Debates on Advertising Essay

In the text , introduction to mass communication media literacy and culture, Stanley Baran states specific complaints about advertising. He states that advertising is intrusive , deceptive, exploits children, and demean and corrupts culture. Ads can be intrusive because they are everywhere and interfere with and alters our experience. It can be deceptive because the ads implicitly and sometimes explicitly says that it came improve someone’s lives through a purchase of a product. Ads also exploit children because they are targeted. There are ads that are specifically mind blowing go them. Finally, ads demanding and corrupts culture by appealing to human values and needs. Advertisers accomplish this goal by using the AIDA approach and consumer culture. The AIDA approach is used to persuade consumers and the consumer culture is used to impose new definitions that serve the advertiser and not the cultures important aspects of our lives. The disagreements that are shown by Baran in Chapter 12 are legitimate. The arguments that are provided supports the complaints given. I believe the accusations that support advertising are tolerable. Advertising is everywhere and interferes with and alters our experience. Advertising is all over the world. Ads does not have to be actual billboards or commercials on television. The clothes that we wear and the products that we use are also advertisements. This is also called 360-marketing. Advertising can also be deceptive. There are many products in our society where it is supposed to change out lives. For example, â€Å"AXE† , a male shampoo, is supposed to attract more women if you wear it. These products can be deceiving to our culture because of this. The advertisers know that people in society want an excitement in their lives , so to improve that they create products that excite the consumers. I also think that advertisements do exploit children. Ads specially create ads for children because they are the influence on their parents. This means that the advertisers will use the children to their advantage to get their products brought. For example , when children see a product that’s eye catching to them , they will beg their parents to buy that product which will eventually happen because the parents would not want to keep hearing their children beg. Lastly , advertisements does demean and corrupt our culture. I believe this is true because advertisements come about to seek products that we need. They attract us by producing products that we use everyday. For an example , we use soap everyday to wash our bodies. The advertisers will produce many soap ads to intrigue us to buy a particular soap. Also, producers create many soaps , with different scents to give us the idea that it will make you smell better which leads back to the idea of advertisements being deceptive. This shows that advertisers do demean and corrupt our culture.The article â€Å"Boosting Smoking Among Children† supports the complaint of advertising exploiting children. In the article RJR Nabisco created a new campaign for its camel brand cigarettes. Anti smoking groups accused the company of attacking young smokers as they saw Joe Camel repeating the same path as to smoke go an† untapped market†. It was stated by Dr. Joseph DiFranza that,† children as young as 3 years old could recognize Joe, and more kids could identify him than could identify Mickey Mouse†(page 335). DiFranza researched that Joe camel was the single most recognizable logo in the country. This shows that advertisements connect to children because they can realize a character at the age of 3. The children do not understand what is going on , but the advertisers know that the parents will buy their cigarettes because of the children. Also , when the children get older , the camel on the cigarette box will be more common and if decided to smoke they would buy only that product because they are used to seeing it. The Ad Council and Media Foundation does challenge common practices of the advertising industry by creating â€Å"uncommercials†. Uncommercials are commercials ,at no cost if used, challenge known actual commercials. In the article ,†Challenging Advertising: Ad Busters and Uncommercials† it is stated that ,†those who wish to use them to , as the Media Foundation likes to call it, â€Å"culture jam,† or challenge the prevailing commercial culture†(page 336). This shows that the uncommercials are used to show that the advertisements demean and corrupt out culture. This is done by showing and telling us that we need to buy a certain product to live. It also connects to the complaint that advertisements are deceptive. This is because seeing that we supposedly need a certain product in our life makes us want to buy the product not knowing that it is just for money.In the documentaries â€Å"Consuming Kids† and â€Å"Killing Us Softly 4† shows us the specific complaints against advertising. In â€Å"consuming kids† it was showed that children are targeted in many wa ys. This connects to the idea that advertisements exploit children because in the documentary it is shown that the children do influence parents. For example, a new car was brought because the children were attracted and begged their parents to buy it because of what was inside. The parents do not realize that the children are why their money is spent on unnecessary things. In â€Å"Killing Us Softly 4† it was shown that advertisements demean and corrupts our culture because women are portrayed and used as an object to sell products. Also in the documentaries they tell the society how to prevent the unbalanced advertising. In â€Å"Consuming kids â€Å"†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. In â€Å"Killing Us Softly 4 † lady name stated that the society should , † become aware and pay attention , teach media literacy in school, protest and speak out about the problem , deface ads, and get involved and change the attitudes that are presented for us†. This shows that there are ways that we can maneuver around the pile up of advertisements. In conclusion , the advertising industries received many complaints on the ways they attack consumers. The reasons stated were because of advertisements being intrusive , deceptive, exploiting children and demeaning and corrupting our culture. AIDA approach and consumer culture helped these complaints conquer their goal. This created a controversy between industries and social groups. The social groups were the ones who complain about these problems.

Baroque Composers

This meaner you complete all work in a word processing document (e. G. , Microsoft Word) and attach the file using the dropped tool. Use the Unit 5: Text Questions dropped basket. The answers to the Review & Critical Thinking questions are worth 10 points. Unit Five: Text Questions Review Questions 1 . What are figured bass and basso continuo? How are they related? 2. What is ornamentation? 3. What is an oratorio? How does it differ from an opera? 4. What is an orchestra? How did the development of orchestras influence Baroque music? 5. What is an instrumental suite? Critical Thinking Questions .What are the characteristics of Baroque music? How would you describe Baroque 2. Choose one of the composers discussed in the unit and listen to several of the composer's works. Which works did you listen to? How would you describe this composer's music? Why do you think this composer was an influential figure in Baroque music? 3. How did composers and musicians think about themselves during the Baroque period? How did this influence the music that they created? 4. What advantages and disadvantages did Baroque composers have in the patronage system? What did they gain from this practice?What limitations did it place on them? 5. Baroque music often tried to capture and reflect a particular emotion or feeling. Choose one of the musical works in the unit. Identify the work that you chose. What feeling or emotion is the composer trying to capture or reflect in the work? What aspects of the music lead you to this emotion or feeling? Discussion Questions Please post questions and answers on the UNIT FIVE discussion boards. Unless otherwise instructed, you should submit at least one full paragraph for each question. Each discussion assignment is worth 5 points.

A Vietnam Country Review History Essay

A Vietnam Country Review History Essay Vietnam as we know is approximately 331,688 km ² in area but it does not include the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa islands, it is larger than Italy and almost the same size as Germany. Vietnam is located in South East Asia, bordered to the north near China, to the west near Laos and Cambodia and to the east, by the Pacific Ocean. The capital of Vietnam is Hanoi, it is located in the north and is the second largest city in Vietnam, as the capital of Vietnam for almost a thousand years now, and Hanoi is considered to be one of the cultural centres of Vietnam, where most of the Vietnamese dynasties had left behind their imprint. After that I will summarize some culture of Vietnam. First of all, the Culture of Vietnam, or in particular the culture of the Kinh ethnic origin in the northern Vietnam, is one of the oldest cultures in the Pacific region. Although so, the major influence is China, Vietnam’s culture had created a lot of features, quite similar to the other people of East Asi a and other countries in the Pacific Ocean (such as Cambodia , Laos and Thailand) that have suffered a major cultural influence by India. Nowadays, the culture of Vietnam has changed from time to time, it is a special blend of the many ancient cultures with the indigenous culture of the Vietnamese. Other than the influence of China, the cultures of the Vietnamese people are also influenced by the Western culture. Some examples of the Vietnamese culture are: food, apparel, religion, and the cultural territory. Body Climate First of all I will talk about the climate in the south of Vietnam, it is located in the tropical monsoon equatorial so it has a very high temperature throughout the year and it only has two seasons, which are rainy and dry. The rainy season begins from the month of May to November and dry season will begin from the month of December to April the following year. Because the south rainy season is longer than the dry season, so this has some sort of influence in the change of culture I ways of food to the culture in the south, the central, and the north of Vietnam. As we know the cuisine of Vietnam is very famous around the world, Ho Chi Minh City’s cuisine is also partly reflected by the cultural life and natural minerals, its cuisine is influenced by the French cuisine, Cambodian cuisine and the Thai cuisine. Today, the specialties are easily found at Ho Chi Minh, it is a combination of the food from the North, Middle, South and international cuisines, for example: sour soup is a combination of the sour salty of the north, spicy peppers of the central, and sweet fresh of the south. Another example is the beef steaks which are thinner and more mature and it is also spicier vegetables served with it compared to France. By contract, the nature of the part middle of Vietnam is it has a very hard climate, it is influenced by the sea breezes as well as the mountain winds. The people living here are austere and rich energetic. The Central Foo d has food that are very spicy, very spicy-hot, as positive (for the cold when it comes to soaking in water and odor resistant nature of the seafood capital nature-sound welding) and it is very salty. The food materials are often simple, but if you ever have the opportunity to really enjoy, it will be an experience that will never be forgotten.

Central Banks and Monetary Policy Research Paper

Central Banks and Monetary Policy - Research Paper Example There are four main objectives of the central bank such as stable inflation, high and stable real growth, stable interest rates and stable exchange rates (Almoayed Group, 2007).   It will also address how the central bank monitors the money supply and the numerous tools of the monetary control will also be discussed in this study. The most significant part of this research paper is to study the association between price stability as well as other goals of the central bank. The behavior of the monetary aggregates, inflation as well as output in the context of UAE will also be discussed in a detailed way in this study. Last but not the least, the research study will endeavor to review the performance of the UAE central bank and discussion regarding interest rate as well as exchange rate stability in the UAE will be explained in brief. 1. Discuss briefly the five objectives of central banks. In their pursuit of maintaining price stability, central banks are said to manage the money su pply process. The central bank in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was set up in the year 1980 and is considered to be the chief regulatory as well as the supervisory body with regard to the overall banking industry. The central banks of the UAE are believed to exert increasingly stringent vigilance on the financial institutions. Apart from this, the main objectives of the central banks operating in the UAE region are principally concentrated on issuing currencies, suggesting the government regarding the monetary as well as the financial issues, acting as the last resort lender for the other member banks and likewise, it is held to be responsible for managing the supply of money in the market and ascertain the way an economy operates. The initial objective of the central banks have been identified as being the responsible authority is to set up and preserve financial stability within the economy or rather stable real growth. It is since central banks are known to possess quite inclusi ve information regarding the risks in terms of financial stability with the assistance of its research as well as surveillance activities. The second objective of the central banks has been stated as the exercise of its essential roles for promoting and monitoring the reliability of the various financial institutions, particularly the banks since they are known to enjoy regulatory as well as supervisory control over those institutions. The third main objective of the central banks is the application of their respective tools to make certain of the prevalence of price stability such as the functions related to the open market and the interest rates. The tools are regarded as the effectual instruments for the purpose of manipulating financial stability through the intermediary procedures along with manipulating the aspect of demand with regard to the economy (Almoayed Group, 2007). The fourth objective of the central banks is to discharge its role as the ‘lender of the last reso rt’.

Rhetorical analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 2

Rhetorical analysis - Essay Example As a function of this particular means of analysis, this student will seek to provide feedback and analysis of personal reaction, a description and discussion of the audience that this announcement is appealing to, the underlying purpose, and the means by which individuals within the announcement are ultimately represented. In seeking to address each of these rhetorical issues, the student can hope to gain a more appropriate and well nuanced understanding of the motives and mechanisms that lie at the very heart of this specific public service announcement. Furthermore, by attempting to draw inference on each of these issues, it is the hope of this student that the reader and/or researcher will better to be able to understanding the public service announcement through the lens of analysis which will be presented. Firstly, with regards to this student’s reaction to the given piece, it was one that was immediately drawn to the high definition portrayal of a given setting with see mingly infinite small details occurring in rapid order within the field of vision of the viewer. This particular technique helped to build the suspense, in conjunction with the melodramatic music which was playing throughout the Public Service Announcement (PSA), and lead the viewer to focus solely on trying to locate the â€Å"reportable incident† that the text, speech, music, and setting foreboded. Similarly, with respect to the given audience for this Public Service Announcement (PSA), the viewer can assume that this extends to all citizens of responsible age. Such a broad generalization can of course be made due to the nature of the information that the PSA is trying to integrate with the viewer. As such, maximizing shareholder input is of course a primary interest to the individuals responsible for making the film (See Something Say Something Campaign, 3). Although each of the rhetorical levels of analysis which will herein be included are important, it is arguable that the very most important one is that of the rhetorical appeals that the PSA makes upon the viewer. The most powerful of these is the way that the PSA tugs upon the emotions of the viewer. This is affected by representing situations in a seemingly normal way; however, through utilizing sinister motives, references to the prior attacks of September 11th, the way in which our current world has changed, and the strong and ever-present feeling that there is something lurking beneath the surface, the PSA is able to engage the emotions of the viewer in a way that would otherwise not be possible. Moreover, by using images and slight of hand camera work that tells a story within a story which ultimately has a connection to a larger story (terrorism), the viewer is even further engaged as to the means whereby they can stand to affect a difference on this action being perpetrated within the world in which they live. This is interesting and powerful due to the fact that the PSA does not make any mention of a particular time or place. Instead, the instance itself and the ramifications thereof is enough to engage the shareholder to give up information to the authorities as a function of protecting themselves and society. With regards to the purpose, as has been stated up until this point, the purpose is to shock the viewer and spur a degree of future action based upon the representations that are alluded to on the screen. In this way, the filmmakers seek to

Environmental Issues Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Environmental Issues - Essay Example The third issue discussed is the ecosystem pricing of goods and services. The fourth outlines the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's position against Precautionary Principle. The last and fifth issue discussed in the paper is paraphrasing the transition to organic agriculture. This paper, therefore, gives a clear and understandable summary of all the issues as discussed in the book. Issue 1 - Precautionary Principle In the book, the argument occurs between Nancy Myers who supports the issue while Goldstein Bernard argues negatively towards the issue. The outline of disagreement between the two principle contributors teaches more about the argument and acts as an analysis of the same. The first disagreement is the beliefs of Nancy Meyer about precautionary principle justifies that the people have a right to know the risks behind the choices intended to make and thus be cautious in exchange of benefits. This gives the people a chance to know as much as possible the dangers on any action. Accor ding to Nancy, the manufacturers increase the possibilities of choosing the options which aim at reducing the risks as a safer alternative to the consumers. On his side, Goldstein Bernard argues that precautionary principle cannot be classified as a threat to the toxicological science. He bases the argument on the fact that, most definitions lack when considering precautionary principle. Another disagreement between Nancy Meyer and Goldstein Bernard is on the risk assessment. There had been arguments in the past that precautionary principle is not needed by the people. Nancy Meyer, on the other hand, argues in a different perspective that risk assessment has been used to derail the application of the precautionary actions appropriately. According to Stein (2000), it is a fact that the assessments of the risks require the decision makers to gather enough information to make the decision. These norms end up in management of the risks rather than preventing them. Nancy’s words w ere once justified by Thompson (2001), who concluded that the standard risk assessment can only be useful in high conditions of uncertainty. This is because it can be utilized to in helping in establishment of better alternative to the technologies which are dangerous. In contrast to the views of Nancy, Goldstein Bernard argues that there are different actions that one can take as a move to precaution. He says that it would be advantageous for one to consider some of the actions under the prevention nomenclature. Goldstein Bernard classifies the prevention actions as primary and secondary prevention. The assumption of the primary preventions is that, there is no problem when starting e.g. a person starting smoking where no cigarettes are produced. He continues to argue that there are no initial problems reported at the initial stage and the primary prevention should, thus, aim in prevention of any action which might trigger problems later. On the other hand, Goldstein Bernard explai ns the secondary prevention to depend on the early discovery of the problems. For example, diagnosing the high blood pressure before the patients gets a stroke. Goldstein Bernard arguments boldly explain that the actions taken as a result of ecological risk assessment and management happens because of being secondary prevention. This is especially when the problem is related to the chemicals which are known to be toxic. There is another

Sociology SGY360 - Weekly answers (weeks 2 to 12), info ready and easy Essay

Sociology SGY360 - Weekly answers (weeks 2 to 12), info ready and easy to do - Essay Example cording to Beck and Beck-Gernsheim the daily life of parents is becoming instrumentalized as brining up a child is considered a science and every move of the parents even playing and cuddling are a part of learning. 2. Children are valued and loved and get a lot of affection from parents, however they create distress for parents as well, since usually children in a home increase economic pressure and, interfere with support between spouses and create marital tensions. 2. According to Loseke, the sociological perspective of domestic violence is less popular than the psychological view because the psychological view gives simple ideas to complicated situations. Also, according to Loseke psychological theories pertain only to people who are objects of extreme violence. Lastly, he believes that sociological theories are less popular than psychological theories because they do not challenge people to think of the relationship between violence and a social

Cultural differences between east and west Germany (1945 - 1961) Research Proposal

Cultural differences between east and west Germany (1945 - 1961) - Research Proposal Example at interest as there are many people who do not understand the reason East and the West Germans behave differently, and the West is more developed than the East especially in governing matters1. History plays a great role in shaping communities and Germany was not an exception especially between 1948 and 1961when most of the differences existed. The study will enlighten many readers and the future researchers and help them understand the problems that faced countries and communities in the earlier times. Germany participated in the killing of many Jews due to racism that characterized the communities3. The importance issues for discussion in this proposal are the highlights of the cultural issues such as the military culture between the East and the West Germany some of which exist today5. There was a strong social and collective mentality in the communist society in the East Germany, unlike West Germans who are individualistic. Religion also brought some differences in that there were few believers in the East in which many are atheist and unreligious4. In West Germany, more people were religious and attended the church and other worship places. The hobbies for the two regions were also different with East Germany loving nudism a lot more than West Germans do. Racism was also common in East Germany, it was rare to find foreigners, and seclusion for the few who existed was common5. The Nazi party persecuted many Jews, killed millions, and split their families by offering the convenient divorce. Even today, racism exists in the East more than it does in the West Germany, for instan ce, the Nazi dressing code that identified them for discrimination4. There are various research methods to use in this proposal to discuss the differences, which exist in the two communities in Germany. First, examination of the available primary sources and lecture notes will assist in gathering enough literature for the study. Secondary sources such as academic journals and other

Entrepreneurship in the Global Environment Essay

Entrepreneurship in the Global Environment - Essay Example Both for commercial and non-commercial purposes, internet media sites or companies, supported social media, have turned out to be giant multinational firms. Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is one, among the five skilful and innovative co-founders of Facebook. As recorded in April 2013, Zuckerberg had become the chief executive and the chairman of Facebook Inc. Thus, Zuckerberg is a corporate entrepreneur of the famous publicly traded company (in National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations). Zuckerberg is the living example that emphasizes the fact that a common student of Harvard University can actually be creative enough to promote such a famous company and acquire a net worth of about US $19 billion. Zuckerberg belonged to a middle income family in White Plains, New York. His mother was a psychiatrist and his father was a doctor. Right from his early age, he had special interest in computer related affairs. At the age of 12 years, he used the software of Atari BASIC to m ake a special message program named â€Å"Zucknet†. Despite his interest in computers, Zuckerberg had excelled in literature studies. In his school life, he had invented the special music software named â€Å"Synapse†. ... In his university life, Zuckerberg had introduced a special program named â€Å"CourseMatch†. This software helped the students to find their classes on the basis of the different selected sources. Later on, he even invented special software that was related to social networking. Finally, with the help of some of his friends, Zuckerberg invented the special software of Facebook within his university days. Overtime, this social network has become popular among millions of users, thereby turning Zuckerberg into a corporate business entrepreneur (Migliorisi and College, n.d.). According to the view of the researcher, Zuckerberg sets the best example of an entrepreneur. It is highly rational to analyze his entrepreneurial skills. Zuckerberg even possess high quality of personal skills. An entrepreneur would only be successful in the long run if he has good personal habits and knowledge. The above profile of the person explains that he has the best of knowledge and personal skills that are all required for an entrepreneur. He also possesses the crucial skill of effective communication which facilitates the promotion of his invention and creativity to millions of individuals today. Zuckerberg is a living legend in the business world and his contribution in the corporate, social and economic fields is priceless. Facebook, in the current epoch, is not only used for the purpose of social communication, but is also valid for the usage of business-to-business as well as business-to-consumer transactions. Zuckerberg is not only creative in nature, but is also a good leader in the industry. He is the best living example that enumerates the true power of human capital in the world. Similarly like economic capital, produced means of production, human

My Version of Happiness Essay Example for Free

My Version of Happiness Essay What is happiness? For me, with my sixteen years of life as my basis to define what it is, I think happiness is making friends, meeting new people, enjoying what you have, loving what you have, accepting what you have, enjoying what youre doing, being in a situation that youll remember and laugh at later on, trying to smile, unconditional love, irrepressible smiling, having a crush, pursuing and finding success in pursuit, learning new things the easy way, witnessing something funny, sugar rush, and many other things. Basically, at this moment, happiness, for me, is acceptance, hoping, and believing. I say that because those are the things that have made me happy. Since happiness is subjective, or at least I find it to be so, I know that happiness, for me, is more often than not, ephemeral. It is spontaneous. It causes you to be so as well. It comes when you expect it and when you dont. It is more beautiful in the latter. Some people devote their entire existence to finding it. I think, though, that it is like a dogs tail; if it is sought for like a tangible object, it will not be caught. Some people make sad attempts at trying to generalize what it is. Some people write books on how to acquire it. Like a step by step program, cookbook style. Some people live life waiting for it. Some people observe how other people respond to the temptation to be happy. I guess, Im part of those people, but if thats so, who observes us? Some people neglect happiness; they dont look for it, they doubt its existence. Some people try to find their purpose in the hope of finding happiness with it. Some people just live. Some people are always filled with it. Some people say they have found it. Some people think they have found it. Some people feign happiness. Some people try to know things to be able to know what happiness is. Some people try to justify their happiness. Some people buy things to become happy. Some people neglect being empty to be happy. Some people hide it. Some people write about its nature. Some people find other people, and happiness comes with them sometimes. I do all that, different approaches for different moments. Happiness is tricky thing, deadly as a drug, addicting like one, yet it is legal. It could be a state of mind, but it could just as well be someone or something.

Improving The Risk Return Performance Of Portfolios

Improving The Risk Return Performance Of Portfolios With the development of the Chinese capital market, more and more investors start to look for a more rational way to invest. To increase the investment return and decrease the risk, investors must learn to allocate their funds in order to diversify risk. However, due to the limited assets that can be invested in, the convenience and effectiveness of portfolio diversification must be studied. This paper mainly explores the function of futures in the ordinary stock portfolio through the study of risk-return performance. By comparing the efficient frontiers of different portfolios, the risk-return performance of the futures portfolio and mixed stock-futures portfolio is better than the stock only portfolio. Futures play an important role in upgrading the integrated portfolio of stock and futures. The results of this study provide investors with a feasible way to diversify their funds in multi-type investment portfolios, which is of great theoretical and practical significance. I. An introduction to Chinese capital market Ever since December 19, 1990, when Shanghai stock exchange opened, people become more and more interested in investing in the security market to make money. After twenty years, investing in stocks is a quite popular and important way for ordinary Chinese people to manage their money. However, stock market itself can not meet investors needs of diversifying risk and increase capital return, and investment diversification becomes a natural solution and guiding concept. Although twenty years have passed since Shanghai stock exchange came in existence, development of Chinese capital market is quite slow, with limited kinds of investment products. Lack of varieties of trading tools and incomplete structure of capital market products make it difficult to diversify in Chinese capital market. In developed capital markets such as Hong Kong, over 80% of financial derivative instruments in international financial market have been introduced. In stock market, the trading of index futures, options and warrants is quite active with a trending of exceeding the trading of spot market. Hong Kong bond market is even more diversified. Based on three basic kinds which are bond, note and certificate of deposits of fund-raising tools, many more complicated derivatives such as floating rate bonds, variable rate bonds, convertible bonds, credit card receivables, and the current debt instruments traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing has been increased to 129.(20 09) On the contrary, despite of stocks, there are few more than five years investment instruments in mainland China capital markets. The trading of 1-5 year instruments is also confined so that the available trading instruments are quite limited. As an emerging market the risk of stock market is higher than normal, both systematic risk and market risk. The systematic flaws in Chinese stock market such as no trades of state owned and corporation owned stocks and lack of index futures  [1]  or other kinds of hedging instruments make the whole stock exchange system more uncertain. The strong influence of state policy changing is also a reason for high uncertainty. As for the market risk, stock market is in sharp adjustment since the end of 2007. On the one hand, the overall risk has lowered a little; it is still too high compared with the mature capital markets. On the other hand, the low self-control ability of the participants involved in stock market makes the unsystematic risk highe r than average. Investing only in stock market can not successfully diversify risk. Considering the incompleteness of Chinese warrant market, futures have been chosen to diversify risk. Chinese future market also started in 1990. After six years of cleaning up and reconstruction (1995-2000), future market is in good development. In 2002, stock market turned down, which made part of the stock market capital switch to future market and made it a hot deal. This situation is quite similar to what happened in 2007-2008. Chinese future market developed from first pilot reform to rectification and now has entered a new stage of stable development. The legal operation and market discipline have been significantly improved. These features make futures possible as a component of portfolio. At present, research of the role of futures in the portfolio is focused on index futures and its hedging properties, while the research of commodity futures is focused on its function of price discovering. Adding futures into ordinary stock portfolio has not been well discussed so that this article will research on the performance of portfolio with commodity futures to see whether futures can effectively diversify risk and raise the return. How to optimize investment portfolio becomes the first and most important question that investors need to consider. Thus, modern portfolio theory becomes quite widely applied in practice. Portfolio means investors allocate certain amount of money to different kinds of assets in order to gain as much as possible return or to get the lowest possible risk. II. Past literature review in portfolio selection theories In 1959, Markowitz published his paper named Portfolio Selection: Eficient Diversification of Investments, which conducted a pioneering study of optimizing portfolio in the security market. Ever since then, modern finance and investment decision making comes into a quantitative stage. Portfolio theory is a set of theories and methods to help investors choose certain types and allocate their money from varieties of instruments to form efficient portfolio. In Markowitz theory, mean-variance model can be applied to any class of financial assets, as long as its expected return and the correlation of each asset can be accurately estimated (Markowitz, 1959). In his model, mean represents the expected return of an asset and its risk is represented by the variance. In order to use the Markowitz mean-variance method, we need to find the expected rate of return and risk. However, considering the ineffectiveness of Chinese stock market, the simple mean-variance is not applicable. Thus, more app ropriate method of evaluating return and risk needs to be found. Among these different evaluating methods, people tend to agree using expected return as a representative of future earnings. The return of a financial asset is consisted of two parts: intertemporal cash flows and capital premium (asset price changes during the holding period). The return that this article is going to use is the daily logarithmic rate of return, so the intertemporal cash flows can be ignored. The yield can be expressed as: Because logarithmic rate of return can be simply added which facilitate the data processing by software and its value can be any real numbers, this article will use logarithmic rate of return as the evaluation of asset yields. The simplest way to get the expected rate of return is calculating its average. Its flaws are also quite obvious: the result is far from accurate. In order to find more accurate estimation, we need to fit time series data to appropriate model and find the unconditional expectation of asset return. In 1980s and 1990s, lots of literatures have discussed the predictability of stock market and suitable model of predicting asset returns. M.Hashem Pesaran and Allan Timmermann (1995) found that the predictable components of stock returns are highly correlated with business cycle and the magnitude of shocks influences the model more than expected. But because what they studied is a long term relationship in the stock market, the results can only be a consultation. As for the daily stock return, many researches suggest that it shows significant dependence on former returns. Vedat Akgiray found in his paper about the conditional heteroscedasticity in stock returns that the probability distribu tion of return lag of s days is dependent on return today for several values of s (1989). He used daily returns on the CRSP (Center for Research in Security Prices) value-weighted and equal-weighted index from January 1963 to December 1986 to find that GARCH (1,1) shows the best fit and forecast ability among the econometric models. Noticing that the return he used is also logarithmic rate, the features of logarithmic rate in this article can be expected to be just like that in his study. Similar results can be obtained from other literatures. There is a positive relation between the expected risk premium and the predictable level of volatility and a negative relation between unpredictable component of stock market risk and excess holding period return (K. R. French et al, 1987). Although they can not determine a certain model to describe the exact relation (difficult to choose between ARIMA and GARCH-M), the relation between return and risk is quite significant. Studies about Chinese stock market also show evidence of fitting stock return data in ARMA or GARCH models. The daily returns of Shanghai and Shenzhen index indicates significant ARCH effect and the data fit in GARCH-M model well (Hua Tian and Jiahe Cao, 2003). It is reasonable to choose ARMA or GARCH model to simulate the actual stock movement. But as for the measurement of risk there are comparably various methods. Markowitz explained the mean-variance theory in his 1959 portfolio selection paper which introduced the statistical concept of expectation and variance into the study of investment portfolio. Under a certain probability distribution of returns, he used the average deviation from the average return of all the random returns. Thus, risk can be quantified with the expectation of return as return expected and standard deviation as the measurement of risk. Although variance has some easy to use features such as simple calculating and easy understanding, it is only an approximate measurement of risk. Using variance needs the distribution to be systematic and does not take the investors different feeling about capital gain and loss into consideration. Given the same amount of gain and loss, the pain of loss is usually larger than the happiness of the capital earnings. Variance ignores this asymmetry while LPM (lower partial moments) would be a better measurement. Harlow proposed this new indicator as a more accurate way to describe risk (1991). LPM is an abbreviation of lower partial moment, which P (partial) stands for its measuring only one side of the returns compared with the fundamental rate and L (lower) stands for less than fundamental rate (downside risk). LPM is a risk measurement which meets the requirements of Von Neumann Morgenstern utility function and can cover almost all peoples risk preference. It shows a new way to describe risk apart from the traditional utility measurement which is the function of variance or the standard deviation. The expression of LPM is: , where n is called the order of LPM indicators, representing the risk aversion of investors, and z is called fundamental rate of return which is the minimum return that investors would accept. Different values of n would change LPM into different measurements of risk and therefore meet different investors risk preference, from risk preference to risk neutral, then risk aversion. One advantage of LPM is that it can show only the pain or loss possibility when the return is lower than the expected. The other is it can show what investors different risk preference can affect the feelings to the same asset by simply changing the order n. LPM is less popular in evaluating volatility than variance as the calculation of LPM is more complicated. Another reason is that LPM must be calculated separately for each variable while variance can be added or processed under certain assumptions. This means people need to program it in order to use LPM with computer data processing programs. On the contrary, all the data processing programs have a default function of calculating variance. The way to evaluating the performance of asset portfolios is its efficient frontier. Every combination of risky assets can be plotted in a risk-return space, and those combinations with the highest return under the same risk or with the lowest risk under same return are called efficient portfolios. Usually, the upper part of the curve which describes risk-return features of efficient portfolios is called efficient frontier. Ordinary efficient frontier of investment portfolio is calculated by Markowitzs mean-variance method. This article will use LPM to substitute variance to calculate efficient frontier which makes it more like investors thoughts of risk. Merriken suggested that variance and LPM are suitable for the study of short-term investment (1994), which is quite popular in Chinese capital market. Based on the review of the related literatures, this article will use econometric models to get expectation daily return of stock and futures and both variance and LPM to calculate efficient frontiers to see whether adding futures into stocks would improve the performance of portfolios. III. Theoretical study and empirical data results i. Theories of econometric models and multi-type asset portfolio The econometric models used to estimating the expected return and risk are ARMA and GARCH models depending on the features of different stock and futures time series. ARMA is an abbreviation of autoregressive and moving average model, which is typically used in estimating autocorrelated time series. As what is mentioned in the literature, auto-correlation in daily logarithmic return is shown by theoretical study, and the empirical study of the realistic data also suggests this result. Typical ARMA model is consisted of two parts: AR (auto-regressive) part and MA (moving average) part. It is normally notified as ARMA (p, q) where p is the order of autoregressive part and q is the order of moving average part. AR part is written as: , where are the parameters and is the error term (usually white noise). The value of p suggests how many lags of are regressed on and therefore is a measurement of autocorrelation. For the need of stays stationary, usually we need the absolute value of is less than unit. MA part is written as: , where are the parameters, is the expectation of , and is still the error term (usually white noise). The value of q suggests how many error terms are included in the smoothing process of average and MA process is always a stationary time series. Thus, ARMA model is written as: , which is a combination of autoregressive part and moving average part. The value of parameters is generally determined by the least square method which minimized the residual error term. The value of p and q is chosen to better fit the model without too much lags or smoothing terms. The method used in this article is through the value of ACF (autocorrelation function, which is used to determine the order of moving average) and PACF (partial autocorrelation function, which is used to determine the order of autoregressive part). In spite of autocorrelation, there are other special features of financial time series data such as fat tails, extreme values and volatility clustering. Simple ARMA models assume that the error term is independently and identically distributed which does not meet the fact. Thus, Engle (1982) posed ARCH (Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity) model to analyze this volatility feature of financial data. Four years later, T.Bollerslev improved this model and made it GARCH which is a generalized ARCH model. GARCH model is developed specially for financial data and is widely used in the study of volatility. In addition to the normal econometric model, people use GARCH to better analyze and forecast volatility. GARCH model can be written as: where the first equation is a simple ARMA model, but this time is not an independently and identically distributed normal error term. is an independently and identically distributed error term and is called conditional variance which is estimated by the third equation (also an ARMA model). and are independent of each other and the distribution of is not restricted as normal but can be changed to satisfy actual situation. This makes GARCH a more accurate model in estimating the expected rate of return and risk. Hiroshi Konno and Katsunari Kobayashi (1997) made an attempt to add bonds into ordinary stock portfolio to find a new way of allocating investment. Their purpose is to extend the mean-variance model normally used in optimizing stock portfolios to integrated bond-stock portfolios. At that time, big scale mean-variance models were restricted in stock portfolios although the computer technology and mathematical methods in financial engineering developed fast. Although bonds seem always to be considered separately when people intend to invest in financial market, Hiroshi and Katsunari still want to add bonds into portfolios. The reason is that before 1980s, the return of bond was far less risky than that of stock due to the stable interest rate. However, after 1980s, interest rate became much more volatile and investors bore heavily loss and huge risks. Actually, the volatility of bonds at that time was even higher than that of stocks. Considering this, combining bonds and stocks into the same portfolio is of great realistic meanings. The method they used is mean-variance and mean-absolute deviation models where variance and absolute deviation are as the different measurement of risk. The results are also quite satisfied as adding bonds into stock portfolios can increase the expected return under the same risk level. Never the less, Raimond Maurer and Frank Reiner in 2001 also used this idea of multi-type asset portfolio to discuss the possible outcomes of adding real estate securities into international asset portfolios under a shortfall risk frame. They noticed the fact that financial time series data had its own features and the tradition way of evaluating risk using variance can not reflect what investors think in the reality. Therefore, LPM was introduced as the way of measuring risk to reflect the asymmetry in the rate of return of asset. They compared the situation in Germany and in US by calculating the efficient frontiers of common portfolios, then calculating the efficient frontiers of adding real estate securities into portfolios. Because they studied between different countries, Raimond Maurer and Frank Reiner also calculated the effects of hedging. The results are also quite satisfied as the efficient frontiers move to the left, especially for those high risk-averse investors in Germany. Also, hedging could improve the performance of portfolios, especially for the US investors. With hedging they can build investment portfolios with higher rate of return under a relatively low risk level. But as mentioned above in the introduction part, there are few commercial bonds besides the government bonds; the only possible type of asset besides stocks that can be added into investment portfolios is futures. This article will also calculate the efficient frontiers of stocks, futures and combined portfolios separately, using both variance and LPM as the measurement of risk. As to the number of assets that should be held in one portfolio, investors have different opinions. Most mutual funds in the US market hold more than 100 stocks. Although these over-sized investment portfolios may well diversified risks, the expected return can be just acceptable as higher operational fee are needed to maintain such a huge portfolio and these stocks usually contains some low return ones. Xianyi Lu (2006) discussed this question that how many stocks are suitable for Chinese investors to hold in a single portfolio. He constructed portfolios with different number of stocks to compare their risk-return performance. The measurement of risk he used is variance. He came to the conclusion that 20 stocks would be enough to diversify most of the risk. The close-up price of stock is quite easily obtained while to find suitable closing price of futures is somewhat tricky. Futures are contracts which specify certain quantity and quality of fundamental assets between two parties to trade at a specified date in the future with a price agreed today. Thus there can be various contracts with the same kind of fundamental asset in different delivery date. Considering the trading characteristics of Chinese future market, Chengjie Ge and Yong Liang from a Chinese fund called Guotai Junan tried to construct a continuous future contract to get the daily closing price in 2008. When a contract first comes into market, the transactions are quite few. One contract is traded most actively just three or four months before delivery date, as the coming of specified date the trading volume begins to fall quickly. Those investors, especially the speculators would only trade those contracts that so-called à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“dominant contractà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?. Thu s, each future contract is in good liquidity only for a short time period. A continuous future contract is selecting the most actively traded contract of same fundamental asset at the same time to form a new, artificial contract to get the continuous price time series of one asset. ii. Data collection and analysis This article uses daily closing price of stock and futures from the time period 04/01/2007 to 31/12/2008. The data is obtained from RESSET database  [4]   Futures chosen are copper, aluminum, rubber and fuel oil from Shanghai Future Exchange, corn and soybean meal from Dalian Future Exchange and cotton and wheat gluten from Zhengzhou Future Exchange. In order to get daily return we need to construct continuous future contracts by selecting the most active contracts. As to the 8 futures used in this article, the most active contracts of wheat gluten, soybean meal, cotton, fuel oil and corn are those contracts with delivery date four months before the current month (not accounting current month); the most transacted contracts of rubber, aluminum and copper are those with delivery date two months before the current month (still not accounting current month). For example, current time is 19970201, so the contract which should be selected for cotton is the 199705 contract whose delivery month is May 1997. When it comes to 19970301, the contract selected for cotton should be 199703, and so on, so forth. After constructing eight continuous future contracts, we can get the time series of close-up price. The calculation of logarithmic rate of return, variance and LPM is just like the stock data. Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics of futures like the mean, the standard deviation, and some others. As the bond market is not mature in China, the risk free rate that used in this article is the three-month central bank bill rate which is also from the RESSET database, same database as the closing price of stocks and futures. From the statistics in the table we can find that the logarithmic daily return of futures shows asymmetry and fat tails, far from the assumption of mean-variance model that the distribution of returns should be normal distribution, or at least a symmetric bell-shaped distribution. Thus, using variance or standard deviation or any other kind of symmetric statistics would be less accurate. Fitting data into econometric models should provide a better estimation of expected rate of return and risk. Table 2.1-2.4 and Table 3.1-3.3 show the estimation of coefficients using ARMA and GARCH models. The models of stock returns are mostly ARMA models, but of futures are half GARCH models and half ARMA models. Table 2 is the results of future data and table 3 is the results of stock data. From the table we can see that there are four futures which are better fit in GARCH models and for the other four, ARMA is enough as the residual series after ARMA does not show significant heteroscedasticity in error terms. As for stocks, none of the 19 stock time series show significant heteroscedasticity which means ARMA could describe the features of stock price series. One interesting finding is that only 11 stock price time series show the correlation effect while the other 8 stock price series seem to be random walk. Table 2.1 and Table 2.2 are the GARCH results of future returns. Cotton, soybean meal, aluminum and copper show significant auto correlated heteroscedasticity. The basic model that used to estimate the return is ARMA model, and the first two lags show the most correlation with current logarithmic rate of return. The null hypothesis for all the coefficient in the model is the coefficient equals zero. The constant terms in the models are not significant despite that of soybean meal whose p-value is 0.0202, which means we can reject the null hypothesis under a 5% confidence level. The reason for not able to reject the null hypothesis of constant terms equaling zero may be the absolute value of daily logarithmic rate of return is too small, usually under 0.01. In such a low level the normal test to calculating p-value may become not suitable. So the value of constant terms is still used in the ultimate model to calculate the estimation of expected return although we can not reject the po ssibility that it actually equals zero. Table 2.3 and Table 2.4 show the ARMA results of future returns. Wheat gluten, corn, fuel oil and rubber daily logarithmic rate of return are estimated by ARMA model. The null hypothesis is also that any coefficient equals zero with p-value stands for the probability of making mistakes when rejecting the null hypothesis. The problem is the same with that of GARCH models as the p-values are too large to reject. But still we accept this result and make forecast using the present model. In spite of the not-so-satisfying results in the constant term, the coefficients of AR term and MA term are quite significantly different from zero which can be tell from the p-values. This is also true in futures GARCH model and stocks ARMA models. The significance of correlations in logarithmic rate of return series matches the features of financial time series and is what we would like to expect when estimating these coefficients. There are 19 stock return series to be modeled, but only 11 of them shows autocorrelation with their lags. None of these shows significant heteroscedasticity in the error terms so the model chosen is ARMA model. The constant terms of each stock return model is smaller than that of future return model, and the p-value is bigger than 0.05 as expected. The current return of four stocks out of this eleven shows significant correlation with the six and seven lags, showing the existence of cycle effects in the stock market. For these four stocks, what happened in the week before affects the price of this week more compared with other time. Other seven stocks show the ordinary one or two lags correlation. The coefficients of AR and MA part are also of great significance and the null hypothesis can be rejected. For those 8 stocks which do not show the existence of autocorrelation, the processing method is to calculate the basic descriptive statistics such as mean and variance. This method may ignore the asymmetry and fat tails of the data, but as there is no good econometric model to estimate random walk series, this simple way has its own advantage and also of quite high accuracy in estimating the expected rate of return and risk. This article use the forecast value of each model as the expected rate of return, and the variance of the sample as the expected risk for the mean-variance model of investment portfolios. For those 4 GARCH future models, the expected risk is the forecast value of the error part model. As for those eight stocks whose logarithmic daily return series are random walk, simply use the mean as the expected rate of return and the variance as the expected rate of risk. LPM1 is using the three-month central bank bill rate as fundamental rate of return because of its risk-free characteristic. The mean-LPM model also uses the results of expected rate of return from the forecast of GARCH and ARMA models as the only change in this new model is the risk measurement from variance to LPM. Someone may argue that different econometric models could cause different estimation of expected rate of return, thus the results of efficient frontiers become not so convincing. The purpose of this article is to compare the efficient frontiers of different asset portfolios, trying to find the possible improvement of adding futures into the ordinary stock portfolios. The econometric estimation is used to construct Markowitzs mean-variance model. What can be seen from Table 2 and Table 3 is that most of the assets can be fitted into ARMA model. As a matter of fact, because the absolute value of daily logarithmic rate of return is too small, the difference of constant terms between GARCH and ARMA model for the same asset is very small that can be ignored. The calculation of efficient frontiers is using MATLAB financial tool box, and the original data is what has been done above. After calculating the correlation coefficient matrix of 19 stocks and 8 futures, there is not much correlation of each asset. In fact, most of the correlations coefficients are between 0.1 to 0.3, with some of them even to be negative correlated. It suggests that the risk diversify of investment portfolios should successful using these 27 assets according to the statement of Markowitz. 8 futures portfolio Stock and future portfolio (The green line is the efficient frontiers of 19 stocks portfolio, the purple line (in the middle) is of 8 futures portfolio and the blue line is of the mixed stock and future portfolio.) Compared these three efficient frontiers, we can find that adding futures into the ordinary stock portfolio can greatly improve the performance of portfolios, which is even greater under lower risk level. Single future portfolio also performs well compared with single stock portfolio as it can offer higher rate of return under the same risk level. From Figure 1 we can find with the same expected return of 0.4ÃÆ'—10-3, the mixed stock and future portfolio can reduce the risk from 0.012 of single stock portfolio to less than 0.006. This more than fifty percent of risk reduction shows great practical meaning of multi-type asset investment portfolios. Figure 2: the efficient frontiers of stock, future and mixed portfolios using mean-LPM model Figure 2 shows the same results as the Figure 1. The mixed stock and future investment portfolio can improve the risk-return performance of portfolios. Similarly, future portfolio performs much better than stock portfolio, and it can greatly raise the expected return under higher risk level. The mixed portfolios improvement is mainly under low risk level, as the risk becomes bigger, the performing difference between future portfolio and mixed portfolio are not so significant, for the efficient frontiers overlap each other. The efficient frontiers are straight lines in Figure 2 while they are curves in Figure 1. The different risk measurement may result in this. Because LPM only calculates the downside risk, the risks of the portfolios which provide same return are not the same. Every single LPM must be calculated separately. So the shape of the new efficient frontiers may look different from the traditional hyperbola-shaped curves in mean-variance models. Both the mean-variance model and the mean-LPM model show that only investing in stock market can not get as much return as investing only in future market under the same risk level because the efficient frontier of stock portfolio is to the right of that of future portfolio and the distance between the two efficient frontiers is quite large. It reveals a fact that investing only in stock market can not guarantee ideal revenue. Although twenty years has passed since the establishment of

Ronald Schaffers America In The Great War Essay -- Ronald Schaffer Am

Ronald Schaffer's America In The Great War   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ronald Schaffer’s America in the Great War gives new insights into World War I. The book gave historical accounts about the war that other books negated to included. The thesis that Schaffer tries to prove that the Great War was the start of the American welfare state and the beginning of â€Å"big† government. America in the Great War was structured in chronological order of the war, from America’s mobilization to the actual fighting. What the book did not include is a detail account of the fighting. This was the biggest draw back in a otherwise well thought book.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The book begins with the mobilization of the United State’s industry and man power. The first two chapters dealt with how the Federal Government shaped the view of the war in America’s minds. The methods that the Federal Government used varied from propaganda to coercion. The point behind the Federal Government’s involvement in propaganda was to rally the country to fight the war. The first step in shaping the people’s mind was to get the labor and industry to work together. The Federal Government established committees and teams to persuade the minds of the United States. One of these committees were the Committee on Public Information established in April 13 1917 by order on the President of the United States. The committee was led by George Creel, former social reformer. He had great power in what the United States saw and heard for the next few years. His first order was to manage American minds without directly using propaganda and censorship. Other nations fighting the war practiced wide spread censorship of all war related material. Creel realized that this would not work in the United States, instead he flooded Americans with news. The news released to the public was in such large numbers and in such great detail that Americans could not understand all of it. The Committee on Public Information also produced films. The films were designed to rally Americans behind the war effort. The films were nothing else but propaganda, but Creel designed the films to not come across as propaganda. The committee was very successful in hiding the fact that they were engaging in propaganda. Many Americans believed in the films and supported the war e... ...overnment helped veterans in such a large scale. The treatment of the shell shock veterans would eventually lead to one of the largest welfare programs, the Veterans administration.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In addition Schaffer changed my views about the American home front. I was not aware about the extent of propaganda involved shaping the thinking in the United States. I did not know that the Federal Government suppressed dissent to the level that it employed. Such use of propaganda and suppression in the United States would be impossible and such a government using that would be called a Fascist government.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In conclusion, I liked the book due the fact that Schaffer proved his thesis, the Great War gave rise to the American welfare state. I believe that Schaffer proved his thesis with clear and concrete evidence. I enjoyed how Schaffer shed new light on the Great War. Many historical accounts only deal with the actual fighting and not the behind the scenes action that Schaffer writes about. Schaffer’s account about women and blacks during the war gave new levels. History has forgotten the contributions that these groups gave to the war.

Funds: Hedge and Mutual- Who and What They Are Essay -- Finance Financ

Funds: Hedge and Mutual- Who and What They Are Ever since their creation in 1949 by A. W. Jones, hedge funds have been widely regarded as a unique and luring alternative to investing ones money. Some have seen them as a replacement to the well-known mutual fund- while others believe that they are an entirely new domain. Besides defining both the hedge fund and mutual fund, this paper aims to expose the answer to a deeper question: Are hedge funds REALLY different than a mutual fund, and if so, how and why? By comparing both financial intermediaries in the areas of structure, strategy, and their respective environments, it is my hope that I can unmask any uncertainties that may reside within these financial institutions. The most basic question that must first be answered in this type of paper is the most obvious: what is a hedge fund, and how or what is it made up of? Mishkin describes a hedge fund as a special type of mutual fund - which on a very basic level is correct. But here we must be careful, while mutual funds are referred to as â€Å"public† hedge funds are referred to as â€Å"private.† This opens a portal of regulatory issues between the mutual fund and hedge fund entities. Mutual funds, and there thousands of them in the United States alone, are among the most highly regulated financial intermediaries. Thus they are subject to a very large number or requirements that insure that they act in the best of interests of their â€Å"public† shareholders. To digress only briefly, it is important to mention the importance of regulatory enactments since the early twentieth century because they have an enormous impact on today’s companies. Four of the most influential acts include the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities ... ...r risk factors, but take bets on relative price movements utilizing strategies such as long–short equity, stock index arbitrage, convertible bond arbitrage, and fixed income arbitrage. Long–short equity funds use the classic A.W. Jones model of hedge funds, taking long and short positions in equities to limit their exposures to the stock market. Stock index arbitrage funds trade the spread between index futures contracts and the underlying basket of equities. Convertible bond arbitrage funds typically trade the embedded option in these bonds by purchasing them and shorting the equities. Fixed income arbitrage generally refers to the trading of price or yield along the yield curve, between corporate bonds and government bonds of comparable characteristics, or more generally between two baskets of similar bonds that trade at a price spread.† [Fung and Hsteh, p. 319-320]

Character Analysis of Elisa Allen in The Chrysanthemums by Steinbeck Es

Many readers who analyze Steinbeck's short story, "The Chrysanthemums", feel Elisa's flowers represent her repressed sexuality, and her anger and resentment towards men. Some even push the symbolism of the flowers, and Elisa's masculine actions, to suggest she is unable to establish a true relationship between herself and another. Her masculine traits and her chrysanthemums are enough to fulfill her entirely. This essay will discuss an opposing viewpoint. Instead, it will argue that Elisa's chrysanthemums, and her masculine qualities are natural manifestations of a male dominated world. Pertinent examples from "The Chrysanthemums" will be given in an attempt to illustrate that Elisa's character qualities, and gardening skills, are the survival traits she's adopted in order to survive, and keep her femininity and vulnerability in a man's world. The first evidence that supports this conclusion is the behavior which occurs between Elisa and her husband, Henry. There is a "deeply rooted dysfunction between Henry and Elisa, [which is] a lack of real communication" (Palmerino, 1). They are "successful" farmers, but it is Henry who tends the economic production. The opening sets up a character contrast which runs throughout the piece by showing Henry selling thirty head of beef, while Elisa grows "beautiful" chrysanthemums. The contrast is that of the differences between a masculine and a feminine perspective of each other. This shows a limiting of Elisa from a man's point-of-view. Henry tells Elisa that she has a way with growing things, but he feels she is only contributing in an aesthetic way. In other words, Elisa is made to feel that her contribution isn't as worthy as a man's even though the insult is hidden ... ... real love, she may be able to find fulfillment in her flowers more than she ever has. They can be released into the male world and survive, beautiful and strong, though fragile, just as she has. The chrysanthemums are not Elisa's frustration, they are her hope in a world she sees without hope. Therefore, when the tinker simply drops the flowers on the side of the road, the symbolic weight of the chrysanthemums must be considered. Higdon states that "the crucial question remains whether or not Elisa has been destroyed" (Higdon, 668). The reader can see how the flowers represent mostly a positive symbol of growth and life. Elisa may not have anywhere to turn for real understanding, since men are not able to explore her inner-qualities, but it is better that she grows flowers than shutting off her own emotions and feelings and using others like the men around her.

Compare and Contrast the ways in which Christina Rossetti communicates her attitudes towards death in “Song” and “Remember” Essay

In both â€Å"Song† and â€Å"Remember†, Rossetti conveys her own attitudes towards death through writing about how others should treat her death and how she wants to be remembered, respectively. She addresses important ideas as well as using word choice and the metrical template to paint a clear picture of her perceptions of death. As a poet, Rossetti uses her choice and form of words as a way of conveying her initial feelings towards death. In â€Å"Song† the tone is immediately set by the ingenuous and candid first line, â€Å"When I am dead my dearest†. It portrays a surprisingly pragmatic approach to death on behalf of the poet and demonstrates an emotionally detached attitude to it, believing that it is inevitable; hence she does not disguise the subject of this poem in clichà ©d euphemism. The rest of the verse develops this, where she uses imperatives, â€Å"Sing†, â€Å"Plant† and â€Å"Be†, stressed at the beginnings of their lines, to show that she is adamant that her partner should dispense with all the conventional trappings of grief. The verse is heavily embellished in connotations of mourning, Rossetti making reference to as many symbols of it as she can, â€Å"roses at my head†, â€Å"sad songs† and a â€Å"cypress tree†, almost to satire the traditions of the day. Clearly, her views are that people should accept death as fated, although she also carries a tone of indifference as to what her partner should do, telling him that she does not mind whether he wishes to remember or forget her, â€Å"And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget†. This apathy is just as effective as the orders to not grieve, as she rejects the traditional and overt emotional intensity of the Pre-Raphaelites, demonstrated in poems such as â€Å"The Blessed Damozel†, parodying them. She finishes the poem in this manner, using the ambiguity of â€Å"haply, whereby it could be an archaic form of happily, so she will not be sad, or it could mean â€Å"perhaps† showing her casual and impervious attitude to whether she dies or not. In â€Å"Remember†, imperatives are also used to give a sense that she wants her death treated in a certain way, the first line being demanding and insistent, â€Å"Remember me when I am gone away†. Immediately, her perceptions of death seem to be that it is a final thing, hence she needs her partner to be sure to remember her, using this same imperative verb three times in the octet. It could almost suggest that she is scared of death, realising that she will be â€Å"Gone far away† and have no contact with earth again, and â€Å"Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay† reflect her unwillingness to die, and a sense of fear of it. However, these lines also reveal a flawed relationship, whereby she had been controlled by her officious partner. The use of the imperatives therefore may be Rossetti now trying to reverse these roles and control him, because of her resentment towards him; â€Å"You tell me of our future that you plann’d†. The accusatory tone is emphasised by the spondee on â€Å"you plann’d† and the shift from â€Å"our† to â€Å"you† suggests bitterness. Clearly, she is using her death as a way to make her partner realise his wrongs, and feel guilty through having to think about her for a change, and the fact that now she is going to have to be in a â€Å"silent land† where he can â€Å"no more hold me by the hand†. However, there is a shift in Rossetti’s tone indicated by the volta, â€Å"Yet†, as the sestet begins, moving from this idea of demanding that her partner remember her, to that of indifference to the matter. It seems she realises that their relationship was flawed and that she didn’t really love this man who tried to control her after all, and so she suddenly does not appear to mind if he â€Å"should forget me for a while† and in fact tells him, â€Å"do not grieve† if he feels guilty for doing so. She reaches a fatalistic acceptance that she is going to die, and that it doesn’t matter what her partner chooses to do, because she now appreciates that she should not make him â€Å"remember and be sad† when he could â€Å"forget and smile†, moving on with his life, and not tied to remembering someone who did not love him. However, it could be interpreted that here, Rossetti is again playing with the idea of guilt, and that she puts on this apathy in order to leave her partner in limbo to whether to forget or remember her. Perhaps this is her ploy to make him feel the guilt of trying to control her and through doing so, he will realise his wrongs, and thus been controlled by her, which you could argue as being her object, as the ultimate form of revenge. Rossetti also addresses the idea of religion in both â€Å"Song† and â€Å"Remember† which broadens her portrayal of her attitudes towards death. In â€Å"Song†, as already discussed, Rossetti rejects convention in her pragmatic approach to death, but also consciously rebuffs the traditional religious views of the time. There is no sense of celestial bliss or heaven in her mention of what death will be like, with no mention of a desire for a ceremony. She deliberately talks of her partner being â€Å"the green grass above me†, which shows that she has no belief of her dead body ascending into a divine afterlife, but rather staying firmly buried under the ground. Rossetti thus rejects the Pre-Raphaelites’ Anglican moral influences by her subversive reference to the afterlife. She writes of how she will be â€Å"dreaming through the twilight†, and given our associations of twilight- a time between day and night, it seems Rossetti imagines that she will merely be in an in-between stage, rather than in a true life in heaven or hell. Her reference to how she â€Å"shall not hear the nightingale sing on as if in pain† is also subversive, this time, of literary tradition. In poetry at the time, there would always be a reverent and eulogistic attitude to the nightingale, such as in â€Å"Ode to a Nightingale† by Keats, where he writes how the bird â€Å"singest of summer in full-throated ease† and so depicting a bird with a beautiful song, enjoyed by everyone. However, Rossetti writes that the bird sounds â€Å"in pain†, demonstrating an irreverent and caustically dismissive attitude to such conventional writing. Rossetti describes how death will be a form of sensory deprivation for her; â€Å"I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain† and again, it is surprising, but she seems to find a comfort in this, writing of these bad things- â€Å"shadows†¦.rain† and what she finds as a horrible noise, and how she will not miss them when she is dead. This shows how she does not fear death but rather sees it for its benefits. In â€Å"Remember†, she rejects religion, writing that â€Å"It will be late to counsel then or pray†. She uses the conflict in her relationship with her partner to form the structure for this clash- advice and guidance, her approach, verses looking to religion for the answer, which would be her partners approach. Thus, from this, we can conclude that she does not see death as something in the hands of any devout power above her. Rossetti also uses the meter, and structure of rhythm and rhyme to her advantage to help convey her attitudes towards death. The poem â€Å"Song† is written in two verses of eight lines, with an ABCB rhyme scheme. The simplicity of this metrical template suggests contentment and serenity, as it is familiar to the reader. The stresses are placed on important words such as the imperatives in the first verse, and the rhyme gives it an easy bouncing rhythm associated with humorous nursery rhymes, which fits the light-hearted feel the poem has when it concludes, with the balanced ending, â€Å"Haply I may remember, and haply may forget†, reflecting Rossetti’s nonchalant attitude towards death. The second verse could be interpreted to be a response to the first, however, whereby Rossetti’s lover is conveying his feelings, although Christina Rossetti herself is still writing. Perhaps he is talking of the relief it will be to not hear her constantly complaining- he will not have to hear her â€Å"sing on as if in pain† as she suffers from her illnesses or even just rambles on about death, or be surrounded by negative feelings, represented in the poem by the â€Å"rain â€Å"and â€Å"shadows†. Given our associations with twilight as a calm and quiet time, it seems he will be able to live in peace without her, and have entire free will as to whether he â€Å"may remember† or â€Å"may forget†. However, considering that Christina Rossetti is credited as the poet for the entire poem, perhaps she is paranoid that this is what he thinks, so is putting herself in his shoes, and feels guilty for this selfishness, and so, when she writes, â€Å"And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget, she is merely trying to ensure that she does not dominate any more of his life. The poem â€Å"Remember† is a sonnet, composing of fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter. The fact that sonnets are synonymous with love makes this poem again subversive, as it deals with love in a surprising way, whereby the relationship has broken down and Rossetti’s obsession now seems to be with her own demise, rather than a lover. It is made up of an octet, with the rhyme scheme ABBAABBA and a sestet, with the rhyme scheme CDDECE, and the latter begun with a volta, which in â€Å"Remember†, is â€Å"Yet†. This clear separation marks how the poem deals with her death in two separate parts, the octet with the remembrance of her, and the sestet, with forgetting her, and hence in turn marks her change in attitude between one where she requires her partner to remember her, and where she realises that there is no need. In conclusion, Rossetti’s attitudes to death, presented in both â€Å"Song† and â€Å"Remember† are highly subversive, and reject the pre-Raphaelite conventions of religion and the belief that the woman is dependant on their partner, in a passive role, and fears death away from their partner who they rely on.

Value at Risk (VaR)

Financial markets started to use the â€Å"Value at Risk† extensively since 1990’s. But the measures of Value at Risk (VaR) were active in different names since as early as 1920’s (Holton 2003). It is the measurement of the worst expected loss at a given confidence level under normal market conditions over a specific time interval. It can also be expressed as the lowest confidence level of the potential losses that can occur within a given portfolio during a specified time period. Value at Risk only presents the worst-case scenario (Harper n. d. ).The two major parameters to be chosen for risk measurement are the time period and the confidence level. The time period can vary from a few hours to a few years. For example it can be stated that when a portfolio manager has a daily VaR at $1 million at 1%, it means that there is only 1 chance in 100 to incur a daily loss of more than $1 million under normal market conditions. The commonly used methods to estimate Valu e at Risk are: Variance – Covariance Method, Historical Performance and Monte Carlo Simulation (Benninga & Wiener 1998). Variance – Covariance Method:This model was made popular by J. P. Morgan in early 1990’s. This approach is based on the assumption that the underlying market factors have a multivariate normal distribution. This assumption helps in determining the distribution of mark-to-market portfolio profits and losses. After finding the distribution of possible portfolio profits and losses, the standard mathematical properties of Normal distribution can be used to determine the loss that will be equaled or exceeded x percent of the time which is called Value at Risk (Linsmeier & Pearson 1996).The following example can be taken to discuss the theory. A U. S. company entered a FX forward contract in the past. The difference between current date and date of delivery is 91 days. The contract requires the company to deliver $15 million in 91 days and in exchan ge it will receive  £10 million. The facts taken into consideration are the spot exchange rate expressed in dollars per pound (S), 3 month pound interest rate (rGBP) and 3 month dollar interest rate (rUSD). The current mark to market values in dollars is calculated based on the following formula:USD mark to market value= S x GBP 10million – USD 15 million 1+ rGBP (91/360) 1+ rUSD (91/360) Here the holding period is one day and the probability is 5%. The distribution of possible profit and loss on this portfolio has the mean of zero as the expected change in portfolio value over a short holding period is almost always close to zero. A standard property of the Normal distribution is that if a probability of 5% is used in determination of the Value at Risk then it will be equal to 1. 65 times the standard deviation of changes in the portfolio value.Standard deviation is the measure of the spread or dispersion of the distribution and computing the value of the standard deviatio n of changes in the portfolio value is the main factor in this method (Linsmeier & Pearson 1996). Value at Risk = 1. 65 x standard deviation of change in portfolio value The first step in measurement of VaR through this method is to determine the basic market factors and standardized market positions through â€Å"Risk Mapping†. In this case the basic market factors are spot exchange rate and 3-month dollar and pound interest rates.The associated standardized positions are spot pounds, dollar dominated 3 month zero coupon bond and a 3 month zero-coupon bond exposed only to changes in the pound interest rate. The next step is to estimate the parameters of distribution assuming that the percentage changes in the basic market factors have a multivariate Normal distribution with means of zero and thus capturing the variability of market factors by standard deviation and co-movement by the correlation coefficients.The third step is to compute standard deviations and correlations o f the changes in the values of standardized positions using the covariance matrix of changes in the basic market factors. The final step is to calculate the value of variance and standard deviation of the portfolio using standard mathematical results about the distributions of sums of Normal random variables. Standard deviation is the square root of variance. In our case its value is $ 52500 approximately. Now as the probability was taken as 5%, the formula comes to Value at Risk = 1. 65 x standard deviation of change in portfolio value = 1. 65 x $ 52,500 = $ 86,625The benefit of this model is that it uses compact and maintainable data set often available from market and third parties and calculation is quite speedy using algebraic formulae. The drawback of this method is that it assumes the change of the portfolio value to be linearly dependent on all the changes in the values of assets and also that the asset returns normal distributed (Jorion 2006). Historical Performance: Histor ical Performance method is the simplest and most transparent method that takes into account relatively lesser number of assumptions about the statistical distribution of underlying market factors (Linsmeier & Pearson 1996).The method works by using historical changes in market rates and prices to estimate potential future loss or profit with the portfolio and thereby calculating the Value at Risk. This can be illustrated based on the above example. Here we assume the holding period as 1 day, probability of 5% and computation to be based on 100 preceding business days from the current date. The current day will be the 100th day. The method involves five steps. The first step is to identify the basic market factors and to determine the formula to express mark to market value.In our case the basic market factors are 3 month dollar interest rate, 3 month pound interest rate and spot exchange rate. The formula for mark to market value is derived as USD mark to market value= S x GBP 10mil lion – USD 15 million 1+ rGBP (91/360) 1+ rUSD (91/360) Next the values of the identified basic market factors for previous 100 days are to be obtained. Daily change in these rates will be able to set the base for constructions of hypothetical values of market factors useful in the calculation of hypothetical profit and loss.The daily Value at Risk number is a measure of the portfolio loss caused by such changes over a one day holding period. The next and most important step is to subject the current portfolio to the changes experienced in the previous 100 days to calculate daily hypothetical profits and losses. In this step 100 sets of hypothetical values for market factors are calculated based on daily historical percentage changes in the market factors combined with current market factors. These hypothetical values are then used to compute 100 hypothetical mark to market portfolio values.Subtraction of current day mark to market portfolio value from each of the 100 hypothe tical values gives 100 hypothetical daily profits and losses. Ordering mark to market profits and losses from the largest profit to the largest lost is the next step. Finally the loss, which equals or exceeds 5% of the time is selected. In the present example of 100 days calculation the fifth worst loss will be the value at risk. This method relies completely on the historical data. Thus it may not be able to predict most accurately if the period chosen is not a typical one and is posing any special market condition (Jorion 2006).Monte Carlo Simulation: This method is quite similar to the Historical Performance Method. The major difference is that this method uses statistical distribution to capture the possible changes in the market factors instead of observing historical changes in market factors to calculate hypothetical profit and loss. The method involves five steps to estimate Value at Risk. The same example of single forward contract can be considered in this respect. The fir st step here is to identify the basic market factors and to determine the formula to express mark to market value similar to the Historical Performance Method.The next step is to assume a specific distribution for changes in the basic market factors and to estimate the parameters of that distribution. For the present example the percentage change in the basic market factors having multivariate Normal distribution is assumed and estimates of standard deviation and correlates are used as in this case the parameters like means, standard deviations and correlations can be interpreted naturally and their estimation is easier. However, it can be said that Monte Carlo Simulation allows risk managers to choose the distribution according to their requirements.But this flexibility also runs a risk of a bad choice that may not be suitable for the particular case (Jorion, 2006). Pseudo-random generator is used in the following step to generate more than 1000 or sometimes 10000 hypothetical valu es of changes in market factors. These are then used to calculate hypothetical mark to market portfolio values. Actual mark to market portfolio value on the current date is subtracted from each of the hypothetical values to get the hypothetical daily profits and losses.The following step is to order the mark to market profits and losses from the largest profit to the largest loss and the Value at Risk is selected as the loss which equals or exceeds 5% of time. While comparing the different aspects of these three methods it can be said that Historical Performance is the simplest method for estimating Value at Risk. It is suitable for estimation for any kind of options of the portfolio. It is easy to compute and implement and can be explained without much effort.The drawbacks of the method are that it can be misleading if the data used is not typical and represents a specific condition quite similar to Monte Carlo Simulation and Variance-Covariance methods. It is too much dependent on historical data. It is not possible to analyze alternative assumptions through this method. Monte Carlo Simulation and Variance-Covariance methods on the other hand can easily analyze alternative assumptions. Variance-Covariance method though can not examine distribution of market factors other than normal. Both of these methods are easy to implement but tougher to explain.Variance-Covariance method is easy in computation but can not capture the risks of portfolio with options when the holding period is long. Monte Carlo Simulation on the other hand is not easy to compute but it can surely capture the risks regardless of any options (Linsmeier & Pearson 1996). Thus it can be said that all of the three methods have their own benefits and drawbacks and it is completely at the discretion of the risk manager to choose a method appropriate to the portfolio based on the factors to be considered and the holding time.

Most Significant Events of Each Decade

Most Significant Events Final Project K A University of Phoenix: Axia College Jonathan Tietz November 28, 2010 Most Significant Events of the 50`s, 60`s 70`s 80`s and 90`s World War II lasted from 1939 to 1945. This was a war that involved most of the world’s nations and all of the world’s greatest powers. When the war ended the events that followed over the next five decades had a great effect on the American people. There are some events that had more of an effect than others. This paper will discuss five major events over five decades that has had a powerful effect on the American people.Beginning in 1950 and ending in 1990, this paper will discuss the most significant events from each decade that either positively or negatively changed the American way of living. The communist scare took place in the 1950`s. McCarthyism, named after a man named Joseph McCarthy was a republican U. S. senator. In the 1950`s anticommunism created fear among the American people (McCarth yism, 2006). McCarthy played on Americans fears in an effort to better his political campaign. He instilled this fear by convicting anyone who was a part of the communist party or had anything to do with it.During court hearing Americans remained silent so that they wouldn`t be accused of communism. He accused some of the United States federal government of being communist and soviet spies. McCarthy was unable to prove his claims and was therefore censored by the American government (McCarthyism, 2006). Americans lost their jobs if they were accused of communism, library books were burned to hide evidence of communist acts. Americans suffered greatly during this time as they had to walk on around on egg shells (McCarthyism, 2006). IfAmericans did not agree with anticommunism, they were considered to be communist and were punished for not supporting the American way. People feared McCarthy, but it all ended when he made a public mockery of senate procedures (McCarthyism, 2006). He en ded his career to be known as reckless and dishonest man. Americans want peace took place in the 1960`s. The Vietnam War was well overdue considering some events that took place after World War II. How did America get involved in the Vietnam War? It all started with the Atlantic Charter. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston S.Church hill created this charter in hopes of a better world. Russia and China were not part of this charter and ultimately lead the U. S. to believe that Russia and China were involved in colonialism. Communism increased in South East Asia, mostly in Korea, Vietnam, China, and Cuba. The U. S. took action and attacked and conflict arose with Korea. The U. S. gets involved in Southeast Asia`s politics. North Korea invades South Korea. Nothing is accomplished and North Korea remains the same and South Korea remains the same. Next the U. S. inhabits South Vietnam.The U. S. helps rebuild South Vietnams economy. The U. S. tried to gain control over South Vietnams politi cs to avoid Vietnam turning communist. In 1965 North Vietnam attacked South Vietnam and American bases. North Vietnam lost the Vietnam War because they were no match for the American troops. The war had a dramatic effect on the American way of living. Americans rallied for peace and fell into the hippie era during the Vietnam War. During this time sex and drugs were on the rise. New drugs were introduced to the American people as the drug population grew.People began to have more sex during this time, which may have something to do with the increased drug use. The hippie era was a way of Americans expressing themselves of how they felt about the war. Many people wrote songs that told stories of things that were going on during that time. Mainly people wanted the war to end. Americans wanted peace, and sex, drugs and music was their way of getting away from it all. Detente took place in the 1970`s. Nixon`s visit to china in 1972 was an important step to build a relationship between A merica and China. This was the first time an American president had visited China.President Nixon visited China from February 21-28, 1972. Nixon reaffirmed interest for a peaceful settlement, and the U. S. continued to have relations with the Republic of China. Nixon was a strong advocate against communism so it surprised everyone when he went to visit china. He felt that if all nations cooperated with each other, then they could have reduced revenue and prevented a third world war. Nixon`s engagement with the communist was called Detente. Nixon held diplomatic conversations with China to establish a relationship and use that relationship against the Soviet Union.Nixon began the Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty. Soon after came the end of the cold war. All About the Benjamin’s, took place in the 1980`s the decade of corporate greed. During this time Ronald Regan was the president and he was looking for a way to improve the American economy. His economic policy focused on focused on four points. First Regan wanted to reduce government spending, reduce income, reduce government regulation and control the money supply (Reagonomics 2010). His approach involved reducing tax cuts for wealthy Americans, and cutting funding for lower class Americans ( Reagonomics 2010).Regan felt if he cut funds for people on welfare that those Americans would try to get jobs. He introduced the earned income credit. He felt that this tax credit would be a way to encourage the unemployed to get out and work. Regan economic policies had both positive and negative effects on the American way of living (Reganomics 2010). The wealthy became richer and the poor became poorer. The unemployment rate declined but there was an increase in homeless and hungry Americans. Regan thought that he could create wealth for the U. S. by allowing business owners and free market corporations to compete for wealth.Reagan lowered the oil windfall profit tax. He lifted the petroleum price, deregulated air lines, and most of the airlines went bankrupt. He thought he could fix things that he could not fix. His motives were in the right place but the actions he took were not completely in the Americas best interest. Many Americans suffered during this time, but still Reagan was elected for a second term. He was liked by many. Some believe that Reganomics benefited America. Some of the policies introduced by Reagan are still being used today. Some of Reagan’s policies served as a blueprint on different ways to better the conomy. The Never Ending War took place in the 1990`s. In the books it is written that the gulf war began in August 1990 and ended in February 1991, but a war in Iraq still goes on today (1990`s, 2010). The gulf war was a war waged by the U. N. led by the United States and The United Nations against Iraq. Iraq troops invaded Kuwait in 1990 and brought immediate economic sanctions against Iraq. United States president George H. W. Bush sent American soldiers to Sau di Arabia six months later (1990`s, 2010). Many nations joined the coalition with America but America had the majority in military forces.Following The United States was Saudi Arabia, The United Kingdom, and Egypt (Gulf War, 2010). There had already been friction with Iraq and the United States that date back to the Cold War. Iraq was an ally of the Soviet Union (Gulf War, 2010). The United States had a concern involving Iraq`s position on Israel and Palestinian politics because Iraq disapproved of peace between Israel and Egypt. On August 12, 1990 Saddam Hussein wanted to compromise (Gulf War, 2010). He requested an immediate freeze of all boycott and siege decisions and wanted normalization of relations with Iraq.The United States expressed that there would be no negotiations until Iraq came out of Kuwait. Many resolutions were passed regarding the invasion made by Iraq. The most important was Resolution 678, passed in November of 1990, which set a deadline for Iraq to withdrawal from Kuwait (Gulf War, 2010). The deadline was for January 15, 1991. Ultimately if Iraq did not withdrawal but that time, they would have to be forced out. This brings us back to the coalition. Some countries did not join the coalition but sent money in support of it. Some countries did not want to increase U. S. nfluence in the Middle East (1990`s, 2010). In the end many nations were persuaded. Nations were promised economic aid, debt forgiveness or threats to withhold aid. Today the war in Iraq continues. There are still American troops overseas. How long will this war continue? It is unknown, but what is known is that this war has been indirectly been going on for decades, and all other wars and significant events before this war ultimately led to this one. So what is going to happen to America for the years to come? How will our current president deal with current issue that are results of past presidents decisions?America still has the same economic problems that Regan faced. W e are still at war with Iraq even after the first President Bush left office. In the future I see the war continuing. After the attacks of 9/11 I don’t think that The United States government would feel comfortable if they pulled all of the soldiers out of Iraq. I see the United States falling into a deeper depression. After all we are dealing with years of economic recovery. The unemployment rate over the past years has dropped. It is extremely hard for some people to get jobs.What is so hard to understand is how the United States began as one of the strongest countries economically, socially and politically and now we are falling so far behind. The United States is falling behind in education and this used to be the leading country in education. The United States has fallen behind in production. How could a country that is not social developed, compete with other countries that are so far ahead? It is unknown where the United States will be a decade from now but based on th e past compared to now, we might be dealing with same old issues.It may be worst. There may be more homeless, hungry, unemployed Americans a decade from now. The way the deficit is Funding for welfare programs may get cut again. Things are still the same. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. If things do not soon change, there will be no hope for America’s future.Works CitedMcCarthyism. (2006, 8 23). Retrieved 11 23, 2010, from pbs. org: http://www. pbs. org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/arthur-miller/mccarthyism/484/ 1990`s. (2010).Retrieved 11 28, 2010, from Wikipedia: http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/1990s Gulf War. (2010).Retrieved 11 27, 2010, from Wikipedia: http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Gulf_War Vietnam War. (2010).Retrieved 11 23, 2010, from wikipedia: http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Vietnam_War