Sonnet poem analysis Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Sonnet poem analysis - Research Paper Example the relationship and she thinks it could be a painful relationship perhaps pointing to the fact that the poet has been in a relationship earlier also. The poet is unsure about her relationship because relationships have become completely unpredictable and things can go horribly wrong, for youngsters it is all about moving on, some can successfully do that while some others often struggle to move on, this is exactly why the poet looks confused about her relationship in the poem. The poem is beautifully constructed and writing a sonnet is arguably the most difficult task but the poet has managed to accomplish it and the poem conveys a really deep meaning. The poem is all about parenthood and how modern day parents have completely become insensitive to the wants and the needs of the children, children are pouring ink into water and the mother does not seem to care and they keep doing the same for quite some time, this has also resulted in the death of the fish in the tank but the parents still somehow manage to ignore all this. The poet also says that the cook is on leave and the mother is crying because she is peeling the onions but in reality she should also be crying because she is completely ignorant and she pays no attention to her children. â€Å"The poet also says that the mother is lovely and father is late,† (Scenes from the Playroom) perhaps suggesting to the fact that the father returns home very late from work and is left with no energy to talk to his kids and his wife and the mother who stays at home has no time to spend with her children and the children are left alone to do as they like. The complete isolation of children by their parents has been beautifully portrayed in the poem. To conclude it is fair to say that both the poems talk about something really sensible, the first poem talks about relationships and how fragile they are these days and the second poem talks about parents not being able to pay any attention to their children. The poet

Early childhood education Essay Example for Free

Early childhood education Essay Early childhood education has for a very long time been neglected by educational planners in Australia. Early childhood education is one of the most important stages in pursuit of education given the fact that the foundation children receive in their pre-school years and in early school years goes along way in shaping their prospect careers. Early childhood education in Australia is faced with several challenges key of which include lack of a systematized curriculum covering both private and public sectors. The other challenge is lack of enough trained teachers in early childhood education which has seen the standards of early childhood education deteriorate in the recent past. Although the Ministry of Education in Australia has on several occasions initiated commissions to offer long lasting solutions to the challenges highlighted above, none of this has to date yielded into success. Failure for recommendations contained in various commissions set up by the Howard government can be attributed to lack of clear policy governing early childhood education provision in Australia. Early childhood education provision in Australia has traditionally been teacher-centered as opposed to being child-centered. It has lacked impetus in that instead of focusing on the needs of the children the kind of education provided in early stages of schooling has lacked in objectivity. There is therefore a need for a lot more emphasis on children interest from an early age so as to overcome some of the challenges witnessed in latter stages of education such as upper primary and secondary levels. If children are given enough orientation at the pre-school and early school levels such children are likely to grow up with a clear focus on areas of interest something which can help resolve the low literacy and accounting skills evident amongst high school and primary schools students. Teacher training will play a very significant role in accomplishing the goals of early childhood education. Teachers play a critical role in curriculum interpretation and unless the teachers are able to interpret curriculum effectively efforts to streamline early childhood education in Australia are likely to fail. To counter such challenges there is a need for the government to offer incentives to early childhood education teachers for instance offering free training programs or alternatively offering government sponsored training programs (MacNaughton, Williams, 1998). There lacks proper curriculum to guide early childhood education and the one in place has been in use for many decades something which clearly indicates that it could have outlived its use (Margetts, 2003). Until stakeholders in early childhood education come up with solutions as well as recommendations geared towards streamlining early childhood education to meet modern educational needs then all efforts geared towards achievement of effective early childhood education provision in Australia are likely to be unsuccessful. In conclusion, early childhood education in Australia is in deplorable state. There is a need for the government to include in its educational agenda, policies which will see more funding directed to early childhood education. The government must take initiative and implement the necessary amendments to the education act which has not served early childhood education properly. There is a need for integration of early childhood education to primary education and secondary education for purposes of achieving transition so that early childhood education is not viewed as a stand alone sector in education. References MacNaughton, G. Williams, G. (1998. 69-79) Techniques for Teaching Young Children: Choices in theory and practice, Addison Wesley Longman Australia Pty Ltd, Frenchs Forest, NSW. Margetts, K. (2003. pp. 45-65) Child care arrangements, personal, family and school influences on childrens adjustment to the first year of schooling, Proceedings of the Australian Early Childhood Association Biennial Conference, Hobart 10–13 July 2003, Australian Early Childhood Association.

Review On The Capital Structure Debate Finance Essay

Review On The Capital Structure Debate Finance Essay Corporations fund their operations by raising capital from a variety of distinct sources. The mix between the different sources, generally referred to as the firms capital structure has attracted considerable attention from academics and practitioners. Debt and equity are raised by firms to finance new investment projects. As such, both of them are sources of funds for the business. Debt usually consists of bank loans either long term or short term whereas equity consists of stocks and bonds. Hence, capital structure refers to the mixture of debt and equity finance used by a company to finance its activities. The correct choice of the mix of debt and equity is questionable. Financial managers problem is to find out the combination of securities that have the greatest overall appeal to investors. Moreover individual firms often change their debt ratios over time, perhaps responding to changes in investment opportunities, agency costs and so on. According to R Charles Moyer, James R. McGuigan and William J. Kretlow (1982), leverage is closely related to capital structure in the financial field. 2.1.1 Importance It is found that there are basically three types of financing decisions taken by firms namely the (i) the distribution of earnings which is the consumption decision, (ii) the capital budgeting decision,i.e, the investment decision and (iii) the capital structure decision. The capital structure decision is fundamental in order to carry out the other two financing decisions, i.e how much cash should the firm lend or borrow in order to carry out the consumption and investment decision. The capital Structure decision is important since profits of various organizational constituencies are maximized as well as the organization is able to deal with its competitive milieu. 2.2 Theories of Capital Structure 2.2.1 Traditional View The traditional view specifies that when a firm uses the right mix of debt and equity, the lowest its WACC, the more it will maximize the firms value due to the tax advantage of debt. If a firm wants to make an optimal capital structure decision, it will have to choose those sources of finance that gives the lowest cost of capital which will in turn lead to the lowest WACC. However, it is to be noted that as gearing increases, the cost of equity and consequently the bankruptcy risk will increase which will in turn lead to an increase in the cost of debt. However, the validity of this theory has been criticized since there is no underlying theory which shows by how much the cost of equity should increase due to increased leverage and by how much the cost of debt should increased due to increased in bankruptcy risk. 2.2.2 Modigliani and Miller Theory In their landmark paper in 1958, the Modigliani Miller Theorem (Modigliani and Miller, 1958, 1961) says that the value of a firm and the investment decisions should be autonomous from its capital structure. In other words, leverage should have no effect on investment decisions. However, the Modigliani Miller Theorem assumes a world with no taxes, information asymmetries or agency costs. Assuming perfect capital markets, they propounded to what is today widely known theory of capital structure irrelevance which means that the capital structure that a company chooses does not affect its value. Later theories argue that leverage clearly can matter due to the effect of taxes, information and agency costs (Myers, 2001). Later, in 1963, Modigliani and Miller took taxation under consideration and proposed that companies should employ as much debt capital as possible in order to achieve the optimal capital structure. Along the lines with corporate taxation, numerous studies also analyzed the case of personal taxes imposed on individuals. Miller (1977) suggests tax rates in the tax legislation of the some of the OECD countries that evaluate the total value of the company. These are the corporate tax rate, the tax rate on income in the form of dividends and the tax rate on interest income. According to Miller, the value of the company depends on the relative percentage and importance of each tax rate, compared with the other two. With respect to theoretical studies, there are two widely acknowledged competitive models of capital structure namely the static trade off model and the pecking order hypothesis. 2.2.3 Tradeoff/ Static Theory This approach presents capital structure as a balance between positive and negative effects of leverage respectively linked to a firms tax advantages and financial risk. The trade off theory introduces into the capital structure debate the benefit of the debt tax shield on one hand and the cost associated with financial distress on the other. The implication of this theory is that each firm has an optimal debt ratio that maximises value, although this level may vary between firms. Moreover, the trade off theory is often further extended to incorporate agency considerations. This is in the spirit of Jensen and Meckling (1976) who note that debt is valuable in reducing the agency costs of equity but at the same time debt is costly as it increases the agency costs of debt. However, there are factors that this theory cannot explain such as why companies are generally conservative in using debt finance, for example, some successful companies such as major pharmaceutical manufacturers continue to operate with low leverage. Furthermore, this theory cannot explain why leverage is negatively related to profitability as reported by Myers (1993), Titman and Wessels (1988) and Fama and French (2000). 2.2.4 Pecking Order Theory Pecking Order Theory is considered as one of the most influential theories of capital structure According to Myres (1984), this theory advocates an order in the choice of finance due to different degrees of information asymmetry and related agency costs embodied in distinct sources of finance. As such, retained earnings are used first since they constitute the cheapest means of finance, hardly being affected by any information asymmetry. Second, debt is used as there is low information asymmetry due to fixed obligations acting as an effective monitoring device. Finally, external equity is used only as a last resort as it conveys adverse signaling effect as explained by event studies. This theory also claims that there is no optimal capital structure that maximises the firms value. The attraction of interest tax shields and the treatment of financial distress are therefore assumed to be second order of importance, because debt ratios change when there is an imbalance of internal cash flows net of dividends and real investment opportunities. Profitable firms work down to low debt ratios, while those whose viable investment opportunities exceed internally generated funds tend to borrow more and more. The pecking order form of financing is also influenced by information asymmetries which are where investors make inferences about a firms prospects based on managements financing decisions. A positive impact on the share price only occurs if management chooses to refinance with debt rather than equity, because the firms prospects are then viewed as being good (i.e. by investors). Managers thus avoid the alternative scenario (a decline in the share price due to new equity issues) by maintaining a borrowing capacity or financial slack that consists of retained earnings and/or marketable securities. 2.2.5 Agency Theory Jensen and Meckling (1976) pinpoint the existence of the agency problem which arises due to the conflicts either between managers and shareholders (agency cost of equity capital) or between shareholders and debt holders (agency cost of debt capital). Promoters with major shareholding usually consider the impact of raising funds via equity financing. However, more equity shareholders would imply a dilution of control. Therefore, in order to retain control over management, some firms prefer debt financing. Theory supports that leverage matters due to the effect on agency costs. Leverage is predicted to reduce the agency costs from the manager-shareholder conflict; thereby mitigating the investment inefficiency resulting from this conflict. The Free Cash Flow theory (Jensen, 1986) suggests that debt reduces the agency cost of free cash flow. He also argues that, since debt commits the firm to pay out cash, it reduces that amount of free cash flow available to managers to engage in self interest activities. Debt financing ensures that the management is disciplined to making efficient investment decisions which will maximize the firms value and that they are not pursing individual decisions which will increase the profitability of bankruptcy. The mitigation of the conflicts between managers and shareholders constitutes the benefit of debt financing. Furthermore, Jensen argues that debt also imposes strong control effects on managers. Debt holders can exert a stronger control of the firm than shareholders. A promise to shareholders to payout a certain amount in dividends is considered weak since it is not binding (dividends can be reduced in the future). Debt creation, however, forces managers to effectively bond their promise to pay out future cash flows. The debt holders have the right to take the firm to bankruptcy court if the firm cannot make its debt service payments. The threat caused by failure to make debt service payments serves as an effective motivation force for managers to make their firms more efficient. Thus, through the reduction of free cash flows and control effects, leverage is presumed to mitigate the manager-shareholder conflict and overinvestment. According to Harris and Raviv (1990), the role of debt in allowing investors to generate information useful for monitoring management and implementing efficient operating decisions. Debt-holders use their legal rights to force management to provide information. The optimal amount of debt is determined by trading-off the value of information and opportunities for disciplining management against the probability of incurring costs. Monitoring costs would be incurred by debt-holders to ensure that the managers do not increase the risk of the firm by investing in risky projects. However, by investigating in risky projects, free cash flows can fluctuate and debt holders might not be paid. To prevent this, banks will have to monitor the firm and will thus impose a number of conditions, for example, the firm will keep a particular liquidity ratio as decided by the banks analysis. Subsequently, the cost of debt will increase since it will include the agency costs. As a result WACC will increa se and eventually the value of the firm will decrease. Hence, the firm will not be able to take maximum of debt since the cost of debt will increase because of the monitoring costs that have to be adhered to. Therefore, firms with relatively higher agency costs due to the inherent conflict between the firm and the debt-holders should have lower levels of outside debt financing and leverage. 2.2.6 The Signaling Hypothesis The Signaling Theory is based n the assumption that managers possess superior knowledge as insiders as opposed to outside investors who know much less about the economic health of a firm. This hypothesis suggests that managers may choose financial leverage as means to send signals to the public about the future of the company. Ross (1977) claimed that greater average financial leverage is used by managers to signal an optimistic future about the firm. Furthermore, Leland and Pyle (1977) argued that an owners willingness to invest in his own project conveys a positive information to the market since it can be used as a signal for project quality. 2.2.7 Bankruptcy Cost Arguments against/For debt (put I table in Appendix in case in excess)

Free College Admissions Essays: I Am Very Smart :: College Admissions Essays

I Am Smart and Jewish (Is that Redundant?) Â   As my application shows, I am an above average student in most areas. I have particularly excelled in mathematics, earning good grades throughout high school. When pondering about my future, I thought that I might be able to use math to be successful in business. So after my sophomore year, I decided to take some business courses with the goal of attaining a solid background in the field. High school, however, has not adequately prepared me to enter the world of business. This is the primary reason I am applying to the University of Connecticut: I hope to further expand my education in the field of business. Â   Outside of school, I have a wide variety of other interests. One of my favorite things to do is to play sports, especially baseball and basketball. Since I was about seven years old, I have played in many baseball and basketball leagues. While I join an intramural baseball league every spring, I play competitive basketball year-round. I play these sports not just to enjoy myself, but also to learn how to be a better leader. My leadership in basketball was formally acknowledged last year, as I received the sportsmanship award. This award meant a lot to me, especially since my team won the league championship that year. Not only did it show that everyone on the team recognized me for my leadership, but also it made me feel good knowing that I had helped lead a team to a championship trophy. This was my third year being on a championship basketball team, and I have also been on championship baseball teams, but winning the sportsmanship award was an added bonus. Â   Beyond my competitive sports, I have been skiing and playing golf recreationally since I was about eight years old. Every summer I take golf lessons to improve my abilities on the golf course. I also took ski lessons every winter for about five years until I felt I was skilled enough to compete on my own. During my sophomore year in high school, I went out for the high school ski team. I did pretty well during the season, although I might have done better had I taken a few more lessons earlier in my life. Unfortunately, that was my only year skiing for the team.

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

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

Japanimation Essay examples -- Japanese Animation Art Artistic Essays

Japanimation Japanimation (Japanese animation) is becoming one of Japan's most popular exports to the world; it has become a growing phenomenon in the US. Anime has attracted hordes of fans in many countries; the artistic detail, and the intriguing and the outrageous storylines are causing fans to be addicted. College fan clubs, societies, and the Internet have popularized anime (derived from a French word, but is used in Japan to describe animation) to the point of conventions being held all over the world. Anime ratings range from â€Å"G† to â€Å"NC-17.† These ratings only exist when they are imported into the US, as in Japan their rating system is different. The Japanese air shows on television that contains a lot of violence and nudity in it. On American television, extreme violence and nudity is prohibited for children, especially if the show is animated. Some animes are cute and are made specifically for children; then there are animes that are for teenagers that have romanc e, love, and everyday situations that teenagers go through. The most gruesome kind of anime consists of bloodshed, violence, nudity, sex, and bad language. Ding said, "Well first of all, when you have Saturday morning cartoons on channel twenty and fifty, people thirst for good animation and something different. Anime is just that, Americans have never seen or even thought of extreme violence, nudity, or cussing in cartoons. Since the Japanese don't think that nudity in cartoons is lewd, no one in Japan cares if they see someone naked popping up on the screen" (G. Ding, personal communication, November 2, 2000). Borshansky stated, "American cartoon culture finally got tired of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. They wanted some depth to cartoons, compelling... ...ory of Anime. (1996). Retrieve April 20, 2003 from the World Wide Web. http://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.5/articles/patten1.5.html O'Connell, M. Japanese Manga and Animation: A Brief History of Animation. (2000). Retrieve April 20, 2003 from the World Wide Web. http://www.uncc.edu/~medomoto/3209/anime/anime_history.html Simmons, M. (2000, November). Pokemon: The first movie. Animerica, 7, 7-11. The Right Stuf International Inc. The right stuf - An introduction to anime. (1996). Retrieved April 20, 2003 from the World Wide Web. http://www.rightstuf.com/resource/globalhistory.shtml History of Japanese anime. The origins of anime. (No date). Retrieved November 2, 2000 from the World Wide Web. http://www.mvhs.net/~animetq/frames.html Pokemon Information. March 18, 2004 from the World Wide Web. http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/students/pokemon/info.html

Ethics, Morality, and Legality Essay

Ethics are defined as individual perceptions of what is right or wrong, good or bad based on an individuals morals and values and also based on social values. Too often bribery is mistaken for lobbying. Bribery is illegal and short-term while lobbying is legal and a more permanent solution. There exists certain loopholes in law that allow for bribery to take place in the name of lobbying as was the case for the Winter Olympics Scandal where Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC) members gave gifts to International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials in a bid to influence them to pick salt lake city as the venue for the winter Olympics. Punishment for violating ethical and legal codes should be punitive as well as rehabilitative. However reforms should not be limited to the affected person to prevent future occurrences. Ethics, Morality, and Legality Bribery and lobbying are two phenomena that are very often misinterpreted such that it easy to confuse bribery for lobbying. According to the Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, lobbying is â€Å"to promote, as a project, or secure the passage of, as legislation, by influencing public officials† (lobbying, n. d. ). Bribery on the other hand is regarded as illegal, but there has been a great debate as to whether bribery should be considered as unethical or illegal. However, most scholars and business people regard bribery as a phenomenon that ought to be regarded as unethical. There is a difference between these two phenomena that should be explored. Harstard and Svensson, argues that through lobbying firms can be able to change the rules to their advantage (Harstard and Svensson, 2005). As an option the firm may prefer to offer a bureaucrat a bribe so that he may bend the rules for them so that they may avoid the cost of complying. While lobbying results in a change, a bribe only bends the rules. However while a change of rules is more permanent the bureaucrat does not commit to not asking for a bribe in future. Based on a simple growth model, firms tend to prefer to bribe when the expected development is low but prefer to lobby when the expected development is high (Harstard and Svensson, 2005). The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (15 U. S. C. sec. 78) stipulates that it is illegal for US firms to give bribes locally or internationally. The act defines a bribe as an illegal payment meant to influence or sway an official to award or maintain a business activity. So there has to be possible profit from any venture for which a firm allegedly bribes in order for it qualify as a bribe. In the case of alleged bribery by members of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC) to the members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to select Salt Lake City as the 2002 Winter Olympics’ venue the committee could have defended themselves in the following way: the committee could have argued that while it is illegal to give bribes, it was not illegal to give gifts and in fact the IOC rules provided for gift offering so long as the value of the gifts did not exceed 150 dollars. Ethics are defined as the beliefs about what is right or wrong, good and bad and is based on an individual’s values and morals and how the behavior is perceived by society. Legal principles are derived from the society’s or a firm’s ethical principles. Since ethical and legal principles are what drive firms and societies in general, they are therefore important. Violation of ethical and legal principles should be punishable by legal sanctions such as imprisonment (Rawl, 1994). The former Volkswagen personnel director Klaus Volkert who sentenced to two years in prison for involvement in a bribery scandal that financed prostitutes and exotic holidays for union officials in order to get their support in management plans. However punishment should not be the only motive behind legal sanctions, the authorities should also aim at rehabilitating the affected person (Punishment, 2003). The remedies should not be limited to punishment of the affected employee rather there should be reforms in the entire organization in order to avert future scandals and to create a better business culture. Ethics drive organizations and societies. Each organization has its own code of ethics which must be followed by its personnel. Often bribery is mistaken for lobbying and might be used by organizations in a bid to achieve its goals. However bribery is illegal and goes against ethics and law. Those who engage in bribery should be punished. References Harstad, B. , Svensson, J. (2005). Bribe or Lobby: It’s a Matter of Development. Retrieved July 18 2010, from, http://www. kellogg. northwestern. edu/base/papers/harstad. pdf Lobbying. (n. d. ) Merriam Webster Dictionary. Retrieved July 18 2010, from, http://www. merriam-webster. com/dictionary/lobbying Punishment. (2003). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved July 18 2010, from, http://plato. stanford. edu/entries/punishment/ Rawls, J. (1994). Punishment. Retrieved July 18 2010, from, http://ethics. sandiego. edu/Applied/deathpenalty/Rawls. html