Citi Bank Project Essays - Citigroup, Citibank, Wachovia

Citibank, a Citigroup company, has set a goal to be the premier international financial company in the next millennium. The public relations efforts of Citibank start with a website. Citibank.com gives all the customers from around the world access to their banking and enables them to do everything that they do in the bank online. They also support to a lot of charities and do a lot of sponsorship organizations. I think the campaign that Citibank runs to be the good citizen corporation are very effective. Citibank keeps high financial results. Citibank has had some good PR opportunities. Examples of these are The Catholic Charities Brooklyn Funding and program delivery occurs at both the corporate and local levels. Services include: consumer health education (via print, classroom and intranet-based delivery); preventive screenings and immunizations; behavior change, fitness and work conditioning programs; and targeted interventions for those at risk or with chronic medical conditions. There is also some bad publicity surrounding Citibank. Some examples are Citibank ran a lockdown of ATM cards for customer traveling or otherwise in Canada, Europe or Russia. Apparently, the network had been hacked. Unfortunately, Citibank seems somewhat lacking as some reported Citibank failed to notify them before they used their card to attempt to retrieve money, Despite Citibank's recently publicized policy of not doing business with firms "that manufacture or sell military weapons, military munitions or firearms," new information indicates the New York-based global banking giant may be selective about enforcing its own policy. Though company spokesmen have denied Citibank pursues "business relationships" with such firms, a newly discovered press release tells a different story. Dated Nov. 30, 1999, the release states that Sanford I. Weill, 66, chairman and co-chief executive officer of Citigroup, was elected to the board of directors of United Technologies Corporation, a company that manufactures Pratt & Whitney engines for jet fighters, as well as Sikorsky helicopters for the military and other "aerospace and defense products." Citigroup is the parent company of Citibank and Travelers, and the most recently bad publicity about Citibank is Citibank previously teamed up with the FDIC to pick off Wachovia's banking operation for $2.2 billion. Four days after the deal was announced, Wells Fargo loaded up the stagecoach, buying Wachovia as a whole for $15 billion. The FDIC shrugged its shoulders, glad not to have pay $42 billion to secure against losses, and let Wells Fargo proceed with the takeover.

Native American essays

Native American essays Native American stories reflected their lives and beliefs vividly. Through stories Native Americans could explain natural phenomenon such as earthquakes and thunderstorms. They would often blame these events on gods that were responsible. Creation stories are also common among Native American storytellers such as Stone Boy. For better explanation they would often add human traits to animals or Natural things that otherwise would not be able to talk to move. By personifying things they could add dialogue to animals talking with trees, or the sun talking to farmers. This gave them more room to expand their stories and explanations of events. The stories told by different tribes were often directly associated with their every day life. For example the Iroquois tribe, since they were a tribe based around agriculture their stories often explain bad growing seasons or harsh winters. Some stories that refer to hard growing seasons are Hiding Sun and Seedling Shower. In Hiding Sun it explains how the sun is afraid to come out because it fears that it will be hurt from warring tribes. This explained to the people that when there was conflict with other tribes it often led to a hard growing season. It personified the sun which otherwise would not have been able to talk or explain the reasons it had to hide. Even though this was most likely coincidence the people believed that if there was conflict it would be bad for agriculture, it is said that this is one of the reasons that the Iroquois were such a peaceful tribe. In the story Seedling Shower it explains how the Iroquois believed that the rain was sometimes seeds. This expl ained the woven weeds in their crops. The Native Americans embraced their stories as much as everyday possessions. They would pass the stories on to the next generation and try too keep the stories alive. Over time these stories evolved into more...

Building Innovation into Outsourcing Relationship Case Study

Building Innovation into Outsourcing Relationship - Case Study Example Therefore, after identifying the innovation process to be implemented, AlphaCorp must understand how the innovation will be incorporated into the intended operation and or processes (Babin & Schuster, 2012). In other words, it is only through understanding the scope of the innovation that costs and services required to initiate and implement such innovations can be determined and analyzed. Â  AlphaCorp and B&B must distinguish between innovation and continuous improvement in the projects they are running or intend to run towards improving their productivity (Babin & Schuster, 2012). They must ever consider or regard all projects or programs that they have never been working on and are intended to be initiated into their systems as a mean of improving their service deliveries and operations as innovative programs or projective. However, there are some programs and projects that have been operating within the system, but they need to be adjusted on for better results (In Hirschheim et al., 2014). The systematic progress on processes that are already existing programs and projects is known as continuous improvement. Notably, well-intended and drafted projects and programs must give room or ways through which continuous improvement will be conducted on them. Â  Finally, AlphaCorp and B&B must know that innovation must always be carried on already existing productions but not new productions or areas (Babin & Schuster, 2012). In some cases, innovations often fail and if such failures are experienced in new production or areas, it will be highly challenging restore the destroyed image of the product or of the company in the new areas it failed due to failed innovation.

Personal and Profesional Development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Personal and Profesional Development - Essay Example On the other hand, professional development is a continuous improvement in a person’s career, not a one-time thing; it aims at assessing and skill improvement to increase one’s value in an organization. This enhances individual’s future in an organization especially with the ever changing and advanced world of modernity and technological enhancement (Masters, Wallace & Harwood, 2011). Professional development includes several facilitated learning opportunities which range from college degrees or university to formal coursework, seminars, conferences as well as informal learning, Professional development is known to be intensive and collaborative due to its evaluative stages. Therefore, it has to be noted that Professional development comprises several approaches that include the following, reflective supervision, lesson study, consultation, mentorship, coaching and technical assistance. There are several individual who participate in professional development on the daily basis from different fields with an aim of enhancing their demand at the place of work, for instance, health practitioners, lawyers, teachers, military officers and accountants just to mention a few, engage in professional development with an objective of lifelong learning as a way of improving professional competence in order to boost their career, to keep pace with ever-changing technology and practice or sometime to comply with a measure put in place by organizational regulatory body, in some cases individuals may be subjected to meet the professional development courses as a requirement established by human resource department (Wadhwa, 2008). Personal development, on the other hand, may comprise the art of developing other people too. This can be achieved through roles, for instance, mentoring or teaching by the way of personal competence.( for example, a manager who has particular skill, may use it

Business-to-Business Marketing Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Business-to-Business Marketing Report - Essay Example (Zoltners, Sinha & Lorimer 2009: 3). A motivated sales force will usher higher sales as compared to an unmotivated sales force. A well-coached, well-trained sales force ushers more sales than an untrained sales force. 2.1 â€Å" Sales Force Structure â€Å" If a company markets a single product to one industry with customers spreading over many locations and in such an event, it is ideal to employ a territorial sales force structure. On the other hand, if a company sells different products to many varieties of customers, it may either engage a product sales force structure or a customer sale force structure or a mixture of both. Under the territorial sales force setup, an exclusive geographic province is assigned to each sales person to market the company’s whole range of products to all customers in that geographical area. Under this structure, each sales person role and accountability are clearly defined. Company with diversified products engages different kinds of product s sales forces. For instance, Lear Corporation’s employ outstanding 145-sales force that brings many feats to the company. Lear sales force is good at relationship building and to satisfy customer’s needs. (Kotler 2008:423). American Express ,PepsiCo, and the Hartford Financial Services Group. sales personnel comprise one of the company’s most expensive and productive assets and increasing their figures may increase both revenue and costs to the company. (Kotler 2008:423). 2.2 â€Å" Various Sales Promotional Tools† A company’s sales promotion mix includes a mixture of various types of sales promotional tools employed by it to market its products or services. The chief six sales promotional tools are – advertising, personal...About $ 800 billion is being spent by all American companies each year on sales force, which is about 3 times the quantum of dollars spent on advertising. Many past empirical studies have found communication; commitment, trust, social contracts and co-operation are the variables that influence B2B relationships. As per eMarketer, about 88% of the shoppers prefer to do shopping online instead of traditional shopping as they can shop through online 24 hours a day and 365 days during a year. According to DoubleClick research study, about 73% of interviewees answered that they purchased a product through online due to email marketing. This demonstrates that B2C marketing is gaining momentum nowadays. SPSL should maintain adequate sales force and should launch its own website. SPSL should publish some success stories, offer the visitors some plumbing tips on how to keep their plumbing system hassle-free, and there should be a review section where its customers can post their views and recommendations about the SPSL services. SPSL can also introduce e-mail campaigns, pay-per-click campaign, local SEO programs and other online marketing strategies to attract new customers. SPSL should also publish in their websites positive reviews’, blog entries, and forum discussions section, about its past deals and upcoming ones.

McDonalds Workplace Hygeine

McDonalds Workplace Hygeine Executive Summary This report is to apply the HACCP to check and evaluate the food safety procedures in one of the most famous fast-food company; the McDonald .and also aims at offering some suggestions to correct some of the non-satisfactory procedures. The report will describe it from the following aspects: personal hygiene, cleaning and sanitizing, pest control, garbage disposal, receiving foods, storing foods, cooling defrosting, cooking and holding. McDonald is a leading food service retailer. Just in the USA, it has more than 12,300 traditional restaurants, plus approximately 1320 satellite locations in facilities like hospitals. They serve more than 21.8 million customers a day. So how dose the food safety procedures go on in McDonald is of great importance, which is related to the health of consumers. In order to apply the HACCP to check the food safety procedure, this report does a study of the food safety procedure in the McDonald, and find out that as a successful enterprise, McDonald develops detailed provisions to ensure the food safety procedure, making food safety a key factor to its success. Introduction Produce and serve safe food is the final goal for foodservice operations (Yi-Mei Sun, 2005). It was reported that HACCP system have not yet been homogeneously implemented across all of the food industry (Panisello and Quantick, 2001; G.Campbell-Platt, 2002). The key action, known as critical control points can be taken to reduce or eliminate the risk of the hazards being realized. It is used in the food industry to identify potential food safety hazards at all stages of food production and preparation processes. McDonald, as the biggest fast food retailer in the world, take the food safety as a never-ending process, from raw materials, through the facilities and distribution centers, and all the way to the restaurants. It„ ¢s a top priority at McDonald„ ¢s. (Sarah Fister Gale, 2006). Situational Analysis Personal Hygiene Personal hygiene of the workers is probably one of the most important thing, because the workers need to interact with the customers, and in the McDonald, they are responsible for the dinning environment. McDonald has specific regulations for workers„ ¢ personal hygiene as follows: 1. Clothes must be clean and appropriate. 2. Keep hair clean, ladies„ ¢ face should not be covered by the hair. 3. Men„ ¢s hair should be above the collar, long hair is not allowed. 4. Men need to shave and manicure everyday. 5. Ladies should wear the appropriate make-up. And too much decoration is not allowed. 6. Keep the fingernail clean and short. 7. Maintain oral hygiene and regular bathing. 8. Members of the McDonald„ ¢s restaurant management group need to wear uniforms. 9. Wash hand before going to workstation. Of all the McDonald„ ¢s hygiene standards, most of the regulations are carried out by nearly all the workers in McDonald. But there is the told by one of the workers in McDonald: Sorry to ruin your idea about McDonald„ ¢s and hand washing. I„ ¢ve worked at McDonald„ ¢s for three months, and I never see anyone wear gloves, or wash their hands, managers included. Since this comments comes from the forum, it is difficult for us the judge its reliability. However, the suggestions for the McDonald manager is that, they need to pay more attention to the workers personal hygiene, and try their best the make the situation much better. Cleaning and Sanitizing Cleaning and Sanitizing are necessary processes to create a clean and nice environment for the customers in the McDonald. According to the HACCP, cleaning and sanitizing should follow four steps: pre-clean, main clean, sanities and drying. Regulations concerned about cleaning and sanitizing in the McDonald are: Pre-clean: 1. The dining tables, chairs ,windows and equipment should be spotless. 2. All the tableware and machine should be completely cleaned and sanitizing after work. 3. The glass must be rub everyday 4. The parking lot must be flush everyday 5. The trash bin must be brushed everyday Main clean: McDonald makes a readily cleaning regulation to main clean. Readily cleaning regulation means anybody in any position must clean the peripheral position to keep the position clean. What is more, the McDonald has its own special method to simplify the clean and sanitizing job and save the time spent on clean and sanitizing. Firstly, they use lots of paper, plastic and other disposable tableware. This means, the worker only needs to put the table wares which are left by the customers when they finish into the garbage bin, and clean the table. Then everything is done. Secondly, they use trays and trays of paper, which are convenient for the customers to carry, and reduce the chance to dirt the desk. And as a result ,save the time spent on cleaning the table. Finally, all the kitchen equipments are of stainless steel surface. As the stainless steel surface is easy to clean, the efficiency of cleaning work is improved. Pest control Pest control is also of great importance. Nobody likes the presence of pests which transmit diseases. Here is what has been done in McDonald concerned about pest control: 1.McDonald especially focus on the controlling of cockroach. 2 In the entrance of the distribution center, a kind of special yellow light has been designed to drive the fly. 3 The inside of the distribution center has been painted white, especially the floor around the warehouse. Then it will be much easy to trace the cockroach and the mouse. and some actions can be taken to prevent bad ting from happening. In McDonald, the keys to successful pest controls are as follows: 1. Correct identification of the pest is the first step in control, because information on pest biology, ecology, and behavior can be easily obtained if the pest is known. 2. It is important to detect pest problems early. Careful visual inspections can help in early detection of infestations. 3. Control measures must be timed to target the most vulnerable stage of pests. as many pests are susceptible to control measures at certain times in their lives. Garbage disposal There are many garbage need to dispose everyday in McDonald. In order to protect the environment , McDonald uses paper bags instead of bags. Here are the regulations related to garbage disposal in McDonald: 1 Disposal garbage day and never leave them until tomorrow. 2 Workers must clean the place around them at anytime. 3 Use different trash bins to separate the different kinds of garbage. 4 Wear gloves when dispose garbage 5 Wash hand after disposing garbage Although garbage disposal is a small little thing, attention should be paid to, otherwise it will be harmful to the cleaning procedure. Receiving foods According to the HACCP, the receiving contains the following aspects, and this report wills analysis the situation in the McDonald following the HACCP: 1. Approved source. To make all the products has the same flavor, the McDonald especially focus on the standardization of raw materials. And all the materials must be offered by the McDonald distribution center. 2. Choosing the suppliers Knowing that suppliers are a major player in fulfilling its promise and adhering to its social responsibility, McDonal„ ¢s ensures 100% eligibility before adding any resource to its database of approved suppliers. To quality as a McDonald„ ¢s supplier, they must meet the McDonald„ ¢s internal food safety standards, product specification and farm biosecurity policies 3. Guality supervision and inspection The McDonald has stringent procurement standards. The purchasing department is responsible for quality supervision and inspection of the raw materials of the suppliers. When a defective product is found, it should be return immediately. And the suppliers should solve the problem as soon as possible. If the suppliers can not solve the problem before the deadline, their qualification for suppliers will be canceled. So the goods receiving procedure of the McDonald is following the HACCP. Storing Foods Storing foods is a funny thing for McDonald. According to the HACCP, the McDonald can store the hamburger that is not sold out as well as the method is correct and proper. 1. The French fries must be thrown away, if it can not be sold out within seven minutes. 2. The hamburger must be thrown away, if it can not be sold out within ten minutes. It is not because of food decay or food defect. The McDonald insists on offering the most valuable and qualified food to the customers. And this is just right the reason why the McDonald does what is mentioned above. So, storing foods is in fact not only a funny thing for McDonald but also a serious thing for McDonald. And through the following statements one can see, how serious it is: 1. The temperature inside the house for cold storage should be between 1 and 4, and the temperature of the house for cold storage should be between -22ÃÆ'‚ °~18ÃÆ'‚ °. 2. Special attention should be paid to the storage of hamburger, otherwise accident will be easy to happen ,if it is not storied under the standard temperature. 3. The storage of food and materials should be obey to the regulations. And it definitely follows the HACCP, or even does a greater job. Cooling and Defrosting Cooling is a useful way to keep most of the food or materials fresh. When inspect whether the food is fresh or not, McDonald pays much attention to the test of temperature, especially the temperature control of the frozen food. The workers much inspect every product to make sure it is under the condition of cooling. The main principle for the refrigerate is insisting -FIFO , the FIFO stands for first in first out. Special methods have been made, concerned about how to organize the food, for example, there can only be six boxes of French fries up forward. Before the food being cooled, the manager need to inspect the temperature and the quality of the goods. Cooking and Holding The reported foodborne illness cases per year were 76 millions in the US(Tauxe, 2002) and 9.4 millions in the UK(Walker, et al, 2003).Improper food handling is responsible for 97% of food borne illness associated catering(Griffith CJ, 2000). The McDonald pays much attention to cooking and handling procedure. The main principle for cooking is -less amount many time  which can ensure the high quality and high fresh level of the food. For instance, twelve hamburgers should be made in four minutes; workers can not cook the twelve hamburgers at one time. The time figured out for making one hamburger is one handured and forty-five senconds, take the additional time into consideration, humburgers can be made in ten minutes. Nearly all foods in the McDonald have the specific holding time, the holding time for humbuegers is ten minutes, for french fries is seven minutes, for apple pie is ten minutes, and for coffee is thirty minutes, and the temperature of the milk sent by the supplier mus t be under 4ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒâ€¦Ã‚ ¾Ãƒâ€  , otherwise, it will be returned. Conclusions In conclusion, workplace hygiene is very important to McDonald which does a good job in such eight aspects above-mentioned. McDonald„ ¢s ways to manage the workplace hygiene can be good references for other similar establishments. Beause of the work for hygiene is systematic, there may be some behaviours not conform to specified requirements exsit, for instance, some worker may omit washing, McDonald still needs to make better use of the HACCP to make the situation even better. References Griffith, CJ 2000. Food safety in catering establishments, in: Safe Handling of Foods, JM Farber and ECD Todd, Eds., Marcel Dekker, New York, 235-256. G.Campbell-Platt 2002. HACCP/food safety objectives. Food Control ,13, PP. 353. Panisello,P.J, Quantick,P.C 2001. Technical barriers to hazard analysis critical control point. Food Control,12(3), PP. 165-173. Sarah Fister Gale 2006. CASE STUDIES IN FOOD PROTECTION McDonaldds USA: A Golden Arch of Supply Chain Food Safety. Food Safety Magazine [Online] Issue February/March 2006, Available at:http://www.foodsafetymagazine.com/article.asp?id=491sub=sub1 [Accessed 12 Sep 2009] Tauxe, R.V 2002. Surveillance and investigation of food borne diseases. Food Control,13,PP. 363-369. Walker, E.,Pritchard,C., Forsythe,S. 2003. Hazard analysis critical control point and prerequisite programme implementation in small and medium size food business. Food Control,14, PP. 169-174. Yi-Mei Sun., H.W.Ockerman 2005. A review of the needs and current applications of hazard analysis and critical control point(HACCP) system in foodservice areas. Food Control,16, PP. 325-332.

Lorraine Hansberrys A Raisin In The Sun Essays -- essays papers

A Raisin in the Sun In A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry portrays obstacles that the Younger family and other African Americans had to face and over come during the post World War 2 era. Obstacles that had to be over come by the Youngers were economical, moral, social, and racist obstacles. Lorraine Hansberry, the author of the play had to face one of these as well growing up. Born in Chicago on the south side in an all black neighborhood, Lorraine Hansberry and her family had to deal with segregation. Moving to a white neighborhood in Chicago, her family had to deal with threats of violence and legal action. Her father defended the case successfully all the way to the Supreme Court.(sparknotes1) Her parents were well known in national black culture and political circles, which probably sparked her to latter become a reporter and editor for the Freedom, a black newspaper in New York from 1950-53. Hansberry relates her life situations through her play by having the Younger family deal with a similar circumstance. In the play Lena Younger or better known as mama, receives a 10,000-dollar check because her husband had past away. She decides to buy a house in Clybourne Park, which is an all white neighborhood. After finding out a black family is moving to Clybourne the so-called Organization Committee sends out a Mr. Lindner to welcome the Youngers. He d...

The Roles of Corporate Governance in Bank Failures During the Recent Financial Crisis

The Roles of Corporate Governance in Bank Failures during the Recent Financial Crisis Berger, Allen N. 1 | Imbierowicz, Bjorn2 | Rauch, Christian3 July 2012 Abstract This paper analyzes the roles of corporate governance in bank defaults during the recent financial crisis of 2007-2010. Using a data sample of 249 default and 4,021 no default US commercial banks, we investigate the impact of bank ownership and management structures on the probability of default.The results show that defaults are strongly influenced by a bank’s ownership structure: high shareholdings of outside directors and chief officers (managers with a â€Å"chief officer† position, such as the CEO, CFO, etc. ) imply a substantially lower probability of failure. In contrast, high shareholdings of lower-level management, such as vice presidents, increase default risk significantly.These findings suggest that high stakes in the bank induce outside directors and upper-level management to control and reduce risk, while greater stakes for lower-level management seem to induce it to take high risks which may eventually result in bank default. Some accounting variables, such as capital, earnings, and non-performing loans, also help predict bank default. However, other potential stability indicators, such as the management structure of the bank, indicators of market competition, subprime mortgage risks, state economic conditions, and regulatory influences, do not appear to be decisive factors in predicting bank default.JEL Codes: G21, G28, G32, G34 Keywords: Bank Default, Corporate Governance. Bank Regulation 1 University of South Carolina, Moore School of Business, 1705 College Street, Columbia, SC, USA, Phone: +1803-576-8440, Wharton Financial Institutions Center, and CentER, Tilburg University, Email: [email  protected] usc. edu 2 Goethe University Frankfurt, House of Finance, Grueneburgplatz 1, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Phone: +49-69798-33729, Email: [email  protected] uni-frank furt. de 3 Goethe University Frankfurt, House of Finance, Grueneburgplatz 1, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Phone: +49-69798-33731, Email: christian. . [email  protected] com The authors would like to thank Lamont Black, Meg Donovan, Xiaoding Liu, Raluca Roman, Sascha Steffen, Nuria Suarez, Larry D. Wall, and participants at the 29th GdRE International Symposium on Money, Banking and Finance for useful comments. 1 Why do banks fail? After every crisis, this question is asked by regulators, politicians, bank managers, customers, investors, and academics, hoping that an answer can help improve the stability of the financial system and/or prevent future crises.Although a broad body of research has been able to provide a number of answers to this question, many aspects remain unresolved. After all, the bank failures during the recent financial crisis of 2007-2010 have shown that the gained knowledge about bank defaults is apparently still not sufficient to prevent large numbers of banks from failing. Most studies of bank default have focused on the influence of accounting variables, such as capital ratios, with some success (e. g. Martin, 1977; Pettway and Sinkey, 1980; Lane, Looney, and Wansley, 1986; Espahbodi, 1991; Cole and Gunther, 1995, 1998; Helwege, 1996; Schaeck, 2008; Cole and White, 2012). However, almost no research to date has empirically analyzed the influence corporate governance characteristics, such as ownership structure or management structure, have on a bank’s probability of default (PD). 1 This is perhaps surprising for two reasons. The first is the calls for corporate governance-based mechanisms to control bank risk taking during and after the recent financial crisis (e. . , restrictions on compensation and perks under TARP, disclosure of compensation and advisory votes of shareholders about executive compensation under DoddFrank, guidance for compensation such as deferred compensation, alignment of compensation with performance and ris k, disclosure of compensation, etc. by the G20, or more recent discussions in the UK regarding a lifetime ban from the financial services industry on directors of collapsed banks), which are largely without basis in the empirical literature on bank defaults.The second is the literature showing that governance mechanisms can have a very strong influence on bank performance in terms of risk taking (e. g. , Saunders, Strock, and Travlos, 1990; Gorton and Rosen, 1995; Anderson and Fraser, 2000; Caprio, Laeven, and Levine, 2003; Laeven and Levine, 2009; Pathan, 2009, Beltratti and Stulz, 2012). It is therefore the goal of this paper to analyze the roles of corporate governance, including both ownership structure and management structure, in bank defaults. The results are key to underpinning the recent calls for changes in corporate governance to control risk.As well, the results may add a new dimension to the extant literature on the effects of corporate governance   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   1 An exception is Berger and Bouwman (2012), which controls for institutional block ownership, bank holding company membership, and foreign ownership in models of bank survival and market share. However, the paper does not focus on these variables, nor does it include the ownership of directors and different types of bank employees, which are the key corporate governance variables of interest here. 2 on bank performance.Although this body of research has clearly established the causalities between corporate governance and bank risk taking, no study has so far used corporate governance structures to help explain bank defaults or to distinguish default from no default banks. Our paper attempts to fill this void. To analyze the influence of corporate governance structure s on bank defaults, we analyze 249 US commercial bank defaults during the period of 2007:Q1 to 2010:Q3 in comparison to a sample of 4,021 no default US commercial banks. We use five sets of explanatory variables in multivariate logit regression models of default.First, we include the impact of accounting variables on banks’ probability of default (PD). These accounting variables are well represented in the established literature on bank default. Second, we employ various corporate governance indicators to measure banks’ ownership structure and management structure. For ownership structure, we use the shareholdings of different categories of bank management, whether the CEO is also the largest shareholder, whether the bank or its holding company is publicly traded, and whether the bank is in a multibank holding company.For management structure, we use the numbers of outside directors, chief officers, and other corporate insiders (all normalized by board size), the board size itself, and if the Chairman of a bank is also the CEO. For the purposes of this paper, we define â€Å"chief officers† as all bank managers with a â€Å"chief officer† position, such as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Lending Officer (CLO), or Chief Risk Officer (CRO). Third, we incorporate measures of market competition.We thereby account for the large literature on bank market power which is inconclusive on the effects of higher market power on bank stability, depending on whether the traditional â€Å"competition-fragility† view or the â€Å"competition-stability† view dominates, as discussed in Section II A. We also account for the bank’s competitors’ subprime loan exposure – a factor often cited as a major source of default risk in the recent crisis – which could help the bank by weakening or eliminating some of its competition.Fourth, we employ economic variables at the state level – GDP growth and the house price inflation – the latter of which is believed to have contributed to instability in the banking system due to banks being able to only partially recover collateral in defaulted mortgage loans. Finally, we account for potential differences among federal bank regulators. Our results confirm the extant bank failure literature by finding that accounting variables such as the capital ratio, the return on assets, and the portion of non-performing loans, help predict bank default. Our key new finding is that the ownership structure of a bank is also an important predictor of bank PD. Specifically, three bank ownership variables prove to be significant predictors of bank failure: the shareholdings of outside directors (directors without other direct management executive functions within the bank), the shareholdings of chief officers, and the shareholdings of other corporate insiders (lower-level management, such as vice presidents). Interes tingly, the effects differ among these three groups.While our results suggest that large shareholdings of outside directors and chief officers decrease a bank’s probability of default, larger shareholdings of lower-level management significantly increase bank PD. We find that these ownership structure variables add substantial explanatory power to the regressions, raising the adjusted R-Squared of the logit equations by more than half relative to the accounting variables alone. We offer explanations for these perhaps unexpected findings.We hypothesize that lower-level managers with large shares may take on more risk because of the moral hazard problem, whereas this problem may not apply as much to outside directors and chief officers because they are vilified in the event of a default. However, our other corporate governance indicators for management structure do not appear to significantly influence bank default probabilities. Perhaps surprisingly, bank market power, competi tors’ subprime loan exposure, state-level house price inflation and income growth, and different primary federal regulators also have little or no influence on bank failure.These results are robust to different specifications, time periods prior to default, as well as a possible sample selection bias caused by the types of banks for which corporate governance data are available. In an additional analysis, we develop a variable based on the individual shareholdings of outside directors, chief officers, and other corporate insiders as a single default predictor variable. This measure confirms that the ownership structure of a bank has significant predictive power for bank default, especially if observed some time period prior to default.Overall, our results add substantially to the question of why banks fail, and also contribute to the aforementioned discussion of corporate governance-based mechanisms to control bank risk taking. The remainder of the paper is structured as foll ows. In Section I, we provide an overview of the relevant literature regarding corporate governance and bank stability. In Section II A, we describe the composition of our data set. Section II B contains the summary statistics on anecdotal evidence of the reasons behind bank failures during the financial crisis of 2007-2010.We describe the ownership and management structures of the banks in our sample in Section II C. 4 Section II D contains summary statistics on the accounting, competition and economic data. Section III reports our main multivariate results, and in Section IV we develop and test a single indicator of bank ownership structure to predict default. Section V concludes. I. Literature Overview Our paper builds upon and expands the existing literature in two closely connected areas of research: bank defaults and the influence of corporate governance structures on bank risk taking.The literature on bank default mostly focuses on testing a wide variety of bank accounting va riables on banks’ default probabilities in discriminant analyses and regressions of dependent binary default indicator variables. Examples that precede the recent financial crisis are Meyer and Pfifer (1970), Martin (1977), Whalen and Thomson (1988), Espahbodi (1991), Thomson (1991, 1992), Cole and Fenn (1995), Cole and Gunther (1995, 1998), Logan (2001), and Kolari, Glennon, Shin and Caputo (2002). The predominant findings are that the default probability increases for banks with low capitalization and other measures of poor performance.Following this body of research, there are only few papers to date analyzing the relevant drivers of bank default during the recent financial crisis: Torna (2010), Aubuchon and Wheelock (2010), Ng and Roychowdhury (2011), Berger and Bouwman (2012), and Cole and White (2012). Torna (2010) focuses on the different roles that traditional and modern-day banking activities, such as investment banking and private equity-type business, have in the f inancial distress or failure of banks from 2007 to 2009 in the US. The paper shows that a stronger focus on these modern-day activities significantly increase a bank’s PD.Aubuchon and Wheelock (2010) also focus on bank failures in the US, comparing the 2007-2010 period to the 1987-1992 period. They predominantly analyze the influence of local macroeconomic factors on banks’ failure probability. Their study shows that banks are highly vulnerable to local economic shocks and that the majority of bank failures occurred in regions which suffered the strongest economic downturn and the highest distress in real estate markets in the US. Ng and Roychowdhury (2011) also analyze bank failures in the US in the crisis period 2007-2010.They focus on how so called â€Å"add-backs† of loan loss reserves to capital can trigger bank instability. They show that add-backs of loan loss reserves to regulatory capital increase banks’ likelihood of failure. Berger and Bouwman (2012) focus on the effects of bank equity capital on survival and market share during both financial crises (including 5 the recent crisis) and normal times. They find that capital helps small banks survive at all times, and is important to large and medium banks as well during banking crises.Finally, Cole and White (2012) perform a test of virtually all accounting-based variables and how these might add to bank PD, using logit regression models on US bank failures in 2009. Using the standard CAMEL approach, they find that banks with more capital, better asset quality, higher earnings and more liquidity are less likely to fail. Their results also show that bank PD is significantly increased by more real estate construction and development loans, commercial mortgages and multi-family mortgages.Although our paper is closely related to these studies – especially to the post-crisis research and in terms of sample selection, observation period, and methodology – we strongl y expand the scope of the existing analyses to include corporate governance variables and other factors and are therefore able to substantially contribute to the understanding of bank failure reasons. Our most important contribution is the analysis of detailed ownership and management structure variables in the standard logit regression model of default.The distress of the banking system in the wake of the recent financial crisis has triggered a discussion about the role of corporate governance structures in the stability of financial institutions. Politicians (e. g. , the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report, 2011), think tanks (e. g. in the Squam Lake Working Group on Financial Regulation Report, February 2010), NPOs (such as in the OECD project report on Corporate Governance and the Financial Crisis, 2009), and academic researchers (an overview of scholarly papers regarding corporate governance and the financial crisis is provided by e. g.Mehran, Morrisson and Shapiro, 2011 ) have recently not only intensely discussed, but also strongly acknowledged, the importance of corporate governance for bank stability. The discussions resulted in a number of actions from regulators addressing corporate governance in banks, such as restrictions on compensation and perks under TARP, various compensation guidelines set forth by the G20, or â€Å"clawback† clauses for executive compensation in addition to guidance for deferred compensation in Dodd-Frank. Banks even started to implement voluntary â€Å"clawback† clauses for bonus payments (such as Lloyds TSB) in addition to these mandatory clauses.However, the finding that corporate governance has implications for bank stability was already established long before the recent financial crisis. Several studies such as Saunders, Strock and Travlos (1990), Gorton and Rosen (1995), and Anderson and Fraser (2000) show that governance characteristics, such as shareholder composition, have substantial influence on banks’ 6 overall stability. Their findings support that bank managers’ ownership is among the most important factors in determining bank risk taking.The general finding in all studies is that higher shareholdings of officers and directors induce a higher overall bank risk taking behavior. Saunders, Strock and Travlos (1990) show this for the 1979-1982 period in the US, and Anderson and Fraser (2000) confirm this for the 1987-1989 period. Although Gorton and Rosen (1995) obtain the same result for the 1984-1990 period, they additionally show that the relationship between managerial shareholdings and bank risk depends on the health of the banking system as a whole: it is strongly pronounced in periods of distress and might reverse in times of prosperity.Pathan (2009) provides empirical evidence for the period 1997-2004 that US bank holding companies assume higher risks if they have a stronger shareholder representation on the boards. Based on these findings, we have s trong reason to believe that corporate governance structures might also have an influence on bank default probability. In light of the recent financial crisis, some studies, such as Beltratti and Stulz (2012) and Erkens, Hung and Matos (2012), analyze bank ownership structures with special regard to bank risk. Testing an international sample of large publicly traded banks, Beltratti and Stulz (2012) find that banks with better governance (in terms of more shareholder-friendly board structures) performed significantly worse during the crisis than other banks and had higher overall stability risk than before the escalation of the crisis. Specifically, they find that banks with higher controlling shareholder ownership are riskier. This result is confirmed by Gropp and Kohler (2010).Erkens, Hung and Matos (2012) analyze the influence of board independence and institutional ownership on the stock performance of a sample of 296 financial firms (also including insurance companies) in over 30 countries over the period 2007-2008. They find that banks with more independent boards and greater institutional ownership have lower stock returns. Also testing an international sample, Laeven and Levine (2009) show that banks with a more diversified and outsidercontrolled shareholder base have an overall lower risk structure than banks with a highly concentrated hareholder base in which most of the cash-flow rights pertain to one large (inside or outside) owner. Kirkpatrick (2008) also establishes that weak corporate governance in banks 2 Another corporate governance-related body of research focuses on compensation structures in banks with special regard to risk. Among the most recent works on bank management compensation and risk taking behavior are Kirkpatrick (2009), Bebchuk and Spamann (2010), DeYoung, Peng, Yan (2010), Fahlenbrach and Stulz (2011), and Bhattacharyya and Purnanandam (2012). leads to inadequate risk management, especially insufficient risk monitoring through the board, a factor which contributed greatly to the bank instabilities during the crisis. 3 Although the existing body of research has clearly established a connection between governance and bank risk taking behavior, none of the studies investigates the influence certain governance characteristics might have on bank default. The risk variables most often investigated are the stock price (e. g. , Beltratti and Stulz, 2012), returns (e. g. Gropp and Kohler, 2010), lending behavior (e. g. , Gorton and Rosen, 1995), or general stability indicators, such as the Z-score (e. g. , Laeven and Levine, 2009). Standard governance proxy variables are managerial shareholdings (e. g. , Anderson and Fraser, 2000), bank insider shareholdings (Gorton and Rosen, 1995), the ownership percentage of the single largest shareholder (Beltratti and Stulz, 2012), or the shareholder friendliness of the board (as developed by Aggarwal, Erel, Stulz, and Williamson, 2009, and used by e. g.Beltratti and Stulz, 2012). Our paper offers three important contributions to the literature. We are the first paper to combine a range of these factors by investigating the influence the ownership and management structures in banks may have on their default probability. We are the first paper to differentiate between top- and lower-level shareholdings as well as between outside and inside director shareholdings. Finally, our paper is the first to analyze the influence of management structures on bank default probability. II. Data A. Sample SelectionOur main data set is a collection of more than ten different data sets merged manually on the bank level. We start with the population of US commercial banks using the FFIEC Call Report data set to collect bank balance sheet, income statement, and off-balance sheet data for each 3 As noted above, Berger and Bouwman (2012) include institutional block ownership, bank holding company membership, and foreign ownership as control variables in models of bank survi val and market share. They do not find strong, consistent results for any of these variables. 8 bank. We exclude systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs), commercial banks with at least $50 billion in total assets (as defined by Dodd-Frank), as none of these institutions failed during the crisis, perhaps because of the TARP bailout and/or extraordinary borrowing from the discount window. 5 These data are augmented by two additional data sets containing general economic indicators on the state level. The real estate price development is measured using the quarterly returns of the seasonally-adjusted Federal Housing Financing Agency (FHFA) house price inflation index for the state.The quarterly percentage change in state GDP is taken from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis â€Å"Federal Research Economic Database† (â€Å"FRED†). The fourth data set we use contains detailed information on the annual census-tract- or MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area)-leve l mortgage lending in the United States. This data set is referred to as the â€Å"Home Mortgage Disclosure Act† or â€Å"HMDA† data set, obtained through the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC).This data contains the total amount and volume of mortgage loans by year and census tract/MSA, both on an absolute level as well as broken down by borrower characteristics. We classify each mortgage granted to a borrower with an income of less than 50% of the median income in the respective census tract or MSA as â€Å"subprime. † Although we acknowledge that borrowers falling into this income group might also be classified as â€Å"prime† borrowers in some cases, we believe it to be a fair assumption that mortgage borrowers of this category can be deemed as rather high-risk borrowers, and hence we group these as â€Å"subprime. We include the ratio of originated subprime mortgage loans to total originated mortgage loans in our data set cal culated on census tract or MSA level. We use the subprime variable and the Herfindahl Hirschman Index (HHI) of local market concentration as measures of competition. The HHI is based on the FDIC Summary of Deposits data on the branch level. We use each bank’s share of deposits by branch in each rural county or MSA market for these calculations, and take weighted averages across markets for banks in multiple local markets using the proportions of total deposits as the weights. 4 Merged or acquired banks are treated as if the involved banks had been merged at the beginning of the observation period, by consolidating the banks’ balance sheets. As a robustness check, we exclude all merged and acquired banks from our data set. Results remain unchanged. 5 We also exclude all savings institutions with a thrift charter obtained through the Office of Thrift Supervision. This also includes all failed thrifts and thrift SIFIs (such as Washington Mutual and IndyMac).We do so for r easons of comparability and to obtain a homogenous sample of commercial bank failures only. 6 We use total deposits in calculating the HHI because it is the only variable for which bank location is available. 9 In a next step, we collect data on corporate governance, specifically, ownership and management measures. The information is taken from four sources: the Mergent Bank Database, the SEC annual bank reports publicly available through the SEC’s EDGAR website, the FDIC Institutions data, and CRSP.The Mergent data base contains detailed ownership and management information for 495 US commercial banks (both stock-listed and private). We specifically use information on each bank’s shareholders, their directors, and officers as well as on the other corporate insiders. To expand the sample, we complement the Mergent data base with the information given in the annual reports filed with the SEC of each bank with registered stock. The information on whether a bank is in a m ultibank holding company or not is taken from the FDIC Institutions data set, obtained through the official FDIC website.Public banks are all banks or banks in bank holding companies (BHCs) with SEC-registered shares which are publicly listed and traded on a United States stock exchange over the observation period. We treat subsidiaries of multibank holding companies as public banks if their respective BHC is publicly listed. Information on trading and listing is obtained from CRSP. Banks with (CUSIP registered-) shares which have been sold in private placements are treated as privately-owned banks. All banks without a stock listing and without a stock-listed BHC are treated as private banks.In a last step, we have to determine which banks failed within our observation period. As we only focus on US commercial bank failures in the recent financial crisis of 2007-2010, we use the FDIC Failed Institutions list as reported by the FDIC. 7 This list contains a detailed description of eac h failure of an FDIC-insured commercial bank or thrift, including the name of the bank, the exact date of failure (i. e. , when the bank was put into FDIC conservatorship), its location, the estimated cost of the failure to the FDIC, as well as information on the acquiring institution or liquidation of the failed bank.This list allows us to compile the data set of all failed institutions which are eligible for the analyses in our paper. To gather additional information on each failure, we use multiple sources. First, we employ the Material Loss Reports (MLRs) published by the FDIC as part of their bankruptcy procedure for all material bank failures. 8 In it, the FDIC provides a detailed report on the causes for the failure of the bank, whether or not the failure was caused by the bank’s management and its (lack of)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   7 As obtained through the FDIC website: http://www. dic. gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist. html The FDIC publishes Material Loss Reports for all bank defaults which result in a â€Å"material loss† to the FDIC insurance fund. On January 1st 2010, the threshold for a â€Å"material loss† to the FDIC fund was raised from $25 million to $200 million. 8 10 risk management, and whether or not the failure could have been anticipated by the regulatory and supervisory authorities of the bank. For failed institutions for which no MLR was published, we gather news wire articles, press releases or reports from newspapers located in each bank’s local market.The information we take from these multiple sources is: the exact failure reason, whether or not bad risk management was among the causes for the failure, whether or not regulatory action had been taken against the failed bank (especially ce ase-and-desist orders), and whether or not the failure came as a surprise to the regulatory and supervisory authorities. We use one additional source to determine the surprise of each bank’s failure: stability reports (â€Å"LACE Reports†) published by Kroll Bond Ratings, an independent firm specialized in rating banks and other financial services firms.These reports contain a rating scheme for each bank (based on a number of standard rating indicators) ranging from A (best) to F (worst). As the ratings are published quarterly, we are able to determine whether or not a bank has a rating better than â€Å"F† in the quarter prior to failure. We deem any failure as â€Å"surprising† if either the MLR specifically states that it was surprising or the LACE report shows that the failed bank’s rating was better than â€Å"F† in the quarter prior to failure.This leaves us with a data set of 249 default banks and 4,021 non-default banks. All bank fai lures occur in the period 2007:Q1 to 2010:Q3. For the regressions we obtain a total of 79,984 bankquarter observations in an unbalanced panel. As corporate governance information cannot be obtained for all banks, we exclude all failed and non-failed banks from our subsample of banks with corporate governance data for which we cannot obtain reliable information on the desired ownership and management variables.Our final subsample of banks with corporate governance data consists of 85 default banks and 243 no default banks, recorded over the same period, for a total of 5,905 bank-quarter observations. A detailed description of all of the explanatory variables used in the regressions is provided in Table 1. (Table 1) B. Anecdotal Evidence on Bank Defaults We first investigate the causes of bank failures on an anecdotal level. We do so to better understand the different reasons for bank failures and to ensure that our sample of bank failures is not biased by e. . too many cases of fraud or regulatory intervention. We draw on the 11 aforementioned Material Loss Reports (MLRs) and news sources to determine that the reasons for bank failures can be clustered into six distinct groups: â€Å"General Crisis Related,† â€Å"Liquidity Problems Only,† â€Å"Loan Losses Only,† joint â€Å"Liquidity Problems and Loan Losses,† â€Å"Fraud,† and â€Å"Other. † The MLRs and other sources reporting on the failures mentioned these six groups of failure reasons almost exclusively.If MLRs and/or news reports do not contain a specific failure reason, but instead mention that the failure came as a result of the general economic conditions or the crisis, we label the failure as â€Å"General Crisis Related. † As shown in Table 2, Panel A, we find that 95 out of 249 banks fall into this category. If it is explicitly mentioned that either only liquidity problems, or only loan losses, or a combination of both was the cause for the failure, we cluster the banks in the respective groups â€Å"Liquidity Problems Only,† â€Å"Loan Losses Only,† or â€Å"Liquidity Problems and Loan Losses. We find that only one bank was put into FDIC conservatorship as the result of liquidity problems only. In contrast, 106 banks’ failures were triggered by loan losses only and 22 banks defaulted after the joint occurrence of both liquidity problems and loan losses. Finally, we find that 5 banks failed or were taken into FDIC conservatorship due to management fraud. For 20 banks, a specific failure reason could not be determined; we thus label their failure reason as â€Å"Other. These anecdotal results show that loaninduced losses played a dominant role for banks’ stability during the recent financial crisis, as opposed to liquidity problems. The FDIC also publishes the estimated cost of the failure to the FDIC insurance fund. We collect and report these numbers to show the economic importance and which fail ure types are the most costly. The overall estimated cost of all failures in our sample to the FDIC insurance fund amount to approximately $6. 75 billion. In 2009 the fund incurred the highest cost with an estimate of $2. 6 billion from 119 failures; however, the highest insurance costs per institution were incurred in 2008, with only 20 failures resulting in an estimated cost of $2. 61 billion. The 106 loan lossinduced failures are the most costly group with a total of $2. 08 billion. Interestingly, defaults due to both loan and liquidity losses seem to be much more expensive per institution as compared with loan loss-only failures. Although the overall contribution of the insurance cost to the overall estimated FDIC losses of the loan and liquidity loss group is only slightly smaller with $2. 3 billion, this group consists of only 22 banks, as compared to the 106 bank failures in the loan loss-only group. (Table 2) 12 In a second step, we collect anecdotal evidence on the role of the banks’ management and the regulatory agencies prior to bank failure. Specifically, we determine whether or not bad risk management contributed to the default. Whenever the MLRs, other official FDIC releases, or newspaper articles mention that the bank suffered from managers’ bad risk management, we classify the respective bank as a â€Å"Bad Risk Management† bank prior to default.Panel B in Table 2 shows that this is the case for only 18% of all defaults. The fact that not even a fifth of all bank defaults during the recent financial crisis happened due to inadequate risk control systems (or failures thereof) calls for a detailed investigation of alternative reasons for bank failures, such as the banks’ ownership and management structures. We also gather information on the actions taken by the regulatory and supervisory agencies prior to the default. Supervisory actions prior to default (especially cease-and-desist orders to prevent the bank from fail ing) are used in only 7. % of all defaults. Based on the MLRs and the LACE ratings, we also find that only 13. 6% of all bank failures came as a surprise and were neither anticipated by a rating agency nor by the supervisory authority. According to Panel B in Table 2, one explanation for this rather low percentage of surprises might be that most of the surprising failures occurred at the onset of the financial crisis, when market participants have not been able to predict the severity of the crisis, while in 2009 and 2010 more banks failed but this was expected more often.Taken together, Panel B in Table 2 shows that our sample of bank failures does not put too much weight on potentially distorting factors as for example regulatory intervention or fraud and emphasizes the requirement of an investigation of alternative reasons for bank failures, such as the banks’ ownership and management structures. C. Corporate Governance and Bank Defaults Table 3 shows summary statistics of the ownership and management data of our sample banks.We report summary statistics for the total sample, as well as broken down by default and no default banks, bad risk management, banks subject to cease-and-desist orders prior to default, and surprising versus non-surprising failures. We define â€Å"Outside Directors† as members of a bank’s board of directors, who do not perform any function other than being a board director in the respective bank. The literature on corporate governance also refers to this group as â€Å"independent directors. As noted above, we define â€Å"Chief Officers† as all bank managers with a â€Å"chief 13 officer† position. â€Å"Other Corporate Insiders† are all bank employees holding lower-level management positions in a bank, such as vice presidents, treasurers, or department heads. Note that these â€Å"Other Corporate Insiders† are neither â€Å"Chief Officers† nor members of the bank’s boa rd of directors. The shareholdings are determined based on the Mergent data base or SEC filings. The data contain name, title, and the amount of shares held by each manager.The shareholding variables are normalized by the number of the bank’s outstanding shares and the numbers of outside directors, chief officers and other employees are scaled by the board size. 9 Table 3 reports that, on average, default banks have much lower shareholdings of outside directors, slightly lower shareholdings of chief officers, and much higher shareholdings of other corporate insiders, as compared to no default banks. Additionally, the CEO is the single largest shareholder in some of the default banks. This is never the case in no default banks.In terms of management structures, we find that default banks have smaller boards, fewer outside directors and more chief officers relative to their board size, and the Chairman is less often also the CEO than in no default banks. (Table 3) These values paint an interesting picture of the ownership and management characteristics of default and no default banks in our sample. Table 3 provides empirical evidence that default banks tend to be characterized by fewer shareholdings of outside directors and chief officers and larger shareholdings of lower level management.A tentative conclusion of these descriptive results could be that the incentives are set very differently in default and no default banks. In no default banks, more than 80% of all shares are held by chief officers, who are responsible for the continuation of bank’s operations in the long term, or by outside directors, who are responsible for the oversight of these operations. Furthermore, outside directors and chief officers are publicly known figureheads of the banks. This might imply that their personal reputation is connected to the bank’s performance and survival, at least to some extent.In contrast, lower-level management, such as vice-presidents or t reasurers, hold more than 50% of all shares in default banks. This group is neither publicly known nor held responsible in public for the failure of the bank, even though they may exert a tremendous amount of direct influence on the actual risk 9 Note that the scaling with the board size does not imply that the sum of the three variables adds up to one because other corporate insiders are not members of the board while also chief officers are not always members of the board. 14 taking of the bank in its daily operations. 0 The position of lower level management is equivalent to equity holders in the classic Merton (1977) firm value model which states that shareholders of insured banks have a moral hazard incentive to increase variance of returns, since the assets of the bank can be put to the FDIC in the event of default. This incentive may be less for the outside directors and chief officers who are publicly known and vilified in the event of default as compared to opaque lower lev el management. Accordingly, Table 3 suggests that outside directors and chief officers behave more responsibly in terms of risk taking when they have large stakes in the bank.In contrast, other non-executive corporate insiders tend to increase risk taking when they hold shares of the bank. We investigate this result in more detail in the next section in a multivariate setting. Looking at the ownership structures of default banks with bad risk management, we find that they have fewer outside director shareholdings, fewer other corporate insider shareholdings and larger chief officer shareholdings as compared to banks where bad risk management is not mentioned.These exact same shareholder structures are featured by default banks against which cease-anddesist orders had been issued in comparison to banks without such orders before failure. Regarding the management structures of banks with bad risk management prior to default, we find that they are characterized by smaller board sizes, fewer chief officers and fewer outside directors relative to their size.Again, the exact same characteristics can be seen in banks against which cease-and-desist orders had been issued before default, except for the board size, which is slightly higher in banks with cease-and-desist order. These numbers allow for two tentative interpretations regarding the existence of bad risk management: first, banks run by managers facing little oversight through fellow corporate insiders or outside shareholders are more likely to be able to exercise bad risk management, causing the bank to fail.Second, the regulators might be aware of the bad risk management situation in these banks, but act to no avail, i. e. issue ceaseand-desist orders against the banks without being able to save them from defaulting. Interestingly, the ownership and management characteristics of bad risk management and ceaseand-desist-banks are also mostly shared by banks whose failure came as a surprise to markets and regul ators. As compared to banks whose failures were more predictable, they have fewer outside   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   10We acknowledge that there are a few exceptions, such as Nick Leeson, Jerome Kerviel, and Bruno Iksil, who became known to the public. However, individual traders have to severely cripple their financial institutions (with losses, only attributable to them, in the billions) before being in the news. Additionally, all of these now infamous cases were based on fraudulent risk taking, as opposed to risk taking within the allowed boundaries. The news on these tail events also supports the notion that lower-level employees may have a tremendous impact on bank risk. 5 directors and other corporate insiders as shareholders. In terms of management, they have slight ly smaller boards, more chief officers and outside directors relative to their board size. Only the number of shares held by chief officers is lower for surprising failure banks, a characteristic in which they differ from the bad risk management and cease-and-desist order banks. These governance features can be a sign of limited outside control of the bank’s executive management.As a result, executive managers might have been able to hide the true financial situation of the bank from regulators (in spite of a possibly higher scrutiny expressed by the cease-and-desist orders) and other stakeholders until the very end, either in an attempt to rescue the bank or for mere fear of admitting the failure of the bank. These structures might also allow for gambling for resurrection in an attempt to save the bank. Without outside control, the managers could have taken on excessive risks with promising high returns in a last effort to rescue the bank.We finally report information if the bank is publicly traded versus privately owned and if it is organized in a multibank holding company as this also describes a bank’s ownership structure. We also include these factors because publicly traded banks and banks in multibank holding companies might have access to additional capital markets besides only the bank’s internal funds (or the internal funds of the holding company) which, especially in times of distress, might serve as a source of financial strength.About 27% of all default and 41% of all no default banks in our sample were publicly traded over the observation period. Only 12% of the default banks and 14% of the no default banks were part of a multibank holding structure. We find similar numbers for the risk management, cease-and-desist order and non-surprising failure groups. Table 3 indicates that certain corporate governance characteristics, such as limited outside control of management through fellow top-level employees or through independent outside directors as hareholders, can foster bad risk management and the concealment of a bank’s true financial situation. If managers are inadequately monitored, they lack incentives to act in the best interest of shareholders. The fact that a small number of banks failed surprisingly might be an indication that it can be difficult for the regulator to recognize or anticipate problems if the managers are willing and able to conceal them. Our results are therefore in line with the findings of Anderson and Fraser (2000), who show that management shareholdings and risk taking are positively related.The results are also consistent with e. g. Laeven and Levine (2009), who show that banks with more concentrated ownership and management structures also exhibit higher overall risk 16 taking. We therefore substantially extend this body of literature by showing that the management shareholdings also have implications for the most extreme case of bank risk, which is default. D. Summary Statistics of Accounting, Competition and Economic Variables Table 4 provides summary statistics on the variables other than the corporate governance variables.It shows that default banks differ strongly from no default banks, especially in terms of general characteristics, business focus, and overall stability. As can be seen in the table, default banks are on average larger than no default banks as measured by asset size, have a lower capital ratio, lower loan volume relative to their assets, stronger loan growth as well as weaker loan diversification as measured by the loan-concentration HHI. On the funding side, default banks rely more on brokered deposits and less on retail deposits than no default banks.Not surprising, default banks also perform worse in terms of overall stability than no default banks: they have a negative return on assets and a much higher non-performing loan ratio. Interestingly, default banks have a lower exposure to mortgage-backed securities (MBS) than no default banks. Note that default banks do not have any off-balance sheet derivative exposure (not shown in the table), which is why we exclude this factor in our regression analyses. (Table 4) Table 4 also shows the differences in accounting data between default and no default banks for our sample with available corporate governance data.While most differences and values are very comparable between our full data sample and our corporate governance sample, one difference is asset size. The banks for which we are able to obtain ownership and management data are larger than the average banks in the full sample. However, this is to be expected, as mostly large banks register shares with the SEC, which in turn requires them to publish ownership and management data. We will therefore also test our results with respect to a possible sample selection bias in our following analyses with a specific focus on bank size and publicly traded shares.Finally, in the last three columns, the table shows the development of accounting variables from two years prior to default until the quarter immediately preceding the default. In line with expectations, we observe on average a very strong decline of the capital ratio, the return on assets, and the loan growth, paired with a strong increase in the ratio of non-performing loans 17 over the last two years before default. This confirms a rapid decline in bank profitability and a deterioration of stability.Interestingly, banks seems to strongly increase the amount of retail funding in the form of brokered deposits, from roughly 9% two years before default up to 18% in the quarter before default. At the bottom of Table 4, we show summary statistics for the market competition and state economic condition variables. For market competition, we report the deposit-based HHI of market concentration and the subprime lending ratio of originated subprime mortgage loans to total originated mortgage loans on census tract or MSA level.The state economic condition variables include the house price inflation indicator, calculated using the average quarterly returns of the seasonally-adjusted Federal Housing Financing Agency (FHFA) house price inflation index for the bank’s states, and the quarterly percentage changes in state GDP. 11 Comparing the values for default and no default banks, we find that default banks face slightly higher market concentration, competitors with lower subprime exposure, a steeper decrease in house price values and a slightly lower GDP growth than no default banks.These differences are confirmed for our subsample of banks for which corporate governance data is available, with the exception of market concentration, which is slightly lower for default banks than for no default banks. We do not detect any substantial change in the market competition variables over the twoyear period leading up to defaults. Market concentration only increases marginally, subprime risk remains virtually unchange d. We see slightly stronger variations in the two state economic indicators.The FHFA house price index stays negative throughout the period, decreasing slightly in the year before the default but moving to a slightly higher value in the quarter before default. The same goes for the GDP growth, which turns negative in the year before default, but moves back up to slightly positive values in the quarter before default. We will forego a detailed analysis of these univariate statistics and instead rely on the multivariate regression results to interpret the variables’ influence on bank defaults in greater detail. 11 We use the state economic variables from the states in which the banks have deposits.For banks with branches in different states, we calculate the weighted exposure to each state through the FDIC Summary of Deposits data, as previously used for the HHI calculation, to obtain a weighted exposure to the state economic variables. 18 III. Multivariate Analysis A. Methodol ogy In this section, we investigate the possible influence factors have on bank failure in a multivariate logistic regression framework with an indicator variable for bank failure in the default quarter as dependent variable and a number of predictor variables.By choosing this model specification, we follow a broad body of literature having established this approach as standard procedure (e. g. , Campbell, Hilscher, and Szilagyi, 2008), which was pioneered for banks by Martin (1977). We include a total of five sets of explanatory variables: accounting variables, corporate governance variables, market competition measures, state economic indicators, and bank regulator variables. We combine these sets of variables to test eleven different model specifications, in which each specification is comprised of either a different set of variables or a different subsample.As reported in Table 4, we have a main sample of 249 bank defaults and 4,021 no default banks. We also have a subsample com prised of 85 default banks and 243 no default banks for which we obtain corporate governance data of a bank’s ownership and management structures. The different model specifications alternate between these two data samples. We include both subsamples in our analyses to show that our data does not suffer from selection biases – i. e. , that similar results hold for banks with and without available corporate governance data.We test the contribution the different variable sets or combinations thereof have on the explanatory power of our model of bank default. We additionally test each model for three different time periods: the quarter immediately preceding the default, as well as one and two years prior to default. By also testing the time component, we follow a body of research (e. g. , Cole and Gunther, 1998; Cole and White, 2012) which shows that the predictive power of binary regression models in the context of bank defaults varies over time.Table 5 contains eleven m odels together with an additional model in which we account for a possible sample selection bias. Models I and II test only the influence of accounting variables on bank defaults, separately for all banks (Model I) and the subsample of banks with available corporate governance data (Model II). These models most closely resemble the extant empirical literature on bank defaults. Models III and IV focus on the corporate governance sample only. They incorporate accounting variables in addition to six corporate governance ownership variables (Model III) and five corporate governance management variables (Model IV).Model V subsequently investigates the joint influence of the accounting and all the corporate governance variables on bank default. Models VI-VIII expand 19 this setting by adding market competition variables, the bank’s local market power and its competitors’ subprime loan exposure (Model VI), by adding economic indicators for the state house price inflation and the quarterly change in state GDP (Model VII), and by adding possible effects stemming from different primary federal bank regulators (Model VIII), respectively.Models IX and X jointly incorporate these three variable sets together with accounting data and exclude corporate governance variables. Model IX does so for all banks, and Model X includes only the sample of banks with available corporate governance data. In Model XI, we include all variables. The final model, labeled â€Å"Heckman Selection Model,† presents a robustness check using a Heckman Selection model which will be explained later in more detail.In running these tests, we are primarily interested in three questions: First, how do the different sets of variables and combinations thereof contribute to the overall explanatory power of the regression? Second, which variables are statistically significant in explaining bank failures? Finally, at what point in time prior to the actual default date do sets of variable s or individual variables have the largest explanatory power in predicting bank defaults?The accounting variables include measures of the bank’s size, return on assets, capitalization, loan portfolio composition, funding structure, securities business, and off-balance sheet activities. By doing so, we follow a large number of articles on bank default (e. g. ; Lane, Looney, and Wansley, 1986; Whalen and Thomson, 1988; Espahbodi, 1991; Logan, 1991; Thomson, 1991; Cole and Gunther, 1995, 1998; Kolari et al. , 2002; Schaeck, 2008; Cole and White, 2012) who show that accounting variables have significant explanatory power in predicting bank default.By including the log of total assets, the ratio of equity to assets, and the return on assets, we follow Cole and Gunther (1995, 1998), Molina (2002) and others who show that these variables can serve as valid indicators for size, capitalization, and profitability. To measure the composition and stability of the bank’s loan portf olio, we include five accounting variables. We use the ratio of total loans to total assets, excluding construction and development (C&D) loans, as well as the ratio of C&D loans only to total assets.In doing so, we follow Cole and White (2012), who show that C&D loans have strong explanatory power in predicting bank defaults, especially in the recent financial crisis. We account for this finding by investigating the singular influence of C&D loans in a bank’s overall loan portfolio on the likelihood of bank failure, as well as incorporating the ratio of the bank’s remaining loans to its assets. We also include a loan concentration index, the growth of a bank’s loan portfolio and the ratio of non-performing loans to total loans in the 20 regressions to account for concentration and credit risk.Short-term funding and illiquidity risks are measured by the ratios of short-term deposits to assets and brokered deposits to assets, respectively. We additionally include the ratio of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) to assets. Finally, the ratio of unused commitments to assets is included as a measure for off-balance sheet risks. We do not include the off-balance sheet derivative exposure of the banks in our analyses as no default bank in our data sample has any exposure to these in any time period. The corporate governance variables are taken from the set of measures introduced above.To account for the bank’s ownership structure, we include the number of shares held by outside directors, chief officers, and other corporate insider shareholders (defined as in section II. C). Each of these variables is standardized by the number of shares outstanding of the respective bank. We also include a dummy variable indicating whether or not the bank’s CEO is also its single largest shareholder. In addition, we include dummy variables for whether a bank is organized in a multibank holding company, and whether the bank or its BHC is publicly trad ed.As mentioned before, publicly traded banks and banks in multibank holding companies might have access to further capital markets which might serve as an additional sources of financial strength. 12 By including these ownership variables in our multivariate regression framework, we account for the previous literature on the relationship between banks’ ownership structures and bank stability, such as Saunders, Strock and Travlos (1990), Gorton and Rosen (1995), Anderson and Fraser (2000), Caprio, Laeven and Levine (2003), Laeven and Levine (2009), and Pathan (2009).We thereby moreover investigate if the stark differences in the descriptive statistics between default and no default banks in terms of ownership structure also hold in a multivariate setting. To further proxy for the bank’s management structure, we include the number of outside directors, the number of chief officers, the number of other corporate insiders, all scaled by the bank’s board size, to ac count for relative differences in management and oversight among banks. 3 We additionally employ (the logarithm of) the number of members of the board of directors (â€Å"Board Size†) and an indicator variable if the CEO of the bank is also its Chairman. We are thereby the first to explicitly investigate the impact of a bank’s management structure on bank default. 12 As a robustness check, we replace the multibank holding company (BHC) dummy with a dummy variable indicating whether or not the bank is part of any BHC structure, either single-bank or multibank. The results remain unchanged. 13As a robustness test, we also standardize the number of outside directors, chief officers, and other corporate insiders variables by the asset size of the bank. The results remain unchanged. 21 The set of variables on bank competition contains the Herfindahl Hirschman Index (HHI) of bank market power on MSA or rural county level, its squared value, as well as the ratio of originated subprime mortgage loans to total mortgage loans originated on census tract/MSA level. We use the HHI as a proxy for the competition a bank faces in its local market.To calculate the HHI, we define the deposits held by each bank’s branches as the product market, the rural county level or MSA in which the bank’s branches are located as the local market, and each quarter as the temporal market. Using the standard HHI calculation method, we sum up each bank’s squared market share in each market and quarter. For banks which are active in multiple markets, we use the weighted average across each market to determine the HHI. A broad body of research has shown that competition is an important stability factor for banks.According to the literature, higher market power may result in either a higher or a lower probability of bank failure. In the traditional â€Å"competition-fragility† view, higher market power increases profit margins and results in greater franch ise value with banks reducing risk taking to protect this value (e. g. , Marcus, 1984; Keeley, 1990; Demsetz, Saidenberg, and Strahan, 1996; Hellmann, Murdock, and Stiglitz, 2000; Carletti and Hartmann, 2003; Jimenez, Lopez, and Saurina, 2007). Thus, a higher HHI may result in a lower probability of failure.In contrast, in the â€Å"competition-stability† view, more market power in the loan market may result in higher bank risk and a higher probability of failure as the higher interest rates charged to loan customers make it harder to repay loans and exacerbate moral hazard and adverse selection problems (e. g. , Boyd and De Nicolo, 2005; Boyd, De Nicolo, and Jalal, 2006; De Nicolo and Loukoianova, 2007; Schaeck, Cihak, and Wolfe, 2009). Martinez-Miera and Repullo (2010) furthermore argue that this effect may be nonmonotonic.We control for this possibility by also incorporating the squared value of local market power. Berger, Klapper, and Turk-Ariss (2009) argue that the effe cts of both views may be in place – banks with more market power may have riskier loan portfolios but less overall risk due to higher capital ratios or other risk-mitigating techniques – and find empirical evidence of these predictions. In addition to the HHI, we also include in our analyses the ratio of originated subprime mortgage loans to total mortgage loans originated to account for the particularities of the recent financial crisis.As is known now, the excessive origination of mortgages to borrowers with subprime creditworthiness led to high losses for banks in the recent financial crisis. Additionally, prior research establishes that real estate loans in general also played an important role for bank stability in earlier crises (e. g. , Cole and Fenn, 1995). We include the average subprime mortgage loan ratio in a bank’s census tract to measure the subprime risk exposure of 22 the bank’s local competitors.Based on the aforementioned literature and the characteristics of the recent financial crisis, we hypothesize that stronger subprime exposure of a bank’s competitors could increase the competitors’ risk structures and therefore also their default risk, which might have helped the observed banks survive the crisis by weakening their competitors. The set of v

Free Essays on Deep Curriculum Alignment

Chapter one discusses the reasons why assessment and accountability have become increasingly prevalent over the last 50 years. Interestingly, English blames most of the problems with assessment and accountability on politics. The chapter discusses in depth the rhetoric associated with the defects of public education today. Six culprits including the monopolistic and inefficient nature of public education, the genetic incapacity of minority children and children of color to do well in school, the intransigence of teacher unions to educational reform, the lack of intellectual rigor in colleges of education, the good ‘ole boy coaches who dominate school leadership positions, and the lack of â€Å"quality† in schools which must be forcefully inserted by ratcheting up the consequences of not doing well on state tests were all investigated in the chapter. I can very easily relate to all six of these â€Å"culprits.† At different times in my education career, I have heard reference to all six. I particularly enjoyed the discussion centered on the last culprit since this high-stakes testing practice is used in the state of Alabama. What is most thought provoking about this is that I had actually bought into the belief that some of these â€Å"culprits† were actually legitimate. English points out that these aspects have little or nothing to do with poor tests score and fixing them will not improve tests scores since test scores are not caused by any of them. This chapter also explores four popular myths about tests. Among these myths are tests are neutral and objective, tests are meritocratic tools, tests take the politics out of education, and one can test (inspect) quality in education. I found of particular interest the section dealing with tests and politics. English refers many times to the politics involved in high stakes testing in this chapter. To be perfectly honest, I did not realize to what extent testing was political... Free Essays on Deep Curriculum Alignment Free Essays on Deep Curriculum Alignment Chapter one discusses the reasons why assessment and accountability have become increasingly prevalent over the last 50 years. Interestingly, English blames most of the problems with assessment and accountability on politics. The chapter discusses in depth the rhetoric associated with the defects of public education today. Six culprits including the monopolistic and inefficient nature of public education, the genetic incapacity of minority children and children of color to do well in school, the intransigence of teacher unions to educational reform, the lack of intellectual rigor in colleges of education, the good ‘ole boy coaches who dominate school leadership positions, and the lack of â€Å"quality† in schools which must be forcefully inserted by ratcheting up the consequences of not doing well on state tests were all investigated in the chapter. I can very easily relate to all six of these â€Å"culprits.† At different times in my education career, I have heard reference to all six. I particularly enjoyed the discussion centered on the last culprit since this high-stakes testing practice is used in the state of Alabama. What is most thought provoking about this is that I had actually bought into the belief that some of these â€Å"culprits† were actually legitimate. English points out that these aspects have little or nothing to do with poor tests score and fixing them will not improve tests scores since test scores are not caused by any of them. This chapter also explores four popular myths about tests. Among these myths are tests are neutral and objective, tests are meritocratic tools, tests take the politics out of education, and one can test (inspect) quality in education. I found of particular interest the section dealing with tests and politics. English refers many times to the politics involved in high stakes testing in this chapter. To be perfectly honest, I did not realize to what extent testing was political...

Eugenics of Darwinism Essays

Eugenics of Darwinism Essays Eugenics of Darwinism Essay Eugenics of Darwinism Essay Eugenics of Darwinism In 1883, shortly after the abolishment of slavery, Francis Gallon, a cousin of Charles Darwin, expanded on Darnings theories of evolution to create a concept he called Eugenics. Eugenics is the thought that genetics and race determine intelligence, social behavior, disease, poverty and other things including characteristics such as feeble-mindedness. This belief would be used to exterminate masses of people throughout history. Many social elite around the globe accept this belief as truth and supported it whole-heartedly by funding much of the research and practices or by miming to the defense of those whom decided to use Eugenics to Justify their horrific actions. The documentary Racism a History produced by BBC details a history leading up to the development of Eugenics and then the use of Eugenics to Justify the elimination and population control of several groups of people deemed by believers of the concept to be expendable in order to preserve the fittest race. Survival of the fittest. In 1803 the British settled in Tasmania, Australia. The indigenous people of Tasmania were the aboriginal tribe. The settlers would kill an aboriginal any time they came across one. However, a missionary named George Augustus Robertson was hired to capture the indigenous people and try to civilize them according to the norm of British society instead of killing them. He convinced 300 aboriginals to move to a new settlem ent he called Point Civilization so that he could turn them into proper Christians. By the middle sass about 260 of teethe had died of exposure to disease brought by the Europeans. This fate would lend support to Darwinism and eventually Eugenics on the matter of natural selection (survival of the fittest species). Killings continued in several other countries where many other indigenous people would perish by the actions of Europeans. All would be Justified by scientific racism like Eugenics. One of the most profound Justifications the documentary uses to display this White European mindset of a favored race happened in the sass. India was under British rule and the country had climate change due to El Ion that would cause a depletion of crops. The British Raja sat back and let over 30 million Indian people die from starvation and Justified his inaction by not wanting to interfere with the natural selection. In 1904 in a colony of Germany located in Iambi, Africa, the indigenous people rebelled against the Germans. This led the Germans to build the first concentration camps. Shark Island is where one of these concentration camps was located. It is stated that every African that went to Shark Island knew they would die there. Thousands of Africans lost their lives via the Germans there. Some refer to this as the Black Holocaust. During the early sass, the United States was experiencing a massive influx of immigrants. Many in the US were concerned that this immigration combined with the abolishment of slavery would lead to racial mixing and would threaten the survival of the superior race. The Eugenics Records Office was formed. The office was run by Charles Davenport. During this venture, sterilization of the lower genetic p ool was conceived as well as marriage laws that restricting interracial marriages and forced sterilizations of several citizens deemed genetically deficient were performed. Some sterilizations were even preformed on hillier as young as 10. Germany saw what the Americans were doing and not only applauded the attempts to eradicate the weaker genetics but also adopted the sterilization process. The American Rockefeller foundation funded the building for the German Eugenics facilities. Placed in charge of the facility was Eugene Fischer whom had earlier studied the racially mixed people of Reboot in Africa concluding that racial mixing is bad for the white race because the African traits show dominance in the offspring. At the German facility, Fischer was in charge of the theorization of 400 racially mixed children. Soon the German facility moved onto gassing over 70000 mentally ill and when they ran out of mentally ill subjects, they gassed over 15000 that were considered sick. Some of these people were labeled as sick merely because they wore glasses. These actions would lead to the mass genocide of the Jewish people via Hitler. While Germany, Britain and the United States were large contributors to the atrocities linked to Eugenics, other countries also supported the movement including Sweden which sterilized over 60000 people u to race or mental illness. However, it was hard for a people that were poor, uneducated and it is probably safe to assume, non-violent to fight against Eugenics when it had such noted and powerful supporters such as Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens, Charles Kinsley, George Bernard Shaw, H G Wells and Margaret Ganger Just to name a few. The many stories of Eugenics seem hidden away from history, lost in the shadows of the Jewish Holocaust. These recollections of history cant and shouldnt stay hidden. I find this documentary to be very informative and reliable. I would recommend it to a friend and also use it as an instructional aid. The reasons why I would do this are because the video gives a new perspective of global interest in race relations during the times leading up to the holocaust and lends to several questions regarding why the murders of so many blacks and mentally ill were swept under the table never to be discussed while pretty much everyone knows about the Jewish Holocaust. I rate this video a 4. 5 out of 5. I would give it a perfect 5 but I feel they had to edit content out due to time limits.

Contemporary Issues in World Politics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 6000 words

Contemporary Issues in World Politics - Essay Example IR focuses on the relations between the various states of the world and how their interaction and relationship are handled by the countries themselves and international organizations from the diplomatic and military perspective. Thus, when a state carries out its international relations with other states, in line with the IR theory of Realism it will mainly focus on its own interests and benefits, and very minimally from the perspective of other countries and even international perspective, and carry out actions accordingly. When the focus is on Realism, Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes are regarded as the founding fathers of this Realism theory, however the Twentieth-century Realism and the scientifically enriched and associated Neorealism is focused, it had its beginnings mainly during the Cold War. That is, Realism as a theory came into prominence particularly during the Cold War years, because both United States and Soviet Union carried out aggressive and at the same time defen sive activities in various fields from Military, space, foreign relations, etc, etc, mainly to protect their self-interests. Although, there was focus on international interests, which prevented nuclear catastrophe, even that decision of not to use nuclear weapons were based on self-interests. Both the countries threatened to use nuclear arsenal particularly during the Cuban crisis, they stepped down their aggressive postures, when their self-interests are catered or fulfilled. In the current times, there is no such an intense rivalry between countries, but still states act in a self-centric manner. The states will mainly prioritizes their national interests as well as territorial security, even over other forms of national functioning including their history, ideology, moral considerations, etc., as well as international concerns like world peace. With this motive, the states will act both in an offensive as well as in a defensive manner against other territories or nations to upho ld these aspects. That is, they could go into a ‘game’ of one-upmanship with their opponent states, indulge in exchange of harsh words, carry out war games, initiate small-scale intrusion or even wars, etc. The states will always do this mainly with a self-centric perspective, and thereby dominate other states or territories. States in the international system maximally remain in the constant state of antagonism with few countries or maximum countries. Even politically and militarily ‘insignificant’ states will have some form of antagonism or rivalry with some countries in their neighbourhood. These countries will have general distrust and that will focus them to orient their international relations with those countries in a self-centric manner. This is happening even in the environment of strong overseeing International Organizations (IOs). Although, IOs are developed and supported by states to foster cooperation, goodwill and peace among the nations, each state had or still having various personal motivations or self-interests to support IOs and importantly act through them. IOs started evolving after the formation of sovereign state system, and as states only form and operate IOs, states have major stakes in them. States act through IOs in the matters of international relations, and for other social and economic purposes. When they do that, they will first focus on their