Why Toolbox Manufacturers Charge High Interest Rates and Mechanics Pay Them :: Finance Interest Mechanic Manufacturing

Why do Toolbox Manufacturers Charge High Interest Rates and Mechanics are willing to pay for them? The high interest rates of toolbox financing provide benefits for the manufacturing company and the mechanics. The company increases their net income and the mechanic receives financing, convenience and the name brand. We have all been there. We walk into the garage of our mechanic’s shop, taking a quick glance; we see the huge elaborate toolboxes that each mechanic owns. Most of them are from Mac, Matco or Snap-On. Unless you work in the tool industry most people do not realize what the real cost of each of these boxes is. The average toolbox costs a minimum of $4,500 and can run up to $9,500 for just one component of the set. The Big Three toolbox companies in the industry are Mac, Matco and Snap-on and all are using outrageous interest rates depending on state requirements. The rates vary from 6.25% all the way up to 22.50% in most states. So how much does that toolbox really cost if a mechanic makes weekly payment for the whole term of the contract? A $4,500 dollar contract as the principle balance at 22.50% interest while paying $32.71 a week for 208 weeks (4 years) will cost a total amount of $6,803.68. That is over $2,000.00 in interest. Looking at a $9,500 dollar contract at 22.50% interest while paying $69.06 a week for 208 weeks, will cost a total amount of $14,364.48. That is almost $5,000.00 in interest! Looking at this scenario from a company’s perspective, there has to be a point of competitiveness. Each manufacturer offers in-house financing for mechanics that are interested in buying their product. Due to many mechanics having little or damaged credit, the companies are taking a financial risk by financing them. Considering that for every 100 contracts the company buys 2 will default on the loan. There is a 2% chance of default on a loan. Each company buys 300 contracts on average per day, approximately 78,000 contracts annually which means that 1,500 will more than likely default. The rate of interest on the company’s part is determined by an estimate of how much money will be lost. If the interest income from these rates makes up approximately 35% of each company’s net income, then the total amount of interest income would be 37% from these contracts. 1 For the company, the benefit of bringing in a 35% net income outweighs the cost of a 2% loss of interest income. The other point of view, the mechanic’s, involves three solutions to this question.

Reflection paper on date rape for Human Sexuality Essay

There are many sad stories of girls who have been violated by someone that they know. They almost all begin with a wonderful night and eventually get taken advantage of. The woman in the situation may feel as though she asked for it. The male may feel as though she didn’t say no, so if I do this I am doing nothing wrong. It is horrifying to me how many times this has happened to a woman. The number of times it happens to women is the most significant thing about date rape to me, because I didn’t realize that it happened so much. I think knowing this will help me to watch out for things around me a little better and make my trust level go down even further. I think all women need to watch out for themselves in sketchy situations. If she or I feel uncomfortable then she or I should try to avoid the situation before it is too late, if possible. This isn’t always as easy as it sounds though. There have been quite a few times that I was in situations where potentially very bad things could have happened to me and out of pure luck they didn’t. I am usually a very trusting person, but the past couple of years I’ve been having to rethink that and become more of an untrusting person to try to protect myself. Men take their strong, masculine image and use it to their advantage. They may try to use guilt, lies, alcohol, and/or aggressiveness to get a girl to have sex with them. If she declines and he still continues to have sex with her, then he is committing a crime. The worst part is that girls don’t really know who to trust or not to trust. It’s a very scary world in which we live. I wish the world was different and it was ok to trust everyone especially the people you are close to, but since it’s not I have to be really careful when choosing who I will trust.

Criteria for Capital Lease

A lease is an agreement for the purchase of assets whereby a person or company purchases assets through financing from another party which may be the manufacturer or direct owner of the asset or some financial institution such as a bank.Lease is also a rent agreement whereby a person or company agrees to rent an asset for a certain period of time. The party renting or purchasing these assets is known as a lessee. The lease agreement with respect to a lessee is classified into two categories which are capital lease and operating lease.The rent agreement is usually known as operating lease whereas the purchase agreement is usually known as non-operating lease or capital lease. Though the purchase agreements are usually known as capital leases some other conditions have to be met for the lease to be classified as a capital lease. A lease can be classified as a capital lease if it is non-cancelable and meets one of the four following criteria:1. At the end of a lease agreement the owners hip of the leased asset is transferred effectively from the lessor to the lessee.2. There may be a provision for a purchase of the leased asset by the lessee at a price lower than the market value of the asset at the end of the lease agreement.3. The time duration of the lease agreement is greater than or equal to 75 percent of original life of the asset.4. The present value of the total lease payments should be greater than or equal to 90 percent of the fair value of the asset (Brigham & Ehrhardt, 2001).One of the criteria for classifying a lease is the factor of present value of lease payments. This calculation is based on the discounting rate of the company which is an estimate and not an actual rate. The rate is estimated based on the next period lease payments or the total lease payments either using a constant rate or a declining rate.The present values calculated under the different assumptions may yield varying present values. As the present values calculated are based on as sumptions and do not reflect the actual values it would be difficult to compare the present value of the minimum lease payments with the fair value of the asset (White, Sondhi, & Fried, 2002).Operating Lease or Capital LeaseThe classification of lease as operating or non-operating affects the long term liabilities and the shareholders’ equity of the firm. The difference in the liabilities and shareholders’ equity entails a difference in the debt/equity ratio of a firm. If the company classifies the lease as capital lease it would result in a lower net income than the income reported with operating lease.The lease payments under operating lease are included in operating expenses and are not included in the liabilities section of the balance sheet. Operating lease is not shown on the balance sheet as a liability and results in a higher net income thus companies would prefer to classify the lease as an operating lease to reflect higher net income and a lower debt/equity r atio. If the company chooses to record the lease as capital lease the lease payments would reduce the amount of net income and the total amount of lease will be included in the noncurrent liabilities.A decrease in net income would mean a decrease in retained earnings and eventually a lower shareholders’ equity with higher long-term debts which would increase the debt/equity ratio of the company. The companies would prefer to classify leases as operating leases to benefit from the higher net income and a lower debt/equity ratio (Damodaran, 2005).References Brigham, E., & Ehrhardt, M. (2001). Financial Management: Theory and Practice 11th Edition. Cincinnati: South-Western Educational Publishing.Damodaran, A. (2005, February 2). Operating Versus Capital Leases. Retrieved July 7, 2009, from Pages.stern.nyu.edu: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/AccPrimer/lease.htmWhite, G. I., Sondhi, A. C., & Fried, D. (2002). The Analysis and Use of Financial Statements. New J ersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Â  

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel Essay

The Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman was praised by The Economist (2006) as â€Å"the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century†¦possibly of all of it†. In 1970, he published an essay on the social responsibility of business in the New York Times Magazine. In his article, he explains in complex detail about the notion of â€Å"social responsibility† of businessmen within a corporate environment and their goal to increase profits. Indeed, at first glance, this quote seems to capture the mentality of many of the actors in the financial sector in our era. Banks and financial institutions are accused of acting unethically and only in their self-interest to increase profits along with brokers and investment bankers who are accused of primarily aiming high incentives and bonuses by selling unconscionably high-default assets. Scholars argued that corporate governance failings and lack of ethical behaviour were significant causes of the financial crisis of autumn 2008 (Skypala, 2008). This essay discusses the question whether the above statement made by famous economist Milton Friedman is still relevant in the context of business today and to what extent it is relating to the financial sector and in particular to the financial crisis of autumn 2008. In order to address this problem, it is important to discuss the fundamental view behind Friedman’s idea since it needs to be fully understood and interpreted. He stated that the social responsibility of business was to maximize profits and to create value for stockholders within the bounds of the law. Furthermore, he thought that using corporate resources for purely altruistic purposes would be socialism. Moreover, corporations had no social responsibility other than to spend its resources to increase the profits of its investors since only investors as individuals could decide to engage in social contributions. Thus, he believed that the corporate executives, who were appointed by investors to make profits on investments, could not engage in social contributions using the corporate money. As a result, they could only do so as a private individual on their own behalf. Friedman devoted â€Å"social responsibility† to violating the interest of the manager’s employers. In other words, if managers invest in â€Å"social responsible† projects, they will harm the business since these investments will result in inefficiency and lost production leading to a reduction in shareholder’s wealth. His idea and the logic behind it have proven unconvincing to many scholars (Mulligan, 1986; Feldman, 2007; Wilcke, 2004). Indeed, several arguments can be shown which offset his idea. Firstly, his theory does not allow for the possibility that profits and social responsibility can ever exist together. It is necessary to consider the constraint noted by Jensen (2002) who indicated that it is â€Å"logically impossible to maximize in more than one dimension at the same time unless the dimensions are monotone transformations of one another†. This constraint implies that profits and social performance cannot be maximized simultaneously. That is why there is a trade-off between profits and social performance. Still, it does not mean that profit maximization and social performance cannot be congruent. In reality, there are many examples which show that both can coexist. Several reasons are to be mentioned here. Nowadays, banks and financial institutions are more aware of their role towards the society since they realize that they are an integral part of it. Furthermore, they notice that they can contribute positively to the environment and society with a positive effect on their reputation, creating a higher firm value. Furthermore, since numerous scandals of firms violating morality and ethics in the late 1990s and early 2000s (e. g. WorldCom and Enron) the significance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is increasing tremendously and included in the business culture of most of the financial institutions today. The concept of CSR means that â€Å"corporations have ethical and moral responsibilities in addition to their responsibilities to earn a fair return for investors and comply with the law† (Munstermann, 2007). So, almost every large corporation is increasingly investing to improve its performance on sustainability assets. Banks and financial institutions know that society is always enlightened when it sees that a firm is engaged in charity and donating projects. While it is true that engagement in â€Å"social responsible† projects, for example donating for orphans of the developing countries means explicitly higher expenses and hence, reducing the profit, it has a long term profit as well. Engagement in donating projects has a positive effect on the reputation of firms, thus, affecting positively the consumer behavior of customers who will buy more products of firm, thus creating profit. Friedman also never considers the very real possibility that companies engaging in â€Å"social responsible† projects gain the support from the community and polity that might, otherwise, eventually turn against them. Nowadays, almost all companies working in the financial sector are in some kind of way socially engaged. Looking at websites of famous big banks like Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, one can find headings of Corporate Social Responsibility throughout the pages. Deutsche Bank has its own report on CSR for each year which reports engagement in AIDS projects in South Africa and support of education for children in India. JP Morgan reported an annual donation amount of $110 million for organization in 33 different countries and Goldman Sachs is actively involved in environmental projects. This shows that almost 4 decades after the famous essay of Friedman, companies do not follow his sole idea anymore but are – or are forced to – act socially responsible. On the other hand, a business should try to make profit since it is inherent in its nature and by definition (except for non-profit organization). According to the Business Dictionary, a business is an â€Å"economic system in which goods and services are exchanged for one another or money. Every business requires some form of investment and a sufficient number of customers to whom its output can be sold at profit on a consistent basis. † If a company does not make profit on a consistent and long-term basis, it will face financial distress and bankruptcy. Then, employees and workers will become unemployed which will affect the society negatively. For example, all the employees of banks going bankrupt in the financial crisis like Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae and Lehman Brothers were facing hardship. Hence, it is true that businesses are to a certain extent socially responsible to make profit in order to ensure job security and to create more jobs. This helps the society and improves the economy of the society. But Friedman does not consider the fact that if companies’ sole interest would be profit making, they can harm people and the surrounding environment. What if firms poison the water by disposing chemicals in rivers and sea – disposing toxic that leads to illnesses and death of animals and human beings? Friedman also fails to argue whether profit-generating actions like selling nuclear bombs to terror organizations, or knowingly manufacturing and selling defective, health-threatening products count as social responsibility as long as the company makes profit. Evidently, in the financial sector there are not activities such as producing bombs or life-threatening drugs. Even though this sector cannot produce life-threatening products, it can create a value chain of unethical and careless activities that can damage the whole world as well. One example is the Asian financial crisis in 1997 where moral hazards were mentioned as a major cause. Moral hazards are â€Å"negligent and fraudulent insureds† (Baker, 2000). It also refers to situation that tempted otherwise good people. The problem with moral hazards in the Asian financial crisis was that Asian banks thought that they would receive implicit guarantees that they would be bailed out if they encountered financial distress. Hence, these banks and companies were much more speculative in their investments and kept investing increasingly. If the investments fail, they will not have to bear the cost since it will be picked up by the government. They were playing with people’s money and did not act in the social interest of their customers. Instead, they were only focussing on making as much profit as possible. The result is known to everybody: In 1997 the nations of East Asia experienced the worst economic crisis they have never seen before. Obviously, the latest and most discussed topic on morality in the two recent years has been the culpability of shareholders and banks along with board directors for failings that led to the financial crisis of 2008. On the one hand, the crisis can be blamed on mortgage brokers, investment bankers and banks’ executives. Skewed incentives and greed contributed too much of the crisis. For example, mortgage brokers generate sub-prime mortgages but were paid regardless of the outcome. That is why they were selling unscrupulously assets with high default risk to clueless customers in order to receive high commissions. Not to mention â€Å"Wall Street Executives† who were focusing solely on how to increase their bonuses and remuneration packages. Also, Banks who took on these mortgages were accused of shoddy risk management and unethical behaviour, since they knew from the beginning that these subprime mortgages would eventually be securitized and removed from the bank’s balance sheet. Again, the originating banks got paid up front for processing the mortgages without having to retain part of the risk. Another factor is the misleading ratings of financial instruments credit agencies that were by far from independent. Arrangers of the secured assets were allowed to manipulate the creation of secured assets by mixing good assets with high risk assets to the point of getting a triple A-rating. If they did not get this rating, the assets were withdrawn, reconfigured and resubmitted. Since agencies are owned by banks, they were subjected to give best ratings to these dangerous assets and mortgage brokers knowing the risky idea behind those assets sold them to unsuspecting investors. According to Friedman, every party involved in the actions mentioned above showed â€Å"social responsibility† since they did not care about their social responsibility to the world but only about maximizing their profits. Evidently, the aftermath of the American financial crisis has shown that the social responsibility of business is definitely not only to increase their profits. If banks, brokers and lenders, accountants, the government and important financial organization did not incorrectly assessed or even ignored the magnitude of the risks mentioned above, if managers and investment bankers were not greedy and showed herd investment behavior, it can be argued that the crisis could have been prevented. But the various parties acted immorally and socially irresponsible not caring about the social consequences of their actions. Consequently, the Asian crisis of 1997 and the global financial crisis of 2008 are two memorable examples that offset Friedman’s idea. In conclusion, this paper has shown that Friedman’s request of being socially responsible by focusing solely on increasing profits is nowadays theoretically not accepted by banks and financial institutions. In contrast, in the 21st century social responsible corresponds to the alignment of business operations with social and ethical values. It is seen as the key to beat the competitor and to ensure sustainable growth. But the latest financial crisis has shown that even though CSR is part of the business culture of the large corporations, the key players in the large corporations do not practice social responsibility in a proper manner. It seems that CSR and corporate governance are a compilation of words and rules that adds only little value to the everyday businesses. Money has made everybody blind. Everybody wanted to have a piece of the big cake leading them to lower their inhibition threshold. The â€Å"social responsibility† of businesses should not be increasing profit but focusing on what it really means in practice to encourage stewardship. As a matter of fact, banks and financial institutions first need to show social and ethical manner in order to prevent another disaster like the financial crisis of 2008. All in all, businesses need to focus on environmental and social issues in the arena of corporate responsibility since the society expects and demands responsibility of organizations. In fact, the law expects it as well. Banks and financial institutions are challenged after the aftermath of the financial crisis – they have to find a way how to act in the best interest of stakeholders, society, the government and the environment, still being able to make sustainable profit. It is now a request from the society. ? References Baker, T. (2000). Insuring Morality. Business Dictionary. Definition of business. Homepage: http://www. businessdictionary. com/definition/business. html [1. 2. 2010]. Feldman, G. (2007). Putting Uncle Milton Friedman To Bed: Reexamining Milton Friedman’s Essay on the Social Responsibility of Business. Labor Studies Journal (32), 125-141. Jensen, M. C. (2002). Value maximization, stakeholder theory, and the corporate objective function. Business Ethics Quarterly, 2002 (12), 404-437. Milton Friedman, a giant among economist. The Economist. Verfugbar unter: http://www. economist. com/business/displaystory. cfm? story_id=8313925 [28. 1. 2010]. Mulligan, T. (1986). A Critique of Milton Friedman’s Essay â€Å"The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits†. Journal of Business Ethics (5), 265-269. Munstermann, T. (2007). Corporate Social Responsibility: Gabler. Skypala, P. (2008, 17. November). Time to reward good corporate governance. Financial Times, S. 6. [28. 1. 2010]. Wilcke, R. W. (2004). An Appropriate Ethical Model for Business and a Critique of Milton Friedman’s Thesis. The Independent Review (2), 187-209. The Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman was praised by The Economist (2006) as â€Å"the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century†¦possibly of all of it†. In 1970, he published an essay on the social responsibility of business in the New York Times Magazine. In his article, he explains in complex detail about the notion of â€Å"social responsibility† of businessmen within a corporate environment and their goal to increase profits. Indeed, at first glance, this quote seems to capture the mentality of many of the actors in the financial sector in our era. Banks and financial institutions are accused of acting unethically and only in their self-interest to increase profits along with brokers and investment bankers who are accused of primarily aiming high incentives and bonuses by selling unconscionably high-default assets. Scholars argued that corporate governance failings and lack of ethical behaviour were significant causes of the financial crisis of autumn 2008 (Skypala, 2008). This essay discusses the question whether the above statement made by famous economist Milton Friedman is still relevant in the context of business today and to what extent it is relating to the financial sector and in particular to the financial crisis of autumn 2008. In order to address this problem, it is important to discuss the fundamental view behind Friedman’s idea since it needs to be fully understood and interpreted. He stated that the social responsibility of business was to maximize profits and to create value for stockholders within the bounds of the law. Furthermore, he thought that using corporate resources for purely altruistic purposes would be socialism. Moreover, corporations had no social responsibility other than to spend its resources to increase the profits of its investors since only investors as individuals could decide to engage in social contributions. Thus, he believed that the corporate executives, who were appointed by investors to make profits on investments, could not engage in social contributions using the corporate money. As a result, they could only do so as a private individual on their own behalf. Friedman devoted â€Å"social responsibility† to violating the interest of the manager’s employers. In other words, if managers invest in â€Å"social responsible† projects, they will harm the business since these investments will result in inefficiency and lost production leading to a reduction in shareholder’s wealth. His idea and the logic behind it have proven unconvincing to many scholars (Mulligan, 1986; Feldman, 2007; Wilcke, 2004). Indeed, several arguments can be shown which offset his idea. Firstly, his theory does not allow for the possibility that profits and social responsibility can ever exist together. It is necessary to consider the constraint noted by Jensen (2002) who indicated that it is â€Å"logically impossible to maximize in more than one dimension at the same time unless the dimensions are monotone transformations of one another†. This constraint implies that profits and social performance cannot be maximized simultaneously. That is why there is a trade-off between profits and social performance. Still, it does not mean that profit maximization and social performance cannot be congruent. In reality, there are many examples which show that both can coexist. Several reasons are to be mentioned here. Nowadays, banks and financial institutions are more aware of their role towards the society since they realize that they are an integral part of it. Furthermore, they notice that they can contribute positively to the environment and society with a positive effect on their reputation, creating a higher firm value. Furthermore, since numerous scandals of firms violating morality and ethics in the late 1990s and early 2000s (e. g. WorldCom and Enron) the significance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is increasing tremendously and included in the business culture of most of the financial institutions today. The concept of CSR means that â€Å"corporations have ethical and moral responsibilities in addition to their responsibilities to earn a fair return for investors and comply with the law† (Munstermann, 2007). So, almost every large corporation is increasingly investing to improve its performance on sustainability assets. Banks and financial institutions know that society is always enlightened when it sees that a firm is engaged in charity and donating projects. While it is true that engagement in â€Å"social responsible† projects, for example donating for orphans of the developing countries means explicitly higher expenses and hence, reducing the profit, it has a long term profit as well. Engagement in donating projects has a positive effect on the reputation of firms, thus, affecting positively the consumer behavior of customers who will buy more products of firm, thus creating profit. Friedman also never considers the very real possibility that companies engaging in â€Å"social responsible† projects gain the support from the community and polity that might, otherwise, eventually turn against them. Nowadays, almost all companies working in the financial sector are in some kind of way socially engaged. Looking at websites of famous big banks like Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, one can find headings of Corporate Social Responsibility throughout the pages. Deutsche Bank has its own report on CSR for each year which reports engagement in AIDS projects in South Africa and support of education for children in India. JP Morgan reported an annual donation amount of $110 million for organization in 33 different countries and Goldman Sachs is actively involved in environmental projects. This shows that almost 4 decades after the famous essay of Friedman, companies do not follow his sole idea anymore but are – or are forced to – act socially responsible. On the other hand, a business should try to make profit since it is inherent in its nature and by definition (except for non-profit organization). According to the Business Dictionary, a business is an â€Å"economic system in which goods and services are exchanged for one another or money. Every business requires some form of investment and a sufficient number of customers to whom its output can be sold at profit on a consistent basis. † If a company does not make profit on a consistent and long-term basis, it will face financial distress and bankruptcy. Then, employees and workers will become unemployed which will affect the society negatively. For example, all the employees of banks going bankrupt in the financial crisis like Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae and Lehman Brothers were facing hardship. Hence, it is true that businesses are to a certain extent socially responsible to make profit in order to ensure job security and to create more jobs. This helps the society and improves the economy of the society. But Friedman does not consider the fact that if companies’ sole interest would be profit making, they can harm people and the surrounding environment. What if firms poison the water by disposing chemicals in rivers and sea – disposing toxic that leads to illnesses and death of animals and human beings? Friedman also fails to argue whether profit-generating actions like selling nuclear bombs to terror organizations, or knowingly manufacturing and selling defective, health-threatening products count as social responsibility as long as the company makes profit. Evidently, in the financial sector there are not activities such as producing bombs or life-threatening drugs. Even though this sector cannot produce life-threatening products, it can create a value chain of unethical and careless activities that can damage the whole world as well. One example is the Asian financial crisis in 1997 where moral hazards were mentioned as a major cause. Moral hazards are â€Å"negligent and fraudulent insureds† (Baker, 2000). It also refers to situation that tempted otherwise good people. The problem with moral hazards in the Asian financial crisis was that Asian banks thought that they would receive implicit guarantees that they would be bailed out if they encountered financial distress. Hence, these banks and companies were much more speculative in their investments and kept investing increasingly. If the investments fail, they will not have to bear the cost since it will be picked up by the government. They were playing with people’s money and did not act in the social interest of their customers. Instead, they were only focussing on making as much profit as possible. The result is known to everybody: In 1997 the nations of East Asia experienced the worst economic crisis they have never seen before. Obviously, the latest and most discussed topic on morality in the two recent years has been the culpability of shareholders and banks along with board directors for failings that led to the financial crisis of 2008. On the one hand, the crisis can be blamed on mortgage brokers, investment bankers and banks’ executives. Skewed incentives and greed contributed too much of the crisis. For example, mortgage brokers generate sub-prime mortgages but were paid regardless of the outcome. That is why they were selling unscrupulously assets with high default risk to clueless customers in order to receive high commissions. Not to mention â€Å"Wall Street Executives† who were focusing solely on how to increase their bonuses and remuneration packages. Also, Banks who took on these mortgages were accused of shoddy risk management and unethical behaviour, since they knew from the beginning that these subprime mortgages would eventually be securitized and removed from the bank’s balance sheet. Again, the originating banks got paid up front for processing the mortgages without having to retain part of the risk. Another factor is the misleading ratings of financial instruments credit agencies that were by far from independent. Arrangers of the secured assets were allowed to manipulate the creation of secured assets by mixing good assets with high risk assets to the point of getting a triple A-rating. If they did not get this rating, the assets were withdrawn, reconfigured and resubmitted. Since agencies are owned by banks, they were subjected to give best ratings to these dangerous assets and mortgage brokers knowing the risky idea behind those assets sold them to unsuspecting investors. According to Friedman, every party involved in the actions mentioned above showed â€Å"social responsibility† since they did not care about their social responsibility to the world but only about maximizing their profits. Evidently, the aftermath of the American financial crisis has shown that the social responsibility of business is definitely not only to increase their profits. If banks, brokers and lenders, accountants, the government and important financial organization did not incorrectly assessed or even ignored the magnitude of the risks mentioned above, if managers and investment bankers were not greedy and showed herd investment behavior, it can be argued that the crisis could have been prevented. But the various parties acted immorally and socially irresponsible not caring about the social consequences of their actions. Consequently, the Asian crisis of 1997 and the global financial crisis of 2008 are two memorable examples that offset Friedman’s idea. In conclusion, this paper has shown that Friedman’s request of being socially responsible by focusing solely on increasing profits is nowadays theoretically not accepted by banks and financial institutions. In contrast, in the 21st century social responsible corresponds to the alignment of business operations with social and ethical values. It is seen as the key to beat the competitor and to ensure sustainable growth. But the latest financial crisis has shown that even though CSR is part of the business culture of the large corporations, the key players in the large corporations do not practice social responsibility in a proper manner. It seems that CSR and corporate governance are a compilation of words and rules that adds only little value to the everyday businesses. Money has made everybody blind. Everybody wanted to have a piece of the big cake leading them to lower their inhibition threshold. The â€Å"social responsibility† of businesses should not be increasing profit but focusing on what it really means in practice to encourage stewardship. As a matter of fact, banks and financial institutions first need to show social and ethical manner in order to prevent another disaster like the financial crisis of 2008. All in all, businesses need to focus on environmental and social issues in the arena of corporate responsibility since the society expects and demands responsibility of organizations. In fact, the law expects it as well. Banks and financial institutions are challenged after the aftermath of the financial crisis – they have to find a way how to act in the best interest of stakeholders, society, the government and the environment, still being able to make sustainable profit. It is now a request from the society. ? References Baker, T. (2000). Insuring Morality.Business Dictionary. Definition of business. Homepage: http://www. businessdictionary. com/definition/business. html [1. 2. 2010]. Feldman, G. (2007). Putting Uncle Milton Friedman To Bed: Reexamining Milton Friedman’s Essay on the Social Responsibility of Business. Labor Studies Journal (32), 125-141. Jensen, M. C. (2002). Value maximization, stakeholder theory, and the corporate objective function. Business Ethics Quarterly, 2002 (12), 404-437. Milton Friedman, a giant among economist. The Economist. Verfugbar unter: http://www. economist. com/business/displaystory. cfm? story_id=8313925 [28. 1. 2010]. Mulligan, T. (1986). A Critique of Milton Friedman’s Essay â€Å"The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits†. Journal of Business Ethics (5), 265-269. Munstermann, T. (2007). Corporate Social Responsibility: Gabler. Skypala, P. (2008, 17. November). Time to reward good corporate governance. Financial Times, S. 6. [28. 1. 2010]. Wilcke, R. W. (2004). An Appropriate Ethical Model for Business and a Critique of Milton Friedman’s Thesis. The Independent Review (2), 187-209.

Understand Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder Research Paper

Understand Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder - Research Paper Example At school, teachers may find it hard to control ADHD students, since they may not be in a position to adhere to the rules of the institution. In addition, ADHD children are bound to fail academically despite the teachers’ effort to assist them; this is influenced by low self-esteem and rejection from their peers (Harpins, 2005). Therefore, teachers should be trained by professional psychologists on how to deal with psychiatric disorders in children. In addition, parents with ADHD children should inform the teachers about a child’s condition beforehand. This will enable a teacher to offer additional assistance to the child, for instance, in reading, mathematics, spelling, and speech therapy among others (Bupa health information, 2011). Families ADHD in children affects their families as well, especially parents; this is due to the uniqueness of the child’s behavior, which differs from that of normal children. As a result, parents may be in a dilemma on how to deal with the situation. Needless to say, ADHD is usually an added cost to the family due to healthcare expenses. In addition, parents of ADHD children may get frustrated when other family members refuse to care for the child. Moreover, their ADHD child may be stigmatized, which is evident when peers do not invite them for parties or play (Harpins, 2005). ADHD children have poor sleep behavior, and as a result, parents’ rest is affected, leaving little time for themselves. Family relationships are affected by this financially and socially strenuous task (Harpins, 2005). In addition, siblings of children with ADHD suffer from emotional disorders due to unwilling care taking and victimization... Understand Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder Attention Deficient Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) is a common disorder related to the mental health, which is prevalent among children. Such children often struggle to fit in the social life, and as a result, they suffer from low self-esteem, perform poorly at school, and have difficulties maintaining relationships. Apparently, ADHD cases are being regulated, since awareness has been created over the years; as a result, the condition is becoming acceptable in the society. This research paper will focus on understanding children with ADHD and the impact ADHD has on a child’s social, family, and school life. In addition, the special attention related to ADHD process will be analyzed. ADHD impact on the Family Life, School Life, and the Child's Social Life Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder can affect all dimensions of a child’s life, as well as his parents, siblings, and friends. According to Harpin, this disorder becomes more prominent at different staged in their li ves; in some cases, ADHD can persist even in adulthood, and as a result, disrupting their personal and professional lives. According to Carey, the environment surroundings such as school, family, and society influence the ADHD symptoms in a child. ADHD children’s social life is affected as well. In school, other children may not want to be associated with the children suffering from ADHD, leaving them out from games and other social activities.

How to develop a culture of safety in health care organizations Essay

How to develop a culture of safety in health care organizations - Essay Example Unfortunately, this culture led to many incidents not to be reported. To combat this problem, health-workers are encouraged to report problems instead of hiding them, so that they can be solved in time. To develop a culture of safety in health organizations, cultures are accessed occasionally so as to make amicable changes where necessary. Additionally, teamwork is highly recommended so as to avoid the occurrence of blame games and negligence of risky incidents. Most organizations also advocate the participation of the patient in the treatment process so as to create good communication system between healthcare personnel and patients (Duke University Medical Center, 2005). Additionally, involvement of patients in the treatment process leads to physicians observing rules and regulations to the later so as to minimize the occurrence of accidents within health-centers. Routine check-up and update of healthcare systems have also been found effective in developing a culture of safety in health organizations. Thus, many healthcare organizations not only maintain, but also update their systems in order to catch up with technological advancements that aid in enhancing patients’ safe ty. Additionally, most health organizations also advocate openness among its employees so as to enhance patients, workers, and personnel safety within healthcare environment (Duke University Medical Center, 2005). Rule of accountability has also been found effective in developing a culture of safety in healthcare organizations. It achieves this by ensuring all the healthcare providers do their respective jobs

The swine flu clean up Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The swine flu clean up - Essay Example It is noteworthy that the earlier SARS outbreak as well as the Hurricane Katrina were at threat level three and four respectively. Though the current administration has not been found wanting in its response, there are nonetheless several steps that could have been taken to counter the threat of transmission. Swine Flu is a virus that spreads from pigs to humans and then from humans to humans as well. The typical symptoms are coughing, fever and headache with muscular atrophy as well. The greatest risk is not from eating pork but from the spread of the virus from person to person. There has been a widespread belief that the current hype over the swine flu outbreak has largely been media driven and in reality, the outbreak is not as severe as it seems. As the ABC news website puts it, â€Å"As the swirling national media coverage of swine flu nears the end of its first full week, signs are emerging that a certain degree of panic may be gripping the public† (ABC News, 2009). Further, the website adds that, â€Å"While the official case tally in the United States hovers at 64, according to data presented by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today, even suspected cases are edging their way into the public eye†. Thus it is apparent that people by and large are worried over the pandemic and are taking preventive steps to protect themselves and their families against the outbreak. The WHO or the World Health Organization responded immediately to the new threat by convening an emergency meeting where the threat level was raised to 5. According to a prominent news website, â€Å"The World Health Organization called a third emergency meeting in response to a spike in swine flu cases and said the expert panel will discuss Wednesday whether to raise the worldwide flu alert level. After the panels first meeting Saturday, WHO declared the outbreak an international public health emergency and on Monday it raised the pandemic alert level from