Producing Marisol Essays - Marisol, Jos Rivera,

Producing Marisol Marisol, a play written by Jose Rivera, is the play I enjoyed reading the most this semester. Rivera, one of the leading contemporary Latin American playwrights, writes with an image. After reading Marisol, I came away with a very specific picture of what Rivera had in mind. He easily combines the realistic moments of life, the dangers of the Bronx, dealing with an emotionally unstable young man, Lenny, and the friendships developed with those we work with, with his world on the verge of apocalypse where the mundanities of life we take for granted have changed. Marisol has elements of pure theology where Rivera's own possible musings are written in to his characters. These elements include the appearance of Marisol's guardian angel in Marisol's dreams, the threat to Marisol's life in the form of a woman turned to a pile of salt and the smoke from a fire in Ohio blocking the sun in New York City. These all occur in the first act before the War of the Heavens begins. This play was written in the early nineties, copyright 1992, 1994, and revised and copyrighted 1999. Rivera was very specific in his stage directions and overall views of the design and production of the play in order to facilitate his image. These stage directions and other designs should be followed by the people producing his play in order to produce the image the play means to impart to the audience. He poises a gold crown, suspended in the air over the set, over the actors, over all of his creation, signifying God. But this crown, this God, remains motionless, remains detached from all the proceedings. To support his unnervingly imminently apocalyptic world, the mundanities that we would take for granted that are missing from Marisol's world, like the moon and the extinction of coffee, are dropped to the audience in a conversation between June, a co-worker and Marisol's best friend, and Marisol at work(Rivera 22-23). To accomplish the subtlety of unnerving the audience, Rivera gives a perfect office building; two desks, a radio, books, papers, the New York Post (Rivera 20) contrasting perfectly with the utter absurdity of facts pouring out of their mouths. This show should be done in a small theatre, and for design explanations, I will use the Studio Theatre at Towson University. This will allow the action to be closest to the audience, including them in the show. The set would consist of three brick walls painted directly onto the walls of the theatre. The wall behind the center rows of seats would remain black due to seat proximity. The back wall of the staging area (backing the scene shop) would be painted to the rafters , leaving the balcony itself black but the wall behind the upper balcony painted. The wall would have faux windows with iron gates on them running horizontally at about four feet above the floor. The two side walls would also have brick running up above the balcony. The two side walls would be completely masked by a black dropcloth for the first act. There would be two wagons used in Act One, neither bigger than 8 feet (which I am guessing to be the width of the scene shop door). The graffiti'd poem, "The moon carri es the souls of dead people to heaven./The new moon is dark and empty./It fills up every month/with glowing new souls/and carries its silent burden to God./Wake Up." (Rivera, 9) will be painted on the scene shop door which will remain closed. All entrances and exits will be from the four studio doors. The exterior door of the studio will be Marisol' s apartment door and have a series of locks she will lock behind her. It will only be used once. There will be a ladder from the balcony to the floor that the angel will use for her entrances. It will lock onto the bars for support. On one of the wagons will be June's kitchen, and the other will be Marisol's apartment, including bed, table, lamp, and clock (Rivera 12). The office will be downstage with the two desks, chairs and props wheeled in from opposing house doors and meeting in the middle.

Hegelian Dialectics

Hegelian Dialectics Introduction Hegel formulated a method that would be used in resolving conflicts among members of society. He suggested that a conflict would be resolved in three stages.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Hegelian Dialectics specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More In his analysis, a thesis would generate a reaction that he referred to as the antithesis. The two would always be in conflict for quite some time before forging a common position, something he termed as a synthesis. In the phenomenology of spirit, Hegel presented the science of experience of consciousness whereby he described the process through which people’s consciousness develops over time. People’s minds go through a number of stages as regards to consciousness. The development of the mind starts with the lower levels and ends with the high levels. This article analyzes how Hegel used the idea of the master and the slave to bring out the conflicts that usually exist among various groups in society. The article situates the reasoning of Hegel in two articles, one being the Second Sex by Simone and the other is the modern woman as a subject by Fanon. Hegel’s Dialectics In his works on phenomenology, Hegel discussed the idea of independent and dependent self-consciousness whereby he talked about lordship and bondage in detail. He also discussed two critical issues related to life and desire. Hegel employed several concepts in analyzing how self-consciousness forms. Through self-awareness, a group of people develop certain knowledge, spirit, and sciences meaning that what people know are always held as true (Hegel 112). Knowledge develops when one consciousness recognizes the existence of another consciousness meaning that conflicts among groups will never take place without each group developing a sense of belonging. Knowledge development, according to Hegel, does not follow the basic rules of science, but instead it dev elops through a phenomenological construct, which has a clear history. This entails a group demanding for freedom after realizing that another group interferes with its interests. Regarding master-slave dialectic, the views of Hegel were that the relationship between the owners of the means of production and the proletariat could be understood through an internal analysis or process, particularly when it occurs in one individual. Moreover, the same could be comprehended through an external process, particularly when it takes place between two people or two groups. Based on his view, whatever takes place in the mind of an individual would be the same thing that would take place in an individual’s life. This means that if an individual feels oppressed in his or her reasoning, there is a high likelihood that such an individual would indeed be oppressed even in normal life.Advertising Looking for essay on philosophy? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Hegel was of the view that the objective suppression and objective sense of inferiority would gel to become one thing. The two levels of consciousness are never in harmony and they can even be in conflict to an extent that they fail to agree. The self at this moment is viewed as a foreign object whose existence interferes with proper reasoning. The two types of consciousness would as well perceive each other as animated objects as opposed to equal subjects. Based on this, Hegel concluded that the self does not appreciate the existence of another self. One self views the other self as an ordinary object with an autonomous shape. Due to this, a contradiction emerges, but the self tries to resolve the conflict through negating the other self, using a dialectical method. Since an agreement will not be readily reached, the two will be engaged in constant process of convincing each other. This struggle persists until death, even though no self-conscious ness would want death to take place since it would have fuelled a natural negation. The two forms of self-consciousness try as much as possible to avoid death. Therefore, the two tend to strike a deal to cooperate through constant communication and acceptance of subordination. The master would be willing to negotiate since she understands that life without self-awareness is useless. The slave accepts slavery because of the fear of death. The slave allows he master to control his life. Application of Hegel’s Ideas The second sex is the writing of Simone, which talks about the position of women in history. The scholar observed that women have never been given an opportunity to express themselves socially, politically, and economically due to the presence of men. Men are like masters who understand that life would never be enjoyable without self-consciousness. On their part, women accept their position as slaves since they fear death. Women have always engaged men in several fro nts in order to realize their dreams in society. In her works on history, she notes that reproduction is considered slavery to women because it denies them an opportunity to engage in economic and political development. Men have different views, which are perceived as the thesis since they control the affairs of society while the views of women are believed to be the antithesis because they oppose the position of men. Since the two forms of self-consciousness fear destruction, they will agree to form a working formula, which would result to a synthesis. Under the new arrangement, women would be given adequate chances to participate in economic and political development. Their physical weaknesses would not be used to undermine their positions in society. In the second part of her works, she opposes the idea of marriage since it undermines the position of women in society. Women are mainly relegated to the private domain of the home since their role in marriage is related to performin g domestic chores. Fanon suggested that the white race is always perceived as a superior race because of its physical qualities and skin colour. The black race is viewed as an inferior race, whose major role is to serve the black race.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Hegelian Dialectics specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Since time in memorial, the black race has never occupied its position in society, just like women (Fanon 191). During colonialism, the white race misused the labour of the black race to benefit itself while the black race was simply languishing in poverty. In this regard, the views of the white race are perceived as the thesis since they dictate all forms of life in society. The black race is always in constant conflicts with the white race hence its views are believed to be antithesis. The conflicts between the two races will persist for years until the time when the black race will rise up to chall enge the position of the white race. Since the white race is aware that life without self-awareness is useless, it will decide to engage the black race in talks in order to resolve the conflicts. A relationship would be established, with new ideas referred to as the synthesis. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008. Print. Hegel, Georg. Phenomenology of Spirit. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998. Print.

Financial and Mortgage Services Industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Financial and Mortgage Services Industry - Essay Example Furthermore it will give us an external environment overview of the strategic tools used to understand market growth or decline, business position, potential and direction for operations. The Basel II Regulations are expected to reshape the entire financial services industry by creating new classes of competitors based on their risk-measurement and value-measurement technologies. These guidelines pose serious threats to both real estate lending by commercial banks and the viability of the entire industry since higher capital charges could reduce available capital for commercial real estate. [5] Sarbanes-Oxley developed a private, nonprofit corporation, to ensure that financial statements are audited according to independent standards. It also holds chief executives and chief financial officers directly responsible for the accuracy of financial statements. The law seeks to rule out conflicts that would make securities analysts less than objective and gives board audit committees rather than CEOs or chief financial officers full control of auditors. [3] The new regulations for mutual funds to have 75% independents in the board of directors and have an independent mutual fund chairman of the board represent one of the most drastic changes. These rules will require the search and hiring of new members to meet the regulations as a result, a shortage of potential candidates may be experienced. These regulations can be good or bad for a company depending on the quality of decisions taken at the time of appointing new directors and chairperson. [7] Hedge Funds Regulations With the increasing growth of hedge funds in the market, the regulations to monitor them are becoming more practical in the near future. [6] Regulations for New Entrants Some regulations regarding the minimum capital requirements for a company act as a barrier to new firms trying to enter the industry. Along with this investment and technological input costs are difficult to meet for these new entrants. [6] Economic Forces Federal Interest Rate Hikes The changing of the fund rate has the most impact on short-term rates. The raising or lowering of this rate will affect interest rates on mortgages, credit cards, and home equity lines of credit. When the target rate is raised, consumers pay more interest. When the rate is lowered, they pay less. These rate hikes will also affect credit cards since credit card interest rates are tied to the prime rate, which is subject to the actions of the Fed. As the rate increases tend move slowly to credit cards because issuers re-price cards once a quarter, the rate increase will be seen in the near future. [8] Declining Personal Savings Rate In September 2005, the personal saving rate as a percentage of disposable income was negative implying US consumers spent more than 100% of their monthly post-tax income. This decline in savings can be bad for the economy as there will be lesser investment and the financial sector can suffer. [4] Compliance Costs for Small Firms U.S. businesses

Business improvement and change for Cadbury plc UK Essay

Business improvement and change for Cadbury plc UK - Essay Example The main aim of conducting an external analysis of a company is to recognize the environment in which the organisation functions and appraise the organisation’s placement in that environment. Internal analysis is carried out to find out what additional measures can be taken to bring the company out of any problems which it might face then. These measures are first compared to the present existing plans and outlays and later on the implement process takes place. Cadbury Schweppes had plans to break up its business into two separate entities out of which one would focus on its key chocolate and confectionery market while the other on its US drinks business. Michael Porter introduced the Five Forces of Analysis which is conceived as the structural assessment of an industry. The five forces are: competitive rivalry, barriers of entry, threats of substitutes, power of buyers, and power of suppliers.

Export Managing Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Export Managing - Assignment Example Description in promotion and internalization" of Sheep artisan cheese as a "Niche original product" is based on less import limitations of USFDA in such Diary products. Also, an environmental analysis of the Importer of Artisan cheeses on US Diary market (competitors) will be explored through available official data base from State resources, National Chambers and Foundations as ought to relevant publications. Therefore this "Paper" would try with theoretical conclusion to find out the most acceptable marketing strategy as a part of export management to increase import of FYROM's Artisan Cheese to the USA. Introduction The current market status of the firm would be checked and a thorough screening shall be done for any potential that there exists for the firm to penetrate deeper into the U.S economy because this is the strategic goal of the countries consortium. This goal was also supported by the U.S because it was in their long term interest that the farming sector be given a boost and also some NGO's came forward to support the cause but these NGO's were heavily funded by the USAID. Although the first shipment (2004) was very figurative it was a sign that still a small country as FYROM is, can be able to develop export on a very specific, but for the country, agro-industrial important segment. Also, aware of the experience of our neighbors, (Greece and Bulgaria) it was an argument for an opportunity to have and outcome in export for the traditional part of agribusiness of the country. The "case" will include a presentation of a theory how a consortium can go "international" if it apply a good marketing plan and...Description in promotion and internalization" of Sheep artisan cheese as a "Niche original product" is based on less import limitations of USFDA in such Diary products. Also, an environmental analysis of the Importer of Artisan cheeses on US Diary market (competitors) will be explored through available official data base from State resources, National Chambers and Foundations as ought to relevant publications. The current market status of the firm would be checked and a thorough screening shall be done for any potential that there exists for the firm to penetrate deeper into the U.S economy because this is the strategic goal of the countries consortium. This goal was also supported by the U.S because it was in their long term interest that the farming sector be given a boost and also some NGO's came forward to support the cause but these NGO's were heavily funded by the USAID. Although the first shipment (2004) was very figurative it was a sign that still a small country as FYROM is, can be able to develop export on a very specific, but for the country, agro-industrial important segment. Also, aware of the experience of our neighbors, (Greece and Bulgaria) it was an argument for an opportunity to have and outcome in export for the traditional part of agribusiness of the country. The "case" will include a presentation of a theory how a consortium can go "international" if it apply a good marketing plan and export ma

Performance of Hedge Fund Relatively in UK

Performance of Hedge Fund Relatively in UK 1.1- Introduction: Hedge funds are actively managed portfolios that hold positions in publicly traded securities. Gaurav S. Amin and Harry M. Kat (2000) stated on their report that A hedge fund is typically defined as a pooled investment vehicle that is privately organized, administrated by professional investment managers, and not widely available to the public. It charges both a performance fee and a management fee. It allows a flexible investment for a small number of large investors (usually the minimum investment is $1 million) can use high risk techniques. 1Now days it is very clear that in the matter of alternative investment mutual fund is not performing well. As a high absolute returns and typically have features such as hurdle rates and incentive fees with high watermark provision hedge fund gives a better align to the interests of managers and investors. 2Moreover mutual funds typically use a long-only buy-and-hold type strategy on standard asset classes, which help to capture risk premia as sociate with equity risk, interest rate risk, default risk etc. However, they are not very helpful in capturing risk premia associate with dynamic trading strategies. That is why hedge fund comes into the picture. In the year of 2009, this takes the greatest history of the world in the following century. In the year of 2008 the world saw the greatest fall down of the world economy. Lots of people missing their jobs, lots of company were stopped. The world economy faced the highest losses in the history. These all factors are showing only one way to makeover from that greatest downfall that is hedging. 3The last couple of decades have witnessed a rapidly growing in the hedge funds. Relative to traditional investment portfolios hedge funds exhibit some unique characteristics; they are flexible with respect to the types of securities they hold and the type of the position they take. 1 Agarwal, V. and Naik, N. (2000). Multi-period performance persistence analysis of hedge fund s. The journal of financial and quantitative analysis. Vol. 35, No,3. PP-327. 2 Agarwal, V. and Naik, N. (2004). Risks and portfolio decisions involving hedge funds. The review of financial studies, Vol. 17, No.1. PP-64. 3 Journal of banking and finance 32(2008) 741-753- Hedge Fund Pricing and Model Uncertainty by Spyridan D. Vrontos, Ioannis D. Vrontos, Daniel Giomouridies. Since the early 1990s, hedge funds have become an increasingly popular asset class. The amount invested globally in hedge funds rose from approximately $50 billion in 1990 to approximately $1 trillion by the end of 2004. And because these funds characteristically use stantial leverage, they play a far more important role in the global securities markets than the size of their net assets indicates. Moreover, investments in hedge funds have become an important part of the asset mix of institutions and ever wealthy individual investors (Malkiel, B. and Saha, A. (2005). 4The number of FOHFs increase by 40% between 2001 and 2003, and now comprised almost two third of the $650 billion invested in the USAs hedge fund market. Due to its nature it is difficult to estimate the current size of hedge fund industry. 5Van Hedge Fund Advisors estimates that by the end of 1998 there were 5380 hedge fund managing $311 in capital, with between $800 billion and $1 trillion in total assets, which indicates the higher number of recent new entries. So far, hedge fund is based on American phenomena. About 90% hedge fund managers are based in the US, 9% in Europe and 1% in Asia and elsewhere. Now a days around 5883 hedge funds are trading around the world. (*Barclay Hedge database). Chart 1: Assets of Hedge fund industry from 1997 to 2009. Source: http://www.barclayhedge.com/research/indices/ghs/mum/Hedge_Fund.html According to the Barclay hedge database the asset of hedge fund industry is $1205.6 billion dollar. 4 Financial times, 29th October, 2003. www.vanhedge.com http://www.barclayhedge.com/products/hedge-fund-directory.html 1.2- Research questions: Specifically in this paper, I want to address two main questions. First one is what is the performance of hedge fund and FTSE100 over the period of 2001 to 2008? To evaluate the performance I use three traditional risk adjusted performance measurement model. To give a better idea and matter of easily understand I use the Sharp ratio, the Treynor ratio, and the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). However, the equity market index is not necessarily the right benchmark for hedge funds, therefore, market betas and abnormal returns may not be the appropriate measures for risks and profits. To mitigate this problem, I calculate sharp ratios, which are defined as the ratio of the average excess fund returns over the standard deviation. Second question is does hedge funds gives better return from UK equity market (FTSE100)? To make this comparison I use regression analysis where the correlation will show how the hedge funds act against the FTSE 100. 1.3- Objective of the study: The main objective of this study is to find out the performance of Hedge fund relatively with the UK equity market FTSE 100. In addition, I address in this paper four major hedge funds performance correlation with FTSE100. As a result an individual investor can easily understand which portfolio will give better return at their investment perspective. This study focuses on UK investors perspective only. In the past several years, lots of studies had been done on this area like Park and Staum (1998), Brown et al. (1999), Agarwal and Naik (2000), Herzberg and Mozes (2003), Capocci and Hubner (2004), and Malkiel and Saha (2005) analysis the hedge fund performance. Most of the statistical methodology is on the regression with equity markets and rest of all are in the cross product ratio. Above all they tried to find out the return of different types of hedge fund depending on the market risk and market return. So finally, the purpose of this paper is clearly established, that is to understand hedge fund performance over the UK equity market (FTSE100). 1.5- Overview of the methodology: In this section I would like to describe an overview of my methodology. To find out the hedge fund performance and the FTSE100 markets performance I use three traditional risk-adjusted performance measurement models. First one is the Sharpe ratio, secondly, the Treynor ratio and finally, the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). I address the Sharpe ratio and the Treynor ratio because these two gives better easy view for an investor to evaluate the hedge fund performance by themselves. However, the Sharpe ratio and the Treyneo ratio measure the excess return of per unit of risk for an investment asset. These two are used to understand how well the return of an asset compensates the investor for the risk taken. When comparing two assets each with the expected return of fund against the same benchmark with risk free return, the asset with the higher Sharpe ratio gives more return for the same risk. As a result investor can easily understand where to invest. In this paper I use total 287 funds including different types of hedge funds like- Event driven (31), Hedge fund (54), Global macro (37) and Market neutral (165). As a benchmark I use FTSE100 and for the risk free rate I use UK 10 year Treasury bond. All data were collected from the DataStream which is run by Thomson Reuters the worlds leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals (http://thomsonreuters.com/). 1.6- Definition of the key terms: Hedge fund: In the early study by Francis C.C. Koh, Winston T.H. Koh , David K.C. Lee, Kok Fai Phoon (2004) stated in their report that Hedge Funds are innovative investment structures that were first created more than 50 years ago by Alfred Winslow Jones. He established a fund with the following features: (a) He set up hedges by investing in securities that he determined as undervalued and funding these positions partly by taking short positions in overvalued securities, creating a market neutral position; (b) He also designed an incentive fee compensation arrangement in which he was paid a percentage of the profits realized from his clients assets; and (c) He invested his own investment capital in the fund, ensuring that his incentives and those of his investors were aligned and forming an investment partnership. Most modern hedge funds possess the above listed features, and are set up as limited partnerships with a lucrative incentive-fee structure. In most hedge funds, managers also often have a significant portion of their own capital invested in the partnerships. The term hedge fund has been generalized to describe investment strategies that range from the original market-neutral style of Jones to many other strategies and opportunistic situations, including global/macro investing. On the other report by Liang, B. (1999) stated on his report that there are two major types of hedge funds, one is inshore and another is offshore. Onshore funds are limited partnerships of no more than 500 investors. Offshore funds are limited liability corporations or partnerships established in the tax neutral jurisdictions that allow investors an opportunity to invest outside their own country and minimize their tax liabilities. Due to the large variety of hedge fund investing strategies, there is no standard method to classify hedge funds smartly. There are at least 8 major databases set up by data vendors and fund advisors. I follow the classification used by Eichengreen and Mathieson (1998), which relied on the MAR/Hedge database. Under this classification, there are 8 categories of hedge funds with 7 differentiated styles and a fund-of-funds category. For my paper I chose three different categories, which are as follows: (a) Event driven funds. These are funds that take positions on corporate events, such as taking an arbitraged position when companies are undergoing re-structuring or mergers. For example, hedge funds would purchase bank debt or high yield corporate bonds of companies undergoing re-organization (often referred to as distressed securities). Another event-driven strategy is merger arbitrage. These funds seize the opportunity to invest just after a takeover has been announced. They purchase the shares of the target companies and short the shares of the acquiring companies. (c) Global/Macro funds refer to funds that rely on macroeconomic analysis to take bets on major risk factors, such as currencies, interest rates, stock indices and commodities. Opportunistic trading manager that makes profits from changes in global economies typically based in major interest rate shifts. To make profits managers uses leverage and derivatives. (d) Market neutral funds refer to funds that bet 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 strategy of Jones by taking long positions in selective stocks and going short on other stocks to limit their exposure to the stock market. Stock index arbitrage funds trade on the spread between index futures contracts and the underlying basket of equities. Convertible bond arbitrage funds typically capitalize on the embedded option in these bonds by purchasing them and shorting the equities. Fixed income arbitrage bet on the convergence of prices of bonds from the same issuer but with different maturities over time. This is the second largest grouping of hedge funds after the Global category. Source Eichengreen and Mathieson (1998). 2.1.2- Current scenario of hedge funds: Chapter two Literature review: 2.1- History of hedge fund Despite the increasing interest and recent development, few studies have been carried out on hedge funds comparing to other investment tools like mutual funds. An analysis of Hedge Fund performance 1984-2000 by Capocci Daniel using one of the greatest hedge fund database ever used on his working paper (2796 individual funds including 801 dissolved), to investigate hedge funds performance using various asset-pricing models, including an extension from of Carharts (1997) model combined with Fama and French (1998), Agarwal and Naik (2000) models that take into account the fact that some hedge funds invest in emerging market bond. At the end they found that their model does a better job describing hedge funds behaviour. That appears particularly good for the Event Driven, Global Macro, US Opportunistic, Equity non-Hedge and Sector funds. Since the early 1990s, when around 2000 hedge funds were managing assets totalling capital of $60 billion, the subsequent growth in the number and asset base of hedge funds has never really been refuted. The industry only suffered from a relative slowdown in 1998, but since then has enjoyed a renewed vitality with an estimated total of 10,000funds managing more than a trillion US dollars by the end of 2006. The growing trend of the sector remained remarkably sustained during the stock market collapse that started in March 2000, when the NASDAQ composite Index reached an all-time high of 5,132 and finished three years later with a floor level of 1,253. In the meantime, the global met asset value (NAV) of hedge funds continued to grow at a steady rate of 10.6% (Van Hedge Funds Advisors International, 2002), contrasting with a decrease of 2.7% in the worldwide mutual fund industry ( Investment Company Institute, 2003). In 2001, Capocci and Hubner(2004) estimated that there were 6,000 he dge fund managing around $400 billion. In 2007, Capocci, Duquenne and Hubner (2007) estimated that there were 10,000 hedge funds managing around $1 trillion. This is a growth of 11% in the number of funds and 26% in assets over six years (6PhD thesis paper by Daniel P.J. Capocci). Other studies from practitioners Hennessee (1994), and Oberuc (1994) also showed an evidence of superior performance in the case of hedge funds. Ackernann and Al. (1999) and Liang (1999) who compared the performance of hedge funds to mutual funds and several indices, found that hedge funds constantly obtained better performance than mutual funds. Their performance was not better than the performance of the market indices considered. They also indicated that the returns in hedge funds were more unstable than both the returns of mutual funds and those of market indices. According to Brown and Al. (1997) hedge funds showing good performance in the first part of the year reduce the volatility of their portfolio in the second half of the year (Capocci Daniel- An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984-2000). Taking all these results into account hedge funds seems a good investment tool. 6 PhD thesis paper by Daniel P.J. Capocci. Electronic copy available at: http//ssrn.com/abstract=1008319. 2.1.1- Facts and finding of development in hedge funds: As a result of flexible investment strategies, a better manager inventive alignment, sophisticated investors, and limited SEC regulations hedge funds have gained incredible popularity. In the report of Agarwal, V. and Naik, N. (2004) stated that it is well accepted that the world of financial securities is a multifactor world consisting of different risk factors, each associated with its own factor risk premium, and that no single investment strategy can span the entire risk factor space. Therefore investors wishing to earn risk premia associated with different risk factors need to employ different kinds of investment strategies. Sophisticated investors, like endowments and pension funds, seem to have recognized this fact as their portfolios consist of mutual funds as well as hedge funds.1 Mutual funds typically employ a long-only buy-and-hold-type strategy on standard asset classes, and help capture risk premia associated with equity risk, interest rate risk, default risk, etc. Howe ver, they are not very helpful in capturing risk premia associated with dynamic trading strategies or spread-based strategies. This is where hedge funds come into the picture. Unlike mutual funds, hedge funds are not evaluated against a passive benchmark and therefore can follow more dynamic trading strategies. Moreover, they can take long as well as short positions in securities, and therefore can bet on capitalization spreads or value-growth spreads. As a result, hedge funds can offer exposure to risk factors that traditional long-only strategies cannot. However, investor can create exposure like hedge funds by trading on their own account, in practice they encounter many frictions due to incompleteness of markets like the publicly traded derivatives market and the financing market. Moreover, the derivatives market for standardized contracts has grown a great deal in recent years, still it is very costly for an investor to create a customized payoff on individual securities. The same is true for the financing market as well, where investors encounter difficulties shorting securities and obtaining leverage. These frictions make it difficult for investors to create hedge fund-like payoffs by trading on their own accounts. According to Koh, F., Koh,W,. Lee, D,. and Phoon, K. (2004) in 1990, the entire hedge fund industry was estimated at about US$20 billion. At of 2004, there are close to 7000 hedge funds worldwide, managing more than US$830 billion. Additionally, about US$200-300 billion is estimated to be in privately managed accounts. While high net worth individuals remain the main source of capital, hedge funds are becoming more popular among institutional and retail investors. Funds of hedge funds and other hedge fund-linked products are increasingly being marketed to the retail market. While hedge funds are well established in the United States and Europe, they have only begun to grow aggressively in Asia. According to Asia Hedge magazine, there are more than 300 hedge funds operating in Asia (including those in Japan and Australia), of which 30 were established in year 2000 and 20 in 2001. In 2003, 90 new hedge funds were started in Asia, compared with 66 in 2002, according to an estimate by th e Bank of Bermuda. In 2004 more than US$15 billion, hedge fund investments in Asia are expected to grow rapidly. Several factors support this view. Asian hedge funds currently account for a tiny slice of the global hedge fund pie and a mere trickle of the total financial wealth of high net worth individuals in Asia. Hedge funds have posted attractive returns. From 1987 to 2001, the Hennessee Hedge Fund Index posted annualised returns of 18%, higher than the SPs 13.5%. Hedge funds are seen as a natural hedge for controlling downside risk because they employ exotic investment strategies believed to generate returns that are uncorrelated to traditional asset classes. Hedge funds vary in their strategies. So-called macro funds, such as Quantum Fund, generally take a directional view by betting on a particular bond market, say, or a currency movement. Other funds specialize in corporate events, such as mergers or bankruptcies, or simply look for pricing anomalies the stock markets. Hedge funds vary widely in both their investment strategies and the amount of financial leverage. (Koh, F., Koh,W,. Lee, D,. and Phoon, K. (2004) There are a number of factors behind the meteoric rise in demand for hedge funds. The unprecedented bull-run in the US equity markets during the 1990s expanded investment portfolios. This led an increased awareness on the need for diversification. The bursting of the technology and Internet bubbles, the string of corporate scandals that hit corporate America and the uncertainties in the US economy have led to a general decline in stock markets worldwide. This in turn provided fresh impetus for hedge funds as investors searched for absolute returns. (Koh, F., Koh,W,. Lee, D,. and Phoon, K. (2004) Unlike registered investment companies, hedge funds are not required to publicly disclose performance and holdings information that might be construed as solicitation materials. Since the early 1990s, there has been a growing interest in the use of hedge funds amongst both institutional and high net worth individuals. Due to their private nature, it is difficult to obtain adequate information about the operations of individual hedge funds and reliable summary statistics about the industry as a whole. (Koh, F., Koh,W,. Lee, D,. and Phoon, K. (2004) Hedge funds are known to be growing in size and diversity. As at the end of 1997, the MAR/Hedge database recorded more than 700 hedge fund managing assets of US$90 billion. This is only a partial picture of the industry, as many funds are not listed with MAR/Hedge. In practical terms, it is not easy to estimate the current size of the hedge fund industry unless all funds are regulated or obligated to register their operations with a common authority. Brooks and Kat (2001) estimated that, as at April 2001, there are around 6000 hedge funds with an estimated US $400 billion in capital under management and US $1 trillion in total assets. (Koh, F., Koh,W,. Lee, D,. and Phoon, K. (2004) According to Koh, F., Koh,W,. Lee, D,. and Phoon, K. (2004) three interesting features differentiate hedge funds from other forms of managed funds. Most hedge funds are small and organized around a few experienced investment professionals. In fact, more than half of U.S Hedge Funds manage amounts of less than US$25 million. Further, most hedge funds are leveraged. It is estimated that 70 per cent of hedge funds use leverage and about 18% borrowed more than one dollar for every dollar of capital. (See Eichengreen and Mathieson (1998). Another peculiar feature is the short life span of hedge funds. Hedge funds have an average life span of about 3.5 years (See Stefano Lavinio (2000) pp 128). Very few have a track record of more than 10 years. These features lead many to view hedge funds, as risky and opportunistic. In the early study by Fung and Hsieh (2001), they use option like payoffs to view the risks of trend following hedge funds. They saw that the trend followers are typically commodity trading advisors (CTAs) who attempt to profit from trends in commodity prices using technical indicators. According to Fung and Hsieh (2001) trend followers are particularly interesting in that not only are their returns uncorrelated with the standard equity, bond, currency, and commodity indices, but their returns tend to exhibit option like features. They tend to be large and positive during the best and worst performing months of world equity indices. They cite evidence by Fung and Hsieh (1997) who show that if one divided up the states of the world into five states based on the return on the MSCI equity world index, trend followers tend to outperform when the MSCI equity return is at its lowest and highest. The relationship between trend followers and the equity market is non-linear and U-shaped. Alth ough returns of trend following funds have a low beta against equities on average, the state-dependent betas tend to be positive in up-markets and negative in down markets. As a result, Fung and Hsieh (2001) assume that the simplest trend following strategy has the same payout as a structured option known as the look back straddle. The owner of a look back call option has the right to buy the underlying asset at the lowest price over the life of the option. Similarly, a look back put option allows the owner to sell at the highest price. The combination of these two options is the look back straddle, which delivers the ex-post maximum payout of any trend following strategy. Fung and Hsieh (2001) then demonstrate empirically that look back straddle returns resemble the returns of trend following hedge funds. Building on this pioneer work, Fung and Hsieh (2004) propose seven factors that explain aggregate hedge fund returns. These seven factors include the excess return on the SP 500 index, the Wilshire small cap minus large cap index return, the term spread, the credit spread, and trend following factors for bonds, currencies, and commodities. They show that their seven factor model well explains variation in aggregate hedge fund returns. In addition, they find that equity long/short hedge funds tend to load positively on the SP 500 index factor and the small cap minus large cap factor. These results are consistent with the observation that equity long/short hedge funds typically have a small positive exposure to stocks and tend to be long small stocks and short large stocks. Fung and Hsieh (2004) also find that fixed income funds on the other hand tend to load negatively on the change in the credit spread, where the credit spread is measured as the difference between the yield on Moodys Baa bonds and the yield on the 10-year constant maturity Treasury bond. The reason is that fixed income funds typically buy bonds with lower credit ratings and/or less liquidity and then hedge the interest rate risk by shorting US Treasury bonds, which have the highest credit rating and are more liquid. However, Agarwal and Naik (2004) also propose a multi-factor model to explain hedge fund risks. They find that non-linear option like payoffs are not restricted to trend followers and risk arbitrageurs, but are an integral feature of payoffs for a wide range of hedge fund strategies. In particular they observe that the payoffs on a large number of hedge fund strategies look like those from writing a put option on the equity index. These strategies include risk arbitrage, distressed debt, convertible arbitrage, and relative value arbitrage. Consistent with the exposure of these strategies to the risks borne by sellers of equity index put options, Agarwal and Naik (2004) find that these hedge funds suffer from significant left tail risk which tends to coincide with severe market downturns. The performance of hedge fund in 2008 was very shocking like more than ten years ago. Teo, M (2009) stated that in the month of August 1998 alone LTCM lost 45% of its capital in the wake of the massive liquidity event triggered by the Russian rubble default. Lots of academic literature has shown that the year 2007 and 2008 was the worst performance of hedge fund. As we know that hedge fund managers make portfolio by taking position in equity market and another fund, but unfortunately the world equity market goes downside. As a result investors who wish to weather future financial maelstroms should take note of the non-linear relationship between hedge fund returns and the equity market. 2.3- Limitations (previous) With respect to lightly regulated investment vehicles with great treading flexibility, hedge funds often pursue highly sophisticated investment strategies. Hedge funds promise absolute returns to their investor leading to a belief that they hold factor-neutral portfolios. With this in mind, hedge funds have some limitations. In the early studies many researchers discussed and explain that obstacles. First of all if we consider the measurement model of hedge funds performance, most of the researcher use traditional performance measure model like, Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio and Jensen alpha which are not adequate for the performance evaluation of hedge funds. Fung and Hsieh (2000) and Roy (2003) stated that is incorrect to use these performance measures t evaluate the hedge funds strategies. Brooks and Kat (2002), Kat (2003), Mahdavi (2004) and Murguia and Umemoto (2004) also mentioned that the Sharpe ratio does not represent the true performance of hedge funds because it does not take into consideration the asymmetry returns of these funds. As a result Perello (2007) propose to use the downside risk framework like Sortino ratio, the upside potential ratio and Omega measure as alternative performance measure. Moreover, Chung, Rosenberg and Tomeo (2004) and Scherer (2004) showed that Sortino ratio makes it possible to the investors to evaluate the risk and the performance of the h edge funds more sustainably than Sharpe ratio. Secondly, according to Ackermann et al. (1999) and to Fung and Hsieh (2000), two upward biases exist in the case of hedge funds. They do not exist in the case of mutual funds, and they both have an opposite impact to the survivorship bias. Survivorship bias is an important issue in hedge funds performance studies (see Carhart and al. 2000). This bias is present when a database contains only funds that have data for the whole period studies. In this case, there is a risk of overestimating the mean performance because the funds that would have ceased to exist because of their bad performance would not be taken into account. The two upward biases exist because, since hedge funds are not allowed to advertise, they consider inclusion in a database primarily as a marketing tool. The first phenomenon stressed by Ackermann and al. (1999) and called the self-selection bias is present because funds that realize good performance have less incentive to report their performance to data providers in order to attract new investors. Malkiel, B. and Saha, A. (2005) stated in their report that Databases available at any point in time tend to reflect the returns earned by currently existing hedge funds but they do not include the returns from hedge funds that existed at some time in the past but are presently not in existence (i.e., the truly dead funds) or exist but no longer report their results (the defunct funds). Unsuccessful hedge funds have difficulties obtaining new assets. Hence, they tend to close, leaving only the more successful funds in the database. But some funds stop reporting not because they are unsuccessful but because they do not want to attract new investment. The second point called instant history bias or backfilled bias (Fung and Hsieh 2000) occurs because after inclusion a funds performance history is backfilled. This may cause an upward bias because funds with less satisfactory performance history are less likely to apply for inclusion than funds with good performance history (Capocci Daniel 2001, An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984- 2000). Performance of Hedge Fund Relatively in UK Performance of Hedge Fund Relatively in UK 1.1- Introduction: Hedge funds are actively managed portfolios that hold positions in publicly traded securities. Gaurav S. Amin and Harry M. Kat (2000) stated on their report that A hedge fund is typically defined as a pooled investment vehicle that is privately organized, administrated by professional investment managers, and not widely available to the public. It charges both a performance fee and a management fee. It allows a flexible investment for a small number of large investors (usually the minimum investment is $1 million) can use high risk techniques. 1Now days it is very clear that in the matter of alternative investment mutual fund is not performing well. As a high absolute returns and typically have features such as hurdle rates and incentive fees with high watermark provision hedge fund gives a better align to the interests of managers and investors. 2Moreover mutual funds typically use a long-only buy-and-hold type strategy on standard asset classes, which help to capture risk premia as sociate with equity risk, interest rate risk, default risk etc. However, they are not very helpful in capturing risk premia associate with dynamic trading strategies. That is why hedge fund comes into the picture. In the year of 2009, this takes the greatest history of the world in the following century. In the year of 2008 the world saw the greatest fall down of the world economy. Lots of people missing their jobs, lots of company were stopped. The world economy faced the highest losses in the history. These all factors are showing only one way to makeover from that greatest downfall that is hedging. 3The last couple of decades have witnessed a rapidly growing in the hedge funds. Relative to traditional investment portfolios hedge funds exhibit some unique characteristics; they are flexible with respect to the types of securities they hold and the type of the position they take. 1 Agarwal, V. and Naik, N. (2000). Multi-period performance persistence analysis of hedge fund s. The journal of financial and quantitative analysis. Vol. 35, No,3. PP-327. 2 Agarwal, V. and Naik, N. (2004). Risks and portfolio decisions involving hedge funds. The review of financial studies, Vol. 17, No.1. PP-64. 3 Journal of banking and finance 32(2008) 741-753- Hedge Fund Pricing and Model Uncertainty by Spyridan D. Vrontos, Ioannis D. Vrontos, Daniel Giomouridies. Since the early 1990s, hedge funds have become an increasingly popular asset class. The amount invested globally in hedge funds rose from approximately $50 billion in 1990 to approximately $1 trillion by the end of 2004. And because these funds characteristically use stantial leverage, they play a far more important role in the global securities markets than the size of their net assets indicates. Moreover, investments in hedge funds have become an important part of the asset mix of institutions and ever wealthy individual investors (Malkiel, B. and Saha, A. (2005). 4The number of FOHFs increase by 40% between 2001 and 2003, and now comprised almost two third of the $650 billion invested in the USAs hedge fund market. Due to its nature it is difficult to estimate the current size of hedge fund industry. 5Van Hedge Fund Advisors estimates that by the end of 1998 there were 5380 hedge fund managing $311 in capital, with between $800 billion and $1 trillion in total assets, which indicates the higher number of recent new entries. So far, hedge fund is based on American phenomena. About 90% hedge fund managers are based in the US, 9% in Europe and 1% in Asia and elsewhere. Now a days around 5883 hedge funds are trading around the world. (*Barclay Hedge database). Chart 1: Assets of Hedge fund industry from 1997 to 2009. Source: http://www.barclayhedge.com/research/indices/ghs/mum/Hedge_Fund.html According to the Barclay hedge database the asset of hedge fund industry is $1205.6 billion dollar. 4 Financial times, 29th October, 2003. www.vanhedge.com http://www.barclayhedge.com/products/hedge-fund-directory.html 1.2- Research questions: Specifically in this paper, I want to address two main questions. First one is what is the performance of hedge fund and FTSE100 over the period of 2001 to 2008? To evaluate the performance I use three traditional risk adjusted performance measurement model. To give a better idea and matter of easily understand I use the Sharp ratio, the Treynor ratio, and the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). However, the equity market index is not necessarily the right benchmark for hedge funds, therefore, market betas and abnormal returns may not be the appropriate measures for risks and profits. To mitigate this problem, I calculate sharp ratios, which are defined as the ratio of the average excess fund returns over the standard deviation. Second question is does hedge funds gives better return from UK equity market (FTSE100)? To make this comparison I use regression analysis where the correlation will show how the hedge funds act against the FTSE 100. 1.3- Objective of the study: The main objective of this study is to find out the performance of Hedge fund relatively with the UK equity market FTSE 100. In addition, I address in this paper four major hedge funds performance correlation with FTSE100. As a result an individual investor can easily understand which portfolio will give better return at their investment perspective. This study focuses on UK investors perspective only. In the past several years, lots of studies had been done on this area like Park and Staum (1998), Brown et al. (1999), Agarwal and Naik (2000), Herzberg and Mozes (2003), Capocci and Hubner (2004), and Malkiel and Saha (2005) analysis the hedge fund performance. Most of the statistical methodology is on the regression with equity markets and rest of all are in the cross product ratio. Above all they tried to find out the return of different types of hedge fund depending on the market risk and market return. So finally, the purpose of this paper is clearly established, that is to understand hedge fund performance over the UK equity market (FTSE100). 1.5- Overview of the methodology: In this section I would like to describe an overview of my methodology. To find out the hedge fund performance and the FTSE100 markets performance I use three traditional risk-adjusted performance measurement models. First one is the Sharpe ratio, secondly, the Treynor ratio and finally, the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). I address the Sharpe ratio and the Treynor ratio because these two gives better easy view for an investor to evaluate the hedge fund performance by themselves. However, the Sharpe ratio and the Treyneo ratio measure the excess return of per unit of risk for an investment asset. These two are used to understand how well the return of an asset compensates the investor for the risk taken. When comparing two assets each with the expected return of fund against the same benchmark with risk free return, the asset with the higher Sharpe ratio gives more return for the same risk. As a result investor can easily understand where to invest. In this paper I use total 287 funds including different types of hedge funds like- Event driven (31), Hedge fund (54), Global macro (37) and Market neutral (165). As a benchmark I use FTSE100 and for the risk free rate I use UK 10 year Treasury bond. All data were collected from the DataStream which is run by Thomson Reuters the worlds leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals (http://thomsonreuters.com/). 1.6- Definition of the key terms: Hedge fund: In the early study by Francis C.C. Koh, Winston T.H. Koh , David K.C. Lee, Kok Fai Phoon (2004) stated in their report that Hedge Funds are innovative investment structures that were first created more than 50 years ago by Alfred Winslow Jones. He established a fund with the following features: (a) He set up hedges by investing in securities that he determined as undervalued and funding these positions partly by taking short positions in overvalued securities, creating a market neutral position; (b) He also designed an incentive fee compensation arrangement in which he was paid a percentage of the profits realized from his clients assets; and (c) He invested his own investment capital in the fund, ensuring that his incentives and those of his investors were aligned and forming an investment partnership. Most modern hedge funds possess the above listed features, and are set up as limited partnerships with a lucrative incentive-fee structure. In most hedge funds, managers also often have a significant portion of their own capital invested in the partnerships. The term hedge fund has been generalized to describe investment strategies that range from the original market-neutral style of Jones to many other strategies and opportunistic situations, including global/macro investing. On the other report by Liang, B. (1999) stated on his report that there are two major types of hedge funds, one is inshore and another is offshore. Onshore funds are limited partnerships of no more than 500 investors. Offshore funds are limited liability corporations or partnerships established in the tax neutral jurisdictions that allow investors an opportunity to invest outside their own country and minimize their tax liabilities. Due to the large variety of hedge fund investing strategies, there is no standard method to classify hedge funds smartly. There are at least 8 major databases set up by data vendors and fund advisors. I follow the classification used by Eichengreen and Mathieson (1998), which relied on the MAR/Hedge database. Under this classification, there are 8 categories of hedge funds with 7 differentiated styles and a fund-of-funds category. For my paper I chose three different categories, which are as follows: (a) Event driven funds. These are funds that take positions on corporate events, such as taking an arbitraged position when companies are undergoing re-structuring or mergers. For example, hedge funds would purchase bank debt or high yield corporate bonds of companies undergoing re-organization (often referred to as distressed securities). Another event-driven strategy is merger arbitrage. These funds seize the opportunity to invest just after a takeover has been announced. They purchase the shares of the target companies and short the shares of the acquiring companies. (c) Global/Macro funds refer to funds that rely on macroeconomic analysis to take bets on major risk factors, such as currencies, interest rates, stock indices and commodities. Opportunistic trading manager that makes profits from changes in global economies typically based in major interest rate shifts. To make profits managers uses leverage and derivatives. (d) Market neutral funds refer to funds that bet 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 strategy of Jones by taking long positions in selective stocks and going short on other stocks to limit their exposure to the stock market. Stock index arbitrage funds trade on the spread between index futures contracts and the underlying basket of equities. Convertible bond arbitrage funds typically capitalize on the embedded option in these bonds by purchasing them and shorting the equities. Fixed income arbitrage bet on the convergence of prices of bonds from the same issuer but with different maturities over time. This is the second largest grouping of hedge funds after the Global category. Source Eichengreen and Mathieson (1998). 2.1.2- Current scenario of hedge funds: Chapter two Literature review: 2.1- History of hedge fund Despite the increasing interest and recent development, few studies have been carried out on hedge funds comparing to other investment tools like mutual funds. An analysis of Hedge Fund performance 1984-2000 by Capocci Daniel using one of the greatest hedge fund database ever used on his working paper (2796 individual funds including 801 dissolved), to investigate hedge funds performance using various asset-pricing models, including an extension from of Carharts (1997) model combined with Fama and French (1998), Agarwal and Naik (2000) models that take into account the fact that some hedge funds invest in emerging market bond. At the end they found that their model does a better job describing hedge funds behaviour. That appears particularly good for the Event Driven, Global Macro, US Opportunistic, Equity non-Hedge and Sector funds. Since the early 1990s, when around 2000 hedge funds were managing assets totalling capital of $60 billion, the subsequent growth in the number and asset base of hedge funds has never really been refuted. The industry only suffered from a relative slowdown in 1998, but since then has enjoyed a renewed vitality with an estimated total of 10,000funds managing more than a trillion US dollars by the end of 2006. The growing trend of the sector remained remarkably sustained during the stock market collapse that started in March 2000, when the NASDAQ composite Index reached an all-time high of 5,132 and finished three years later with a floor level of 1,253. In the meantime, the global met asset value (NAV) of hedge funds continued to grow at a steady rate of 10.6% (Van Hedge Funds Advisors International, 2002), contrasting with a decrease of 2.7% in the worldwide mutual fund industry ( Investment Company Institute, 2003). In 2001, Capocci and Hubner(2004) estimated that there were 6,000 he dge fund managing around $400 billion. In 2007, Capocci, Duquenne and Hubner (2007) estimated that there were 10,000 hedge funds managing around $1 trillion. This is a growth of 11% in the number of funds and 26% in assets over six years (6PhD thesis paper by Daniel P.J. Capocci). Other studies from practitioners Hennessee (1994), and Oberuc (1994) also showed an evidence of superior performance in the case of hedge funds. Ackernann and Al. (1999) and Liang (1999) who compared the performance of hedge funds to mutual funds and several indices, found that hedge funds constantly obtained better performance than mutual funds. Their performance was not better than the performance of the market indices considered. They also indicated that the returns in hedge funds were more unstable than both the returns of mutual funds and those of market indices. According to Brown and Al. (1997) hedge funds showing good performance in the first part of the year reduce the volatility of their portfolio in the second half of the year (Capocci Daniel- An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984-2000). Taking all these results into account hedge funds seems a good investment tool. 6 PhD thesis paper by Daniel P.J. Capocci. Electronic copy available at: http//ssrn.com/abstract=1008319. 2.1.1- Facts and finding of development in hedge funds: As a result of flexible investment strategies, a better manager inventive alignment, sophisticated investors, and limited SEC regulations hedge funds have gained incredible popularity. In the report of Agarwal, V. and Naik, N. (2004) stated that it is well accepted that the world of financial securities is a multifactor world consisting of different risk factors, each associated with its own factor risk premium, and that no single investment strategy can span the entire risk factor space. Therefore investors wishing to earn risk premia associated with different risk factors need to employ different kinds of investment strategies. Sophisticated investors, like endowments and pension funds, seem to have recognized this fact as their portfolios consist of mutual funds as well as hedge funds.1 Mutual funds typically employ a long-only buy-and-hold-type strategy on standard asset classes, and help capture risk premia associated with equity risk, interest rate risk, default risk, etc. Howe ver, they are not very helpful in capturing risk premia associated with dynamic trading strategies or spread-based strategies. This is where hedge funds come into the picture. Unlike mutual funds, hedge funds are not evaluated against a passive benchmark and therefore can follow more dynamic trading strategies. Moreover, they can take long as well as short positions in securities, and therefore can bet on capitalization spreads or value-growth spreads. As a result, hedge funds can offer exposure to risk factors that traditional long-only strategies cannot. However, investor can create exposure like hedge funds by trading on their own account, in practice they encounter many frictions due to incompleteness of markets like the publicly traded derivatives market and the financing market. Moreover, the derivatives market for standardized contracts has grown a great deal in recent years, still it is very costly for an investor to create a customized payoff on individual securities. The same is true for the financing market as well, where investors encounter difficulties shorting securities and obtaining leverage. These frictions make it difficult for investors to create hedge fund-like payoffs by trading on their own accounts. According to Koh, F., Koh,W,. Lee, D,. and Phoon, K. (2004) in 1990, the entire hedge fund industry was estimated at about US$20 billion. At of 2004, there are close to 7000 hedge funds worldwide, managing more than US$830 billion. Additionally, about US$200-300 billion is estimated to be in privately managed accounts. While high net worth individuals remain the main source of capital, hedge funds are becoming more popular among institutional and retail investors. Funds of hedge funds and other hedge fund-linked products are increasingly being marketed to the retail market. While hedge funds are well established in the United States and Europe, they have only begun to grow aggressively in Asia. According to Asia Hedge magazine, there are more than 300 hedge funds operating in Asia (including those in Japan and Australia), of which 30 were established in year 2000 and 20 in 2001. In 2003, 90 new hedge funds were started in Asia, compared with 66 in 2002, according to an estimate by th e Bank of Bermuda. In 2004 more than US$15 billion, hedge fund investments in Asia are expected to grow rapidly. Several factors support this view. Asian hedge funds currently account for a tiny slice of the global hedge fund pie and a mere trickle of the total financial wealth of high net worth individuals in Asia. Hedge funds have posted attractive returns. From 1987 to 2001, the Hennessee Hedge Fund Index posted annualised returns of 18%, higher than the SPs 13.5%. Hedge funds are seen as a natural hedge for controlling downside risk because they employ exotic investment strategies believed to generate returns that are uncorrelated to traditional asset classes. Hedge funds vary in their strategies. So-called macro funds, such as Quantum Fund, generally take a directional view by betting on a particular bond market, say, or a currency movement. Other funds specialize in corporate events, such as mergers or bankruptcies, or simply look for pricing anomalies the stock markets. Hedge funds vary widely in both their investment strategies and the amount of financial leverage. (Koh, F., Koh,W,. Lee, D,. and Phoon, K. (2004) There are a number of factors behind the meteoric rise in demand for hedge funds. The unprecedented bull-run in the US equity markets during the 1990s expanded investment portfolios. This led an increased awareness on the need for diversification. The bursting of the technology and Internet bubbles, the string of corporate scandals that hit corporate America and the uncertainties in the US economy have led to a general decline in stock markets worldwide. This in turn provided fresh impetus for hedge funds as investors searched for absolute returns. (Koh, F., Koh,W,. Lee, D,. and Phoon, K. (2004) Unlike registered investment companies, hedge funds are not required to publicly disclose performance and holdings information that might be construed as solicitation materials. Since the early 1990s, there has been a growing interest in the use of hedge funds amongst both institutional and high net worth individuals. Due to their private nature, it is difficult to obtain adequate information about the operations of individual hedge funds and reliable summary statistics about the industry as a whole. (Koh, F., Koh,W,. Lee, D,. and Phoon, K. (2004) Hedge funds are known to be growing in size and diversity. As at the end of 1997, the MAR/Hedge database recorded more than 700 hedge fund managing assets of US$90 billion. This is only a partial picture of the industry, as many funds are not listed with MAR/Hedge. In practical terms, it is not easy to estimate the current size of the hedge fund industry unless all funds are regulated or obligated to register their operations with a common authority. Brooks and Kat (2001) estimated that, as at April 2001, there are around 6000 hedge funds with an estimated US $400 billion in capital under management and US $1 trillion in total assets. (Koh, F., Koh,W,. Lee, D,. and Phoon, K. (2004) According to Koh, F., Koh,W,. Lee, D,. and Phoon, K. (2004) three interesting features differentiate hedge funds from other forms of managed funds. Most hedge funds are small and organized around a few experienced investment professionals. In fact, more than half of U.S Hedge Funds manage amounts of less than US$25 million. Further, most hedge funds are leveraged. It is estimated that 70 per cent of hedge funds use leverage and about 18% borrowed more than one dollar for every dollar of capital. (See Eichengreen and Mathieson (1998). Another peculiar feature is the short life span of hedge funds. Hedge funds have an average life span of about 3.5 years (See Stefano Lavinio (2000) pp 128). Very few have a track record of more than 10 years. These features lead many to view hedge funds, as risky and opportunistic. In the early study by Fung and Hsieh (2001), they use option like payoffs to view the risks of trend following hedge funds. They saw that the trend followers are typically commodity trading advisors (CTAs) who attempt to profit from trends in commodity prices using technical indicators. According to Fung and Hsieh (2001) trend followers are particularly interesting in that not only are their returns uncorrelated with the standard equity, bond, currency, and commodity indices, but their returns tend to exhibit option like features. They tend to be large and positive during the best and worst performing months of world equity indices. They cite evidence by Fung and Hsieh (1997) who show that if one divided up the states of the world into five states based on the return on the MSCI equity world index, trend followers tend to outperform when the MSCI equity return is at its lowest and highest. The relationship between trend followers and the equity market is non-linear and U-shaped. Alth ough returns of trend following funds have a low beta against equities on average, the state-dependent betas tend to be positive in up-markets and negative in down markets. As a result, Fung and Hsieh (2001) assume that the simplest trend following strategy has the same payout as a structured option known as the look back straddle. The owner of a look back call option has the right to buy the underlying asset at the lowest price over the life of the option. Similarly, a look back put option allows the owner to sell at the highest price. The combination of these two options is the look back straddle, which delivers the ex-post maximum payout of any trend following strategy. Fung and Hsieh (2001) then demonstrate empirically that look back straddle returns resemble the returns of trend following hedge funds. Building on this pioneer work, Fung and Hsieh (2004) propose seven factors that explain aggregate hedge fund returns. These seven factors include the excess return on the SP 500 index, the Wilshire small cap minus large cap index return, the term spread, the credit spread, and trend following factors for bonds, currencies, and commodities. They show that their seven factor model well explains variation in aggregate hedge fund returns. In addition, they find that equity long/short hedge funds tend to load positively on the SP 500 index factor and the small cap minus large cap factor. These results are consistent with the observation that equity long/short hedge funds typically have a small positive exposure to stocks and tend to be long small stocks and short large stocks. Fung and Hsieh (2004) also find that fixed income funds on the other hand tend to load negatively on the change in the credit spread, where the credit spread is measured as the difference between the yield on Moodys Baa bonds and the yield on the 10-year constant maturity Treasury bond. The reason is that fixed income funds typically buy bonds with lower credit ratings and/or less liquidity and then hedge the interest rate risk by shorting US Treasury bonds, which have the highest credit rating and are more liquid. However, Agarwal and Naik (2004) also propose a multi-factor model to explain hedge fund risks. They find that non-linear option like payoffs are not restricted to trend followers and risk arbitrageurs, but are an integral feature of payoffs for a wide range of hedge fund strategies. In particular they observe that the payoffs on a large number of hedge fund strategies look like those from writing a put option on the equity index. These strategies include risk arbitrage, distressed debt, convertible arbitrage, and relative value arbitrage. Consistent with the exposure of these strategies to the risks borne by sellers of equity index put options, Agarwal and Naik (2004) find that these hedge funds suffer from significant left tail risk which tends to coincide with severe market downturns. The performance of hedge fund in 2008 was very shocking like more than ten years ago. Teo, M (2009) stated that in the month of August 1998 alone LTCM lost 45% of its capital in the wake of the massive liquidity event triggered by the Russian rubble default. Lots of academic literature has shown that the year 2007 and 2008 was the worst performance of hedge fund. As we know that hedge fund managers make portfolio by taking position in equity market and another fund, but unfortunately the world equity market goes downside. As a result investors who wish to weather future financial maelstroms should take note of the non-linear relationship between hedge fund returns and the equity market. 2.3- Limitations (previous) With respect to lightly regulated investment vehicles with great treading flexibility, hedge funds often pursue highly sophisticated investment strategies. Hedge funds promise absolute returns to their investor leading to a belief that they hold factor-neutral portfolios. With this in mind, hedge funds have some limitations. In the early studies many researchers discussed and explain that obstacles. First of all if we consider the measurement model of hedge funds performance, most of the researcher use traditional performance measure model like, Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio and Jensen alpha which are not adequate for the performance evaluation of hedge funds. Fung and Hsieh (2000) and Roy (2003) stated that is incorrect to use these performance measures t evaluate the hedge funds strategies. Brooks and Kat (2002), Kat (2003), Mahdavi (2004) and Murguia and Umemoto (2004) also mentioned that the Sharpe ratio does not represent the true performance of hedge funds because it does not take into consideration the asymmetry returns of these funds. As a result Perello (2007) propose to use the downside risk framework like Sortino ratio, the upside potential ratio and Omega measure as alternative performance measure. Moreover, Chung, Rosenberg and Tomeo (2004) and Scherer (2004) showed that Sortino ratio makes it possible to the investors to evaluate the risk and the performance of the h edge funds more sustainably than Sharpe ratio. Secondly, according to Ackermann et al. (1999) and to Fung and Hsieh (2000), two upward biases exist in the case of hedge funds. They do not exist in the case of mutual funds, and they both have an opposite impact to the survivorship bias. Survivorship bias is an important issue in hedge funds performance studies (see Carhart and al. 2000). This bias is present when a database contains only funds that have data for the whole period studies. In this case, there is a risk of overestimating the mean performance because the funds that would have ceased to exist because of their bad performance would not be taken into account. The two upward biases exist because, since hedge funds are not allowed to advertise, they consider inclusion in a database primarily as a marketing tool. The first phenomenon stressed by Ackermann and al. (1999) and called the self-selection bias is present because funds that realize good performance have less incentive to report their performance to data providers in order to attract new investors. Malkiel, B. and Saha, A. (2005) stated in their report that Databases available at any point in time tend to reflect the returns earned by currently existing hedge funds but they do not include the returns from hedge funds that existed at some time in the past but are presently not in existence (i.e., the truly dead funds) or exist but no longer report their results (the defunct funds). Unsuccessful hedge funds have difficulties obtaining new assets. Hence, they tend to close, leaving only the more successful funds in the database. But some funds stop reporting not because they are unsuccessful but because they do not want to attract new investment. The second point called instant history bias or backfilled bias (Fung and Hsieh 2000) occurs because after inclusion a funds performance history is backfilled. This may cause an upward bias because funds with less satisfactory performance history are less likely to apply for inclusion than funds with good performance history (Capocci Daniel 2001, An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984- 2000).

Marry Shelley :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, in London, England. She was destined to live an extraordinary life. Her parents were two of the most noted freethinkers of the Enlightenment era. Her father, William Godwin, was a celebrated philosopher and historian. He was known for overeating and borrowing money who would give him a loan. He didn’t have much time for anything but his philosophical ideas. He met his match in Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary’s mother. She was every bit as much a radical thinker as Godwin. She declared herself independent at the age of 21. She and her sisters ran a school in France, where she had an affair with an army captain and had her first child, Fanny, out of wedlock. After being abandoned, she and Fanny moved back to England and attempted suicide. She began writing. She was well-known for her revolutionary feminist writings. Wollstonecraft and Godwin met a dinner party at Godwin’s home and the two began an affair. Wollstonecraft was five months pregnant when she married Godwin. Although Godwin and Wollstonecraft didn’t agree with the whole marriage thing, they wanted Mary’s children to be legitimate children. Mary’s mother died of complications just ten days after Mary was born. Her father was a self-absorbed intellectual and was left to take care of his daughters all alone. Although he loved his daughters, the responsibility of raising them on his own was too much for him and soon began looking for a wife.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Godwin married four years later to Mary Jane Clairmont. She turned out to be a mean and shallow woman who favored her own two children over Mary and Fanny. Mary was a lively child and was often treated unfairly by her stepmother. She received frequent whippings which led to her rebellion of a girl’s traditional role. As a result of this, Mary kept to herself and was unhappy and alone. Although she didn’t have a formal education, she picked up on the intellectual environment created by her father and his visitors. Mary was quite bright and began reading the writings of her mother around the age of eight. She had memorized every word by the age of ten. Mary spent many hours at her favorite reading spot, her mother’s grave.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Percy Shelley, a poet, was an admirer and friend of William Godwin and spent a great deal of time at the Godwin house. Shelley also admired the writings of Mary’s mother.

An Analysis of the Stubbies Advertisement by Coca-Cola Essay

The 2005 ‘Stubbies† advertisement by Coke-Cola owned soft drink company Lemon and Paeroa (L&P) is constructed in such manner to produce ‘New Zealand’ within it text. The advertisement has been produced with particular attention and reference to New Zealand and New Zealanders, subjugating a sense of nationalism among viewers. This essay analyses and explains how L&P creates and fosters a sense of national identity among viewers through elements of; nationalism, banal nationalism, and symbolism. The 1970s styled advertisement for L&P was created by the production company Sliversceen Auckland. The storyline shows a formally dressed suited male entering a tailor shop and becoming acquainted with the casual clothing item of ‘stubbies’ shorts (Vist4ads 2005). These are an iconic clothing item associated with rural New Zealand and are coupled with values such as practicality and comfort. A range of men are then shown in variety of situations depicting the versatility of the stubbies shorts. Although a great deal of focus is given to the stubbies shorts, the item being advertised is the soft drink L&P. It is drunk throughout the commercial, and the advertisement suggests that both stubbies shorts and L&P are essential items of iconic ‘kiwi’ culture. This is reinforced through catchphrase ‘You were there and so was L&P.’ The use of personal pro-noun ‘You’ connects and involves the audience with advertisement through the nationalistic branding technique of ‘co-creation (ZALA VOLCIC and MARK ANDREJEVIC 2011).’The reliance as brand placed upon consumers to build and disseminate the brands identity. The brand L&P has constructed their advertisement in a particular way which leaves a reliance on consumers to reflect, build and distribute brand identity of being an iconic ‘kiwi’ favourite soft drink through dra wing on their proud heritage and positive pastimes which make up New Zealand identity and culture. The consciousness of a space as a nation requires a level of imagination: a sense of people affiliating to the same state who negotiate and construct meanings. The definition of a nation requires a construction of representation of an image (Bell 1996). L&P strives to be an iconic image which in turn encapsulates the embodiment of what it means to part of the nation of New Zealand. Media scholar Claudia Bell states that the building of a nation is not all natural, rather facilitated through socialisation mechanisms that guide us a citizens (Bell 1996). The advertisement aims to guide viewers to reflect on time when men wore ‘stubbies’ and ‘everyone just left their keys in the car anyway’. The portrayal by L&P of these events is suggestive that these were ‘the good times’ for New Zealanders. The viewing population of New Zealand absorbs these values, reflections and associations with L&P as assumptions of identity, which are unconscious taken on board. The connective association with L&P and New Zealand national identity is an is an implicit marketing tool by Cola-Cola in order the present L&P as New Ze aland’s drink of choice and a natural feature of a nation as summarized through the slogan â€Å"world famous in New Zealand since ages ago.† This reminds the viewer that a nation can only be formed through history which makes us unique as a nation. Production and construction of ‘New Zealand’ in the advertisement occurs through the advertising construction and production of banal nationalism. Banal nationalism is a concept founded by Michael billig which argues that the consistent reference to the everyday representations of the nation conceptually forms expressions of nationalism such as forming an imagined sense of national solidarity and belonging among those united in a national sense. Billing claims that everyday expressions of nationalism can be as important and reactivate as the representational flag-waving of nations. (PRIDEAUX 2009) Banal nationalism is repeated throughout the L&P advertisement in a variety of ways. Firstly the sense of implied unity through the advertisements plotlines desires to be ‘our’ story and a snapshot of everyday New Zealand in the summer time of the 1970s. This is achieved through the voice-over language and popular expressions throughput the advertisement such as the colloquiums â€Å"back in the day† and ‘Kiwi’s.’ The casualness of the phrases projects a sense of understanding and unity among the New Zealand audience. The L&P drinking New Zealanders shown the advertisement embody characters which are portrayed as typical ‘Kiwis’ in 1970s such as the small Maori boy with a large afro hairstyle posed next to his bike and the characteristic rural New Zealand bloke complete with singlet, jandals, and a mullet. Banal nationalism also occurs through the advertisement portrayal of typical New Zealand scenes which are familiar with such as the dairy, the rural country side, and a summer barbeque. These are relatable settings to almost any New Zealander and enables personal reflection. The symbols of banal nationalism symbols are most effective because of their constant repetition, and almost subliminal nature, therefore a very powerful marketing and advertising tool. The production of ‘New Zealand’ occurs in the L&P advertisement through the placement of a range of symbols which are an attempt to reference and embody New Zealand as a nation. The repeated image of the kiwi bird along the window in scene when a stubbies clad male is impressing a pretty girl is not a coincidence. The kiwi bird is the product of New Zealand and being used to repeatedly remind viewers of their place in the nation, a process Michael billing describes as being ‘flagged,’ a term coined by nations overuse flying nation flags. The kiwi is iconic since the bird is native to New Zealand. The advertisement also couples the kiwi with other iconic symbols associated with New Zealand and national pride such jandals, and the act of a large summer barbeque which are symbolic of deeper meanings to the New Zealander such as relaxation and family. New Zealand indigenous symbols such as the kiwi bird that are distinctively New Zealand are particular important in the production of nationalism within advertisement simply as they are not British. Historically New Zealand derived symbols of national identity from the motherland such as Britannia (Bell 1996). The kiwi build nationality as it is naturally occurring and guides New Zealanders as citizens. Symbols are closely interlinked with national identity as they draw associations among viewers. The production of national symbols like the kiwi into this advertisement that is selling bottled soft drink is not random, rather an attempt to associate the idealised images associated with the symbol and merge with the marketed product o f L&P. The advertisers wish to make L&P symbolic and iconic and to naturally compel viewers to place L&P into their symbolic category of what embodies New Zealand as a nation and what it is to be a New Zealander. New Zealand is multicultural nation and this has been understood by the advertiser by portraying a range of different New Zealander within the thirty second video clip. This is most effectively portrayed in the end scene of summer barbeque. The barbeque is made up both Pakeha and Maori attendees who seen chatting, relaxing, and drinking L&P. The use of people who literally look like they are New Zealanders localises the advertisement for effective absorption of values. Although New Zealand has many cultural issues such as regular Treaty of Waitangi disputes, these are brushed aside and New Zealand mixed culture is produced and perceived as positive. Although L&P is part of a global multinational company Coke-Cola this is ignored and the advertisement is produced with a distinct New Zealand feel leading consumers to believe the drink is of local origin, in particular the small town of Paeora which the drink shares its name. The advertiser claim ‘world famous in New Zealand’ also slants towards the projection the soft drink is locally produced and therefore competes on a level international soft drinks cannot. (Bell 1996). A key component of nationalism is an understanding of history and the intermingled of both of New Zealand major ethnic races pays homage to New Zealand colonial past and assimilating cultures. L&P understands that the world is rapidly changing and globalisation is rapidly expanding and increasing the dominance of transnational marketplace therefore produced affirmation of ‘New Zealand† and nationalism with their stubbies advertisement to showcase and assert distinctiveness of the nation’s unique local, regional, and national identity (Bell 1996). â€Å"Any nation’s existence relies on some sense of loyalty to that nation, on patriotic sentiment, on awareness of nationalism. A sense of shared purpose, a pride in a place, acknowledgment of national success. All these combine in a sense of belonging (Bell 1996)†. Michael Billing noted that Billing noted that every day we are reminded that we belong to a nation through routine occurrences including using passports, the language of political speakers, the media and academia (Billing 1995 ). However through examination it has become apparent that nationalism has become a tool by advertisers to foster nationalist feelings to their audience. The advertisement establishes and produces New Zealand as a nation and then reproduces and represents New Zealand as an L&P loving nation. In advertising, the power of recognition is manipulated for economic ends. The ‘stubbies’ advertisement shows an idealised version of New Zealand is order to create a collective inte rest in the product. Bibliography Bell, Claudia. Inventing NZ: Everyday Myths of Pakeha Identity. Auckland: Penguin Books, 1996. Billig, Michael. Banal Nationlism . London : Sage Publishing , 1995 . PRIDEAUX, JILLIAN. â€Å"Consuming icons: nationalism and advertising in Australia.† Nations and Nationlism (School of Political Science and International Studies, The University of Queensland) 15, no. 4 (2009): 616–635. Vist4ads. L&P stubbies. 2005. http://www.visit4ads.com/details.cfm?adid=20954 (accessed 08 2, 2013). ZALA VOLCIC and MARK ANDREJEVIC. â€Å"Nation Branding in the Era of Commercial Nationalism.† International Journal of Communication 5, 2011: 598–618.

Biblical Prophets of the Post-exilic essays

Biblical Prophets of the Post-exilic essays Before the Babylonian exile, Biblical prophesy reached its highest point. Prophets such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel changed and molded the scope of Hebrew religion. Their writings were intelligent, insightful, well developed, and contained a great spiritual meaning. Following the Babylonian exile, however, prophesy took a depressing downward turn. There are many post exilic prophets, yet their writings are usually short, mostly irrelevant, repetitive, and, for the most part, anonymous. Though this is the case for many of these prophets, some works cannot be overlooked. Haggai and Zechariah were leaders in the cultic reform of the Hebrew people. Malachai calmed their fears, and assured them of God's love. Still other prophets told of a new, Messianic time when the word of the Lord would be held in its former glory. These were the most important works, as post exilic Hebrews needed not only protection, but spiritual guidance to sustain their society. The prophet Haggai was an integral figure in uniting the Hebrew people. Upon return to their homeland, the Hebrews found most of the infrastructure in a state of disrepair, with the people uncaring for their moral and social responsibilities, to say nothing for their religious practices. Even the temple of the Lord had been destroyed. Haggai emphasized the return to a more cultic society. The coming of a latter glory that was foretold in Haggai's prophesy is emphasized in the book of Zechariah. Zechariah prophesied in the shadow of Haggai, but gave his words a slightly different spin. He emphasizes, like the pre-exilic prophets, the importance of a moral reform among the Hebrews. Zechariah's way of receiving the word of God is very unique among the prophets. The word comes to him in the form of eight visions. These "colorful and strange" visions make up most of his book. The visions are so bizarre that the Lord sends an angel as in interpreter, so that Zeccariah can derive meaning from t...

The Causes Of The Holocaust Essays - Racism, Antisemitism

The Causes Of The Holocaust Essays - Racism, Antisemitism The Causes of the Holocaust Post World War I Germany saw difficult times. Germans were searching for a reason to blame someone for their problems and extremist groups such as the Nazis provided a focus for the German people. Some historians will argue that extreme nationalism was the cause of the Holocaust because of the power of the Nazi party. While a large part of this is true, Germany's anguish after World War I sent people looking for reasons to blame someone or something for their burdens, Germany's humiliation after World War I, its dire economic situation, and antisemitism all came together to cause the Holocaust. Germany's embarrassment after losing World War I was one of the major reasons for the cause of the Holocaust. After Germany's defeat in World War I, Germans found it hard to believe they had lost the war. The Treaty of Versailles was a document that officially ended military actions against Germany (Craig 424). Germans did not like this treaty because their government would have to pay other countries for their economic losses (Allen 57). Germany also lost all of its colonies overseas. It had to give back provinces to France, Belgium, and Denmark. France got German coal mines and Gda sk, now a city in Poland, became a "free city." Poland gained most of Western Prussia and Germany's Rhineland was demilitarized, although allied troops occupied it for fifteen years after the war (Shirer 59). The Treaty also solely held Germany responsible for the War in a "war guilt" clause which greatly upset the Germans. When the German government saw the treaty, they heavily opposed i! t; however they had to accept it. Germany's new republican government ratified it in 1919. Germany's defeat in the war and the provisions in the Treaty of Versailles, officially ending the war, greatly outraged the German people. Germany had lost everything, the economy was in a decline and there was an extremely high unemployment rate. The Germans wanted to restore their nation to its former greatness (Hashoah 28). They wanted to complete this task of restoration in a very short amount of time. German citizens also started looking for a reason for their defeat. A new political party called the National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazis, began its climb by bringing back old prejudices and blaming the Jews for Germany's defeat in the first World War. These were some of the factors that came together to cause the rise of Hitler's Third Reich and the slaughter of twelve million innocent people in the Holocaust. Germany's bad economy in the 1920's and 30's was a factor for the cause of the Holocaust and the Rise of the Third Reich. After the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919, Germany owed other nations money for their economic losses during World War I. This made Germany very poor in the early twenties. In 1923, inflation reached its climax in Germany which made the German Mark lose its value and virtually wiped out the middle class. The German economy was so bad that cartoons were drawn depicting middle class Germans carting around their few possessions and money in wheel barrows. Middle class citizens became more susceptible to appeals from extremist groups such as the Nazis which came about in the years following World War I because they had provided a focus for Germany's problems. Less than three years after German's economy had somewhat stabilized, it went in to a severe economic depression along with the rest of the Western world in 1929. During the years of econom! ic depression the Weimar Republic, who ruled Germany from 1919 to 1933, was criticized for not being able to deal with Germany's problems effectively and efficiently. The Communist and the National Socialist Parties were supported by most of the German voters by 1933 because of Germany's economic problems (Shirer 258). Antisemitism was by far the biggest factor for the cause of the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party were behind this antisemitism campaign. When Hitler and the Nazi party gained power, they made antisemitism an official government policy. Germans were looking for a quick way out of their problems and, by listening to Hitler, they believed

The ideal person Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The ideal person - Essay Example Shu represents Confucius’ golden rule, which warned against imposing on others what you did not want to be imposed upon you. The virtue refers to empathy whereby, an ideal person has the ability to view situations from other people’s perspectives without rendering harsh judgments from their personal appraisals of the situation. Closely related to this virtue is the concept of Zhong (loyalty), which implies that social roles define one’s moral duties. Confucius believed that an empathetic person possessed the ability to embrace people’s different perspectives, which resulted from their differing social roles (Riegel, 2008).Xiao referred to filial piety, which encompassed dimensions of social relations ordered in a hierarchy. These relations included ruler and the people, husband and wife, father and son, elder brother and younger brother, and older friend and younger friend. According to Confucius, an ideal person had the ability to respect those on the low er side of the hierarchy such as wife, younger friend or brother. In addition, proper functioning of the social relations constituted societal harmony (Riegel, 2008).Wen referred to leisurely activities undertaken by individuals; for example, music or arts. According to Confucius, individuals should embed moral themes in these activities, as it added societal value to these activities. He inferred that individuals should avoid engaging in creative pursuits that do not mirror any virtues (Riegel, 2008).