New Hoarding Technique for Handling Disconnection in Mobile

Literature Survey On New Hoarding Technique for Handling Disconnection in Mobile Submitted by Mayur Rajesh Bajaj (IWC2011021) In Partial fulfilment for the award of the degree Of Master of Technology In INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (Specialization: Wireless Communication and Computing) [pic] Under the Guidance of Dr. Manish Kumar INDIAN INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, ALLAHABAD (A University Established under sec. 3 of UGC Act, 1956 vide Notification no. F. 9-4/99-U. 3 Dated 04. 08. 2000 of the Govt. of India) (A Centre of Excellence in Information Technology Established by Govt. of India) Table of Contents [pic] 1.Introduction†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 3 2. Related Work and Motivation 1. Coda: The Pioneering System for Hoarding†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 4 2. Hoarding Based on Data Mining Techniques†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 5 3. Hoarding Techniques Based on Program Trees†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 8 4. Hoarding in a Distributed Environment†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 9 5.Hoarding content for mobile learning†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 10 6. Mobile Clients Through Cooperative Hoarding†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 10 7. Comparative Discussion previous techniques†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 11 3. Problem Definition†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 11 4. New Approach Suggested 1. Zipf’s Law †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 2 2. Object Hotspot Prediction Model†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢ € ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 13 5. Schedule of Work†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 13 6. Conclusion†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 13 References†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 14 . Introduction Mobile devices are the computers which are having wireless communication capabilities to access global data services from any location while roaming. Now a day’s mobile devices are supporting applications such as multimedia, World Wide Web and other high profile applications which demands continuous connections and Mobile devices are lacking here. However, mobile devices with wireless communication are frequently disconnected from the network due to the cost of wireless communication or the unavailability of the wireless network.Disconnection period of mobile device from its network is called as offline period. Such offline periods may appear for different reasons – intentional (e. g. , the available connection is too expensive for the user) or unintentional (e. g. , lack of infrastructure at a given time and location). During offline periods the user can only access materials located on the device’s local memory. Mobile systems typically have a relatively small amount of memory, which is often not enough to store all the needed data for ongoing activities to continue.In such a case, a decision should be taken on which part of the data has to be cached. Often we cannot count on the user’s own judgement of what he/she will need and prefetch. Rather, in our opinion, some sort of automatic prefetching would be desirable. Uninterrupted operation in offline mode will be in high demand and the mobile computer systems should provide support for it. Seamless disconnection can be achieved by loading the files that a user will access in the future from the network to the local storage. This preparation process for disconnected operation is called hoarding.Few of the parameters which complicate the hoarding process are prediction of future access pattern of the user, handling of hoard miss, limited local hoard memory and unpredictable disconnections and reconnection, activities on hoarded object at other clients, the asymmetry of communications bandwidth in downstream and upstream. An important point is to measure the quality of the hoarding and to try to improve it continuously. An often used metric in the evaluation of caching proxies is the hit ratio. Hit ratio is calculated by dividing the number of by the total number of uploaded predictions.It is a good measure for hoarding systems, though a better measure is the miss ratio – a percentage of accesses for which the cache is ineffective. In this work we have given brief overview of the techniques proposed in earlier days and also given the idea for the new hoarding technique. 2. Related Work and Motivation Before the early 1990’s, there was little research on hoarding. Since then, however, interest has increased dramatically among research scientists and professors around the globe and many techniques have been developed. Here we have listed few of the techniques and also will discuss them in brief. Coda: The Pioneering System for Hoarding †¢ Hoarding Based on Data Mining Techniques ? SEER Hoarding System (inspired by clustering technique) ? Association Rule-Based Techniques ? Hoarding Based on Hyper Graph ? Probability Graph Based Technique †¢ Hoarding Techniques Based on Program Trees †¢ Hoarding in a Distributed Environment †¢ Hoarding content for mobile learning †¢ Mobile Clients Through Cooperative Hoarding 2. 1 Coda Coda is a distributed file system based on client–server architecture, where there are many clients and a comparatively smaller number of servers.It is the first system that enabled users to work in disconnected mode. The concept of hoarding was introduced by the Coda group as a means of enabling disconnected operation. Disconnections in Coda are assumed to occur involuntarily due to network failures or voluntarily due to the detachment of a mobile client from the network. Voluntary and involuntary disconnections are handled the same way. The cache manager of Coda, called Venus, is designed to work in disconnected mode by serving client requests from the cache when the mobile client is detached from the network.Requests to the files that are not in the cache during disconnection are reflected to the client as failures. The hoarding system of Coda lets users select the files that they will hopefully need in the future. This information is used to decide what to load to the local storage. For disconnected operation, files are loaded to the client local storage, because the master copies are kept at stationary servers, there is the notion of replication and how to manage locks on the local copies. When the disconnection is voluntary, Coda handles this case by obtaining exclusive locks to files.However in case of involuntary disconnection, the system should defer the conflicting lock requests for an object to the reconnection time, which may not be predictable. The cache management system of Coda, called Venus, diff ers from the previous ones in that it incorporates user profiles in addition to the recent reference history. Each workstation maintains a list of pathnames, called the hoard database. These pathnames specify objects of interest to the user at the workstation that maintains the hoard database. Users can modify the hoard database via scripts, which are called hoard profiles.Multiple hoard profiles can be defined by the same user and a combination of these profiles can be used to modify the hoard database. Venus provides the user with an option to specify two time points during which all file references will be recorded. Due to the limitations of the mobile cache space, users can also specify priorities to provide the hoarding system with hints about the importance of file objects. Precedence is given to high priority objects during hoarding where the priority of an object is a combination of the user specified priority and a parameter indicating how recently it was accessed.Venus per forms a hierarchical cache management, which means that a directory is not purged unless all the subdirectories are already purged. In summary, the Coda hoarding mechanism is based on a least recently used (LRU) policy plus the user specified profiles to update the hoard data-base, which is used for cache management. It relies on user intervention to determine what to hoard in addition to the objects already maintained by the cache management system. In that respect, it can be classified as semi-automated.Researchers developed more advanced techniques with the aim of minimizing the user intervention in determining the set of objects to be hoarded. These techniques will be discussed in the following sections. 2. 2 Hoarding based on Data mining Techniques Knowing the interested pattern from the large collection of data is the basis of data mining. In the earlier history of hoarding related works researchers have applied many different data mining techniques in this arena of mobile hoa rding. Mainly clustering and association rule mining techniques were adopted from data mining domain. . 2. 1 SEER Hoarding System To automate the hoarding process, author developed a hoarding system called SEER that can make hoarding decisions without user intervention. The basic idea in SEER is to organize users’ activities as projects in order to provide more accurate hoarding decisions. A distance measure needs to be defined in order to apply clustering algorithms to group related files. SEER uses the notion of semantic distance based on the file reference behaviour of the files for which semantic distance needs to be calculated.Once the semantic distance between pairs of files are calculated, a standard clustering algorithm is used to partition the files into clusters. The developers of SEER also employ some filters based on the file type and other conventions introduced by the specific file system they assumed. The basic architecture of the SEER predictive hoarding syste m is provided in figure 1. The observer monitors user behaviour (i. e. , which files are accessed at what time) and feeds the cleaned and formatted access paths to the correlator, which then generates the distances among files in terms of user access behaviour.The distances are called the semantic distance and they are fed to the cluster generator that groups the objects with respect to their distances. The aim of clustering is, given a set of objects and a similarity or distance matrix that describes the pairwise distances or similarities among a set of objects, to group the objects that are close to each other or similar to each other. Calculation of the distances between files is done by looking at the high-level file references, such as open or status inquiry, as opposed to individual reads and writes, which are claimed to obscure the process of distance calculation. pic] Figure 1. Architecture of the SEER Predictive Hoarding System The semantic distance between two file referen ces is based on the number of intervening references to other files in between these two file references. This definition is further enhanced by the notion of lifetime semantic distance. Lifetime semantic distance between an open file A and an open file B is the number of intervening file opens (including the open of B). If the file A is closed before B is opened, then the distance is defined to be zero.The lifetime semantic distance relates two references to different files; however it needs to be somehow converted to a distance measure between two files instead of file references. Geometric mean of the file references is calculated to obtain the distance between the two files. Keeping all pairwise distances takes a lot of space. Therefore, only the distances among the closest files are represented (closest is determined by a parameter K, K closest pairs for each file are considered). The developers of SEER used a variation of an agglomerative (i. e. bottom up) clustering algorithm called k nearest neighbour, which has a low time and space complexity. An agglomerative clustering algorithm first considers individual objects as clusters and tries to combine them to form larger clusters until all the objects are grouped into one single cluster. The algorithm they used is based on merging sub clusters into larger clusters if they share at least kn neighbours. If the two files share less than kn close files but more than kf, then the files in the clusters are replicated to form overlapping clusters instead of being merged.SEER works on top of a user level replication system such as Coda and leaves the hoarding process to the underlying file system after providing the hoard database. The files that are in the same project as the file that is currently in use are included to the set of files to be hoarded. During disconnected operation, hoard misses are calculated to give a feedback to the system. 2. 2. 2 Association Rule-Based Techniques Association rule overview: Let I=i1,i2†¦.. im be a set of literals, called items and D be a set of transactions, such that ?T ? D; T? I. A transaction T contains a set of items X if X? T. An association rule is denoted by an implication of the form X ? Y, where X? I, Y ? I, and X ? Y = NULL. A rule X ? Y is said to hold in the transaction set D with confidence c if c% of the transactions in D that contain X also contain Y. The rule X? Y has support sin the transaction set D if s% of transactions in D contains X? Y. The problem of mining association rules is to find all the association rules that have a support and a confidence greater than user-specified thresholds.The thresholds for confidence and support are called minconf and minsup respectively. In Association Rule Based Technique for hoarding, authors described an application independent and generic technique for determining what should be hoarded prior to disconnection. This method utilizes association rules that are extracted by data mining techni ques for determining the set of items that should be hoarded to a mobile computer prior to disconnection. The proposed method was implemented and tested on synthetic data to estimate its effectiveness.The process of automated hoarding via association rules can be summarized as follows: Step 1: Requests of the client in the current session are used through an inferencing mechanism to construct the candidate set prior to disconnection. Step 2: Candidate set is pruned to form the hoard set. Step 3: Hoard set is loaded to the client cache. The need to have separate steps for constructing the candidate set and the hoard set arises from the fact that users also move from one machine to another that may have lower resources.The construction of the hoard set must adapt to such potential changes. Construction of candidate set: An inferencing mechanism is used to construct the candidate set of data items that are of interest to the client to be disconnected. The candidate set of the client is constructed in two steps; 1. The inferencing mechanism finds the association rules whose heads (i. e. , left hand side) match with the client’s requests in the current session, 2. The tails (i. e. , right hand side) of the matching rules are collected into the candidate set.Construction of Hoard set: The client that issued the hoard request has limited re-sources. The storage resource is of particular importance for hoarding since we have a limited space to load the candidate set. Therefore, the candidate set obtained in the first phase of the hoarding set should shrink to the hoard set so that it fits the client cache. Each data item in the candidate set is associated with a priority. These priorities together with various heuristics must be incorporated for determining the hoard set. The data items are used to sort the rules in descending order of priorities.The hoard set is constructed out of the data items with the highest priority in the candidate set just enough to fil l the cache. 3. Hoarding Based on Hyper Graph Hyper graph based approach presents a kind of low-cost automatic data hoarding technology based on rules and hyper graph model. It first uses data mining technology to extract sequence relevance rules of data from the broadcasting history, and then formulates hyper graph model, sorting the data into clusters through hyper graph partitioning methods and sorting them topologically.Finally, according to the data invalid window and the current visit record, data in corresponding clusters will be collected. Hyper graph model: Hyper graph model is defined as H = (V, E) where V={v1 ,v2 ,†¦ ,vn } is the vertices collection of hyper graph, and E={e1 ,e2 ,†¦ ,em } is super-edge collection of hyper graph (there supposed to be m super-edges in total). Hyper graph is an extension of graph, in which each super-edge can be connected with two or more vertices. Super-edge is the collection of a group of vertices in hyper graph, and superedge ei = {vi1, vi2, †¦ inj} in which vi1,vi2 ,†¦ ,vin ? V . In this model, vertices collection V corresponds to the history of broadcast data, in which each point corresponds to a broadcast data item, and each super-edge corresponds to a sequence model. Sequence model shows the orders of data items. A sequence model in size K can be expressed as p = . Use of hyper graph in hoarding are discussed in paper in details. 4. Probability Graph Based Technique This paper proposed a low-cost automated hoarding for mobile computing.Advantage of this approach is it does not explore application specific heuristics, such as the directory structure or file extension. The property of application independence makes this algorithm applicable to any predicative caching system to address data hoarding. The most distinguished feature of this algorithm is that it uses probability graph to represent data relationships and to update it at the same time when user’s request is processed. Before d isconnection, the cluster algorithm divides data into groups.Then, those groups with the highest priority are selected into hoard set until the cache is filled up. Analysis shows that the overhead of this algorithm is much lower than previous algorithms. Probability Graph: An important parameter used to construct probability graph is look-ahead period. It is a fixed number of file references that defines what it means for one file to be opened ‘soon’ after another. In other words, for a specific file reference, only references within the look-ahead period are considered related. In fact, look-ahead period is an approximate method to avoid traversing the whole trace.Unlike constructing probability graph from local file systems, in the context of mobile data access, data set is dynamically collected from remote data requests. Thus, we implemented a variation of algorithm used to construct probability graph, as illustrated in Figure 2. [pic] Figure 2. Constructing the prob ability graph The basic idea is simple: If a reference to data object A follows the reference to data object B within the look-ahead period, then the weight of directed arc from B to A is added by one. The look-ahead period affects absolute weight of arcs.Larger look-ahead period produces more arcs and larger weight. A ’s dependency to B is represented by the ratio of weight of arc from B to A divided by the total weight of arcs leaving B. Clustering: Before constructing the final hoard set, data objects are clustered into groups based on dependency among data objects. The main objective of the clustering phase is to guarantee closely related data objects are partitioned into the same group. In the successive selecting phase, data objects are selected into hoard set at the unit of group. This design provides more continuity in user operation when disconnected.Selecting Groups: The following four kinds of heuristic information are applicable for calculating priority for a grou p: †¢ Total access time of all data objects; †¢ Average access time of data objects; †¢ Access time of the start data object; †¢ Average access time per byte. 2. Hoarding Techniques Based on Program Trees A hoarding tool based on program execution trees was developed by author running under OS/2 operating system. Their method is based on analyzing program executions to construct a profile for each program depending on the files the program accesses.They proposed a solution to the hoarding problem in case of informed disconnections: the user tells the mobile computer that there is an imminent disconnection to fill the cache intelligently so that the files that will be used in the future are already there in the cache when needed. [pic] Figure 3. Sample program Tree This hoarding mechanism lets the user make the hoarding decision. They present the hoarding options to the user through a graphical user interface and working sets of applications are captured automatic ally. The working sets are detected by logging the user file accesses at the background.During hoarding, this log is analyzed and trees that represent the program executions are constructed. A node denotes a file and a link from a parent to one of its child nodes tells us that either the child is opened by the parent or it is executed by the parent. Roots of the trees are the initial processes. Program trees are constructed for each execution of a program, which captures multiple contexts of executions of the same program. This has the advantage that the whole context is captured from different execution times of the program.Finally, hoarding is performed by taking the union of all the execution trees of a running program. A sample program tree is provided in Figure 3. Due to the storage limitations of mobile computers, the number of trees that can be stored for a program is limited to 15 LRU program trees. Hoarding through program trees can be thought of as a generalization of a pr o-gram execution by looking at the past behaviour. The hoarding mechanism is enhanced by letting the user rule out the data files. Data files are automatically detected using three complementary heuristics: 1.Looking at the filename extensions and observing the filename conventions in OS/2, files can be distinguished as executable, batch files, or data files. 2. Directory inferencing is used as a spatial locality heuristic. The files that differ in the top level directory in their pathnames from the running program are assumed to be data files, but the programs in the same top level directory are assumed to be part of the same program. 3. Modification times of the files are used as the final heuristic to deter-mine the type of a file. Data files are assumed to be modified more recently and frequently than the executables.They devised a parametric model for evaluation, which is based on recency and frequency. 3. Hoarding in a Distributed Environment Another hoarding mechanism, which was presented for specific application in distributed system, assumes a specific architecture, such as infostations where mobile users are connected to the network via wireless local area networks (LANs) that offer a high bandwidth, which is a cheaper option compared to wireless wide area networks (WANs). The hoarding process is handed over to the infostations in that model and it is assumed that what the user wants to access is location-dependent.Hoarding is proposed to fill the gap between the capacity and cost trade-off between wireless WANS and wireless LANs. The infestations do the hoarding and when a request is not found in the infostation, then WAN will be used to get the data item. The hoarding decision is based on the user access patterns coupled with that user’s location information. Items frequently accessed by mobile users are recorded together with spatial information (i. e. , where they were accessed). A region is divided into hoarding areas and each infostation is responsible with one hoarding area. 4. Hoarding content for mobile learningHoarding in the learning context is the process for automatically choosing what part of the overall learning content should be prepared and made available for the next offline period of a learner equipped with a mobile device. We can split the hoarding process into few steps that we will discuss further in more details: 1. Predict the entry point of the current user for his/her next offline learning session. We call it the ‘starting point’. 2. Create a ‘candidate for caching’ set. This set should contain related documents (objects) that the user might access from the starting point we have selected. 3.Prune the set – the objects that probably will not be needed by the user should be excluded from the candidate set, thus making it smaller. This should be done based on user behaviour observations and domain knowledge. 4. Find the priority to all objects still in the hoarding set after pruning. Using all the knowledge available about the user and the current learning domain, every object left in the hoarding set should be assigned a priority value. The priority should mean how important the object is for the next user session and should be higher if we suppose that there is a higher probability that an object will be used sooner. . Sort the objects based on their priority, and produce an ordered list of objects. 6. Cache, starting from the beginning of the list (thus putting in the device cache those objects with higher priority) and continue with the ones with smaller weights until available memory is filled in. 5. Mobile Clients Through Cooperative Hoarding Recent research has shown that mobile users often move in groups. Cooperative hoarding takes advantage of the fact that even when disconnected from the network, clients may still be able to communicate with each other in ad-hoc mode.By performing hoarding cooperatively, clients can share their hoar d content during disconnections to achieve higher data accessibility and reduce the risk of critical cache misses. Two cooperative hoarding schemes, GGH and CAP, have been proposed. GGH improves hoard performance by al-lowing clients to take advantage of what their peers have hoarded when making their own hoarding decisions. On the other hand, CAP selects the best client in the group to Hoard each object to maximise the number of unique objects hoarded and minimise access cost. Simulation results show that compare to existing schemes.Details of GGH and CAP are given in paper. 2. 7 Comparative Discussion previous techniques The hoarding techniques discussed above vary depending on the target system and it is difficult to make an objective comparative evaluation of their effectiveness. We can classify the hoarding techniques as being auto-mated or not. In that respect, being the initial hoarding system, Coda is semiautomated and it needs human intervention for the hoarding decision. T he rest of the hoarding techniques discussed are fully automated; how-ever, user supervision is always desirable to give a final touch to the files to be hoarded.Among the automated hoarding techniques, SEER and program tree-based ones assume a specific operating system and use semantic information about the files, such as the naming conventions, or file reference types and so on to construct the hoard set. However, the ones based on association rule mining and infostation environment do not make any operating system specific assumptions. Therefore, they can be used in generic systems. Coda handles both voluntary and involuntary disconnections well.The infostation-based hoarding approach is also inherently designed for involuntary disconnections, because hoarding is done during the user passing in the range of the infostation area. However, the time of disconnection can be predicted with a certain error bound by considering the direction and the speed of the moving client predicting when the user will go out of range. The program tree-based methods are specifically designed for previously informed disconnections. The scenario assumed in the case of infostations is a distributed wire-less infrastructure, which makes it unique among the hoarding mechanisms.This case is especially important in today’s world where peer-to-peer systems are becoming more and more popular. 3. Problem Definition The New Technique that we have planned to design for hoarding will be used on Mobile Network. Goals that we have set are a. Finding a solution having optimal hit ratio in the hoard at local node. b. Technique should not have greater time complexity because we don’t have much time for performing hoarding operation after the knowledge of disconnection. c. Optimal utilization of hoard memory. d. Support for both intentional and unintentional disconnection. e.Proper handling of conflicts in hoarded objects upon reconnection. However, our priority will be for hit rati o than the other goals that we have set. We will take certain assumptions about for other issues if we find any scope of improvement in hit ratio. 4. New Approach 4. 1 Zipf’s Law It is a mathematical tool to describe the relationship between words in a text and their frequencies. Considering a long text and assigning ranks to all words by the frequencies in this text, the occurrence probability P (i) of the word with rank i satisfies the formula below, which is known as Zipf first law, where C is a constant.P (i) = [pic] †¦. (1) This formula is further extended into a more generalized form, known as Zipf-like law. P (i) = [pic]†¦. (2) Obviously, [pic]†¦. (3) Now According to (2) and (3), we have C[pic] [pic] Our work is to dynamically calculate for different streams and then according to above Formula (2) and (4), the hotspot can be predicted based on the ranking of an object. 4. 2 Object Hotspot Prediction Model 4. 2. 1 Hotspot Classification We classify hotsp ot into two categories: â€Å"permanent hotspot† and â€Å"stage hotspot†. Permanent hotspot is an object which is frequently accessed regularly.Stage hotspot can be further divided into two types: â€Å"cyclical hotspot† and â€Å"sudden hotspot†. Cyclical hotspot is an object which becomes popular periodically. If an object is considered as a focus suddenly, it is a sudden hotspot. 4. 2. 2. Hotspot Identification Hotspots in distributed stream-processing storage systems can be identified via a ranking policy (sorted by access frequencies of objects). In our design, the hotspot objects will be inserted into a hotspot queue. The maximum queue length is determined by the cache size and the average size of hotspot Objects.If an object’s rank is smaller than the maximum hotspot queue length (in this case, the rank is high), it will be considered as â€Å"hotspot† in our system. Otherwise it will be considered as â€Å"non hotspot†. And t he objects in the queue will be handled by hotspot cache strategy. 4. 2. 3 Hotspot Prediction This is our main section of interest, here we will try to determine the prediction model for hoard content with optimal hoard hit ratio. 5. Schedule of Work |Work |Scheduled Period |Remarks | |Studying revious work on Hoarding |July – Aug 2012 |Complete | |Identifying Problem |Sept 2012 |Complete | |Innovating New Approach |Oct 2012 |Ongoing | |Integrating with Mobile Arena as solution to Hoarding |Nov- Dec 2012 |- | |Simulation And Testing |Jan 2013 |- | |Optimization |Feb 2013 |- | |Simulation And Testing |Mar 2013 |- | |Writing Thesis Work / Journal Publication |Apr –May 2013 |- | 6. Conclusion In this literature survey we have discussed previous related work on hoarding. We have also given the requirements for the new technique that is planned to be design.Also we are suggesting a new approach that is coming under the category of Hoarding with Data Mining Techniques. Recen t studies have shown that the use of proposed technique i. e. Zipfs-Like law for caching over the web contents have improved the hit ratio to a greater extent. Here with this work we are expecting improvements in hit ratio of the local hoard. References [1]. James J. Kistler and Mahadev Satyanarayanan. Disconnected Operation in the Coda File System. ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 3–25, 1992. [2]. Mahadev Satyanarayanan. The Evolution of Coda. ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 85–124, 2002 [3]. Geoffrey H. Kuenning and Gerald J. Popek. Automated Hoarding for Mobile Computers.In Proceedings of the 16th ACM Symposium on Operating System Principles (SOSP 1997), October 5–8, St. Malo, France, pp. 264–275, 1997. [4]. Yucel Saygin, Ozgur Ulusoy, and Ahmed K. Elmagarmid. Association Rules for Supporting Hoarding in Mobile Computing Environments. In Proceedings of the 10th IEEE Workshop on Research Issues in Data Engineering (RIDE 2000), February 28–29, San Diego, pp. 71–78, 2000. [5]. Rakesh Agrawal and Ramakrishna Srikant, Fast Algorithms for Mining Association Rules. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Very Large Databases, Chile, 1994. [6]. GUO Peng, Hu Hui, Liu Cheng. The Research of Automatic Data Hoarding Technique Based on Hyper Graph.Information Science and Engineering (ICISE), 1st International Conference, 2009. [7]. Huan Zhou, Yulin Feng, Jing Li. Probability graph based data hoarding for mobile environment. Presented at Information & Software Technology, pp. 35-41, 2003. [8]. Carl Tait, Hui Lei, Swarup Acharya, and Henry Chang. Intelligent File Hoarding for Mobile Computers. In Proceedings of the 1st Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MOBICOM’95), Berkeley, CA, 1995. [9]. Anna Trifonova and Marco Ronchetti. Hoarding content for mobile learning. Journal International Journal of Mobile Communications archive V olume 4 Issue 4, Pages 459-476, 2006. [10]. Kwong Yuen Lai, Zahir Tari, Peter Bertok.Improving Data Accessibility for Mobile Clients through Cooperative Hoarding. Data Engineering, ICDE proceedings 21st international Conference 2005. [11]. G. Zipf, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort. Addison-Wesley, 1949. [12]. Chentao Wu, Xubin He, Shenggang Wan, Qiang Cao and Changsheng Xie. Hotspot Prediction and Cache in Distributed Stream-processing Storage Systems. Performance Computing and Communications Conference (IPCCC) IEEE 28th International, 2009. [13]. Lei Shi, Zhimin Gu, Lin Wei and Yun Shi. An Applicative Study of Zipf’s Law on Web Cache International Journal of Information Technology Vol. 12 No. 4 2006. [14]. Web link: http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law

Mortgage bonds a bond secured by a mortgage - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 14 Words: 4216 Downloads: 4 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Finance Essay Type Analytical essay Did you like this example? A mortgage bond is a bond secured by a mortgage on one or more assets.  These bonds are typically backed by real estate holdings and/or real property such as equipment. In a default situation, mortgage bondholders have a claim  to the underlying property and could sell it off to compensate for the default. Mortgage bonds offer the investor a great deal of protection in that the principal is secured by a valuable asset that could theoretically be sold off to cover the debt. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Mortgage bonds a bond secured by a mortgage" essay for you Create order However, because of this inherent safety, the average mortgage bond tends to yield a lower rate of return than traditional corporate bonds that are backed only by the corporations promise and ability to pay. Definition A  mortgage bond  is a  bond  backed by a pool of  mortgages  on a  real estate  asset such as a  house. More generally, bonds which are secured by the pledge of specific assets are called mortgage bonds. Illustrative summary An investor purchases a bond from a financial institution for a fixed amount of money. The financial institution then promises to give the money back years from that day with a small percentage of interest added to the original value. When a person purchases a house, he or she generally must borrow money from a bank or  mortgage  lending company. To borrow this money, the person must sign a  promissory note  stating he or she will pay back the value of the loan, plus a percentage of interest, which is accrued each month. Usually, a  mortgage payment  spans fifteen to thirty years and is paid back in monthly installations. To issues these loans, the mortgage lending company may need to borrow a large sum of cash from a larger financial institution. The mortgage  lender  offers a number of mortgage agreements in one lump-sum package to a financial institution, which issues a mortgage bond in return. With a mortgage bond, t he larger financial institution purchases the mortgage agreement from the mortgage lender and receives the borrowers monthly payment in exchange. The mortgage bond process helps the mortgage lender get the money it needs, while the larger financial institution earns extra money by receiving the monthly payment from the borrower. If the borrower defaults on the  mortgage loan, the loss is passed on to the financial institution that issued the mortgage bond. To regain the money lost from the mortgage bond, the financial institution that issued the mortgage bond can resell the house. This can still result in a loss of money if the mortgage bond is worth more than the home. Related concepts Consolidated Mortgage Bond A bond that consolidates the issues of multiple properties. If the properties covered by the consolidated mortgage bond are already mortgaged, the bond acts as a new mortgage. If the properties do not have outstanding mortgages then the bond is considered the first lien. It can be used as a way to refinance the mortgages on the individual properties. The bond is backed by real estate or physical capital. Consolidated mortgage bonds are used by large companies with many properties, such as railroads, looking to refinance them into one bond to market to investors. It allows companies to set a single coupon rate instead of dealing with several, and makes investors happy because they can purchase a singular bond that covers physical assets of a similar type. Mortgage Subsidy Bond One of the few types of municipal bonds ever issued that may be subject to taxation, provided that the funds raised were used for home mortgages. Mortgage subsidy bonds were issued by cities and other municipalities, and may be either taxable or tax-free. Mortgage subsidy bonds were created by the Mortgage Subsidy Act of 1980. They are issued by either state or local governments and are usually taxable. The  exceptions are a select group of mortgage bonds and veterans bonds. Conclusion In most cases, a mortgage bond is a win-win situation for both financial institutions. The recent increase in the value of homes, however, has caused some difficulty with the mortgage bond arrangement. Because homes were increasing in value, mortgage  lenders  issued loans to people who were not the ideal candidates. As such homeowners default on more loans, and the value of housing levels out, the mortgage bond may be worth more than the value of the house. Debentures Introduction Debenture is a type of fixed-interest  security, issued by companies (as borrowers) in  return  for medium and long-term investment of  funds. A debenture is evidence of the borrowers  debt  to the lender. The word derives from the Latin debeo, meaning I owe. Debentures are issued to the general public through a  prospectus  and are secured by a  trust deed  which spells out the terms and conditions of the fundraising and the rights of the debenture-holders. Typical issuers of debentures are finance companies and large industrial companies. Debenture-holders funds are invested with the borrowing  company  as secured loans, with the security usually in the form of a fixed or  floating charge  over the  assets  of the borrowing company. As secured lenders, debenture-holders  claims  to the companys assets rank ahead of those of ordinary shareholders, should th e company be wound up; also, interest is payable on debentures whether the company makes a  profit  or not. Debentures are issued for fixed periods but if a debenture-holder wants to get his or her  money  back, the securities  can be sold. Definition In the  United States, debenture refers specifically to an  unsecured  corporate bond,  i.e. a bond that does not have a certain line of income or piece of property or equipment to guarantee repayment of  principal  upon the bonds  maturity. Where security is provided for loan stocks or bonds in the US, they are termed mortgage bonds. However, in the  United Kingdom  a debenture is usually secured. In Asia, if repayment is secured by a charge over land, the loan document is called a  mortgage; where repayment is secured by a charge against other assets of the company, the document is called a debenture; and where no security is involved, the document is called a note or unsecured deposit note. A  type of debt instrument that is not secured by physical asset or collateral.  Debentures are backed only by the general  creditworthiness  and  reputation of the issuer.  Both corporations and governments frequently issue this type of bond in order to secure capital.  Like other types of bonds, debentures are documented in an indenture. In law, a  debenture  is a document that either creates a debt or acknowledges it. In  corporate finance, the term is used for a medium- to long-term debt instrument  used by large companies to borrow money. In some countries the term is used interchangeably with  bond,  loan stock  or  note. Illustrative summary Debentures have no collateral.  Bond buyers generally  purchase debentures based on  the belief that the bond issuer is unlikely to default on the repayment.  An example of a government  debenture would be any government-issued  Treasury bond (T-bond) or Treasury bill (T-bill). T-bonds and T-bills  are generally considered risk  free because governments, at worst,  can  print off more money or raise taxes to pay  these types of debts. A  Debenture is a long-term Debt Instrument issued by governments and big institutions for the purpose of raising funds. The Debenture has some similarities with  Bonds  but the terms and conditions of securitization of Debentures are different from that of a Bond. A Debenture is regarded as an unsecured investment  because there are no pledges (guarantee) or liens available on particular assets. Nonetheless, a Debenture is backed by all theƚ  assets which have not been pledged otherwise. Normally, Debentures are referred to as freely negotiable Debt Instruments. The Debenture holder functions as a lender to the issuer of the Debenture. In return, a specific  rate  of interest is paid to the Debenture holder by the Debenture issuer similar to the case of a  loan. In practice, the differentiation between a Debenture and a Bond is not observed every time. In some cases, Bonds are also termed as Debentures and vice-versa. If a  bankruptcy  occurs, Debenture holders are treated as general creditors.  Ãƒâ€š Conclusion The English term debenture has two meanings: 1: a certificate or voucher acknowledging a debt; 2: the ability of a customer to obtain goods or services before payment, based on the trust that payment will be made in the future. The Debenture issuer has a substantial advantage from issuing a Debenture because the particular assets are kept without any encumbrances so that the option is open for issuing them in future for financing  purposes. Subordinated debentures Introduction An unsecured bond with a claim to assets that is subordinate to all existing and future debt. Thus, in the event that the issuer encounters financial difficulties and must be liquidated, all other claims must be satisfied before holders of subordinated debentures can receive a settlement. Frequently, this settlement amounts to relatively little. Because of the risk involved, the issuers have to pay relatively high interest rates in order to sell these securities to investors. Many issues of these debentures include a sweetener such as the right to exchange the securities for shares of common stock. The sweeteners are included so that interest rates on the subordinated debentures can be reduced below the level that would be required without them. Subordinated debentures without the conversion option appeal to risk-oriented investors seeking high current yields. Subordinated debenture  has a lower priority than other bonds of the issuer in case of liquidation during  bankruptcy, below the liquidator, government  tax  authorities and senior debt holders in the hierarchy of creditors. Definition   Subordinated debt  (also known as  subordinated loan,  subordinated bond,  subordinated debenture  or  junior debt) is debt which ranks after other debts should a company fall into  receivership  or be closed. Such debt is referred to as subordinate, because the debt providers (the lenders) have subordinate status in relationship to the normal debt. A typical example for this would be when a promoter of a company invests money in the form of debt, rather than in the form of stock. In the case of liquidation (e.g. the company winds up its affairs and dissolves) the promoter would be paid just before stockholders assuming there are assets to distribute after all other liabilities and debts have been paid. Explanation Subordinated debt has a lower priority than other bonds of the issuer in case of  liquidation  during  bankruptcy, below the  liquidator, government tax authorities and  senior debt holders  in the hierarchy of creditors. Because subordinated debt is repayable after other debts have been paid, they are more risky for the lender of the money. It is unsecured and has lesser priority than that of an additional debt claim on the same asset. Subordinated loans typically have a higher  rate of return  than senior debt due to the increased inherent risk. Accordingly, major  shareholders  and  parent companies  are most likely to provide subordinated loans, as an outside party providing such a loan would normally want compensation for the extra risk. Subordinated bonds usually have a lower credit rating than senior bonds. Subordinate debenture and stocks. When somebody decides to invest in stocks, he or she becomes one of the owners and thus, becomes a shareholder of the good and bad times of the company. The investor faces uncertain fortunes related to the companys  financial  graph. So this explains the amount of risk related to stock-investments. But debentures are more secured investment, as payments with high interest rates are guaranteed. The company is bound to pay interest on the borrowed money, and once the debenture matures, all the borrowed  money  is returned. In other words, the investors gain interest as income from the debentures. Subordinated debenture and bonds. Subordinated debenture and bonds are similar, but  bonds  carry more security than debentures. In both of these investment forms, interest and value is guaranteed, but in case of liquidation, bond holders receive the payment first, followed by the senior bonds, and only after that comes the subordinated debenture holders, who have no collateral which they can claim from the company in case bankruptcy takes place. To compensate for the possibility of such losses,  high interest rates  are paid to the subordinated debenture holders. Examples A particularly important example of subordinated bonds can be found in bonds issued by banks. Subordinated debt is issued periodically by most large banking corporations in the U.S. Subordinated debt can be expected to be especially  risk-sensitive, because subordinated debt holders have claims on bank assets after senior debt holders and they lack the upside gain enjoyed by shareholders. This status of subordinated debt makes it perfect for experimenting with the significance of  market discipline, via the signaling effect of secondary market prices of subordinated debt (and, where relevant, the issue price of these bonds initially in the primary markets). From the perspective of policy-makers and regulators, the potential benefit from having banks issue subordinated debt is that the markets and their information-generating capabilities are enrolled in the supervision of the financial condition of the banks. This hopefully creates both an early-warning system, like t he so-called canary in the mine, and also an incentive for bank management to act prudently, thus helping to offset the  moral hazard  that can otherwise exist, especially if banks have limited equity and deposits are insured. This role of subordinated debt has attracted increasing attention from policy analysts in recent years. For a second example of subordinated debt, consider asset-backed securities. These are often issued in  tranches. The senior tranches get paid back first, the subordinated tranches later. Finally,  mezzanine debt  is another example of subordinated debt. Conclusion Because subordinated debenture is repayable after other debts have been paid, they are more risky for the lender of the money. It is unsecured and has lesser priority than that of an additional debt claim on the same  asset. Subordinated bonds are regularly issued (as mentioned earlier) as part of the securitization of debt, such as  asset-backed securities,  collateralized mortgage obligations  or  collateralized debt obligations. Corporate issuers tend to prefer not to issue subordinated bonds because of the higher interest rate required to compensate for the higher risk, but may be forced to do so if indentures on earlier issues mandate their status as senior bonds. Also, subordinated debt may be combined with  preferred stock  to create so called  monthly income preferred stock, a  hybrid security  paying dividends for the lender and funded as interest expense by the issuer. Investment-grade bonds Introduction A  bond  is considered  investment grade  or  IG  if its credit rating is BBB- or higher by  Standard HYPERLINK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard__PoorsHYPERLINK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard__Poors Poors  or Baa3 or higher by  Moodys  or BBB (low) or higher by  DBRS. Generally they are bonds that are judged by the rating agency as likely enough to meet payment obligations that banks are allowed to invest in them. Ratings play a critical role in determining how many companies and other entities that issue debt, including sovereign governments; have to pay to access credit markets, i.e., the amount of interest they pay on their issued debt. The threshold between investment-grade and speculative-grade ratings has important market implications for issuers borrowing costs. The risks associated with investment-grade bonds (or investment-grade  corporate debt) are considered noticeably higher than in the case of first-class government bonds. The difference between rates for first-class government bonds and investment-grade bonds is called investment-grade spread. It is an indicator for the markets belief in the stability of the economy. The higher these investment-grade spreads (or  risk premiums) are, the weaker the economy is considered. Until the early 1970s, bond credit ratings agencies were paid for their work by investors who wanted impartial information on the credit worthiness of securities issuers and their particular offerings. Starting in the early 1970s, the Big Three ratings agencies (SP, Moodys, and Fitch) began to receive payment for their work by the securities issuers for whom they issue those ratings, which has led to charges that these ratings agencies can no longer always be impartial when issuing ratings for those securities issuers. Securities issuers have been accused of shopping for the best ratings from these three ratings agenc ies, in order to attract investors, until at least one of the agencies delivers favorable ratings. This arrangement has been cited as one of the primary causes of the  subprime mortgage crisis  (which began in 2007), when some securities, particularly  mortgage backed securities  (MBSs) and collateralized  (CDOs) rated highly by the credit ratings agencies, and thus heavily invested in by many organizations and individuals, were rapidly and vastly devalued due to defaults, and fear of defaults, on some of the individual components of those securities, such as home loans and credit card accounts. Definition Investment grade bonds  are bonds which are rated BBB- or higher by SP and Fitch or Baa3 or higher by Moodys. These ratings are indicators of  default risk  on a particular bond issue with higher rating suggesting lower risk. Bonds which fall below the investment grade threshold are known as  speculative bonds  (also known as  high yield bonds,  non-investment grade  bonds or  junk bonds) The following table lists the ratings which would qualify an issue as  investment grade. Description Moodys SP Fitch Maximum Safety Aaa AAA AAA High grade Aa1 AA+ AA+ High grade Aa2 AA AA High grade Aa3 AA- AA- Higher medium Grade A1 A+ A+ Higher medium Grade A2 A A Higher medium Grade A3 A- A- Lower medium Grade Baa1 BBB+ BBB+ Lower medium Grade Baa2 BBB BBB Lower medium Grade Baa3 BBB- BBB- In vestment grade bonds  are the investment vehicle of choice for many individual and institutional investors. Understanding what an investment grade bond is and what its benefits and risks are will help you make smart choices. Explanation Bonds are rated as to their creditworthiness by the investment ratings agencies, the two primaries of which are Standard Poors and Moodys. Investment grade bonds must be rated BBB- or Baa3, respectively, or higher by these rating agencies. The highest ratings for investment grade bonds are AAA by Standard Poors and Aaa by Moodys. Even the highest-rated investment grade bonds are considered riskier than government-issued bonds. If you take the rate on an investment grade bond and on a government bond, the difference or spread between them is considered a measure of the economys general stability. The lower the spread, the more stable the market views the economy. Conclusion These ratings are important because corporations use bonds as one method of raising funds. Investment grade bonds are considered reliably certain enough to be repaid that banks can invest in them. For this reason, a bond issuer will strive for the highest rating it can get. And, clearly, for the same reason the objectivity and trustworthiness of the ratings agencies is paramount. Junk bonds Introduction High Yield Bonds,  often referred to as junk bonds, are bonds that carry a high risk of default and, as a result, offer a higher yield than investment grade bonds. A high yield bond is classified as having a  credit rating  of BB+ or lower, while bonds with rating of BBB or higher are known as investment grade.  Debt  instruments are the converse of  equity instruments, or stocks, and generally perform better than equities during  economic downturns. This generality holds because debt holders have the first claim on a companys assets. In recessionary periods when cash flows are tight, the companies are required to pay their bond holders before their shareholders receive anything. Junk bonds are the ones that usually pay a high yield because their credit ratings arent stellar. Therefore, in order to borrow money from outside investors, they must pay a higher interest rate in order to attract people to lend them money. This higher i nterest rate reflects the higher chance of default by the company. Bonds rated BBBÃÆ' ¢Ãƒâ€¹Ã¢â‚¬  Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ and higher are called  investment grade  bonds. Bonds rated lower than investment grade on their date of issue are called speculative grade bonds, derisively referred to as junk bonds. The lower-rated debt typically offers a higher yield, making speculative bonds attractive investment vehicles for certain types of  financial portfolios  and strategies. Many  pension funds  and other investors (banks, insurance companies), however, are prohibited in their  by-laws  from investing in bonds which have ratings below a particular level. As a result, the lower-rated securities have a different investor base than investment-grade bonds. The value of speculative bonds is affected to a higher degree than  investment grade bonds  by the possibility of  default. For example, in a  re cession  interest rates may drop, and the drop in interest rates tends to increase the value of investment grade bonds; however, a recession tends to increase the possibility of default in speculative-grade bonds. Definition A high-risk, high-yield debt security that, if rated at all, is graded less than BBB by Standard Poors or BBB3 by Moodys. These securities are most appropriate for risk-oriented investors. Also called  high-yield bond. Explanation High yield bonds can be bought individually through a broker or in bulk through mutual funds. A high yield mutual fund is a better choice for individual investors because it reduces  risk. This is because the risk is spread over a larger number of contracts, which is known as  diversifying  your credit risk of high yield bonds. That is, while any single bond within the fund may have a relatively high probability of default, when many are grouped together the risk that all, or even most, of the bonds defaulting is much lower. In fact, historically the average rate of  default  between 1971 and 2008 was 3.18%, and even when a high yield bond defaults, bond holders are able to recover on average 44 cents on the dollar.[1]  Therefore, even when high yield bonds default, the investor often does not lose the entire  principal. There are other considerations to take into account besides simply the yield and credit risk. There are two way s high yield bonds enter the market. The first are high yield bonds that are issued by corporations whose credit rating is below investment grade at the time of issue. Because the debt that is being issued is backed by corporations that may a higher chance of being unable to repay, their debt is considered below investment grade and therefore they must pay a higher interest rate. The second way are bonds issued by corporations that were investment grade at the time of issue, but whose credit rating fell below investment grade. For example, suppose Company X currently has a credit rating of AA (investment grade), and issues bonds that expire in 10 years. Two years later, Company Xs performance has fallen off considerably, and its credit rating is now BB+, meaning it is now below investment grade. Therefore, even though the bonds were initially investment grade bonds, it can still fall below investment grade and turn into a high yield bond. These are often referred to as fallen stars. When investment grade companies credit ratings drop to below investment grade, the bond now not only has a higher risk of default, but the price of the bond will fall as well. Therefore, if you plan to sell the bond before maturity, your  holding period return  will suffer with drops in credit ratings. Conversely, if you purchase a high yield bond, and the companys credit rating improves to investment grade, the value of your bond will increase significantly. An investor can view the interest payments as analogous to  dividend  payments made by stocks while changes in credit ratings are somewhat analogous to changes in the bond price. Conclusion The holder of any debt is subject to  interest rate risk  and  credit risk, inflationary risk, currency risk, duration risk,  convexity risk, repayment of principal risk, streaming income risk,  liquidity risk, default risk, maturity risk, reinvestment risk, market risk, political risk, and taxation adjustment risk. Interest rate risk refers to the risk of the market value of a bond changing in value due to changes in the structure or level of interest rates or credit spreads or risk premiums. The credit risk of a high-yield bond refers to the probability and probable loss upon a credit event (i.e., the obligor defaults on scheduled payments or files for bankruptcy, or the bond is restructured), or a credit quality change is issued by a rating agency including Fitch, Moodys, or Standard Poors. A  credit rating agency  attempts to describe the risk with a  credit rating  such as AAA. In  North America, the fiv e major agencies are  Standard and Poors,Moodys,  Fitch Ratings,  Dominion Bond Rating Service  and  A.M. Best. Bonds in other countries may be rated by US rating agencies or by local credit rating agencies. Rating scales vary; the most popular scale uses (in order of increasing risk) ratings of AAA, AA, A, BBB, BB, B, CCC, CC, C, with the additional rating D for debt already in  arrears.  Government bonds  and bonds issued by  government HYPERLINK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_sponsored_enterprisesponsored enterprises  (GSEs) are often considered to be in a zero-risk category above AAA; and categories like AA and A may sometimes be split into finer subdivisions like AAÃÆ' ¢Ãƒâ€¹Ã¢â‚¬  Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ or AA+.

Network Rail - A not for profit company - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 17 Words: 4987 Downloads: 7 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Business Essay Type Analytical essay Level High school Did you like this example? Network Rail A not for profit company. 4,500 words. (i) To what extent and why has Network Rail, a not for dividend private company, been able to resolve the problems of financing and managing the national railway infrastructure, as compared to both public and conventional (for profit) private ownership? Discuss the degree to which the difficulties it has encountered are generic to rail systems elsewhere. There are two essential conclusions to be drawn here. Firstly, that value for money is a outcome mediated through the type and the location of use exercised by individuals, and groups of consumers. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Network Rail A not for profit company" essay for you Create order Secondly, that the imperfect or intermediate state of railway management (if it is regarded as such) ultimately reflects the nature of a problem which successive governments à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" or, if you prefer, successive ideologies à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" have tried to address. If this perspective is accepted, the corollary is that only a rigorously utilitarian re-appraisal of the railway question, conducted with regard to likely outcomes, can offer any kind of solution. ) The problem with this approach however, is that the resulting analysis may well be one which rail users, and society as a whole, are unwilling to accept. The other, and largely unknown factor in this analyses, is the likely impact of medium and long term external factors, such as shifting energy markets and environmental policy. The privatization process as it has been conducted since the 1990à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s, has four essential components, as Steel and Heald indicate: charging, contracting out, denationalization, and load shedding: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Charging involves the (partial) substitution of user charges for tax finance. Contracting-out represents the substitution of private contractors for in-house production. Denationalisation and load-shedding refer to reductions in the scope of public sector activity, taking the forms, respectively, of the sale of enterprises and the (partial) abandonment of public non-market functionsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Steel and Heald 1984: p.13). In the post-privatisation phase, we are essentially faced with a hybridised management style presiding over an increasingly fragmented business. As Hibbs indicates with regard to overall transport use, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Measured by volumeà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦the railways account for a proportion of less than 10 per cent of the market. Wartime apart, their contribution has declined steadily for since the 1920à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s, and yet there are those who seem to see them as in some way essential.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Hibbs 2006: p.59). It is government and the taxpayer who largely make up the difference between utility and viability, so close attention must be paid the extent of government influence in railway management. The Railways Act 2005 dismantled the Strategic Rail Authority and split its tasks between the Department for Transport and Network Rail. As Tyrrall points out, this put the government à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦back in charge of the strategy and the cost of the railways, and of the franchising of TOCs.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ Meanwhile the HSE (Health and Safety Executive) transferred its remit to the Office of Rail Regulation. (Tyrrall 2006: p.123) It has obviously been both the salvation and the misfortune of the rail network to be the subject of long-term government interest and intervention. These activities, sometimes necessary, sometimes unnecessary, and frequently representing some form of financial or structural discontinuity, have the added implication of involving rail ways in an ideological debate. As Ferlie et al. have indicated, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"There is a danger that the reforming cycle simply reproduces itself endlessly, as each generation of newly appointed ministers builds short term political reputations on announcing ever newer reforms.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Ferlie, 2003: S2) The implicit absorption of such dialogue into the political sphere means that generic controversies about the relative utility of private and public management are difficult to divorce from the entire issue of railway management. As Glaister and Travers pointed out of John Majorà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s original privatization impetus, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Debate about the privatisation of the railways has been obscured by the exaggerated nature of opposing views. The government has projected an attachment to an ideologically pure version of privatisation that probably exceeds its own hopes and expectations. Opponents of the policy have exaggerated the potential threats to the operati on of an integrated railway.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Glaister and Travers 1993: p.54) Fortunately for this discussion, we are able to focus on a much more tangible problem: the fitness, for its declared purpose, of Network Rail. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Tangibleà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, in this respect, does not necessarily imply the easy physical access to objective or even accurate information, or that the issues involved are to be adduced or debated in a straightforward way. There is also a further dimension to this question. The performance of Network Rail may be apprehended with relative objectivity in terms of the judgment, activity , and reliability of its governance, officers and systems. This, however, is merely an appraisal of the specificity of that organization. Whilst this is useful, it does not adequately answer the underlying question, which is, on precisely what basis should the UK rail network be run, and what kind organization an be envisaged to properly carry out that function? Within certain parameters, Network Rail is well situated at present: it also has new management. In October 2008, both Chief Sir Ian McAllister and Chief Financial Officer Rod Henderson announced their departure, amidst speculation that the CEà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s post would be filled by Rob Holden, current head of London and Continental Railways. (Wright 4.10.08) In the six months leading up to September 30th 2008, it made pre-tax profits of  £706 million out of turnover of  £3.12 billion: the same results over the same period in 2007 were  £780 million and  £2.9 billion respectively. (Wright 20.11.08). (See Appendix ) The challenge it faces is essentially the same one faced by it ill-fated predecessor: inescapable political pressure for the overall reduction of its public subsidy. The inevitable nature of this is mediated through one key variable: the timescale. As Glaister and Travers argued at the time of privatisation, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦In the short term, there is no prospect of reducing subsidy because: Productivity savings will take some time to go through; The backlog of investment will be caught up; Future investment requirements must be financed; and Reductions in profitability in some services because of regulation and, in the longer term, because of competition through open access, will imply replacement by direct subsidy.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Glaister and Travers 1993 p.57) Network Rail is currently awaiting the outcome of its credit rating to be established by January 2009 which will effectively determine the viability of its plan to raise  £4.4 billion in debt over the next four years. (Wright 20.11.08) As in many other respects, it lacks the self-determination to adequately influence these events. The regulator has recently allowed Network Rail government subsidies, operators fees and freight revenue of  £26.7 billion, a sum  £2.4 billion less than it asked for. Whilst it theoretically has recourse to the Competition Commission for an appeal over such rulings, as Wright indicates, the latter à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦could take years to reach a decision and Network Rail in the interim would have to abide by the October 30 guidelines on its spending.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Wright 20.11.08) This in effect means that, despite making concessions of  £800 million on its original request, Network Rail has to make significant savings on its infrastructural budget. As a spokesman explained, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Reducing costs in line with ORRà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s draft determinations would require annual savings of over 7 per cent in other areas, which is double the overall rate assumed by ORR. It has given no evidence to suggest that this is realistic. It is also out of line with assumptions made by other regulators.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Vermeulen 2008). Basically then, Network Rail has at best reinterpreted, and at worst, perpetuated, the problems of railway finance. Although these issues are not unique to the UK, they are exacerbated by its historical, fiscal and geographical caprices. ii) Based upon the information you have been given, to what extent is it possible to compare Network Railà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s performance in 2008 with regard to usage, investment, punctuality, complaints and overcrowding with Railtrackà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s performance? Evaluate the degree to which performance in these areas has improved under Network Railà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s stewardship. Discuss the degree to which such performance measurement is useful and to whom. Support your arguments with evidence. The enormous amount of data available via the ORR needs careful consideration against that of Network Railà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s predecessor, Railtrack, before any meaningful conclusions can be drawn about the relative performance of the two organizations . The overall passenger kilometers have risen from 9.8 billion to 12.6 billion since 2002. (National Rail Trends 2008) Punctuality, we are informed, has also improved. In 1999, the ORR imposed a penalty of  £400,000 for each one-tenth of a percentage point by which Railtrack failed to meet the 12.7 per cent target for the reduction of self-caused minutes delay per passenger train. (ORR 1999: p.1) This is exactly the kind of margin by which Network Rail has been shown à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" through the ORRà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s own statistic s à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" to have made redress. The percentage of trains arriving punctually has reportedly risen at least 10 per cent across all categories of operators, ( National Rail Trends 2008). Network Rail has not been slow to highlight this: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦the dramatic improvements in punctuality seen over the last five years have continued. By the end of the year, punctuality of trains reached 89.9 per cent.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Network Rail 2008). The passenger approval ratings as published by the ORR also show a shallow upward trend across all regions and types of service. (National Rail Trends 2008). Obviously, such statistics are subject to all the vagaries implicit in mean averages, a clause which must be applied equally to both sets of figures. More specifically, they marginalize the thorny issue of engineering work delays and closures, which have caused significant disagreement between government, regulators and Network Rail. The parliamentary Select Committ ee on transport has drawn specific attention to what it terms the à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"seven day per weekà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ service commitment: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"We welcome the commitment of both Network Rail and the Government to the seven-day per week railway, where engineering works are done overnight, avoiding major engineering possessions at weekends and Bank Holidays. Network Rail will need to implement many changes to the network, such as rerouting and double tracking before the seven day per week railway can become anything more than a distant dream.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (House of Commons 2008). The overall point needs to be made then, that there is a big difference between measuring the performance of a company running on a poorly maintained network, and one which running on a network which is not fully functional. As a means of assessing Network Railà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s performance therefore, a direct comparative approach has significant limitations. Passenger volumes are obviously influenced by performance, and it may be argued that there is a correlation between the two trends. However, the altered business, economic, and infrastructural environment should also be taken into account, as should the differentiated pressures which apply to the respective bodies in different periods. As Wright points out of contemporary projections, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦passenger volumes look set at least to keep pace with such capacity improvementsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦SouthWest Trains predicts the present economic slowdown will provide only temporary respite from the rapid demand growth that has created serious peaktime overcrowding on many of the regionà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s rail routes. Southeastern Trains now plans to maintain capacity on its existing routes even after introduction of the new, high-speed services because it expects continuing, growing demand.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Wright 25.11.08) Furthermore, some of the most revealing indicators of Network Railà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ ž ¢s real performance lay in the minutiae of official reporting on individual infrastructural projects, such as the West Coast Main Line. In 2006 the National Audit Office concluded that, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦value for money for the programme in its entirety has not been maximized: there were substantial early abortive costsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦and the need for additional franchise support for Virgin Rail Groupà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦to keep train services running.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ From this kind of evidence the NAO projected that Network Rail was likely to overspend its budget to 2008-9 by approximately ten per cent. Furthermore, the job still appeared incomplete: as the NAO indicated, there remained à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"uncertaintyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ about the lifespan of à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦some of the equipment on the upgraded line.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (National Audit Office 2006: p.8). There is therefore a complex ethical trade off implicit in the current spending and subsidy negot iations between Network Rail and the government. Iain Coucher, head of Network Rail, has recently said his company was minded to accept the Office of Rail Regulations ruling on its funding, which as Wright reminds us, was à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦  £2.4bn less than Network Rail said it needed to achieve improvements in train punctuality and investment projects.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Wright 21.11.2008) . It will be interesting to see if, despite this significant shortfall, the Rail Trends reports show continued improvement next year, and even more interesting to consider their provenance if they do so. iii) The UK government has indicated its support for procuring public services from the private sector. Evaluate the arguments used in the research and official literature to support the view that the private sector provides a better alternative than the public sector, citing evidence derived from the course readings to support your views. The Economist furnishes us with a useful introduction to this part of the discussion, which is worth quoting in some length. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"The advantage, from the governments point of view, is that it is neither one thing nor the otherà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬ neither in the private sector, which is widely regarded as having ruined the railways, nor in the public sector, which would place the outfit on the governments books and thus discomfit the Treasury by increasing public debt. The disadvantage is that it is answerable neither to shareholders nor, directly, to the Treasury. And with nobody controlling costs, they have mushroomed.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Unattributed, The Economist 2003). Discussion of the privatization of the rail network inevitably involves the consideration of privatization per se, and its comparison à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" favourable or otherwise with public sector management. The public-private debate was one a literary and academic cause celebre, throwing up a whole genre which had its roots in the divi siveness of the 1980à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s and post-Thatcher years. Now that discourse has apparently been displaced by assumptions about the hegemony of a à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Third-Wayà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ neo-liberal economics, rendering discussion of corporatism and the mixed economy vernacular, passÃÆ' © and irrelevant à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" or so it might seem. However, controversy about the stewardship and management of bodies such as Network Rail contains much that is residual, calling up an older discourse about the relative competencies of either camp in British management. There are two strands to this controversy: the supposed abrogation of public resources by private interests, and the relative managerial à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" and ethical à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" qualities of public and private management. This template of public-private competence should not, however, distract us from the specificity of the situation: for example, in the hand over from Railtrack to Network Rail, both set s of senior management were substantively drawn from the private sector, as the Economist noted: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Network Rails pleas are likely to raise a wry smile from the former chairman of Railtrack, John Robinson. Railtrack was forced into bankruptcy when Mr. Robinson told ministers that it could not continue without additional government funding. At that point, it was getting barely half the  £3 billion a year from the taxpayer which Network Rail now says it needsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢. (Unattributed, The Economist 2003). Neither should this fact distract us from the fact that governments of both political persuasions have stopped short of fully re-creating the railway network in their own ideological image. Conservatives have failed to allow authentic laissez-faire economics to take their course, perhaps because of the political impact of line closures and increased costs at the ballot box: Labour meanwhile has avoided full-blooded re-nationalisation, perhaps because their spending plans and the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement could not absorb the burden of the rail balance sheet as in bygone days. Therefore, it may be argued, a partisan analysis of the Network Rail management impasse does us little good in utilitarian terms. It may, as Roberts has argued, be true thatà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"While private sector boardrooms are under pressure to do more with less, many government departments are giving a masterclass in how to do less with moreà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ Given that some parts of the country rely almost entirely on the public sector for economic growth, the problem is too large for anyone to ignore.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Roberts, 2008, n.p.). The potential of either form of expertise is unlikely to be fully tested while the current parameters of rail management remain unchanged. The substitution of a full-blooded private sector ethic in railway infrastructure management is not only extremely unlikely, but of questionable utility unless the f ull implications are genuinely accepted on all sides. In 1986, Starkie à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" with some prescience à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" reflected that, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"It is arguable whether such transfers would promote the objective most strongly canvassed by the privatisers à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" increased efficiency in the supply of services and therefore more benefits to consumers. Efficiency is associated with competition, but it is not necessarily true (even if it seems likely) that a simple transfer of assets to the private sector has the effect of sharpening competitive forces.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Starkie 1986: p.178) At present, the nearest thing Network Rail has to this kind of relationship lays in its contractual arrangements with train operators, although even this features an elasticity not normally present in commercial deals. As one operator spokesman put it, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"We will bend over backwards to help Network Rail to perform,à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  says Graham Eccles, head of rail at Stagecoach. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“But at the end of the day if they dont deliver on their contract with us, we will have to take action.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ .à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Unattributed 2003) As the demise of Railtrack demonstrated however, it is really only the government who can apply the ultimate sanction. (iv) To what extent and how does Network Railà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s governance structure as a not for dividend private company provide accountability to the public for taxpayersà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ money? Is this corporate structure likely to be a problem for not for profit companies that deliver public services in other countries? As Tyrrall points out, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Almost all indicators suggest however, that costs have increased substantially. The cost of BR had been approximately  £4 billion per annum, consisting of around  £3 billion of passenger and freight revenue and  £1 billion of government subsidy. It was accepted that after privatisation gove rnment subsidy payable to the industry via the TOCs would increase to approximately  £1.8 billion initiallyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Tyrrall 2006: p.113). In absolute terms then, railway management governance has merely presided over a net increase in expenditure, with the only measure of return residing in the official statistics. Long before premier John Major somewhat precipitously launched the rail privatisation programme which had been eschewed by his no less zealous but perhaps more circumspect predecessor, Mrs. Thatcher, a Department of Transport report adduced that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"One can distinguish two approaches to managing the railway. One is a business-oriented approach in which the purposes of investment are to adjust as fast as possible to changing demand for transport, to permit changed operating practices which will save money, and to take advantage of the greater productivity of newer assets . The other approach is a custodial approach in which th e purpose is to retain and renew as much as possible of the railwayà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s infrastructure and servicesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Department of Transport 1983: p.49) Privatisation overall à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" if not Network Rail per se has boosted passenger numbers, although, as Tyrrall points out, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"this increase has largely been attributed to the growth in the economyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦and increasing road congestion. These would have increased demand regardless of privatisation, but there is no doubt that more imaginative approaches to pricing and promotion since privatisation also played a part. (Tyrrall 2006: p.111). If we wanted to define Network Railà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s probity in inversionary or oppositional terms, we could do so in Altmanà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s definition of corporate ethics: as he puts it, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"From a Kantian perspective, a corporation can have no responsibility at all. Insofar as it is a tool, and a good tool performs its designated function well, a good corporation maximizes profits for its shareholders.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Altman, 2007: p.261). Whatever the ethical integrity of this perspective, it illustrates precisely the kind of unequivocal purpose which Network Rail lacks. As Ferlie et al. argue, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"There hasà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ been continual restructuring in the UK public sector for over 20 years, initially based on securing greater productivity and value for money, but more recently (though somewhat ambiguously), with a new partnership on partnerships and networks.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Ferlie et al. 2003 S1) Network Rail has attracted many labels and unsolicited testimonials, from being characterised as merely à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"unusualà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ to being a à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"pantomime horse with 230 legsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, a description which the Economist evolved with reference to Network Railà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s 115-member public interest board. The same commentary judged that the institutionà ¢ â‚ ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s origins à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦were not auspicious. Stephen Byers, the transport secretary who forced Railtrack into administration, was casting around for ideas on what to do with the railways and plucked the model from a policy paper by the Institute for Public Policy and Research.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Unattributed, The Economist 2003) Whilst this may be apocryphal, the structure to which the Economist alludes it not: a management body answerable to the aforementioned 115 worthies, two-thirds of whom are selected from 1,200 applicants, the rest drawn from interested stakeholder bodies such as the National Farmers Union and the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation. Many features of the organisationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s structure, such as its public interest board, were designed to reflect its not for profit public service ethic. However, it also retains many aspects of corporate governance which its architects in New Labour may regard as less de sirable, such as a remuneration structure whose profligate tendencies preponderate in the boardroom. The short circuiting of the supposed break with the past in the form of the defunct and now apparently friendless Railtrack à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" was apparent in the awarding of 60 per cent bonuses to all five of its executive directors. Within their terms of service, this largesse would be triggered even if the statistics reflected a performance worse than that of the now sidelined Railtrack. The retention of private sector executive pay structures has not, however, been mirrored in the achievement of other standards. As Monks and Minow put it, the à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"external legitimacy of the executive.must be sustainedby the personal ethic of the individuals involved as well as the broader corporate and societal ethics.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Monks and Minow, 2004, p.41). Yet many of Network Railà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s worst failings have been in the related areas of ethics and value for money. In March 2007, Network Rail was fined  £4 million for its part in an infrastructural disaster directly attributed to its operations management: as Tait reports, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Network Rail, which took on Railtracks liabilitiesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦pleaded guilty to a single count of breaching health and safety laws in the run-up to the fatal crash. Prosecutors told the court this week that there had been a catalogue of failures à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" and that the problems had started with the culture at the top of the body responsible for the track and affected staff at all levels of the organisation.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Tait 2007) As Tyrrall indicates, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦the accident record since privatisation contrasts unfavourably with the record under BR after Clapham Junction (1988), but not by comparison with a longer history of UK rail accidents.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Tyrrall 2006: p.110). However, when one considers the enormous technological and regulator y differentials inherent in the latter comparison, any collateral which might be claimed for Network Rail over its nationalised antecedents appears specious. Network Railà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" and the governmentà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" discomfiture is not without precedent elsewhere, although the value of direct comparison obviously diminishes in the light of confounding variables. For example, Indiaà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s railway system hovers similarly between pressures for privatisation and the maintenance of an essential public service. As the Economist reveals, its à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“operating ratioà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬ operating costs as a proportion of revenuesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬ which had climbed close to 100% by the beginning of this century, has fallen to 92.5%. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦not enough to cover depreciation, maintenance and expansion. Nor can the railways rely onà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ government bail-outs at a tim e when Indias overall fiscal deficit (at more than 10% of GDP) risks becoming unsustainable. Yet the railway system has been losing customers to an improving road network, making it hard to see how its finances will ever improve.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ The important point for comparison here is that, despite this, vested railway interests have little difficulty in garnering support from a range of opinion across Indian society, somehow circumventing the inescapable logic of the balance sheets. As the Economist reports, much of the disagreement is between economists looking at the railways as a business, and dedicated civil servants looking at what they still see as a public utility and social service. As one senior railway officialà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦puts it, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“if you moved to a business model, Indian Railways would collapse.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ .à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Unattributed, The Economist, 2003) Appendix Bibliography Altman, M.C., (2007) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"The Decomposit ion of the Corporate Bodyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol.74, No.3, pp.253-266, Springer, USA. Carbon Trust, (2005), Brand Value at Risk from Climate Change, Carbon Trust, London. Department of Transport, ((1983), Railway Finances, Report of a Committee chaired by Sir david Serpell KCB CMG OBE, Supplementary Volume, HMSO, London. Ferlie, E., Hartley, J., and Martin, S., (2003), à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Changing Public Service Organizations: Current Perspectives and Future Prospectsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, British Journal of Management, Vol.14, S1-S14. Freeman, R., and Shaw, J., (eds), (2000), British Railway Privatisation, MGraw Hill and Price Waterhouse Coopers. Giddens, A., (2000), The Third Way and its Critics, Polity Press, Cambridge. Giddens, A., (2001), The Global Third Way Debate, Polity Press, Cambridge. Glaister, S., and Travers, T., (1993), New Directions for British Railways? The Political Economoy of Privatisation and Regulation, Institute of Eco nomic Affairs, London. Hartley, J., and Allison, M. (2000) , à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"The role of leadership in the Modernization and improvement of public servicesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, Public Money and Management, April-June, pp. 35-40. Hibbs, J., à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Railways and the Power of Emotion: Seeking a Market Solutionà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, in Institute of Economic Affairs, (2006), The Railways, the market and the Government, IEA, London, pp.46-67 Hooley, G., Saunders, J., Piercy, N., Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning (3rd Edition) Prentice Hall, Essex 2004. House of Commons (2008), Transport à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" Tenth Report, INTERNET, available at https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmtran/219/21902.htm [viewed 30.11.08] Institute of Economic Affairs, (2006), The Railways, the market and the Government, IEA, London. Kay, J., Mayer, C., and Thompson, D., (1986), Privatisation and Regulation, the UK Experience, Clarendon Press, Oxford. M onks, R., and Minow, N., (2004), Corporate Governance, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. National Audit Office, (2006), The Modernisation of the West Coast Main Line, The Stationery Office, London. Network Rail, (2008), Annual Report and Accounts 2008, NR London. Network rail, (2005), Corporate Responsibility Report, NW London. Network Rail (2005), Business Plan: Summary Plan, NR London. Office of Rail Regulation, (2008), National Rail Review, Q2 2008-09, ORR, London. Office of the Rail Regulator, (1999), Railtrackà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s Performance Targets: Statement by the Regulator, ORR London. Office of Rail Regulation, (2008), Rail Trends à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" Spreadsheets, INTERNET, available at https://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/nav.1540 [viewed 30.11.08] Roberts, J., à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"COMPANIES UK: Public sector needs more than Private Eye jokes Why Capita deserves a nicer nicknameà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, Financial Times, ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ ¨Published: J ul 21, 2006, INTERNET available at https://search.ft.com/ftArticle?queryText=public+sector+managementy=8aje=truex=17id=060721000987ct=0 [viewed 2.12.08] Starkie, D., à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"British Railways: Opportunities for a Contestable Market, in Kay, J., Mayer, C., and Thompson, D., (1986), Privatisation and Regulation, the UK Experience, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p.177-188.. Steel, D., and Heeald, D., (eds), (1984), Privatising Public Enterprises, Royal Institute of Public Administration, London. Veljanovski, ., (ed) (1989), Privatisation and Competition, A Market Prospectus, Institute of Economic Affairs, London. Tait, N., à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Network Rail fined  £4m over fatal 1999 crashà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, Financial Times, 30 March 2007, INTERNET, available at https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/220fa5f6-dea8-11db-b5c9-000b5df10621.html [viewed 30.11.08] Tyrrall, D.E., The UK Railway: Privatisation, Efficiency and Integrationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢in Institute of Economic Affairs, ( 2006), The Railways, the market and the Government, IEA, London, pp.105-129. Unattributed, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Anyone know how to run a railway?à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ The Economist, 2nd October 2003, INTERNET, available at https://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_NTDTVVT [viewed 1.12.08] Unattributed, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"The Pantomime Horseà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, 26 June 2003, The Economist, INTERNET, available at https://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_TRSSGGD [viewed 1.12.08] Unattributed, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"The Rail Billionairesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, The Eonomist, 1st July 1999, INTERNET, available at https://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_NTRRSG [viewed 1.12.08] Unattributed, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Thereà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s no such thing as a free rideà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, The Economist, 4th December 2003, INTERNET, available at https://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_NNGVRPP [viewed 1.12.08] Ve rmeulen, A., à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Shortfall impedes Network Rail budget dealà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, Financial Times, 8 Sept 2008, INTERNET, available at https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/63adb6c6-7df6-11dd-bdbd-000077b07658.html [viewed 30.11.08} Wright, R., à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Network Rail to à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“acceptà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  cutsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, Financial Times, 21 Nov 2008, INTERNET, available at https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/93db04e8-b76c-11dd-8e01-0000779fd18c.html [viewed 30.11.08] Wright, R., à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Network Rail seeks clarification on funding from regulatorà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, Financial Times, 20 Nov 2008, INTERNET, available at https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/297bb5b4-b6dd-11dd-8e01-0000779fd18c.html [viewed 30.11.08] Wright, R., à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Network Rail Seeks New Chiefà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, Financial Times, 4 Oct 2008, INTERNET, available at https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/285ada56-91ae-11dd-b5cd-0000779fd18c.html [viewed 30.11.08] Wright, R., à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Red and Green lights on roads and railà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢, Financial Times, 25 Nov 2008, INTERNET, available at https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/94fbd3de-ba82-11dd-aecd-0000779fd18c.html [viewed 30.11.08] à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"The funding package for Network Rail, owner of the UKà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s rail infrastructure, for 2009-14 includes money for work to allow longer trains to run on many of the regionà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s routes. Platforms will be lengthened and power supply enhanced along the Tilbury loop on the Fenchurch St line to allow operation of 12-carriage trains. Similar work will be undertaken around Gravesend on the south side of the river. (Wright 25.11.08) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"The Regulators and Franchising Directorà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s duties imply relationships with the government, with each other, with the owners and operators of the infrastructure, with owners and operators of trains, and with each other. In each relationship, there will be points that are politically contentious; badly-handled activiti es could threaten either the success of privatisation or the future of the railway system (or both). (Glaister and Travers 1993: p.55) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"The influence of the HSE has been to enforce regulations which have too often been inappropriate and expensive, conflicting with the element of self-regulation proper to a fail-dangerous industry like transport.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Hibbs 2006: p.57) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"There are many other aspects of brand or a companyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s reputation that can impact a company, including its reputation amongst its business customers, staff, suppliers, shareholders and regulators.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ (Carbon Trust 2005: p.22)

European Colonies of the Americas Essay examples - 972 Words

Following Spain and Portugals first efforts to claim the New World for their own, England, France and the Netherlands establish colonies throughout North America, predominantly seeking economic wealth and opportunities with occasional religious intentions. While the Spanish savagely plunder the riches of the natives to satisfy their own greed in this newly untapped world, the English, French and Dutch pursue a seemingly less violent approach through lucrative trade and establishing colonies, to meet their own intentions. In the northern regions of North America (what is today Canada) and the southeast (what is now Florida) occurred the beginning of French and Native American interactions for trade. On the Atlantic coast of what is today†¦show more content†¦While along the coast of Florida, Jacques le Moyne and his fellow colonists establish Fort Caroline for France. Encountering the Timucuas Indians there, they are offered gifts of food and goods hoping they would help them against the cruel Spanish invaders. The relations between the temporary colonists of Fort Caroline and the natives remained friendly, relying on each other for supplies (Document 4). The intentions among the French were mostly involved in the pursuit for a claim in the land and to gain trading partners instead of religious motives. The English settlers along the Atlantic Coast, discover a single crop which gives them a reason to encourage for the establishment of more colonies. Known as Tobacco, it becomes the most important export among all New England colonies and is the only solid Staple Commodity of this Province. Among with fur and other goods they received from the Native Americans, they traded tobacco with England for supplies. Needing commodities such as wine, sugar, salt, tin and candlesticks, this was how they remained prosperous (Document 7). 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Reel Big Fishs Most Underrated Album free essay sample

Reel Big Fish is one of the most popular third wave ska bands out there. They’ve released some great albums including their most successful, â€Å"Turn The Radio Off,† and my personal favorite, â€Å"Why Do They Rock So Hard.† One Reel Big Fish album that does not get the credit that it deserves is their fifth full-length release, â€Å"We’re Not Happy ’til You’re Not Happy.† â€Å"We’re Not Happy ’til You’re Not Happy† (WNHTYNH), is so much more than just an excellently named album. This album is home to some great Reel Big Fish tracks and features the band going in a very different direction than they ever have. Ska-punk is still very much present on this album, but the tone is much darker than ever before – darker than normal that is. Many fans’ issue with WNHTYNH is the production quality. This album, produced by frontman Aaron Barrett, is produced with a dark, far-off tone, with the horns sounding distant and the guitars sounding distorted even in the ska sections. We will write a custom essay sample on Reel Big Fishs Most Underrated Album or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page I understand why fans aren’t too keen on this unique style, but for me, it is one of the highlights of the record. The album is intentionally rough and gritty sounding. Although producer Aaron Barrett has since disparaged it, I find it interesting and captivatingly unique. On the first song, â€Å"The Fire,† the rough production really adds to the song and further emphasizes the hopelessness portrayed in the lyrics. Aside from the production, â€Å"WNHTYNH† is home to some great, catchy songs that feel at home within Reel Big Fish’s catalog. â€Å"Drinkin’† sounds like it could be the sequel to Reel Big Fish’s hit song, â€Å"Beer.† The guitar intro is catchy and upbeat, and the horns elevate the chorus to perfection. â€Å"WNHTYNH† was recorded at a time when primary songwriter Aaron Barrett was feeling pessimistic about his band. This is reflected in many of the songs, specifically in â€Å"Don’t Start A Band.† This bluntly titled song could have been an ironic comedy song, but the lyrics feel like Barrett is giving sincere advice to not start a band. The instrumentation on this song is excellent. The horns come in during key ska portions and the tone on the guitar during the upstrokes is unique and powerful. Another song dealing with Barrett’s dissatisfaction with his band is the slow rock song, â€Å"One Hit Wonderful.† Though the song does not mention it by name, the lyrics are clearly referring to Reel Big Fish’s mainstream success with the song â€Å"Sell Out† and never being able to live up to the heights the band achieved in the 1990s. One line sums up the sentiments:â€Å"They don’t love you, they just love that one song.† Despite a few hit-or-miss covers, â€Å"We’re Not Happy ’til You’re Not Happy† is full of wonderful songs that take a darker than usual approach for the band. This album has not been given the appreciation that it deserves from the Reel Big Fish fanbase. I hope that this album can be given a second chance by Reel Big Fish fans and that we can hear more of these songs live.

Language free essay sample

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Communicative Language Teaching The Advantages and Disadvantages of Communicative Language Teaching By HAH Introduction The focus of this essay is to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). In doing so, it is important to first clarify the meaning of CLT and it’s place in the ongoing history of language teaching methodology. CLT is generally accepted as the most recognized, contemporary approach to language teaching. CLT is considered an approach, rather than a teaching method, and can seem non-specific at times in terms of how to actually go about using practices in the classroom in any sort of systematic way. The real problem when attempting to define CLT is that there are many interpretations of what CLT actually means and involves. It means different things to different people. Or perhaps it is like an extended family of different approaches, and.. as in the case with most families, not all members live harmoniously together all of the time. We will write a custom essay sample on Language or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page There are squabbles and disagreements, if not outright wars, from time to time. However, no one is willing to assert that they do not belong to the family (Nunan 2004). One of the things that CLT embraces within its family is the concept of how language is used. Instead of concentrating solely on grammar, CLT focuses strongly on communicative competence. Learners are encouraged to apply various language forms in various contexts and situations such as making hotel reservation, purchasing airline tickets, ordering at a restaurant, booking tickets to a show, asking for directions etc. It is this constant exposure to language in realistic situations, which is thought to aid language acquisition. Learners are given a clear reason for communicating in the form of role-plays and simulations. Accuracy of the language is seen to be of less importance than fluency and communicating successfully. Brown (2007) offers the following seven interconnected characteristics as a description of Language free essay sample Most professions or trades use language specific to that line of work. In the workplace of psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists, there is a specific language used in assessing, diagnosing, and treating clients and patients. I have come to be familiar with this as my mother is a therapist and we have talked about her work and diagnosing people with a variety of mental health disorders. The problem with such language and expressing that language in a book like the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) is that it can be used against people in a way that is not healing but harmful and something that very often too few people consider. This language is sometimes used to take very human and real and normal life situations, like bereavement and trauma and sadness and anxiety, and somehow attach a medical diagnosis to them. And, of course, if there is a medical diagnosis, than there must be an accompanying treatment or cure for a cost. We will write a custom essay sample on Language Essay or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page According to Philip Hickey in his article entitled, â€Å"Behaviorism and Mental Health† (2011) in 1952, homosexuality was listed in the DSM as a sociopathic personality disturbance and according to the American Psychiatric Association homosexuality was a mental illness up until 1974. Neil Postman states in his essay The Word Weavers/The World Makers, â€Å"By naming an event and categorizing it as a â€Å"thing†, we create a vivid and more or less permanent map of what the world is like. † (853) That is what happened in the world of psychology and psychiatry regarding homosexual behavior. The American Psychiatric Association agreed that this â€Å"thing†, homosexuality, is an illness and we are Page 1 attaching a name to it: sociopathic personality disorder. It suddenly becomes something very different by the use of those three words, something more frightening and more dangerous sounding according to Hickey (2011). The language of psychiatry, defining a person’s behaviors and feelings and thoughts, and attributing to certain collections of these behaviors, feelings, and thoughts, a mental illness can be dangerous when not used with extreme care. How many people underwent intensive and costly therapy to â€Å"cure† their homosexuality and how many felt intense guilt and self-loathing? How much pain was caused and harm done in a profession whose first oath is to do no harm? Homosexuality is just one example of that. Not to mention the fact that suddenly after 1974, homosexuality was not a mental disorder anymore. Were homosexuals suddenly â€Å"cured†? Of course not. A group of people who believed that their feelings, thoughts, and behaviors were not indicative of illness, gay rights groups, protested and brought enough pressure to bear that language was changed and, slowly, so were attitudes and beliefs. This year an up-dated edition of the DSM-5 was published. This manual lists the symptoms and names of the mental health disorders diagnosed and treated in this country. Prior to this year the DSM-IV included the term Mental Retardation to describe people whose intellectual functioning fell below a certain pre-determined set standard. That term is now excluded and no longer used as it is considered hurtful and offensive. Why? Because a term that originally was used clinically as a short cut and more descriptive term for professional purposes became something used to insult people and put people down. As stated by John Grohol in â€Å"The Dangers of Diagnosis† (1996) the language and the term became harmful, not healing. These professionals use terms like bi-polar, schizophrenia, depression, and others to quickly communicate to others who are familiar with the language. But often those short cut terms are used in hurtful ways or are simply misunderstood and used incorrectly. Page 2 Proponents of the DSM argue that one of the many reasons to use such specialized language is to have a short cut in discussing topics related to the work and as a tool to allow professionals to have a common understanding and clarity in the work. Grohol (1996) states in â€Å"The Dangers of Diagnosis† it is needed in speaking to other professionals and it is needed to access the system of insurance and managed care. The language helps to communicate efficiently and effectively and the professionals who speak that language can move through the work more quickly and, at the same time, often get paid because it has become what not only the psychiatric and psychological businesses use, but also what insurance companies have come to use in way of what they will or will not pay. The power to define is great and it should be used carefully, cautiously. Postman states, â€Å"For the point is that in every situation, including this one, someone (or some group) has a decisive power of definition. In fact, to have power means to be able to define and to make it stick† (837). The other power is that these labels and this language is used to access insurance and money that, without the labels, is otherwise withheld from people. Insurance companies will pay for certain conditions and not others. They take the language and the list of symptoms and decide what is worth paying for and what is not. There is danger in that because someone could be labeled or diagnosed simply because it is the thing that the insurance company will pay for. Just because a small group of people have this ability to label behaviors and feelings and thoughts as certain â€Å"things†, does not mean the people in the field must use these terms or get so use to using these short cut terms that humanity in the field of psychiatry and psychology is lost or forgotten. As Judith Butler states in Undoing Gender, â€Å"†¦relations of power that circumscribe in advance what will and will not count as truth, which order the world in certain regular and regulatable ways, and which we come Page 3 to accept as the given field of knowledge† (743). We are complicated, complex human beings experiencing a variety of wonderful and terrible things throughout our lives. Sometimes forgetting the labels and the short cuts and taking the time to focus on the person and what their unique experience is could be a way to improve the process. As the reading states, our control of language aids in our perception of the world. We use language to bring what we see under control and make the complexities of the experience manageable. This is what diagnostic language is used to do. According to Grohol in â€Å"The Dangers of Diagnosis† (1996) some diagnosis are needed so that two professionals do not sit across from one another and recount fifteen types of behavior and thoughts when two words, for instance, paranoid schizophrenic, would do. However, maybe what is needed is more conversations about those symptoms and what they mean. In a world where there is less time and more demands than ever, the answer to some of this might be to slow down and have conversations with colleagues about what patients are experiencing and perhaps bringing some of that power to bear over insurance companies. These days and in conjunction with the new Obamacare legislation that power could somehow be used so that mental health issues are covered in their entirety. Because of the way language is used clinically some people do not seek treatment because of the fear that somewhere a diagnosis will be put on them that will follow them the rest of their lives. Clinical language is meant for helping professionals in their work not to stick someone with a label that will follow them wherever they go and maybe, unnecessarily restrict them in the future from doing things or holding certain jobs. The point of clinical language is to help the clinicians and doctors, not burden the patient with a label when they are already suffering with a mental health challenge. Page 4