the duration. With these facts above, I want to highlight the important aspect of this what the article goes through. Indeed, the price volatility is connected to the time structure of the bond, but its not direct mathematically related to the maturity in a pure simple way. Since there are evidence that duration is more accurate, the authors for the article wants to generalize the following: For a given basis point change in market yield, percentage changes in bond prices vary proportionally with the duration and are greater, the greater the duration of the bond. There is also true that there is an inverse relationship between duration and coupon. This means that a higher coupon bond will automatically be seen as a shorter-term bond than a bond that has a lower coupon payment, even if they in fact have the same maturity period. Furthermore, this means that a comparison of these bonds with equal maturity will underestimate the default risk premium in periods of upward sloping yield curves and also overestimate the premium in periods of downward sloping yield curves. For instance, referred to the above information, there is evidence that the duration varies inversely with coupon rates. A 50 year 8 percent coupon bond, yielding 6 percent, have approximately the same duration as a 20 year 2 percent coupon bond yielding the same amount of 6 percent. To sum up the article and this paper, I want to highlight the complexity of the relationship between the bond price volatility and the maturity, as well as the relation between then bond value and the duration, even if I believe that duration is a more accurate measurement of price volatility. Expectations, Bond Prices, And The Term Structure Of Interest Rates The term structure of interest rates is of great importance when dealing with bonds, since the interest rate significantly affects the bond price. Burton G. Malkiel examines the relationship between market interest rates and bond prices in his article Expectations, Bond Prices, and the Term Structure of Interest Rates, where he takes the position that Lutz theory of Basic Behavioural postulate is correct and important in understanding the behaviour of market interest rates of securities with different term to maturity. Lutz says that investors decide whether to invest in bond based on their expectation of future short rates, since they are not able to predict long term rates. Malkiel furthermore aims to ease the principle hypothesis by Hicks and Keynes, that future prises are biased expectations of future spot prices. A bonds market price or value is determined by four factors: the face value of the bond; the coupon or interest paid periodically to the bondholder; the effective interest rate per period; and the number of years to maturity. The lower interest rate, the higher the bond price hence the significant relationship between the two factors. The term structure in this sense is important since the investor wants to choose the term and bond that is most beneficial. According to Malkiel, the term structure is based on investors expectations, which is influenced by the normal range of interest rates. If interest rates appear to be very high relative to the normal range, investors may expect that interests will fall and vice versa. The term structure problem is furthermore analysed with a combination of spot and forward trading, resulting in longer term rates as combinations of relevant forward short rates: (1 + R2)2 = (1+r1)(1+r2). When long-term average rates are below the current short rate future short-term rates are expected to fall, and conversely, long rates will exceed the current short rate if future short rates are expected to rise. Additionally, when interest rates are believed to be high in relation to historical averages, investors will prefer long-term bonds while issuers prefer to sell short-term securities, whilst low interest rates will encourage investors to buy shorts and issuers to sell longs. Supporting Lutzs theory, Malkiel makes the conclusion that short and intermediate areas of the yield curve exhibit more dramatic responses to changes in expectations. This is due to the fact that investors cannot predict the long term rates; they only interpret the near past and current market conditions. What is also worth mentioning is that the term structure fluctuates more between e.g. one to two years, and three to six years, compared to a very long period of time, e.g. thirty-four and sixty-eight years. This is also due to the fact that it is difficult to predict changes in interest rates for such a far away future. This furthermore explains that the yield curve tends to flatten out the longer term to maturity. To conclude, investors will choose to purchase bonds depending on their expectations of how interest rates will change in the near and long-term future, the term-structure, and that presumably would be most beneficial in terms of bond price and returns. Does Duration Extension Enhance Long-Term Expected Returns? The articles main purpose is to give investors important information regarding duration and if you can gain a profit or not in the long-term. The author is using empirical evidence mainly from the U.S. Treasury bond market over the past 25 years. All the results of the past returns depend on the interest rate trend in the period the authors are looking at. The focus in the article lies on the long-run expected return differentials across bonds with different maturities. The risk premium is defined as the long-term return exceeding short-term risk-less rate. The writer means that the one-year bill earns on average 150 basis points higher return than one-month bill and after two years the yield curve will remain a constant line. In other words the return of the bill will stay reasonably the same at two years but recall that long-term bonds are riskier than short-term bonds because it is difficult to predict the future. In other words it is uncertain how much the bonds are worth in the long-term because there are many different causes that affect the value in the future. The article discusses the bond risk premium using six theories. There are three classic term structure hypotheses. The first is called pure expectations which means assuming that there is no risk premium. The second is the liquidity/risk hypothesis explaining the compensation for return volatility. The third explains the increase and decrease with duration depending on time horizon called the preferred habitat theory. Ilmanen presents two modern asset pricing theories. One that explains the risk premium proportional to return volatility and the other one that clarifies CAPM. The latter explains that the risk of assets depends on the sensitivity to aggregate wealth as in stock market sensitivity (ÃŽ ² correlation) and risk premium (ÃŽ ² Market risk premium) which in turn depends on market volatility and risk aversion level. Equilibrium model means assets performing poorly in bad times should earn positive risk premium while assets performing well are accepted for low yields but other non-risk related factors are also mentioned. To sum up the article long-term bonds are riskier than short-term bonds and investors earn positive risk premium for bearing this risk. Various models specify that expected returns are linear in duration and return volatility but other factors may contribute. References Longstaff, F. A., and E. S. Schwarz (1992), Interest Rate Volatility and Term Structure: A Two-Factor General Equilibrium Model, Journal of Finance, Vol. 47(4), pp. 1259-1282. Heath, D., R. Jarrow, and A. Morton (1992), Bond Pricing and Term Structure of Interest Rates: A New Methodology for Contingent Claims Valuation, Econometrica, Vol. 60(1), pp. 77-105. Hopewell, M. H., and G. G. Kaufman (1973), Bond Price Volatility and Term to Maturity: A Generalized Re-specification, The American Economic Review, Vol. 63(4), pp. 749-753. Malkiel, B. G. (1962), Expectations, Bond Prices, and Term Structure of Interest rates, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 76(2), pp. 197-218. Ilmanen, A., (1996), Does Duration Extension Enhance Long-term Expected Returns? Journal of Fixed Income, September, pp. 23-36.

The Colliding Dynamics of Class Structure Essay -- Social Studies

The rigidity of class structure is the culprit for the vast number of inequities in society. Power is concentrated in the hands of a small sector; leaving a few individuals to have more authority and influence, in comparison to others. The construction of class structure identifies the way groups are divided into social positions. Differences stemming from social position are further exemplified by the accessibility to valuable resources–such as wealth, education, occupation, and status. Those with distinguished command in society have access to these increasingly wide ranges of resources, which may be present in limited forms to the less powerful. Used as a device of supremacy, power is a style of control when the basis is acquiring these societal possessions. Even though class structure is considered to be fluid in nature, for some it is a complex web of entanglements hard to deal with it. Groups who suffer from social and material deprivations are not doing so by choice, b ut hugely in part to economical and occupational factors. These prominent distinctions have led several to fall victim to the systems of hierarchy. Built within these schemes are the inequalities that arise due to one’s position; and captured inside are the outcomes that influence levels of individual, educational, and occupational independence. People who do observe the inequities between classes may feel the impact of social stratification in various ways. Similarly the dynamics of class structure are very significant elements found throughout the works of Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and Karl Marx. They are all in agreement that society host the series of conflicts underlying that of class structure. Class structure as a whole denotes differing realit... ...ist Feminism." Critical Sociology (Brill Academic Publishers) 25.2/3 (1999): 196-217. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Mar. 2012. Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One. Moscow. Progress Publishers, 1969, N. pag. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist- manifesto/index.htm. Web. 23 Apr. 2012. Orwell, George. "Shooting an Elephant". The Seagull Reader Essays. 2nd Edition. Ed. Joseph Kelly. New York. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2008. 243-250. Print. Peet, Richard. "Inequality and Poverty: A Marxist-Geographic Theory." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 65.4 (1975): 564-571. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Mar. 2012. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. New York. Quality Paperback Book Club, 1992. Print. Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. New York. Quality Paperback Book Club, 1992. Print.