Social Policy – Discipline or Area of Study?

Social Policy is that part of public policy that focuses on improving human conditions i. e. well-being of the public. Social Policy, therefore, is about welfare. It concentrates on social problems such especially issues of education, health, housing, social security and income support. According to Beveridge’s report that was published in 1942 and included in the Labour Party’s 1945 manifesto, Five Giant Social Evils had undermined the British society before the war: ignorance, disease, squalor, idleness and want. These are the five main evils that Social Policy centers on. In my view, Social Policy is interdisciplinary as it draws on many social science subjects but it is a distinct academic discipline in its own right, both in terms of its points of concentration and its methods of analysis. The development of Social Policy as a ‘policy’ and its development as a discipline are closely linked. Formed in 1884, the Fabian Society, which was influenced by the work of labour MP Sidney Webb and that of Booth and Rowntree, challenged the conservative political assumption that economic markets could meet the welfare needs of all was challenged and argued that policy intervention by the state was needed to provide those forms of support and protection which the markets failed to provide. Social Policy was then recognized as an academic discipline of importance when The Webbs – Sidney Webb and his wife Beatrice Webb, both prominent Fabians – established the London School of Economics (LSE). Within it, they incorporated the Charity Organization Society’s School of Sociology to form a new Department of Social Sciences and Administration in 1912. Its first lecturer was Clement Attlee, who became Prime Minister of the UK after the Second World War, and in 1950, Richard Titmuss was appointed as the first Professor of Social Administration in the UK. Until 1987, Social Administration and Social Policy were used interchangeably, but later the name was changed to Social Policy as it was felt that social administration focused largely on analyzing the operation of existing welfare services where as what was now known as Social Policy also analyzed the political and ideological bases of welfare provision. Social Policy is a broad but distinct academic discipline as it is closely elated to many social science disciplines, four of the more important ones being Sociology, Economics, Political Economy and Political Science, but it only draws on them to achieve what are believed to be the objectives of a successful social policy: equality, social justice, liberty and the rights of a citizen. Sociology helps one understand the causes and effects of social divisions such as those on the basis of race, gender or class. Its subject matter ranges from the micro level of face-to-face interaction to the macro level of societies at large, and traditionally, sociologists have focused on topics such as social relations, social stratification, social interaction, culture and deviance. Social Policy, on the other hand, is about provision of welfare to these various people and draws on Sociology to become aware of the various social divisions in order to better understand the needs of each particular group and how welfare can be provided to them. Economics explores the concepts of scarcity and resource allocation. In his 1932 essay, British economist Lionel Robbins described economics as the â€Å"science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses†. It also provides insight into the concepts of equity and efficiency. These concepts are central to the study of Social Policy as it is the scarce resources that policy-makers work to allocate in a way that ensures the greatest well-being of the people. They must also be able to prove that their policies are both efficient – i. e. they are the least costly and of most benefit to those intended – and equitable or fair – i. e. those in similar categories are considered in similar ways. Political Economy originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. However, in the eighteenth century, it developed as the study of the economies of states — polities, hence political economy. It is the study of political ideologies and economic management. For a policy-maker, an awareness of these various political ideologies is indispensable as many of these arguments govern the process of making social and economic policies. Political Science focuses on the interaction between institutions and human behavior and studies the way in which institutions shape choices and how humans change institutional frameworks. It provides an understanding of constitutional arrangements in different countries and their impact on policy formulation. Political Science introduces the student of Social Policy to concepts of equality, social justice, liberty and citizenship.

Jane Austen’s Novels Plot-Construction

In contrast to the simplicity of her style, Jane Austen's plots are unexpectedly complex. She is not content to simply draw two or three characters in isolation. She prefers a family, with their many friends and acquaintances and she tries within her limited range to make things as difficult as possible. SETTINGS OF HER NOVELS Jane Austen's field of study is man. She is, therefore, more preoccupied with human nature than nature in the nineteenth century usage of the word. The background and the scenery of the provincial town is rich in its beauty and grandeur. But there is no attempt to look into the spirit of this country. Thus although, she has some sense of locality yet she does not paint an English community like the other writers of her time. She rather avoids those very elements of the population in which the local flavour, the breath of the soil is most pronounced. She is further incapable of evoking a scene or a landscape and cannot conjure up the spirit of Bath as Emile Bronte could conjure up the spirit of the Moorlands or Hardy that of Wessex. All this, one may say, would be fatal to her dramatic quality of construction. In all her novels, we see only a limited range of human society. Most of her characters are the kind of people she knew intimately, the landed gentry, the upper class, the lower edge of the nobility, the lower clergy, the officer corps of the military. Her novels exclude the lower classes-both the industrial masses of the big cities and the agricultural labourers in the countryside. Three or four families in the country village is the very thing to work on. She does not show any of the great agonies or darker side of human experience. There is no hunger, poverty, misery or terrible vices and very little of the spiritual sphere of experience. Nor do we see any political dimension or even discussions regarding major political happenings in any of her novels. Nature too, is rarely described and her characters are usually presented indoors with an occasional expedition or picnic thrown in. According to Andrew H. Wright, the novels of Jane Austen can be considered on three levels of meaning: first, the purely local-illustrative of country life among the upper middle-classes at the end of eighteenth century in Southern England. Second, they can be taken as broad allegories in which Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and a number of other virtues and defects are set forth in narrative form and commented on in this way. Third is the ironic level whereby the incidents, situations and characters in a novel imply something more than what they seem. PLOT-CONSTRUCTION IN SENSE AND SENSIBILITY It is one of Austen's simplest novels. The story deals with two sisters Elinor -the heroine represents a woman of sense, while Marianne, her foolish foil represents a woman of sensibility. The first volume of the book has a symmetrical pattern and a clear parallel is drawn between the two romances-Edward Ferrars and Elinor, John Willoughby and Marianne. True to Elinor's cool, sensible nature the relationship between Edward Farrar's is conducted on the level of the mind, with both displaying hardly an emotion. The theme of sense is thus exemplified through their relationship. On the other hand Willoughby who enters Marianne's life as a true romantic hero having carried her home when she sprained her ankle, exemplifies the theme of sensibility in his relationship with Marianne. While the moral seems to illustrate the superiority of sense over sensibility there is an ironic twist in the plot whereby Elinor and Marianne virtually interchange their positions PLOT-CONSTRUCTION IN EMMA The plot of Emma can be said to have an ‘inward' and an ‘outward' movement. The inward deal with Emma's self-deception- with what she thinks is happening while the outward deals with what actually is happening and this brings to light her mistakes. It is through a series of humiliations and self reproach that Emma finally awakens to self-knowledge. The reader's enjoyment stems from an awareness that Emma is wrong. From chapter 1 to 15, Emma thinks that Mr. Elton is in love with Harriet only to discover to her horror that Elton loves her. From chapter 18 to 30, Emma thinks herself to be in love with Frank and Jane Fairfax to be associated with Mr. Dixon. From chapter 31 to 46, Emma is convinced that Harriet and Frank Churchill are interested in one another. Towards the end of the novel, from chapter 46, Emma's theories about Frank and Harriet are about Jane Faifax and Dixon are destroyed and she has to face the possibility of Mr. Knightley being in love with Harriet. It is only after Knightley's proposals in the shrubbery that â€Å"what is happening† and â€Å"what Emma thinks is happening† converge and Emma's progress from self-delusion to knowledge is complete. By analyzing the plots of ‘Sense and Sensibility', ‘Emma' and ‘Pride and Prejudice', we observe that Austen's theme-her subject matter revolves round courtship and marriage in each of her novels. By the time we have reached the end of any of her novels, not only the hero and heroine but most of the other people in the story have succeeded in pairing off in marriage. And it is from the courtship of the hero and heroine that the story derives much of their tension. PLOT-CONSTRUCTION IN PRIDE AND PREJUDICE The main plot of Pride and Prejudice presents the story of the misunderstanding, estrangement and union in the lives of two people-Elizabeth and Darcy. The novel begins with the flutter and eager expectation in the Bennet family at the arrival of the young â€Å"single man of large fortune†, Mr. Charles Bingley. The sub-plot of the Jane-Bingley relationship attracts greater interest for some time. They meet at a ball, are attracted towards each other and their intimacy grows through dinner-parties, balls, etc. All this while, however, the events of the main plot also gather interest. Darcy and Elizabeth are present at the same ball. Darcy is looked at with great admiration for about half the evening and is soon ‘discovered to be proud', and when Bingley persuades him to dance with Elizabeth, he says that she is ‘tolerable' but not handsome enough to tempt him. Elizabeth developed ‘no very cordial feelings towards him'. This prejudice forms in the very first m eeting and is intensified by various other factors. Miss Caroline Bingley's designs on Darcy and her efforts to reprobate Elizabeth during her stay at Netherfield are so persistent that inspite of his being attracted by Elizabeth's pair of fine eyes, he realizes that it is dangerous to pay too much attention to Elizabeth and observes a studied reticence. Mrs. Bennet's silly remarks, Mary's all too quick consent to sing at a party, Mr. Collin's sycophancy, Mr. Bennet's want of propriety and Lydia's shallowness—infact everything that the Bennet family did is enough to alienate anybody and Darcy's poor opinion of the whole set urges him to avoid closer connections with Elizabeth. When Elizabeth meets Wickham, his winning manners grow on her good-will, and the altogether false reports of his victimization by Darcy intensify her prejudice far too much. Later, when she naturally suspects that Darcy plays a prominent part in ruining the prospects of her sister's marriage with Bingley, she feels an almost irrevocably strong prejudice a gainst him. From chapter 3 to 33, the prejudice grows in better strength and so when Darcy proposes to her, she bluntly rejects him. In reply to his enquiry about why she refused, she lays the charges at his door without any apology. The first stage in the history of their relationship is convincingly developed. Chapters 35 and 36 mark the climax in this development. Darcy's letter to her marks the beginning of the second stage. Every event occurring subsequent to this helps to reverse Elizabeth's conception of him, undo all the knots of prejudice and reveal the sterling qualities that he possesses. Even at the end of the first stage, his repulsive pride completely dominates all his thought and action, but the citadel staggers at the first rude shock Elizabeth gives him. ‘She showed him how insufficient were all his pretentions to please a woman worthy of being pleased', and even though he was angry at first, he soon realized that the lesson she taught was ‘hard indeed at first but most advantageous'. When they met most unexpectedly at Pemberley, he ‘showed her by every civility in his power that he hoped to obtain her forgiveness and lessen her ill opinion, ‘Darcy's excessive pride is dec reased and Elizabeth becomes proportionately less prejudiced. Many events in the second stage quicken this cleansing process. Even in the offending remarks about her family there is an admission that Elizabeth could inspire in Darcy a strong feeling of love capable of overcoming his strong scruple of family pride; and her vanity is touched. Darcy's narration in the letter makes it clear to her that if he found Jane's behavior ‘without any symptom of peculiar regard for Bingley', it was a pardonable, even justifiable, error of judgment and the motives were certainly unchallengeable. The baselessness of her violent charge of ruining Wickham's career becomes all clear to her. Colonel Fitzwilliam's report about him is also creditable to Darcy. All these events make her conscious that she had acted despicably and that her certainty about her discernment was most unjustifiable. Her visit to Pemberley brings another surprise. His housekeeper, Mrs. Reynold's, is genuinely proud of Darcy, who is ‘the best landlord and the best master', ‘affable to the poor', ‘an entirely good brother': and she is sure to know better. Darcy's unexpected meeting at Pemberley is still more effective: he impresses her aunt and uncle by his excellent manners, and Elizabeth has to admit that her prejudice was ill founded. Finally, Darcy's most invaluable help in the eprisode of Lydia's elopement with Wickham sweeps off all her objections. And so when Darcy's second, and most polite proposal is made, her attitude has changed as much as his. The first minor eprisode is the Jane-Bingley relationship. It can be treated as an independent event, but Jane Austen has woven it well with the main theme. Jane and Elizabeth are sisters who share each other's secrets, hopes and fears and it is the simplest connection. But on the strength of Darcy's regard, Bingley has the firmest reliance, and of his judgment the highest opinion, and so when Darcy suspected that Jane did not love Bingley as fervently as Bingley loved her, and found that her family had all vulgar manners and shallow tastes, he ‘readily engaged in the office of pointing out to him the certain evils of such a choice'. This was one of the very important reasons of Elizabeth's strong prejudice, and thus it is connected with the main theme. The Wickham-Lydia eprisode and the Collins-Charolette relationship is equally well connected with it. While Elizabeth has developed a prejudice against Darcy, she is strongly attracted towards Wickham— and it is very long before she knows what his real character is. One of the two strong charges she levels against Darcy is the ruining of Wickham's prospects. Darcy reveals the truth to her later, but because of her silence on this point, she cannot stop her sister's elopement and the slander on her family. It is this catastrophe, however, that brings Darcy closest to her because it is his love for her that he finds out the fugitives and makes a successful effort to bring about a marriage between Lydia and Wickham, neglecting the thought of the loss to him. Mr. Collins proposes to her, and later marries her best friend Charolette. All the threads are thus connected. Wickham and Charolette also serve as a comment on Elizabeth and Darcy. â€Å"The Darcy-Elizabeth couple is flanked on one side by the unexceptionable Bingley and Jane, it is flanked on the other by Charolette and Wickham†. The last two have the cleverness of the two main characters, but they are time-servers. The structure is therefore, most cleverly unifying. The precision, simplicity and symmetry of ‘Pride and Prejudice' evoke instinctive appreciation. So well it is constructed that the action proceeds logically from exposition, complication and climax to the denouncement and finally the resolution. The sub-plots are also thematically unified. The theme of love and marriage is exemplified through the plot and the sub-plots. Jane Austen uses the dramatic narrative mode and irony so effectively to build her complex plot that it would not be amiss to say that she â€Å"is the most perfect dramatist who never wrote a play†. Furthermore, all Jane Austen plots are characterized by a unity of tone and are compact and well- knit. There are no loose ands anywhere, no event conceived outside the actual plot and nothing usually hampers the progress of the story. JANE AUSTEN'S COMEDY OF MANNERS  IN PRIDE AND PREJUDICE â€Å"The wisest and the best of men-nay, the wisest and best of their actions – may he rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke. â€Å"Certainly†, he replied Elizabeth-â€Å"there are such people, but I hope I am not one of them. I hope I never ridicule that is wiser or good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.† This brief dialogue between Darcy and Elizabeth throws distinct light upon Jane Austen's purpose and programme in her novels. For once it be supposed that Miss Bennet's point of view is but a projection of her creator's. Her intention in these novels is to present a comedy of manners – to present the follies and vices of men and to expose them to general ridicule by employing the devices of comedy, parody, burlesque, irony, wit, satire, each one of them as is suitable for the occasion and need. THE UNITY OF TONE Hence, her plots are characterized by a singular unity of tone and she often achieves it by focusing our attention at it from more than one angle. In Pride and Prejudice alone the unity of plot has been achieved from as many as three angles. We can view the novel first, as Elizabeth Bennet sees everything; secondly, by assigning to Elizabeth and Darcy a prominent place into the novel and by centering the higher and nobler comedy around these two figures; and thirdly by making the whole story a study in Pride— pride of place and responsibility in some, pride in the form of social snobbery in others and also either a perverted pride or the lack of pride in the rest. However, the unity is therefore very essential in imparting coherence and shape to her design. Thus, the structure of Jane Austen's novel is perfect and is ideally suited for the material she wanted to embody and the outlook she wished to present.

Child Protection is part of a continuum of good child-care practice Essay

Child Protection is part of a continuum of good child-care practice that supports children's early development and learning. Discuss - Essay Example Some questions are often posted when experts and professionals discuss the issue of child protection: are children truly abused or molested by their parents and guardians? What are the actions that constitute these abnormal behaviours in people that are naturally expected to provide cares and love for these little ones? According to National Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children NSPCC, children in the United Kingdom are abused in the following ways: physically, sexually, and mentally or psychologically (Cawson et al. 45). The manifestations of these abuses include: physical neglect of children that make them look dirty, uncared-for, forlorn and underfed; emotional and psychological maltreatment that make them appear disconnected from the society and their peers; physical abuse that comes from violent and irate parents and guardians who indiscriminately treat their children without respect for their rights; discrimination and constant bullying from parents that abused alcohol and other dangerous drugs; and the worst of all, sexual abuse of children and minors. In practice, professionals have worked so hard to unearth the reasons why the problem of child abuse is on the rise. Some theories about children abuse have been propounded; however, it is eye-opening to notice that parents or guardians that abuse the children in their custodies do so out of negligence, ignorance, drug or substance-motivated and self-reflection, if they had been victims of child abuse themselves (Cawson et al 58). This circumstance creates a serious social problem when those who should protect the children are the ones preying on or abusing them. Schaffer reckons that a child that is subjected to incessant abuse for a lengthened period of time would have what is referred to as â€Å"stunted growth and poor learning ability† (185). Experts have cleverly discovered that unprotected children from continuous abuse

Operational planning - arts and events management Assignment

Operational planning - arts and events management - Assignment Example This organisation is a non profit organisation governed by a board of directors who represent key stakeholders who provide a significant amount of funding such as; the local authority, the Arts council, EU Social Development Fund, two national banks, and two charitable trusts who are concerned with groups of people that are socially excluded. These four key points will be discussed through a number of imperative sources such as the most recent government census 2001 that can be found over the internet as well as websites such as, upmystreet.com and mintell.com. This will then help to compile a detailed plan of strategic objectives that will then be used by the 'Theatre Royal'. The various elements of operational planning have been discussed as part of the case study of Theatre Royal. It may be seen that the various aspects of operational planning have been tied together under the various headings as follows. Berkshire Sub-Region Context Map (refer to Appendix 1.0) shows Reading just to the west of the city of London. As you can see Reading is a prime location for any already existing or new organisations, as it has easy access to top motorways in the south west of England such as the M3 and M4 giving easy access to the M25. The location is also within 25 minutes drive from one of Europe's largest trading estates fuelling many new jobs in southern England in the town of Slough. Reading is a very multicultural town consisting mainly of Christians (62.63%) however there are many others from a number of religious backgrounds such as Muslims (4.0%), Hindu's(0.99%), and people who state themselves as having no religion (22.0%), (Refer to Appendix 1.1). The total population of Reading is 143,069 people and of these 129,900 people were born within Europe and 123,080 of these originated in the UK. The population sets in Reading consist of various ethnicities and age groups. Furthermore there are 6,196 people from Asia and 3,632 people from Africa. There are also small minority groups within the Reading area as only 5 people are from Western Europe (Luxembourg), 11 from Western Africa in Congo and 17 people from Oceania (for further statistics refer to Appendix 1.2). This

Project Progress Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Project Progress Report - Essay Example At present moment, reservation of a book is done manually. For this, the library users have to complete a reservation card and hand it to the librarian for reserving book and have to check regularly or have to wait for postcard, which is sent to their home address to confirm that the book is arrived and they can collect it. The library for which this database is being created is Wood Green Central Library and is located at 187-197A Wood Green High Road, London N22 6XD. The library has approximately 50 employees, has a turnover of 3 million, and is the main library for the borough of Haringey. Government grants helped to provide the library with a Learning Centre, a number of computers for public use, additionally several reading groups operate from this library, and there is space to host art exhibitions. The purpose of this reservation system is so that students, teachers and the housebound can gain a better service of the library and can take their time to search for a particular book that they want, whether it is for coursework or for teaching purposes. This system will be useful, efficient and user-friendly. In this reservation system, the user has an option either to search by title, author, publication or class (subject). This will be achieved by creating a simple reservation system for the local library by using Microsoft Access to produce a database. This work will be useful to other students who might be creating a database on a particular subject, as they will be able to gain ideas from the database that will be created. This paper is a project progress report (PPR) for a database reservation system for the library. This PPR will cover different topics, such as the scope and objectives of the project, database design and information analysis, methodology and approach, software/tools and modelling languages, schedule of the planned work, progress against the planned work, evidence for the progress claimed, current and

Biases and Judgments Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Biases and Judgments - Essay Example The decision entailed reflection aimed at enhancing the progress of the organization and improve performance. These decisions also promote efficiency in the staff and management. This decision could act as the basis of action since the policies could be implemented (Salaman, 2001). Emotions can influence the decisions that the management of an enterprise makes. Emotions can affect rational decision making; those who follow emotions make irrational decisions. As such, businesses should not come up with decisions based on emotionality as the decisions, may have a negative impact. Fairness should prevail while making decisions; all departments within an organization should be treated equally (Yates, 2003). According to Salaman (2001), reflective decision making includes examination, contemplation, critical meditation and analytical thoughts when making decisions. Therefore, reflective decision makers ensure that managers critically analyze the decisions they make. Reflection means that the decisions have to be given a deep thought before implementation; implementers take their time before coming up with the decision. On the other hand, expedient decision making entails solving problems that require immediate solutions. Expedient decisions mainly stem from the need for them; business organizations mainly make them when need to do so arise. For example, an organization may decide to lay off employees instantly. Yates (2003) asserts that biases may arise when making decisions; they include dependency on one form of information where decisions makers tend to over rely on one course of action. Other biases may include overconfidence on the decisions made and selective gathering of informat ion. Thus, in conclusion, the essay has discussed business decision making. It has addressed the role of decision making, which enhances progress in a business. Emotions and biases have a negative impact on the decisions made; they may lead to poor

Use of the financial statements to make business decisions Essay

Use of the financial statements to make business decisions - Essay Example When the calculations are done, they indicate that at a price of $40.97, the Coca-Cola Company spent a total of $4,015.06 million to repurchase 98 million of common stock in 2014. On the other hand, at a price of $37.11, the company used a total of $4,490.43 million to purchase 121 million shares in 2012. This indicates that the company spent just $475.37 million to repurchase 23 million more shares in 2012, which means that the extra shares only cost an average of $20.66 per common stock repurchased in 2012. This simply goes to show that the extra shares of common stock that were purchased in 2012 above the 98 million mark were very, compared to the price of the common stock in 2014, since they cost 50% less. Additionally, if the Coca-Cola Company had to repurchase 121 million common stocks in 2014, it would have used a total of $4957.37 compared to $4490.43 that the company used to repurchase 121 million common stick on 2012, which shows that the Coca-Cola Company would have saved a total of $466.94 million, if it would have purchased more common stocks in 2012. Therefore, based on these calculations, it would be much cheaper for Coca-Cola Company to repurchase more common stock when the prices are lower since it would save a lot of money. In this respect, the Coca-Cola Company financial statements can help the management to make a decision on whether to use some more of the company’s profits to repurchase more common stocks, other than waiting until the price of the common stock increases.

Negative letter Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Negative letter - Essay Example The company has agreed to deliver services by 7a.m. The time is appropriate because it will provide an allowance of time for the relocation of the misplaced vehicles. The time is also ideal because it will provide the vehicle owners with time to attend their daily jobs. The town council will also provide the vehicle owners with new parking stickers. The parking sticker will be part of the town council’s initiative to reduce the grievances pertaining to the parking of vehicles. The sticker is expected to appear in the rearview mirror of every vehicle. In addition, the new sticker will enhance the regulation of vehicle traffic at the parking lot. This situation notwithstanding, the parking charge hike was ill-timed. The town council should instead expand parking capacity to avoid the breach of parking rules by some innocent vehicle owners. The expansion of parking capacity will provide extra space to ensure that vehicle owners do not scramble for parking

South Carolina Nullification Essay Example for Free

South Carolina Nullification Essay Throughout the great American history, Americans have been through a colossal amount of conflicts, and wars. However, they still figured out a way to compromise and accept each other’s differences. As America improves, they gradually lead to a making of a powerful and organized government. Yet in â€Å"South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification† a conflict arises, where South Carolina is furious at the federal government and wants the best for themselves. Like many other states South Carolina is one of which that had its own negative opinions towards the federal government, leading to a larger problem. The document â€Å"South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification† both supports and contradicts American and constitutional principles. In early 1860’s the Civil war took place, against the North and the South parts of America. In the time that was taken to reach the civil war, many small disagreements and arguments took place that eventually led to having an immense war. However, around three decades earlier, South Carolina had been having disagreements with the federal government. On May 19, 1928 the Congress of the United States passed the Tariff of 1828. The tariff was designed to protect industries in the northern United States which were being driven out of business, by low-priced imported goods by putting tax on them. Well it seems as if this was a great idea, until, the south started to feel the effects of it, on their antebellum economy. The south called the tariff of 1828, â€Å"Tariff of Abominations†. â€Å"South Carolina felt that the protective features of tariffs were harmful to them and they also claimed that they were unconstitutional because they favored North over the South. (u-s-history. com)A government should serve their people with equality and liberty. Instead the federal government chose to be unfair and help the north because that’s where they lived. This case continues to go on, as South Carolina and other southern states get more furious and lead on to making a Nullification of crisis. The Nullification of Crisis includes South Carolina’s opinions and how the tariff of 1828 is the opposit e of, liberty and justice for all. Since the federal government had passed a tariff that is unfair to the south, for the good of the North. South Carolina was so furious that they started talking about the seceding from the union and working their own independent state, where they can have their own laws. However, South Carolina believed that constitutionally, the state government of each state had more power within that state than did the federal government. Therefore, if a state considered it necessary, it had the right to nullify any federal law within its boundaries. The idea South Carolina had was injudicious, they thought of themselves as being more powerful than â€Å"The Federal Government†, the main and the most powerful government in America. The idea of a state being more powerful than a federal government does not exist. It doesn’t say anywhere in the constitution that a state could not follow the federal government laws and have more power than them as well. In addition, if South Carolina and other states had more power than the federal government, you wouldn’t need a federal government and there would be no point of having the â€Å"United States of America†. Moreover, when President Andrew Jackson found out about the nullification of tariffs passed by the congress, he declared an act of open rebellion and ordered U. S. ships to South Carolina to enforce the law. â€Å"Before federal forces arrived Calhoun and Senator Henry Clay had an agreement which lead to congress passing out the tariff of 1833. This lowered the tariff gradually over a decade and prevented any armed conflicts. †(. loc. gov) This shows the strength of the federal government over all the states. In conclusion, the â€Å"Ordinance of Nullification† was a document with many personal opinions and conflicts. For example, the federal government wasn’t equal to the south, by letting north have the positive affect of the tariff of 1928 and south have the negative affect. In result south tried to show that they have more power than the federal government by nullifying the tariffs. However all of this ended with an agreement. Throughout most of our history when a conflict derives a compromise is always made. After all, the conflict and work the Americans went through in the past, made an abundant change for us in the future.

Fashion Blogging - the Impact on Sales Essay Example for Free

Fashion Blogging the Impact on Sales Essay Thus, we first investigate whether blogging activity leads to (differential) market outcomes. We then examine whether managerial communication (magazines advertising) and blogging are synergistic. We assemble a unique data set from fashion containing market outcomes (sales), new media (blogs) and traditional media (magazines advertising) for a brand of clothing, and a brand of shoes. Each category has at least one product launch during the duration of our sample periods. We specify a simultaneous equation log-linear system for market outcomes and the volume of blogs. Our results suggest that blogs are predictive of market outcomes, new and traditional media act synergistically, pre-launch magazines advertising spurs blogging activity but become less effective post-launch and that market outcomes have some effect on blogging. We find detailed support for some of these findings via a unique and novel text mining analysis. We discuss the managerial implications of our findings. I-Introduction Consumer generated media (CGM) such as blogs (a contraction of the term â€Å"Web logs†) have witnessed explosive growth in the last few years. For example, the number of blogs worldwide is estimated to be 184 millions with a readership of 346 million (March 2010). In contrast, in March 2003, the number of blogs was essentially zero. Other types of CGM have also seen similar growth patterns, e. g. , Facebook, which started in February 2004, now has about 400 million members worldwide (February 2011). There are also indications that blogs are now being seen as similar to mainstream media sites – the number of blog sites in the top 100 most popular sites (blogs and mainstream media) worldwide was twenty-two in 2008 and blogs were being viewed by consumers as â€Å"sites for news, information, gossip etc. † (2008). In 2010, four of the top ten entertainment sites were blogs (March 2010). It is clear from these statistics that there is considerable activity (multi- media posting, blogging, visits, traffic etc. ) on the part of consumers. However, an important question, from a managerial perspective, is whether this activity leads to (differential) business outcomes such as sales or profits. In addition, little is known about the relationship between traditional or old media (where the company creates content and delivers it to consumers) and consumer generated, or new, media (where consumers create content and there in an exchange of this content between other consumers and potentially, the company). That is, are there any synergies between new media and old media? In this research, we take the first step towards answering these questions. Blogging is perhaps the most established and largest form of consumer generated media at this point in time. The total worldwide viewership of blogs is estimated to be about 346 million (March 2010). Wikipedia defines as a blog as â€Å"a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Blogging is a worldwide phenomenon with the two biggest blogging markets being the United States and Japan. The number of blogs in the United States is about 23 million (about 12% of all US Internet users) and about 8 million in Japan (about 5% of all Japanese Internet users) in 2009. However, if one examines the total number of posts by language, Japanese language posts account for 37% of all posts worldwide followed closely by English language posts at 36%. Fina lly, readership of blogs in these two markets is ery high about half of all Internet users in the US and about one-fifth of all Japanese Internet users have read a blog in the past year. While there are many informal opinions on the effectiveness of CGM in general (and blogs in particular) vis-a-vis market outcomes, there is limited empirical research that sheds light on this issue, especially for the launch of new products. The majority of the existing research has focused on online chatter (newsgroup postings, reviews and ratings) and its effect on market outcomes. There is some evidence that volume of online user ratings is positively correlated to sales. Blogging, on the other hand, has been seen as a unique type of user generated content as being a highly personal, non-directed communication tool. As Kumar (2005) note, blogs are unique for sociological reasons – they comprise a â€Å"highly dynamic, temporal community structure† that â€Å"focuses heavily on local community interactions† and for technical reasons – blogs â€Å"offer us a ready-made view of evolution (of content) in continuous time. † In addition, blogging activity was probably the most pervasive CGM activity on the web during the time of our data. Given these unique characteristics of blogs as opposed to reviews, it is not obvious that bloggers’ activity should affect market outcomes. Surprisingly, there is very little research that has tried to quantify the effect of blogs on market outcomes, especially in the presence of traditional media and/or an examination of pre- and post-launch changes in the role of old and new media. Two recent empirical papers have focused on blogs and market outcomes. Dhar and Chang (2009) explore the relationship between music album sales (imputed via sales ranks on Amazon. om) and online chatter (as seen in blogs and on social networks). Using 108 music albums in early 2007 (before four weeks and after four weeks of their release), they find a positive correlation between both the number of blogs and Myspace member intensity with future music sales. Gruhl (2005) propose a new methodology to automatically generate a query of blog keywords to detect spikes in Amazon. com’s book sales rank. They conclude that their new algorithm could adequately predict the changes and spikes of future sales ranks. Thus, while these two studies suggest that there may be a correlation between blogging activity and market outcomes, they do not use actual sales data but only sales ranks from Amazon. com. To the best of our knowledge, the second issue that we outline above the positive relationship between traditional media and new media has not been investigated in the literature. Our expectation is that there will be a positive correlation between the quantity of traditional media and new media as traditional media is likely to provide discussion materials for bloggers. From a managerial perspective this issue is crucial, as managers have no direct control over CGM (blogs in our case). However, if there is indeed a synergistic relationship between traditional media, which are under managerial control, and new media, which are outside managerial control, then managers can leverage this relationship. Specifically, they can carry out â€Å"better† resource allocation and media planning (to traditional media) as they can take the spillover effect (from traditional to new media) into consideration. We examine the role of new media with respect to market outcomes as well as the relationship between new media and traditional media using data of two different clothing and shoes brand that are both promoted in fashion blogs. We consider the number of units sold, customers or subscribers (all a proxy for demand) as market outcomes, blogs as representations of consumer generated media and magazines advertising as traditional media. We specify a simultaneous equation model that links sales to advertising and blogs as well as a model that links blogs to advertising. Our results, after controlling for many temporal and cross-sectional factors, suggest that first, the volume of Blogstock (cumulative sum of past blog posts) is positively correlated with market outcomes (volume of clothing sold, and the volume of shoes sold) post launch. Second, the interaction between blogs and magazines advertising has a positive effect on market outcomes. Third, we also find that traditional media (magazines advertising) positively affects new media (the volume of blogs) pre launch. In other words, bloggers consume advertising, independent of the product, and this ncreases their blogging activity. Finally, we find that the effect of blogs varies between pre and post launch. In general, the positive relationship between magazines advertising and the volume of blogs pre-launch becomes weaker after launch. This result suggests that while magazines advertising can independently increase blogging pre-launch via the provision of information and content, post-launch (i. e. , once the product is available), consumers may rely less on traditional media, leading to a much weaker relationship between new and old media at that point. These last three sets of results shed light on the possibility that, broadly speaking, advertising and blogs act synergistically (with the relationship changing somewhat post-launch). The process explanations for our findings is not obvious. We take the first step in eliciting process explanations by carrying out a novel text mining analysis of the blog posts for the two markets (shoes and clothing) for which we have access to the textual content data. The findings from the text mining analysis suggest that blogs may affect market outcomes as they represent a rich source of product information and consumer opinion for other consumers. Also, bloggers do use advertising as a subject for blogging pre-launch but turn their attention to product attributes post-launch. II-Data Our data come from fashion market. We consider data from two brands – clothing and shoes. We first describe the market outcome data for each product market and then we describe the measurement of traditional and new media. III-Market Outcomes The daily sales of clothings were made available for the total fashion market based on a nationally representative consumer panel. The data include daily sales of two new pieces of clothing introduced in the period from January 2013 to March 2013. For shoes, the outcome variable we use is based on the same principle. We have data of two new models that were released (launched) in the period from January 2013 to March 2013. IV-Traditional Media The traditional marketing variable we use is magazines advertising. This was measured in units of daily or monthly Gross Rating Points (GRPs). There are some differences in the patterns of magazines advertising pre and post launch across the two brands. For clothing, most of the advertising is post launch. Typically, commercial ads in this market begin to air about five days pre launch and then the heavier advertising kicks in post launch. In contrast, for shoes, pre-release magazines GRPs are larger (on average) than the post-release magazines GRPs. Specifically, peak advertising for shoes was, not surprisingly, a week before its launch date in order to generate high demand at the time of the opening. V-New Media We obtain blogging data from blog 1 (www. leblogdebetty. com) for clothing data and blog 2 (www. sorayabakhtiar. com) for the shoes data. Both the brands scan and index the two blogging sites on a daily basis using keywords with coverage of about 64% of all blog articles. They then aggregate the data and provide the count of the daily number of blogs that mention a particular keyword on a specific temporal period such as day or month (multiple mentions in the same temporal unit are counted as one). As is typical for most blogs, its contents appear in a reversal chronological order and also include the blogger’s profile, â€Å"trackbacks† (links showing other websites, typically other blogs, that a blog is linked to), and comments. Buzz Research archives the contents of all blog posts. It also carries out lexical analysis of the contents of each tracked blog by using a proprietary text- mining method and classifies each blog as positive, negative and/or neutral with respect to a given keyword. We therefore have access to the actual content of all posts as well as the daily percentage of positive, negative and neutral blogs for the movies and cellular phone service markets. There is big increase in the average number of blogs per period post launch in all two brands. Interestingly, for the two brands markets where we have valence data, the biggest growth is in the percentage of neutral blogs post launch. To illustrate the relationship between marketing outcomes and both traditional and new media, we pick a product across our two brand markets. The figure suggests that magazines advertising, blog volume and shoes buyer are temporally correlated. Dividing the data temporally at the date of release we see that magazines GRPs and the number of blogs exhibit an increasing trend pre-release, but a decreasing one post-release. While we illustrate a typical data pattern through this example, the pattern is not identical for all brands across product markets. In conclusion, these data are novel in the sense that they combine marketing data for both traditional and new media along with market outcomes from a market where new media have proven to be important (at least in terms of activity). Our data are also novel in the sense that they enable us to focus on new product launches. In addition, the fact that we have data from two different brand markets (frequently purchased consumer goods) with varying characteristics (e. . , more versus fewer new product launches) will help us determine if the relationship between market outcomes and new media as well as the relationship between new media and traditional media generalizes across product markets. Finally, the availability of the actual blog post text (for two categories) opens up the possibility to conduct a deeper text-mining analysis. VI-Managerial Implicati ons So far, we have discussed the findings purely from a statistical point of view. However, it may be useful to translate these findings in a manner that uantifies the effect sizes from a managerial point of view. We therefore ran two experiments – the first to get a sense of how managers could change resource allocation and the second to see how managers could use blog data to improve sales forecasts. In the first experiment, we use the estimates from the clothing market data. To illustrate short-term effects, in the experiment, we assumed there were only three periods, two in the pre-release and one in the post-release. Recall that blogging is outside the control of managers. We therefore used the marketing instrument under managerial control in our data set – traditional magazines advertising. In the experiment, we increased the Adstock by one percent in the first pre-release period. The output we measured was the percentage increase in the size of the daily volume sold in the post-release period. A ten percent increase in the Adstock results in a 3. 3 percent increase in the number of blogs at the second pre-release period. As a result of this increase in the Adstock, we find that the net increase in the sales volume is 2. 1 percent. A decomposition of this overall increase due to traditional media versus new media suggested that the increase in the Adstock directly enhances the sales by 0. 13 percent while the interaction between blogging and advertising increases the sales by 0. 1 percent. Furthermore, the largest and most significant increase in the sales volume at post-launch is led by the indirect impact from advertising via blogging activity, which accounts for 1. 9 percent. Similar experiment for the other product markets also support these findings with the overall effect being slightly smaller for shoes (0. 4%). In addition to simulating the short-term effects of advertising, we use a simulation setting similar to the above experiments and expand the time horizon from one period to ten periods. The largest indirect effect of the ten percent increase in Adstock decays slower than do the other two effects across two product categories. The peaks of the indirect effects are located at the third period for t he clothing and at the second period for the shoes. These are resulted from the larger estimates of the carry-over constants of Adstock and Blogstock at post-launch in the blog equations. In the second experiment, we hold out the last observation from each brand and re-estimated the model. We then use the model estimates for prediction and computed the difference in the predicted value and the actual data across all the held out observations. We do this for the full model and a restricted version of the full model where the response coefficients for the number of blogs and the cumulative number of blogs were set to zero. Thus, the difference in prediction (based on the Root Mean Square Deviation) between these two models shows the extent to which the use of blog data can improve sales forecasts. The improvement in RMSD is very high for shoes, and modest for clothing. VII-Conclusion, Limitations and Directions for Future Research This paper adds to the very limited, but rapidly growing field of research into the effectiveness of new media, especially in the case of new product launches. Using a unique dataset from two product markets (a major new media market), we are able to combine into a single source, data on market outcomes, traditional media (magazines advertising) and new media (volume and content of blogs). We used a simultaneous equation model to capture the effect of new media on market outcomes and the effect of market outcomes on new media. While this in itself is somewhat novel, we were also able to include the major marketing activity (mgazines advertising) in both equations, both directly and via interactions. Thus this allows us to investigate two open questions in this domain (a) whether new media (blogging activity in our case) leads to (differential) market outcomes and (b) whether traditional marketing actions (i. e. , magazines advertising) and new media act synergistically. We also make a first attempt, to the best of our knowledge, to use the content of the blog posts to shed â€Å"process† light on our econometric findings via a careful and methodical text mining analysis. Using data from clothing, and shoes brands, we find that patterns across the two categories showing clear linkages between traditional media, new media and market outcomes. In general, we find that cumulative blogs (Blogstock) are predictive of market outcomes, blogs and magazines advertising act synergistically, pre-launch advertising spurs blogging activity (that is predictive of marketing activity) but becomes less effective in inducing blogging activity post- launch and market outcomes also do have some effect on blogging activity. Our text mining results provide additional support for some of these findings. From a managerial point of view, in the experiment using clothing estimation results, we find that a one percent increase in the traditional marketing instrument (magazines advertising) leads to a median increase in market outcomes of 0. 2%, with a majority of the increase coming from the increase in blogging activity generated by the advertising pre-launch. Our analyses do also have a few limitations (driven mostly by the nature of the data). First, as noted earlier, the aggregate nature of our data makes it very hard to offer micro-level causal explanations of the effectiveness of new media and the synergistic relationship between new and traditional media. While our text mining analyses shed some light on our findings, it would be very beneficial to obtain datasets that link individual activity to market outcomes for a larger variety of new media. Second, our measures of new media are at present limited to blog content volume – and in two product markets, keywords and valence. ). Third, our model could be improved with the potential use of non-parametric models to model the effects of both old and new media and the associated interactions. Finally, our data do not contain information on all marketing instruments and hence we use proxies (such as lagged sales in the case of distribution). We hope that with better data, future research will be able to address these limitations.

The Thesis And Statement Of The Problem Finance Essay

The Thesis And Statement Of The Problem Finance Essay INTRODUCTION OF THE THESIS STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM Introduction: This thesis consists of a collection of self-contained research papers within the part of credit risk and securitization. Still if they differ in focus and faculty, they have in universal that I have designed at writing thesis which has important in real-world with a helpful and relevant participation in my thesis of credit risk and securitization. These contributions are either participation to strategy discussions, new opinions and new angles to a continuing debate, accepted practices with the help of study or cleanly development of fresh models. My thesis will be helpful for those companies which really face credit risk and do not have any model to control it. In the beginning of the writing thesis I faced a lot of problems in managing of data, but with the passage of time activities of research provided great knowledge about credit risk and securitization. This thesis will be helpful for me in future time, and it has a great importance for financial organizations. I was thinking, on basis of research on this topic, it is helpful for my job in these good organizations. I can give better performance on this job because it is my favorite area and I am specialist in it. A brief zoology of risks I view the risks faced by financial organizations as falling mainly into the following maximum collections: Market risk-the risk of sudden changes in prices or rates. Credit risk-the risk of changes in value related with sudden changes in credit quality. Liquidity risk-the risk that the costs of adjusting financial positions will boost significantly or that a firm will lose access to financing. Operational risk-the risk of fraud, systems failures, trading errors, and many other inside managerial risks. Systemic risk-the risk of stop working in open market or series of result default. Definitions of Credit risk Credit risk is a possibility that counterparty cannot perform the fixed obligation, including a possibility that the counterpartys credit risk will be reduced, which affect earnings and capital may support of financial organizations. Credit risk is very important as it involve credit department, which is a most important operation of financial organizations, both credits that are assets and contingent liabilities of the financial organizations. Credit risk is the risk of loss due to a counterparty defaulting on contract, or furthers normally the risk of loss suitable to some credit event. By tradition this applied to bonds where debt holders were worried that the counterparty to whom theyve made a loan might fail to pay on a payment (interest or original amount). Credit risk start from the possible that an obligor is either unwilling to achieve on a commitment or its capability to achieve such obligation is damaged resulting in financial loss to the bank. Credit risk is the up to date or future risk to earnings and capital happening from an obligors breakdown to meet up the conditions of any deal with the organizations or if an obligor otherwise not succeed to perform as contracted. The biggest source of credit risk is loans. However, credit risk exists all over the additional activities of the organizations equally on and off the balance sheet. In short, all the credit risks definitions provide same level of conclusion that if credit risk is greater than inspective so organizations will be suffering financial loss in balance sheet. Credit Risk: Financial organizations and financiers face several types of risk. One of the major risks is credit risk. Over the past decade, credit risk was a most important problem existing in the financial organizations. Credit risk has been one of the most active areas of recent financial research. Credit risk consists of two components: default risk and spread risk. Default risk defines as any non-compliance with the exact arrangement of a deal and spread risk defines as decline in market value of the deal/ tool due to change in the credit quality of the debtor/ counterparty. Credit Risk Models have assumed valuable because they give the judgment creator with on the way or awareness that would not otherwise be with pleasure available or that could be marshaled at too expensive cost. In business, almost all organizations carry some credit risk, because most organizations do not demand up-front cash payment for all products delivered and services rendered. Instead, most organizations distribute the product or service, and then bill the customer, often specifying net 30 days payment, in which payment is supposed to be complete on the 30th day after distribute. Credit risk is carried for the period of that time. In a market where margins are fast failing and the demands to lower pricing are implacable, models give their clients a competitive edge. The credit risk models are planned to aid banks in measuring, aggregating and managing risk across environmental and product lines. The results of these models also play more and more significant roles in banks risk administration and outcome measurement methods, client profitability analysis, risk-based pricing, active collection management and capital makeup decisions. Credit risk modeling may outcome in improved internal risk management and may have the possible to be used in the decision-making oversight of financial organizations. Credit risk analysis (finance risk analysis, loan default risk analysis) and credit risk management is essential to financial organizations which give credit to businesses and individuals. Credit can arise for different reasons: motor vehicle purchase finances bank mortgages (or home loans), credit card purchases, installment purchases, and so on. Credit loans and finances have risk of being defaulted. To understand risk levels of credit users, credit contributors normally collect huge amount of information on borrowers. Statistical predictive analytic techniques can be used to analyze or to determine risk levels involved in credits, finances, and loans, i.e., default risk levels. (Internal) credit score is a numerical rating of credit loans. It measures the level of risk of being defaulted. The level of default risk can be best predicted with analytical modeling. Credit scores can be measured in term of default probability or comparative geometric ratings. Managing credit risk is valuable for any organizations, and important resources are faithful to the task by large financial organizations with many customers. For large financial organizations, there may even be a credit risk department whose job it is to assess the financial health of their customers, and expand credit (or not) accordingly. For example, a distributor selling its products to a concerned vendor may challenge to minimize credit risk by reduction payment terms to net 15 days, or by actually selling less product on credit to the vendor, or even cutting off credit totally, and difficult payment in advance. These policies will possibly impact the distributors would-be sales, and basis smooth relationship with the vendor, but the distributor will end up better off if the vendor is delayed paying its bills, or, especially, if it failure to pay and say publicly bankruptcy. Definitions of Securitization Securitization a process whereby any Special Purpose Vehicle raises finances by issue of Term Finance Certificates or any other tools with the authorization of the relative authority of the country, for example, Pakistan commission (SECP) is authorization of the process for such purpose and uses such finances by making payment to the Originator and through such process obtains the title, property or right in the receivables or other assets in the form of actionable claims. There are lots of ways to explain securitization but in core, it is the financing or re-financing of earnings yielding assets by packaging them into a trade able form through an issue of government securities or further securities. There are three major kinds of securitization: true sale, synthetic and whole business (the final largely used in the England and, to a smaller size, continental Europe). In a true sale securitization, a organization sells assets to a special purpose vehicle which finances the purchase by issuing government securities to the capital markets. In a synthetic securitization, the organization does not sell any assets, but removes the risk of loss linked with certain of its assets to a Special purpose vehicle or a bank organization against payment by such of a premium or fee to the Special purpose vehicle. Whole business securitization is basically a secured loan granted by a Special purpose vehicle to the relevant organization. To contribution the loan, the Special purpose vehicle uses profits of government securities issued into the capital markets whereby the organization grants security over most of its assets in favor of the government securities holders. Since it is important for the whole work out to be a case of transfer of receivables by the originator, not a borrowing on the security of the receivables, there is a legal transfer of the receivables to a separate entity. In legal parlance, transfer of receivables is called assignment of receivables. It is also necessary to ensure that the transfer of receivables is respected by the legal system as a genuine transfer, and not as mere eyewash where the reality is only a mode of borrowing. In other words, the transfer of receivables has to be a true sale of the receivables, and not merely a financing against the security of the receivables. Securitization: Securitization is the procedure of financing the cost of originating or carrying economic assets. Those economic assets include responsibilities of clients originated by financial organizations or such as mortgage loans credit card receivables, student loans and student loans, trade receivables, and corporate bonds and loans. Financing arises during the issuance of asset-backed securities. In an asset-backed securities securitization, financial assets which are naturally illiquid, but exchange into cash in accordance with their conditions within a definite time. Financial assets are pooled and converted into asset-backed securities (which are then typically offered and sold in the capital markets). Mortgage backed securitizations and asset backed securitizations, or more usually, the securitization of economic assets, securitization is a form of structured finance firstly developed in the early 1970s in mortgage backed securitization format. It full-grown in the late 1970s in both mo rtgage backed securitizations and asset-backed securitizations formats. In current years, it has reach to Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia (mainly Japan, India). In Pakistan market of securitization growing in recent year because international body of securitization improved the regulations according to Islamic structure for Muslim countries and these regulations match with international securitization transaction. Pakistan play lead role in Islamic securitization all over the Muslim countries. The local controllers have usually encouraged searching and introducing multiple asset-backed financing formations at large. While the whole banking and non-banking financial areas are now facing troubling due to worldwide financial disorder, pointed increase can be seen on the heel of Islamic securitization during contribution by private and commercial sectors. In its simplest form a Securitization require (1) the sale of a huge pool of Receivables by an person (Originator) that makes such Receivable in the line of its business to a bankruptcy-remote, special purpose entity in a way that meet the requirements as a true sale and is planned to reach definite results for accounting purposes, as well as caring the Receivables from the claims of creditors of the person (Originator), and (2) the issuance and sale by the special purpose entity, in either a private assignment or public offering, of obligation securities that are afterward fulfilled from the proceeds of and protected by the Receivables. When the Securitization is stopped up, finances run from the buyers of the Securities to the Issuer and from the Issuer to the inventor (Originator). Statement of the problem This research aim is to take action and analyze the following questions and interviews have been performing from the companies officer to receive information accordingly. What is method for control the credit risk in organizations? The purpose of Securitization in the Corporate Sector? The features of Securities to make its attractiveness? Why the investors are interested to invest in Asset-Backed Securities? Why Islamic securitization important in Muslim world? Does securitization reduce credit risk for the financial organizations? How the Asset-backed Securities have minimized credit risk for the financial organizations? To understand the role of banks and credit rating agencies in the Securitization. Determine the working of factoring for reduce the credit risk and define the benefit of factoring? What are the future prospects of Asset Backed Securitization in Pakistan and all over world? Define securitization costs and expense? How credit  scoring individual customer? How can minimize credit risk through securitization? What is the method of managing the credit risk and how to improve credit risk management? importance of the study The information technology and artificial results have been powerful the businesses of the worldwide economies. To deal with the different risks linked with the businesses, the businessmen have to come up with modern solutions and separate credit risk department and securitizations are one of them. All over the world companies face different type of risk in businesses including marketing risk, operational risk and credit risk. To deal with these risks and improved the financial position of the organization and increase the annual profit of the share holders (owners), they have to pick the positive modern solutions. If mangers of the organizations want to minimize the credit risk so securitization is one of the techniques picked by the organization. In the way, organizations achieved target profits and financial position without any loss of the operating, financial and market of the organization. Study of the credit risk and securitization is allows development new models and techniqu es in the capital market which ultimately create new and more investment chance in the capital market which provide large number of profit to the financial organizations. Study of the credit risk shows, at liberty Asia appeasing Credit Risk Management: 2006-2011 spend estimate and Analysis, local investments in credit risk functions for three purposeful systems, defaults chance judgment, credit collection management systems, and worldwide limits management systems are estimated to compound at a collection percentage of 16.6 per cent annually to US$1.74 billion by 2011. If organizations want to reduce credit risk so growth for successful performance of credit risk, financial organizations need to improve their IT functions for information collection and the interior rating process, categorize proper greatest practices and building ability. Study of credit risk and securitization have very important for any organizations because credit risk accounting for at least two-thirds of their on the whole risk, the financial organizations have the leading holder for credit risk functions. According to research of credit risk controller that if organizations want to reduce credit risk so buildup credit risk departments in the organizations for control the credit risk independence and working of credit risk department that manage the securitization procedures and improved the internal rating process and fairing collection the data about customer and country political issue. Political issue plays a lead role for unsystematic credit risk. In addition, these studies evaluate the opportunity where this idea of securitization can be effectively applied. The study not only points the current companies who have already accepted the securitization but also useful for the potential companies. Delimitation of the study This research was performed within the following limitations: Only financial organizations in the first market level of the Lahore and Karachi Stock Exchange was included in this research. Joint finances were also excluded. All the steps involved in this research process were completed within a two month period (December to February 2010-2011). This place a limit on the overall level of the study. The Lahore and Karachi Stock Exchange is relatively new in the field of credit risk and securitization. This impacts the amount of information available for me. CHAPTER TWO REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND STUDIES Background Credit risk and securitization is not new team for any businessman in the capital market. A lot of the articles, books, research papers and regulations are available in internet and library. I get help from a lot of articles and books for writing a thesis of credit risk and securitization. My work is distribution into two elements: selecting articles and summarizing results. I have read 135 plus articles, books, and research papers of different authors of all over the world for clear understanding of credit risk and securitizations. My literature search starts with electronic full-text databases and Economic Papers, using searching term credit risk and securitization in the title or keywords. Literature Credit risk occurs from the option that the issuer of an asset back securitization, generally a special purpose vehicle, may default on its liabilities. Since the special purpose vehicle is usually controlled to have no assets or business other than holding the securitized assets, the main focal point is on the cash flow from the assets themselves. The most significant option to be considered is default by the underlying borrowers, such as the car owners in the case of automobile loan securitization. While a small but expected loan loss ratio is controllable, the rating agencies must deeply analyze the difference in default and crimes rates and calculates any factors that might activate a growth in defaults. The growth of a possible control of credit risk and securitization market is very dependent upon the authorized and regulatory framework that is position provides sufficient security for investors. The financial organizations, investors, banks and development companies were attractive to perform the securitization for control credit risk. It is therefore, different agreement concerning the current and future receivables of the development companies have been performed through asset backed securitization in different business sectors of the country i.e. leasing sector, oil sector, construction areas, telecom sector, and public sector. Credit risk identification Valuable credit risk identification starts with individual credit measurement. Financial organizations should rate credit value of individual customer commonly. Some financial organizations may concern relative rating. Some rate by kind of credits or transactions. Some apply both relative rating and rating by kind of credits or transactions. Risk rating should also be practical to off-balance sheet transactions. The rating process should be transmission commonly so that adjusts in credit quality will be agreed in time. Such will help the management in revising the policy as well as closely monitor the non-performing loans within a suitable time period. In addition to risk rating, there should be a assessment and analysis of every section and the overall selection to ensure the accepted risk rating. Development analysis, change in risk level and weighted average risk level should be incorporated with other information such as past due trend, credit growth, and the extent of policy exception to help in the analysis of asset quality and credit risk. The principle of valuable risk management is identifying all possible credit risks in the products and transactions through a detailed review of credit risk element in the products and transactions. New products that can incur risk should be given much interest in the new product planning process. Close and careful monitoring should be carried out to ensure that the risks are identified and appropriately managed. Adequate guidelines and control procedures should be specified before the new products and transactions are projected or introduced. Moreover, the new products and transactions should be approved by the board of directors or other suitable committee. Credit risk measurement Financial organizations should have a correct and dependable system to measure credit risk of individual customer in accord with the quality, refund ability and kind of credits or businesses, equally on- and off-balance sheet credit transactions and bank account transactions. This is so that level of risk can be correctly measured, monitored and controlled. To have valuable risk measurement, financial organization should carry on as follows: Formulate a policy and strategy in risk measurement and the impact on financial organizations. Formulate risk measurement processess which is working in high level management which is relative to measuring credit risk. Clear customer segmentation and regular assessment of credit application. Assess the current level of loan loss provisioning against credit risk. That is, even when financial organizations have high level of risk; sufficient amount of provisioning can help reduce against the overall credit risk. Financial organizations should use suitable ratios to test whether the level of loan loss provisioning is practical. Ratio analysis will make known the trend of relationship between loan loss provision with different factors such as non-performing assets and normal loans pass due loans, and stop increased debts, credits and contingent liabilities. Credit risk Monitoring and controlling For reducing credit risk on account of such off balance sheet contacts, financial organizations may accept a multiplicity of measures some of which are showed below: Financial organization must make sure that the security, which is obtainable to the funded lines, also covers the latter of credit lines and the guarantee facilities. On some events, it will be suitable to take a charge over the fixed assets as well, particularly in the case of long-term guarantees. In the case of guarantees covering agreement, financial organization must make sure that the regulars have the necessary technical skills and experience to perform the agreements. The value of the agreements must be definite on a case-by-case basis, and break up limits should be set up for every one agreement. The growth about physical and economic displays should be monitored on a regular basis, and any slippages should be highlighted in the credit review. The policy to authorize non-finance facilities with an observation to increase earnings should be suitably balanced about the risk concerned and comprehensive only after a careful assessment of credit risk is undertaken. Feature of Securitization A securitized tool, as compared to a direct maintain on the issuer, will normally have the following features: Marketability The very important principle of securitization is to make sure marketability to economic claims. Hence, the tool is prepared so as to be marketable. This is one of the most important features of a securitized device, and the others that follow are mostly significant only to make sure this one. The conception of marketability involves two hypothesizes: (a) The authorized and general option of marketing the instrument; (b) The reality of a market for the instrument. Securitization is a misleading notion unless the securitized product is marketable. The very reason of securitization will be defeated if the device is full on to a few expert investors without any chance of having a liquid market therein. Liquidity to a securitized device is given either by launching it into an organized market or by one or more agencies acting as market makers in it, that is, approving to buy and sell the tool at either fixed or market-determined prices. Merchantable Quality To be market-tolerable, a securitized product has to have a merchantable quality in capital market. The idea of merchantable quality in case of physical produce is something which is suitable to merchants in regular trade. When applied to economic products, it would mean the economic obligations embodied in the tools are secured to the investors approval. To the investors approval is a qualified term, and therefore, the originator of the securitized device secures the device based on the needs of the investors. The universal rule is: the broader the base of the investors, the less is the investors ability to attract the risk, and hence, the more the need to securities. For generally distributed securitized tools, estimation of the quality, and its qualifications by an independent expert. The rating provides for the advantage of the position investor, who is otherwise not projected to be in a position to review the degree of risk involved. In securitization of receivables, the idea of quality experience drastic change making rating is a general requirement for securitizations. Hence, the quality of the maintain of the debtors believes significance, which at times enables to investors to rely simply on the credit-rating of debtors and so, create the device totally independent of the originators personal rating. Wide distribution The necessary principle of securitization is to distribute the product. The level of distribution which the originator would like to realize is based on a relative analysis of the costs and the benefits achieved thereby. Wider distribution guides to a cost-benefit in the common sense that the issuer is able to market the product with minor return, and hence, minor financial cost to him. But wide investor base involves costs of distribution and servicing. In observe, securitization issues are still hard for retail investors to recognize. Hence, most securitizations have been secretly placed with expert investors. However, it is possible that in to come, retail investors could be involved into securitized products. Special purpose vehicle In case the securitization needs any asset or claim which needs to be included and separate, that is, unless it is a shortest and unsecured claim on the issuer, the issuer will want an agent agency to act as a storage area of the asset or claim which is being securitized. Let us take the easiest example of a secured debenture, in concentrate, a secured loan from some investors. Here, security charge over the issuers some assets needs to be incorporated, and later broken down into marketable lots. For this purpose, the issuer will bring in an agent agency whose necessary job is to hold the security charge on behalf of the investors, and then issue documentations to the investors of valuable interest in the charge held by the intermediary. So, whereas the charge continues to be held by the intermediary, valuable interest therein becomes a marketable security. The same process is concerned in securitization of receivables, where the special purpose agent holds the receivables with it, and issues valuable interest documentation to the investors. Assets that can be securitized In essence, all assets which produce a cash flow can be securitized e.g. housing loans mortgage loans, credit card receivables, automobile loans, consumer loans, trade receivables, lease finance, etc. a perfectly and usual financial asset is usually securitized. A difference is generally made between asset securitization and mortgage securitization. Asset securitization is sheltered from a pool of loans and receivables though the mortgage backed securities are sheltered by residential or commercial mortgage loans however mortgage backed securities is a particular kind of asset backed securities. Process of securitization The process of creating asset backed securities is talk about in the following points: The Company sells its products and services on credit and this becomes the trade receivables or account receivables in the balance sheet of the company. Out of these receivables, the originator pools definite receivables jointly on the base of maturity and risk structures and sells these to a securitization company identified as Special Purpose Vehicle or Special Purpose Entity. The securitization company makes payment to the originator for the receivables purchased. These receivables are improved into a pool of securities by the securitization company for the reason of issuing Pass Through or Pay through Certificates. These Pay Through or Pass through Certificates are then charged by Credit Rating Agencies e.g. Pakistan Credit Rating Agencies (PACRA). The Pay Through or Pass through Certificates are sold to individual investors or Qualified Institutional Buyers. The gathering of receivables from debtors is obtained by Company itself in case of Pass through Certificates and by Securitization Company in case of Pay through Certificates. If gathering is made by the Company then it is under commitment to pass on the money to the securitization company. The securitization company after that makes payment to the investors. Why do issuers need securitization? These explanations the investors favor to invest in asset-backed securities: Securitization makes tools with reverse maturities, risks, vouchers, which is attractive to investors. Securitization is a prepared financial device i.e. customized to the risk-return and maturity needs of investors, rather than a trouble-free claim against an entity or asset. Asset-Backed Securitization offers and defer higher than devices with similar risk. This is appropriate to the credit value of the tools (generally AAA rated) and the credit development features. Asset-Backed Securitization offers a expected cash-flow. Investors purchase Asset-Backed Securities with self-belief that payments will take place at particular dates in the future. Asset-Backed Securities are protected by the fundamental assets; therefore they offer important security against lower by rating agencies to the issuer. It gives a chance to the investors to spread their investment collection by investing in these asset backed securities. Impact of securitization on the capital market The impact of securitization on capital market can be analyzed in the following points: Securitization decreases transaction costs in the capital market by generating a market for financial claims, which otherwise, would have continued illiquid, i.e. limited trading. Securitization saves intermediation costs, since the particular intermediary costs are service associated and usually lower. Securitization supports saving since it offers a security to investors with guaranteed interest or payments and an assertion of credit quality and security nets in the variety of trustee

A Simple Change Altering the Face of the Game :: Essays Papers

A Simple Change Altering the Face of the Game Lacrosse is one of the fastest growing sports in the world today. Each day, it seems that I meet a new person who has never even seen it played, or in many cases, has never even heard of it. It is a sport that in some areas, such as the East Coast, is very popular and well-known. However, here in the West it is a sport that is growing quickly. As a Women’s Lacrosse player, as well as a referee of the game, I see two completely different perspectives of how it is played. In September of this year, a rule was added that creates hard boundaries and will drastically change Women’s Lacrosse. Throughout this paper, I will explain what has changed, how the game has been impacted, the effect on all of the people involved, and how I feel about the rule. The rule that has changed has to do with the hard boundaries, and I will explain what this means. Before I explain this rule, one must know about a rule that is unique to women’s lacrosse. This is that every time the referee blows a whistle, no matter where a player is, they must freeze in their tracks and they are not allowed to move until the whistle is blown again. Now, moving on, the original boundary rule in women’s lacrosse was that basically, there were no boundaries. Meaning that if the ball went â€Å"out of bounds,† it was whoever got to the ball first and the possession was the referee’s decision. When I say â€Å"out of bounds,† it signifies that if people were going to run into fans or if they were going to run into some near obstacles, such as fences. So the boundaries consisted of physical objects as opposed to lines. There has always been a line marking the boundaries, however, it was just a guideline, and if one went out of it, the referee would just have them bring it back in. Therefore, the difference is that a hard boundary is a set and definite line. If the ball goes out of bounds now, it is the opposite teams ball, for whoever causes it to go out of bounds or touches it last before it crosses the line is at fault. However, when a shot is taken wide, it is whichever team that gets there first who gains the possession.

Hitler In germany :: essays research papers

The point of this essay is to prove that although Hitler came to power within the 'letter of the law" he did not come to power within the 'spirit of the law.' Hitler was appointed Chancellor on the 30th of January 1933, with only two other Nazis in the Cabinet, this was though to be enough to control him, by Van Papen and the conservatives. Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to hold new elections in March 1933, in the hope he would gain an over all majority. However in the new elections Hitler controlled Prussia through GÃ ¶ring (Cabinet Minister) and the other two fifths of Germany through Frick (the other Cabinet Minister). With Nazi appointed police chiefs and local government heads, the Nazis had the legal power to intimidate the electorate. By the end of February 1933 Hitler was Chancellor and in control of police and local government, all legally and not within the spirit of the constitution. On the 27th of February 1933 a half-mad Dutch Communist called Van der Lubbe was found wondering in the ashes of the burning Reichstag. This provided the Nazis with the opportunity to persuade Hindenburg to sign an emergency decree (composed by Frick) on February the 28th, suspending civil liberties and allowing the central Government to run regional governments deemed unable to run them selves. By the end of April, twenty five thousand people had been taken into 'protective custody' in Prussia alone. Under the decree Frick was able to 'take over' areas not already controlled by GÃ ¶ring. Because of the 'suicide clause' these actions were legal however they were definitely not within the democratic spirit of the constitution. In the Reichstag elections of March 1933 the Nazis increased their control from 33.1% in December 1932 to 43.9%. This increase can be attributed to the Nazis strong stance on Communism. The Nazis were known for their hatred of Communism, the middle class voted Nazi because of that policy. Joseph Goebbels' propaganda machine was also very good at 'acquiring' votes. Nazi intimation by the now auxiliary policeman (in Prussia), the S.A. and S.S. plus the threat of unemployment by Nazi run organisations also helped increase Nazi votes. With their rightwing and Catholic allies the Nazis were now in a position to obtain power legally. Hitler clearly gained power legally as regards election results but as to how he got the results it is clear he acted both illegally and against the constitution.

Explanatory Concepts in Political Science Essay

Since 1979 there have been dramatic changes in both the structure and organisation of the Labour Party. In part, this was in response to their failure to win a general election between 1979 and 1997. However, the change goes much further than that and can be perceived as a reflection of the continued struggle between ideologies of different factions within the party. This essay will first try to establish what ‘Old’ Labour was and what it stood for. Then, scrutinising ‘New’ Labour, this essay will discus if, how and why the Labour Party changed and identify the key differences between ‘old’ and ‘new’ Labour. The Labour Party was initially established as a party to represent the newly enfranchised working class in Parliament. Growing out of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), the party owed its existence to various trade union and socialist organisations. Consequently, right from its inauguration, the party’s primary purpose was to elect MP’s that would represent the interests of the unions. Although ostensibly not a committed socialist party, by 1918, the party had included Clause 4 in its election manifesto, the principle of public ownership which committed the party to nationalising land, coal mining, the electricity industry and the railways as well as declaring their intention to make rates of taxation steeply progressive to fund a major extension of education and social services.[1] Labour soon overtook the Liberals in popularity and rose to be the principle opposition for the Conservatives, forming three governments between 1926 and 1945. Post-war Labour fundamentally recognised the relationship between state and society in Britain and introduced a number of reforms in education, social security and welfare in an attempt to lay the foundations for a new, more caring society. The post-war Atlee government sent Labour on a trajectory towards socialism with commitments to economic planning in an attempt to reduce unemployment, a mixed public and private sector economy and a comprehensive welfare system which was endorsed by successive Labour and Conservative governments until 1979 when Thatcherism ideology took over. During this time Labour was widely perceived as being orientated towards a socialist perspective as the government took responsibility for unemployment, healthcare and housing. After Labour’s defeat by the Conservatives in the elections of 1979, the party went through a period of considerable internal turmoil that ultimately resulted in extensive reform of the structure and organisation of the Labour Party. Since 1979, there have been three distinct phases of change as ‘Old’ Labour became ‘New’. These can be defined as The Bennite challenge, Modernisation and New Labour. The first phase of this, the Bennite challenge led by Tony Benn attempted to redress the balance of power within the party. Aided by the leaders of some major trade unions at a special party conference in 1981, the party’s left wing activists succeeded in forcing through a number of internal organizational reforms that enhanced the power of grass-roots activists and trade unions in the selection of parliamentary candidates and party leaders. This change meant that ‘the party would now be committed to bringing about a fundamental and irreversible shift of power and wealth towards working people and their families’[2]. In response, a number of leading parliamentarians and supporters seceded from Labour and founded the Social Democratic Party in 1981. Labour presented a radical manifesto that proposed extensive nationalization of industry, economic planning, unilateral nuclear disarmament, and the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Economic Community. The result was Labour’s worst national electoral defeat in more than 50 years. It was after this defeat that modernisation took place under the new leader of the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock, a politician who, despite his leftist credentials set about re-establishing Labour as a credible national electoral force. Kinnock’s â€Å"modernisation† process towards the beginnings of a ‘New Labour’ contributed to Labour’s electoral revival after the trauma of 1983. As well as explicitly rejecting nationalisation as a tool or goal of economic policy, Kinnock ‘set out to crush the revolutionary left by launching a series of expulsions of supporters of the Militant Tendency’[3] but it was not sufficient to deprive the Conservatives of their governing majorities in the general elections of 1987 and 1992. By the time that Blair took the Labour Party leadership in 1994, the leadership had reasserted its authority having introduced significant organisational reforms which broadened and centralised the decision making process within the party as well as removing all trace of links with Marxist socialist ideology. Traditionally, there had been a strong socialist link with the Labour Party through Clause 4. Despite opposition from many of the Old Labour leaders, the rank and file of the party was insistent on maintaining its Socialist roots right up to the 1990’s. In stark contrast to the rest of Europe, which by 1980 had largely rejected a fully-fledged socialist ideology, Labour maintained Clause 4 that sought to maintain its ideology of socialism and nationalisation. Clause 4 of the Labour Party’s constitution was an integral part of the party’s philosophy and ideology as it marked the party as ardently socialist. Clause 4 is as follows; â€Å"To Secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible up the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.†[4] The clause is clearly anti-capitalist and commits to replacing capitalism with a system of social ownership, justice and planning where more control is given to ‘the workers’. Dearlove and Saunders propose that in practise, Old Labour was happy to accept a capitalist economic order although they sought limited social ownership through nationalisation, limited redistribution or wealth and income through taxation and welfare and limited planni ng through national agencies. In practise then, Dearlove and Saunders suggest that Labour should have been considered as a ‘social democratic’ party rather than actively pursuing its formal socialist objectives. Following the election of Tony Blair in 1994 as leader of the Labour party, the party saw a series of programmatic and organisational changes; the party systematically reviewed its policies so as to re-embrace the mixed economy in the tradition of the revisionists of the 1950s. Labour had consistently struggled to fully implement socialism, and reject the capitalist system because of what many critics believed to be a lack of a proper plan of how to implement their socialist ideology and replace the capitalist system. Blair took the modernisation of the party to a new level, adopting the American idea of rebranding the party as ‘new’. The slogan, ‘New Labour, New Britain’ was unveiled and stuck as the new party name. Blair believed that the Left had to ‘modernise or die.’ [5] With the rejection of Clause 4, Blair and the modernisers showed little respect for Old Labour’s sacred cows; â€Å"state ownership, economic planning, Keynesian de mand management, full employment, tax-and-spend welfarism and close links with the trade unions†[6] and brought Labour back to win the next General election. New Labour is itself a contested term. There is much debate as to what exactly it means. Michael Freeden suggests that the ‘ideological map’ of New Labour is â€Å"†¦located somewhere between the three great Western ideological traditions – liberalism, conservatism and socialism – though it is not equidistant from them all.†[7] Some suggest ‘New’ Labour is nothing but a marketing ploy and product of Alistair Campbell’s PR campaign for Labour in an attempt to win votes. During the 1997 election campaign, the Conservatives tried to convince voters that New Labour was simply ‘Old’ Labour in disguise using the ‘New Labour, New Danger’ slogan. Some political scientists, notably Driver and Martell assert that the political positioning of ‘New’ Labour is nothing more than Liberal Conservatism. They would argue that ‘New Labour’ is simply an extension of Thatcherism inasmuch as it is no different from Thatcherite attempts to blend traditional conservative and classical liberal principles. Pointing to Conservative prescriptions regarding education, the family and welfare, they assert that ‘New Labour’ is simply a progression of Thatcherism. Blair sees ‘New Labour’ as a new means to an old end, believing that the party has the same values yet is using new ways to achieve these aims. Apart from the rejection of Clause 4, how then is ‘New’ Labour different from ‘Old’ Labour? Dearlove and Saunders regard ‘New Labour’ to be Liberal Socialism. New Labour has rejected its classed based socialism in exchange for what many believe to be ethical socialism which has been largely influenced by Blair’s own Christian beliefs and the Labour ‘tradition of self help and mutual aid. Dennis and Halsey have defined ethical socialism as ‘a moral community in which freedom is gained for every member through the sharing of what they have, in equal mutual respect for the freedom of all’. Where Thatcher ‘sought to temper the free market individualism of neo-liberalism with an emphasis on traditional conservative values’ Blair has tried to temper the individualism of neo-liberalism with traditional ethical socialist values of equality, fraternity, self improvement and moral rectitude, in an attempt to amalgama te neo-liberal economics and socialist ethics. Whereas ‘Old Labour’ had been based on the big ideas of socialism and collectivism for the advancement of the working class, ‘New’ Labour attempts to reconstruct the state with more democracy and individual responsibility based on ‘co-operative self-help’ and the idea of communitarianism whereby individuals have a responsibility to help themselves and those immediately around them in their community. There is a new emphasis on social cohesion and ‘New’ Labour’s attempts to repair the social fabric of society. ‘New’ Labour is attempting to maintain the dynamic, innovative and efficient aspects and advantages of a liberalised economy whilst trying to avoid the inimical and often inevitable social fragmentation. One aspect of this is the shift from the ‘Old’ Labour stance on providing a large welfare state as a means of creating a more egalitarian society to ‘New’ Labour’s smaller we lfare state which is based on the principle of ‘hand up, not hand-out’ and the idea that the community and the individual should exist for each other’s benefit. The Ethical Socialist ideals are further perpetuated with ‘New’ Labour’s belief in stakeholder capitalism – the idea that every citizen must be included in the society they live in by being made to feel they have a long term stake in it using the idea of the welfare state and universal provision of services such as healthcare and education. Unlike ‘Old’ Labour’s focus on the interests and needs of the working classes, the trade unions and the poor, ‘New’ Labour concerns itself with the interests of consumers, especially middle Britain and a new deal for citizens. Anthony Giddens argues that this is largely in response to the impact of ‘post-materialism’. This idea asserts, â€Å"after a certain level of prosperity has been reached, voters become concerned less with economic issues than with the quality of their lives.†[8] In order to get the middle England vote, New Labour needed to accommodate for these voters. Giddens also suggests New Labour’s shift is a reflection of class dealignment and the decline of the blue collar, working class which meant Labour could no longer rely on a consistent ‘class bloc’ to vote for them. ‘New’ Labour has largely rejected a Keynesian style economy using demand management style that had been characteristic of ‘Old’ Labour. ‘New’ Labour has also rejected its former ideology of nationalised industry and public ownership replacing this with a much more free market approach and even privatisation of some former publicly owned services such as the London Underground. To argue that there are no discernable differences between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Labour would be both naà ¯ve and crass. Like most political parties, since its inception, Labour has evolved, changing both its organisation and ideology to reflect changes in society and voters needs. The gap between the Left and Right has significantly narrowed with ‘New’ Labour policy and there are undeniable elements of Thatcherism in ‘New’ Labour although it is certainly not merely an extension of this. Perhaps the most significant change to ‘New’ Labour, the amendment of Clause 4, can be attributed to class dealignment and the decline of the working class that has shifted Labour far away from its socialist and nationalising policies that used to provide the core of its ideology. ‘New’ Labour no longer seeks to nationalise and plan but rather prefers equality of opportunity rather than outcome. ‘New’ Labour is no l onger the preserve of the socialist working class; it has been transformed into a party for middle England as much as the workers. [1] John Dearlove and Peter Saunders – Introduction to British Politics 3rd Edition, Polity 2000 p.394 [2] ibid p.397 [3] John Dearlove and Peter Saunders – Introduction to British Politics 3rd Edition, Polity 2000 p.402 [4] The former ‘Clause 4’ of the Labour Party constitution [5] Tony Blair, speech to the Part of European Socialists’ Congress, Malmo, 6 June 1997 [6] Stephen Driver and Luke Martell – New Labour, Politics after Thatcherism 1998 Polity, p.12 [7] Michael Freeden – The Ideology of New Labour – Political Quarterly 70 (1999) p.48 [8] Anthony Giddens – The Third Way: The Renewal of Democracy Polity p.19