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PAD 3003 Intro to Public Administration Module 4 Chapters 9-10
The book is Introducing Public Administration 8th edition by Shafritz, J. M., Russell, E. W., & Borick, C. P.
Overview chapters link https://youtu.be/PCXtfvLWpac
Chapter Nine Strategic Management and Government Regulation
Strategic Management is all about setting and reaching goals. But for the sake of our discussion, let’s define a few terms that may be commonly misunderstood. For our purposes, the hierarchy of thinking in strategic management in the public sector goes from vision to mission to goals to objectives.
The vision is the big picture of what your organization wants to see and the mission is the jointly shared cumulative goals and objectives. Goals are end zones to focus on and objectives are clear steps that can be measured to get you to the end zone. When the vision is clear and the mission well defined, the public administrator has an easy job setting goals and objectives that can be achieved. But, it’s rarely ever that easy.
The Planning Horizon is something that helps to take the concepts of planning and put them into a framework of time: usually annual, five years, ten years, and sometimes even 20. In the state of Florida, we have commissions that meet every 20 years to make recommendations on the state constitution and the state budget, respectively. These commissions have the power to put amendments on the voting ballots directly. They are examples of having a long range plan and continually checking it to make sure that goals and objectives are still being met.
But it is important to emphasize how important planning is in the public sector, even when the plans go nowhere or are shelved. Robert Herjavec, one of the investors on NBC’s Shark Tank puts it best: A goal without a timeline is just a dream”.
This kind of internal management, as opposed to the external public relations that chapter 8 talked about, is all about human resource management and development. This moves agencies into planning for budget requests by developing requests that show outcomes and have clearly measured outputs, outcomes, and the successful completion of objectives. The Government Performance Results Act actually requires that “federal agencies prepare and submit strategic plans to the Office of Management and Budget and Congress.” States have followed suit.
One of the most basic ways to analyze a strategy is through the lens of a SWOT analysis. SWOT is an acronym that stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In light of the planning process, and particularly human resources, the SWOT analysis is something very useful and helpful for administrators when they begin planning their annual budgets. The outcome of SWOT planning is the executive summary of where an organization is before they begin to embark upon anything new, different, or challenging.
We believe that public administration is the field of study that involves people operating with the highest standards as they execute their office. However, sometimes public administrators borrow from the field of political science when they utilize theories such as the “game theory.”
The game theory is the “chicken” concept of two drivers racing down the road at each other waiting for the other to be the “chicken” and veer aside to safety. Game theory represents everything that the public administrator does to “game” the system to protect or preserve his or her own interests – even if they are noble interests.
Best practices, benchmarking, and management scorecards are different tools and tactics that can be utilized to help the public administrator with his or her management – especially by monitoring activities, goals, and keeping track. There has developed from the strategic management a chief performance officer. There is a tremendous amount of information to sift through when putting things like best practices, benchmarks, and management scorecards together. It must be made simple or it becomes like noise.
“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.”
In 2010, NOAA research showed that nearly 40% of Americans live by the coast, or 10% of the land mass of the US excluding Alaska. This presents government administrators with a unique challenge. For example, in the state of Florida, Citizens’ Insurance company was the insurer of last resort for folks in the state who couldn’t get insurance in any other way. However, due to legislative involvement and changes, Citizens has become the largest insurer because the legislature artificially kept their rates low when the market rates were skyrocketing.
This is the interesting part – it would be less expensive not to insure those who lived in precarious places. However, that position would be unpopular for a government agency to take – that people shouldn’t live in particular places. In fact, when individuals are told that they can’t build something a certain way, they are really upset at the building department. However, when the safety precautions they were reluctant to follow save their homes built in flood zones or islands, they are grateful. Euclidian zoning, named after the case from Euclid, Ohio where the supreme court upheld a local jurisdictions right to zone differently, illustrates further the complexity of government regulation and due process of law under the 14th amendment.
All strategic management include the identification of objectives, the adoption of a time frame, the assessment of capabilities & environment, and the selection of a strategy. Public administrators recognize that they do not function in a vacuum, and, although political will may shift, it is better to have a plan that is never executed than to be called upon to perform a plan that doesn’t exist. As Winston Churchill put it: Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Chapter 10 Leadership
Leadership is one of those words that everyone uses, and many use incorrectly. Leadership doesn’t have anything to do with the person, but only about the outcome and the benefit of others. The origin of the word “lead” is from the Old English and brings involves the connotation to cause to go with one, guide, conduct, carry; sprout forth; bring forth, pass one’s life. It brings to bear the idea of “going forth” but not just simply going forth alone, but “going forth unto death.”
There is nothing more profound than a good leader. Because wisdom and leadership are deep waters, it is often difficult to determine who is a good leader and what it is about that person, though we may try. However, we seem to always know a leader when we see him or her in action. The result of leadership is a performance, but leaders, real leaders, are anything but actors.
Why do people follow you? According to “The Bases of Social Power” there are five major “bases” or reasons why people follow a particular person: expert power, referent power, reward power, legitimate power, coercive power. The first two are tied to positive experiences with the leader. There is an admiration factor, which may even develop into a real love for the leader. That is the highest form of leadership, where the follower and the leader share a mutual admiration and love for each other. There is a relationship element involved in leadership. As EM Kelly put it: “Remember the difference between a boss and a leader; a boss says “Go!” – a leader says “Let’s go!”
Why do people follow others and what is it about the leader that allows him or her to lead. One theory attributes this to the “trait” that the leader has, his personality and charisma. Another transactional theory shows how leaders can be laissez faire when they interact with followers and considerate of them.
Contingency approaches to leadership are different than the trait and transactional theories in that men or women aren’t born leaders, but created when the need arises. Remember the story of Cincinnatus who was called from his plow to save Rome and he did so. But when he was done, he went back to the farm.
There is transformational leadership, which is even more “organic” and “grassroots” than contingency leadership. It is a form of leadership that arises within an organization that creates a new vision for leadership. It brings to mind come back stories and turn around stories. One of the most important features of good leadership is the belief in the moral actions of the leader. When followers believe that their leader is above reproach, they listen to him or her when he or she shares good news, or bad, the latter without condemnation or at least contempt.
United States presidents have a bully pulpit from which they can lead through “moral leadership.” At one time, the bully pulpit was reserved for rare occasions. Today, it has become the place of rhetorical leadership, as the line between the campaign and governing has blurred.
There are some ways in which managers slip into some poor leadership behaviors. Micromanagement is something that almost everyone has faced or will face at some time in their life. “Overmanagement” is another term used for an organization that is top heavy.
There is something “supernatural” about our leaders. People have a tendency toward placing leaders on a high pedestal, especially modern day elected officials. They, at the same time, become zealous in their charges and quick to race to blood if and as soon as a leader fails. This is a very challenging predicament precisely because of the inherent difficulty in leading. There is a tremendous amount of unknown involved in leading. The quote below from Roosevelt was taken right after an attempted assassination. He was saved because the bullet went through his folded up speech and glass case before it hit him. The public however, was moved by the heroics.
When someone like that, who is put up on a pedestal, becomes involved in issues affecting morality, it becomes even more charged. For example, the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski scandal. It didn’t matter what he had accomplished when the scandal arose. The people cast stones and wanted to know all of the details.
“I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose”-President Theodore Roosevelt
Political scientist Aaron Wildavsky explained another phenomena in the presidency: the difference in public approval ratings for domestic versus foreign policy. The text explains how he proved that the general public cared less for the foreign policy of the president than the domestic. He did this by reviewing the passage rate for domestic issues by congress and comparing it with the foreign. What he found was that from 1948-1964, Congress approved 58.5 percent of foreign policy bills, 73.3% of defense bills, and 70.8 percent of general foreign policy while only approving 40.2 percent of domestic policy proposals. Perhaps this is because people care more for what they perceive to affect them more; or perhaps this happened because people supported policies that put America as the city on the hill – in a good light.
As our text explains in this chapter, there is a difference between leadership and management. It is far easier to be a manager than a leader, but much less effective at times and always much less revered. The excellent leader is the exception, not the rule. However, modern theory tends to lean toward the idea that leaders are not born, but can learn to become good leaders. And why wouldn’t we think that people can learn to become better leaders. In fact, if you take the constitutional directive that the government of the United States is a government of, for, and by the people that we have a moral impetus to all – young and old, man and woman, student and teacher – become better leaders?
The founding fathers of this nation literally bet on it.
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What is a public company? Definition and meaning
A public company is a business whose shares can be freely traded on a stock exchange or over-the-counter. Also known as a publicly traded company, publicly held company, or public corporation. The stocks of this type of company belong to members of the general public, as well as pension funds, and other large investing organizations.
A public company contrasts with a private company, which is not listed on a stock exchange and whose shares are only traded/exchanged via a private arrangement with the stockholders.
In most cases, the stocks of a public company belong to many investors, while those of a private company are in the hands of comparatively few shareholders.
The value of a public company is determined through daily trading.
Public companies more open than private companies
While enjoying the benefits of being able to raise considerable amounts of money in public capital markets, public companies are subject to much higher levels of reporting, regulations and public scrutiny than private companies.
They must publish annual reports, such as the Form 10-K that has to be filed with the SEC in the US. They have to make public details about their finances and business activities.
Some large companies prefer to stay as private firms because because they do not want to disclose proprietary information which could help rivals.
In public companies, the directors need to get shareholders’ approval for any significant change in strategy or operations.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says that any company in the United States with over 500 shareholders and more than $10 million in assets must register with the SEC and adhere to its reporting standards and regulations.
How to become a public company
For a company to become public it launches an IPO (initial public offering) – on the day of the IPO it converts from a private into a public company.
Businesses generally use IPOs as a means of raising money. Sometimes the directors may decide to go public so that the workers, owners and early investors can cash in their shares.
The money that members of the public spend buying shares during an IPO does not have to be paid back. Those investors effectively become the owners of the business.
Some public companies go private
Publicly traded companies can revert to being private firms again if enough shares are purchased from the shareholders.
Dell Inc., a multinational computer technology company based in Round Rock, Texas, turned back from being a public company into a private one in 2013. Michael Dell, the company’s CEO, Microsoft and Silver Lake Partners took the company private for $24.4 billion. Its shares were delisted from the NASDAQ and Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Why did Dell go private? Ashlee Vance wrote in BloombergBusiness that it was probably so that Michael Dell could keep his company and his job.
“Dell, Silver Lake, and Microsoft get a company that pumps out enough cash to keep all parties happy, while Michael Dell shields himself from being berated by analysts, investors, and the media. Best of all, he gets to keep his company.”
In most countries, public companies are required by law to use generally accepted accounting principles. That is why it is generally easier to compare such companies (financial ratios) than private companies, which may have many different types of accounting methods.
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Helsinki Library. Photo: Kuvio
Today, buildings are responsible for more than 40 percent of global energy usage, and as much as one third of greenhouse gas emissions. There are no quick-fix solutions for creating a more sustainable built environment. The ‘Sustainable Buildings Market Study’ aims to explore drivers, trends and contribute with market insight.
The study shows that sustainability is becoming mainstream in the sector, all the respondents were engaged in sustainable projects compared to 2017, where 5% stated that none of their current projects could be considered sustainable. Looking ahead more 57% of the respondents stated that they expected more than half of their future projects to be sustainable. However, the study reveals a lack of clarity regarding the costs and benefits of sustainable buildings. When asked if sustainable buildings are a good investment, close to 50% of all respondents have little or no insight if sustainable buildings cost more to build, if they have reduced operational cost or if they trade at a premium.
While return on investment is a key driver, Rikke Bjerregaard Orry, Ramboll’s group Sustainability Director for buildings, said “We anticipate an increasing interest from future generations in leading sustainable lifestyles, minimising their personal carbon footprint and working for companies that share their values and operate sustainably. Sustainable buildings tap into this trend and will increasingly become an identity marker for companies striving to make a difference”.
Digitalisation, innovative technologies and new construction techniques carry the promise of improving sustainability and efficiency in the construction sector. According to the respondents we can expect a wider use of Building Information Models (BIM) - not only in the design phase, but also in the operational phase and at the end-of-life-stage of a building. Creating a digital twin of a building makes it possible to consolidate different sustainability metrics, such as Life Cycle Assessment and Total Cost of Ownership into a single model, creating transparency and making it possible for the developer to base their decisions on more complete environmental and economical understanding.
The trend that respondents (49%) identify as the most important is: On-site renewable energy / distributed energy solutions – such solutions can include solar panels, district heating and provision of energy storage. Using new materials to increase sustainability and reduce carbon emissions is also seen to have a large potential. For example, Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) as trees grow they absorb carbon dioxide and store it until they decay or are burned. This makes timber a highly sustainable material. Furthermore, the material can be re-used at the end of a building’s life.
Even the most knowledgeable building owners and project teams benefit from accountability and clear direction. Survey respondents were asked to indicate the three most important issues that influenced their decision to use environmental certification schemes. The top three responses in 2019 were ‘Client, tenant or other stakeholder requirement’ (60%), ‘Enhancement of building performance’ (51%) and ‘Improved quality’ (44%).
Indoor air quality, lighting and thermal comfort are rated by the respondents as the most important wellbeing and health-related factors. Interestingly, few countries have mandatory thresholds for such wellbeing factors. However, environmental certifications standards such as DGNB, LEED and BREEAM can help address issues such as air quality, by dictating requirements to building materials with low levels of chemical substances.
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What Does Hash Mean In Terms Of Crypto Currency – What is Cryptocurrency? Put simply, Cryptocurrency is digital cash that can be utilized in location of traditional currency. Basically, the word Cryptocurrency originates from the Greek word Crypto which means coin and Currency. In essence, Cryptocurrency is just as old as Blockchains. The difference in between Cryptocurrency and Blockchains is that there is no centralization or journal system in location. In essence, Cryptocurrency is an open source protocol based on peer-to Peer deal innovations that can be carried out on a distributed computer network.
One particular way in which the Ethereum Project is attempting to fix the issue of clever agreements is through the Foundation. The Ethereum Foundation was developed with the goal of developing software services around smart contract functionality. The Foundation has released its open source libraries under an open license.
What does this mean for the larger neighborhood interested in taking part in the advancement and implementation of clever agreements on the Ethereum platform? For beginners, the major difference in between the Bitcoin Project and the Ethereum Project is that the previous does not have a governing board and therefore is open to factors from all walks of life. The Ethereum Project takes pleasure in a much more regulated environment. Anyone wanting to contribute to the job must adhere to a code of conduct.
As for the tasks underlying the Ethereum Platform, they are both making every effort to supply users with a new method to take part in the decentralized exchange. The major distinctions in between the 2 are that the Bitcoin protocol does not use the Proof Of Consensus (POC) procedure that the Ethereum Project uses.
On the other hand, the Ethereum Project has taken an aggressive technique to scale the network while likewise tackling scalability issues. In contrast to the Satoshi Roundtable, which focused on increasing the block size, the Ethereum Project will be able to execute enhancements to the UTX procedure that increase deal speed and decrease fees.
The decentralized aspect of the Linux Foundation and the Bitcoin Unlimited Association represent a traditional model of governance that puts an emphasis on strong community involvement and the promo of consensus. This design of governance has actually been embraced by numerous distributed application teams as a means of managing their jobs.
The significant difference between the 2 platforms originates from the fact that the Bitcoin neighborhood is largely self-dependent, while the Ethereum Project expects the involvement of miners to subsidize its development. By contrast, the Ethereum network is open to contributors who will contribute code to the Ethereum software application stack, forming what is known as “code forks “. This feature increases the level of participation preferred by the neighborhood. When it was utilized in forex trading, this model also varies from the Byzantine Fault design that was adopted by the Byzantine algorithm.
As with any other open source innovation, much controversy surrounds the relationship in between the Linux Foundation and the Ethereum Project. The Facebook group is supporting the work of the Ethereum Project by offering their own framework and developing applications that integrate with it.
Simply put, Cryptocurrency is digital cash that can be used in place of conventional currency. Basically, the word Cryptocurrency comes from the Greek word Crypto which implies coin and Currency. In essence, Cryptocurrency is just as old as Blockchains. The distinction between Cryptocurrency and Blockchains is that there is no centralization or ledger system in location. In essence, Cryptocurrency is an open source procedure based on peer-to Peer transaction technologies that can be performed on a distributed computer network. What Does Hash Mean In Terms Of Crypto Currency
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Where Cheapest Crypto Wallet Ledger – What is Cryptocurrency? Basically, Cryptocurrency is digital cash that can be utilized in place of conventional currency. Essentially, the word Cryptocurrency comes from the Greek word Crypto which indicates coin and Currency. In essence, Cryptocurrency is just as old as Blockchains. Nevertheless, the distinction in between Cryptocurrency and Blockchains is that there is no centralization or journal system in location. In essence, Cryptocurrency is an open source procedure based on peer-to Peer deal innovations that can be carried out on a dispersed computer system network.
As an open source procedure, the procedure is highly flexible. This implies that unlike Blockchains, there is a chance for the neighborhood at big to customize the core of the protocol to fit their needs. As such, a great deal of development has taken place around the world with the intent of supplying tools and methods that facilitate wise agreements. One specific method in which the Ethereum Project is attempting to fix the problem of wise agreements is through the Foundation. The Ethereum Foundation was established with the goal of developing software options around wise contract functionality. As such, the Foundation has actually released its open source libraries under an open license.
What does this mean for the larger neighborhood thinking about taking part in the development and implementation of wise contracts on the Ethereum platform? For starters, the significant distinction in between the Bitcoin Project and the Ethereum Project is that the former does not have a governing board and therefore is open to factors from all strolls of life. Nevertheless, the Ethereum Project takes pleasure in a far more regulated environment. Therefore, anyone wishing to contribute to the project needs to adhere to a standard procedure.
As for the jobs underlying the Ethereum Platform, they are both making every effort to supply users with a new method to take part in the decentralized exchange. The major differences between the two are that the Bitcoin procedure does not utilize the Proof Of Consensus (POC) procedure that the Ethereum Project uses.
On the other hand, the Ethereum Project has taken an aggressive technique to scale the network while also taking on scalability concerns. In contrast to the Satoshi Roundtable, which focused on increasing the block size, the Ethereum Project will be able to execute enhancements to the UTX protocol that increase deal speed and decline costs.
The major distinction in between the 2 platforms comes from the functional system that the 2 groups employ. The decentralized element of the Linux Foundation and the Bitcoin Unlimited Association represent a traditional model of governance that positions an emphasis on strong neighborhood involvement and the promo of consensus. By contrast, the ethereal foundation is dedicated to constructing a system that is flexible enough to accommodate changes and include new functions as the requirements of the users and the market change. This model of governance has been adopted by a number of distributed application groups as a means of handling their tasks.
The significant difference between the 2 platforms comes from the reality that the Bitcoin community is mainly self-sufficient, while the Ethereum Project anticipates the participation of miners to fund its advancement. By contrast, the Ethereum network is open to contributors who will contribute code to the Ethereum software stack, forming what is known as “code forks “.
Similar to any other open source technology, much debate surrounds the relationship between the Linux Foundation and the Ethereum Project. Both have actually embraced various point of views on how to finest use the decentralized aspect of the innovation, they have actually both however worked tough to develop a favorable working relationship. The developers of the Linux and Android mobile platforms have openly supported the work of the Ethereum Foundation, contributing code to protect the performance of its users. The Facebook group is supporting the work of the Ethereum Project by providing their own structure and developing applications that integrate with it. Both the Linux Foundation and Facebook see the ethereal task as a way to further their own interests by offering an expense scalable and efficient platform for users and designers alike.
Merely put, Cryptocurrency is digital money that can be utilized in location of conventional currency. Essentially, the word Cryptocurrency comes from the Greek word Crypto which indicates coin and Currency. In essence, Cryptocurrency is just as old as Blockchains. The distinction between Cryptocurrency and Blockchains is that there is no centralization or journal system in location. In essence, Cryptocurrency is an open source procedure based on peer-to Peer transaction technologies that can be performed on a distributed computer system network. Where Cheapest Crypto Wallet Ledger
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About Flying Eagle Cents
America's first small-cent was the Flying Eagle cent, which was originally struck in 1856 as a pattern and was produced for mass circulation in 1857 and 1858. The change came after the United States Mint began experimenting with new pattern cents in the mid 1850s due to increased costs of producing the large cent. The Flying Eagle cent was designed by United States Mint Chief Engraver James B. Longacre and is an adaption of the Christian Gobrecht pattern silver dollars struck in the mid 1830s.
Approximately 1,800 Flying Eagle cents were struck with the 1856 date for use as presentation pieces, and possibly some were made at a later point to satisfy the demands of collectors who wanted examples of the coin. The Flying Eagle cent was officially unveiled for circulation on May 25, 1857, which was during the period that the United States government was demonetizing foreign coinage that was still circulating throughout the nation as legal tender. The Flying Eagle cent is made from a composition of 88% copper, 12% nickel, and were widely dubbed "nicks." Though the Flying Eagle cent was in regular production for just two years, more than 40 million were struck and became quite popular with the public.
For a coin that was produced for only two years (three when counting the popularly collected 1856 presentation piece, which did see limited circulation) at just the Philadelphia Mint, there are a surprising number of issues and varieties. These include the 1856 and 1857 regular issues, 1858 Large or Small Letters varieties, 1858/7 overdates, and proof specimens from 1856 and 1857, as well as proof variants of each the 1858 Small and Large Letters. While the Flying Eagle cent is widely collected as an extension of the Indian Head cent series, Flying Eagle pennies offer enough complexity as a standalone series to provide plenty of challenge to anyone desiring to focus solely on collecting and studying this first incarnation of the small cent.
The prices listed in our database are intended to be used as an indication only. CDN Publishing, LLC does not buy or sell collectible coins or currency and users are strongly encouraged to seek multiple
sources of pricing before making a final determination of value. CDN Publishing is not responsible for typographical or database-related errors. Your use of this site indicates full acceptance of these terms.
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Jason Thistlethwaite is an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance and Innovation (CIGI). Daniel Henstra is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo and a senior fellow at CIGI.
All across New Brunswick, residents are experiencing the worst flooding most of them will see in a lifetime. If watching irreplaceable photo albums, heirlooms and valuables float away or cleaning up mould wasn’t traumatic enough, the worst may be yet to come.
When this nightmare is over, those worst-hit by the damage will be hard-pressed to find accountability from our elected leaders. Extreme weather due to climate change is exposing a “governance gap” in regards to environmental catastrophes that could leave thousands of New Brunswick homeowners out-of-pocket for millions of dollars from flood damage.
In the coming months, expect a lot of finger-pointing to lay blame and avoid accountability for who is actually responsible when an entire community is submerged under water. Often, local authorities and property owners are the first to face blame. Shouldn’t property owners know better than to buy property near a river? Why are local governments not defending vulnerable property?
This finger-pointing is misdirected as it is our provinces and the federal government that need to own responsibility for flood risk. If they don’t, expect many more Canadians to face the same struggle as victims in New Brunswick, Quebec and Alberta have experienced in recent years.
Currently, Canadians pay out $600-million annually for flood damage. Flooding is our most costly and common hazard and has replaced fire as the leading source of property insurance claims. Yet most Canadians are completely unaware of their risk. In a recent University of Waterloo survey, only 6 per cent of property owners knew they lived in a high-risk flood area. We are also unprepared: Fewer than a third of respondents had taken action to protect their property and fewer than one-quarter intended to buy flood insurance.
Most property owners believe that governments will provide disaster assistance to cover the costs of flood damage. But most will be sorely disappointed, because disaster assistance typically covers only about 25 cents of every dollar of total damage. In New Brunswick, for example, property owners are eligible for a maximum of $160,000 for significant structural damage, and secondary residences such as cottages do not qualify. That means many property owners will be on the hook for significant costs, and some might face mortgage default as their property loses value.
Each flood is met with new calls for action to avoid the harm that flood victims in New Brunswick will face for years as they recover. The steps we need to take are clear. Property owners must know their risk and invest in property-level flood protection. Local governments must enforce restrictions on development in high-risk areas and inform citizens of the risk. Flood insurance must be made available and affordable so there is a financial backstop in case of damage.
But local authorities and property owners cannot be expected to embrace this responsibility without effective leadership from our provincial and federal governments. For example, municipalities are expected to limit development in flood-prone areas, but this means lost property-tax revenue that they depend on to pay for services. Moreover, with their limited tax base, municipalities don’t have the capacity to buy out properties in high-risk areas.
The federal and provincial governments have the authority and resources to support better local decision-making by prohibiting development in high-risk areas and funding buyouts. Moving property out of harm’s way will reduce the cost of flood insurance that is often too expensive for those in high-risk areas. These governments are also better equipped to create and maintain high-quality and interactive maps to educate the public about their flood risk.
It’s time we started asking our governments to take responsibility for managing flood risk. If they don’t, why should anyone else?
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Highway work zones are present in most urban and rural road networks due to road rehabilitation, maintenance, utility installation works that are carried out on roadways. The impacts related to highway work zone include traffic delays, vehicle operating cost increase, increase in road accidents, accessibility restrictions, deterioration of air quality, noise and vibration issues. This is a major concern for the public and road users. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the impact on highway work zones especially in urban areas where impacts are generally higher. The study focuses on evaluating the economic cost of highway work zone on an urban road network considering its impact on travel time and vehicle operating cost. The economic cost calculations were conducted using HDM-4 software. Evaluation of the economic impact of work zones will lead improved work zone management practices which will ultimately benefit the road users and general public.
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50% carbon-free electricity by 2030
100%carbon-free electricity by 2045
1. New Mexico’s electricity will be 50% renewable by 2030, with a goal of 100% by 2045. Current law requires renewable energy to supply 20% of New Mexico’s electricity by 2020. Because of loopholes, price caps and exemptions, the actual renewable energy serving New Mexicans is much less – as low as 3% in some cases
2. New Mexico’s economy will be bolstered by a large renewable energy build-out, with a local workforce trained to supply the needed labor. In addition to the air, land, water, and public health benefits for New Mexicans from new renewable energy standards, there are substantial economic benefits. Renewable energy is among the least expensive sources of energy, and New Mexico contains premier sites for its development. The bill provides training for New Mexico workers so that the construction and development jobs of this renewable energy build-out are sustainable.
3. The ETA protects consumers and reduces electricity costs as New Mexico moves away from coal. New Mexico utilities have long relied on coal-fired generation to produce electricity.But with the declining price for renewables and the aging coal infrastructure, New Mexico can now transition away from coal. Some utilities, such as PNM, have substantial coal plant costs approved for recovery but still on their books. The bill uses a tool not currently available to the PRC to better protect customers, while requiring the utility to have shared responsibility: allow-cost financing to pay off coal plant costs and close the facilities, often referred to as “securitization.”
4. New Mexico communities impacted by coal plant closures will receive millions in economic relief. The low-interest bonds of the ETA will also be used to finance crucial economic relief for communities impacted by coal plant closures. In the case of PNM’s San Juan Generating Station, securitization will provide over $40 million to assist plant employees, mineworkers and others with severance pay and job training. In addition, with public input from community stakeholders, the fund will assist the Four Corners’ economy to transition away from its dependence on fossil fuel extraction. Finally, the bill directs hundreds of millions of dollars of replacement power, including renewables, to be developed in San Juan County, where infrastructure already exists. The development will restore the tax base for the community and its schools after SJGS closes, and will provide substantial economic activity for many years to come.
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Those who are to finance solutions need fiscal encouragement
Green bonds are designated bonds intended to encourage sustainability and to support climate-related or other types of special environmental projects.
They come with tax incentives such as tax exemption and tax credits, making them a more attractive investment compared to a comparable taxable bond.
It began in 2001, when voters in the City of San Francisco approved a revenue bond authority, in the form of a city charter amendment known as the “solar bonds,” to finance renewable energy and energy conservation measures on homes, businesses and government buildings so taking meaningful action on climate change.
Since then, green bonds have been growing rapidly. The total volume of green bonds was estimated at 160 billions of dollars on 2016; of which 70 billion were issued in 2016. The labelled volume of bonds issued in 2019 was US$ 255 billion.
The EU Green Bond Standard is a practical and secure financing tool to ensure the real economy investments create environmental impacts that fulfil Europe’s climate goals and other long-term environmental objectives.
Discover Solution 180: Making greener screen productions
Support 366solutions on Patreon and receive the ‘366solutions Insider Newsletter’ with updates on the monthly progress and successes of published solutions.
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“Green Revolution, the best solution to arrest pollution.”
The Green Revolution in India is also known as the Third Agricultural Revolution. The period of the Green Revolution in the 1960s. Agriculture occupies an essential spot in the life and economy of India. It is the backbone of our economic system.
About Green Revolution in India
The Green Revolution in India: A period when agriculture converted into an industrial system in India. The reason is the adoption of modern methods and technology. Such as the use of high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds, tractors, irrigation facilities, pesticides, and fertilizers.
The following facts bring out the importance of agriculture in the economic life of the nation:
1. Above all, Agriculture is the main occupation of the people of India. About 69% of the working force is engaged in agriculture. Thus, Agriculture provides means of livelihood to a large majority of people.
2. Further, the chief source of national income is Agriculture.
In 1960-61, it contributed almost half of our national income. But percentage-wise this figure declined since then to 32.1 percent in 1989-90. Besides, still, agriculture is the predominant sector of our economy.
3. Agriculture feeds the population of the country. Also, it provides food for people and fodder for our cattle.
4. Most importantly, Agriculture forms the basis of our industries. Raw materials like cotton, jute, oilseeds, etc., are supplied by agriculture to industry.
5. The revenues of the State Governments are greatly dependent upon the favorable condition of agriculture.
‘Green Revolution’ had only a limited impact on Indian agriculture. The benefits of the Green Revolution have been reaped only by the rich farmers holding large holdings. They have been able to acquire the necessary supplies of fertilizers, tractors, water pumps, and so on. However, the green revolution did not benefit all regions. Also, the green revolution remained confined to irrigation areas only. It also failed to have any impact on the production of pulses and oilseeds. It has promoted the inequalities of income and wealth. Besides, it mainly benefited the rich farmers who had the means to buy and make use of modern inputs.
Author– Pragya Verma
Checkout other articles- Heart of Asia 2021
Featured image credits- Thinks Knowledge
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The simple definition of FOREX is buying and selling (trading) of currencies at market prices. The term FOREX is actually the combination of two words "FOReign EXchange".
There is actually a group of banks that formulates FOREX financial market. This group of banks actually buys and sells currencies on daily basis during five business days a week, and the daily turn-over of their trades is more than three billion dollars.
Generally, people misunderstand the FOREX market and mix it up with an exchange. But in fact, this concept is not true because this financial market does not have any physical address like New York Stock Exchange or London Stock Exchange. The trades in FOREX financial market are conducted 24 hours a day (five days a week), so you can always trade your favorite currencies.
Traders have the option to trade through FOREX trading terminal, some specifically build software and even over the telephone. This is absolutely great advantage for those who have the ability to earn money through trading currencies, because all you need is a computer with an Internet connection and appropriate software. Since FOREX is a 24-hour market, so you can work from anywhere in the world, any time of the day five days a week.
- Trade over 40 currency pairs as day trades, forward deals or more than 20 currency pairs on options
- Fixed spreads means you know the cost of your trading, regardless of market conditions
- Guaranteed stops prevent slippage when the markets are volatile
- SMS alerts on critical market updates
- Comprehensive research and analysis to help you make important trading decisions
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Making a Budget- Your Path to Financial Success
Do you know that only 3 out of every 10 Americans make a budget for each month? That means most people don’t know how much they’re spending or what they’re spending on.
Budgeting monthly is the smart thing to do, allowing you to allocate more money into savings and your future needs. Use the tools below to begin your journey to financial stability.
A Smart Way to Protect Yourself- Renter’s Insurance
In an unpredictable world, it’s important to protect your hard-earned possessions and assets. Renter’s Insurance is a low-cost way to provide coverage for personal belongings, personal liability, medical payments, and additional living expenses due to a loss.
EVERCREST D&M is partnered with the low-cost insurance provider ePremium Insurance™. Every resident is automatically approved and there is no credit check fee or cumbersome enrollment process. Find out more and sign up at www.epremiuminsurance.com
Leasing vs. Buying a Home
Leasing vs. buying a home, which is right for you? Khan Academy® offers an easy to understand video tutorial on how to make the right decision for you.
Water Conservation Initiative
In 2015, EVERCREST Development & Management implemented the Water Conservation Initiative in response to the California drought crisis and the increasing challenges of climate change. Residents can do their part by making small changes in their daily routine to help conserve our precious resources. Here are some tips:
- Report water runoff & leaks immediately.
- Water in the evenings so no water is lost to evaporation.
- Avoid washing down pavements.
- Install shutoff nozzles on garden hoses.
- Limit shower times.
- Avoid letting the water run when washing dishes by hand.
- Use your dishwater, they typically require less water.
- When doing laundry, match the water level to the size of the load.
How to Conserve Energy and Save Money Doing It
- Wash clothes in cold water, savings average $63/year.
- Install a programmable thermostat and save up to 10% on cooling and heating costs.
- Use your window shades and close your blinds to keep out the hot sun.
- Turn off all lights, appliances, and unplug all electronics not in use.
- Use CFL and LED lightbulbs. They last much longer and reduce energy use from about a third to as much as 80%.
- Buy appliances with the Energy Star label, the government’s symbol for energy efficiency.
- Clean and change A/C filters regularly. Dirty A/C filter makes the A/C unit work harder to keep you cool.
- Reduce water heater temperature to 130°F and purchase a specially-designed blanket to retain heat.
- Seal air leaks and properly insulate windows to save up to 20% on heating and cooling bills.
10 Smart Money-Saving Tips
- Track your spending. Figure out where your money is going each month. This way, you can decide where to cut back and where to allocate funds.
- Cancel recurring expenses. Recurring expenses can take the form of subscriptions to services such as cable TV, gym memberships, mobile phone contracts, and magazine contracts, etc.. Canceling recurring expenses drastically reduces monthly expenses that can be diverted towards paying down debt.
- Pay down your loans and credit cards. Interest payments on loans and unsecured debts account for a large percentage of monthly expenses. As much as possible, allocate a portion of your income to paying down these debts.
- Pay yourself. Divert money to your savings or retirement account each month to plan for the future.
- Start an emergency fund. Things happen, and having an emergency fund is a hedge against any big changes in the future. Typically, you’ll want to keep two to three month’s worth of your salary liquid in your savings account.
- Eat at home. Eating out may be fun but drains your pockets. Eating at a restaurant can be double or triple the price of eating a home-cooked meal.
- Maintain your car. Simple preventive maintenance such as frequent oil changes and inflating tires prevents future expensive fixes to your car.
- Negotiate with your credit card company. Call your credit card company to see if you can lower the interest rate on your credit card. Doing so will save you hundreds of dollars in interest over time.
- Negotiate with your cell phone company. A simple phone call to your cell phone company can often pay off if they are running a promotion. If not, shop around and see if there are other alternative cell phone companies that have cheaper plans for the same service.
- Maintain your health. Eat well, drink water, get plenty of sleep, and exercise frequently. Failing to maintain your health will devastate your finances. Medical expenses are exorbitant and account for a large percentage of personal bankruptcies.
How to Burglarproof Your Home While Traveling
- Avoid discussing travel plans online. In the new age of social media, anyone can overhear that your home is going to stand empty while you’re away.
- Install deadbolt locks. Deadbolts on doors make your home more difficult to break into and burglars don’t like difficult.
- Install a home security alarm. Alarms can serve as a deterrent and many companies offer 24-hour monitoring in case of an emergency.
- Keep a small light on so burglars think someone is at home.
- Avoid a pile-up of mail or newspapers at your front door. Kindly ask a neighbor to gather mail for you so burglars aren’t tipped off that you’re away.
- Ask your neighbor to keep an eye out for you and give them your number. Trusty neighbors take care of each other and serve as an emergency contact while you’re away.
How to Declutter Your Home
- Make a list of places and areas you’d like to declutter first. Instead of tackling the daunting task of decluttering the whole house, consider decluttering one room at a time.
- Fill up one trash bag a week. Filling up one trash bag a week creates a manageable task and allows you to set realistic goals. Donate the items to your local Goodwill, you might even get a tax write-off!
- Give or throw away one item a day, that’s 365 items in a year.
- Donate unwanted books or reading materials to your local library.
- Recycle. There are recycling centers in every city.
- Organize first, buy second. Use the resources you already have before you buy new items.
- Declutter junk first. Decluttering can be a very emotional experience because you may have a personal attachment to certain items. Declutter junk first, then work through the items you have a personal attachment to.
- Don’t wait. The best time to declutter is today!
Simple Tips on Building Better Credit
- Obtain a copy of your credit report. To fix your credit, you have to know what delinquent accounts you have and how much you owe.
- Pay your bills on time, in full, every month. Delinquent payments and collections have major negative impacts on your score.
- Eliminate credit card balances. Your score takes into consideration your credit card balances. Try consolidating your credit cards or get rid of them altogether until you have your finances in order.
- Reduce your debt. Budget and come up with a personal payment plan.
- Get current with missed payments. Everyone makes mistakes, but make sure to repay delinquent accounts. A “collection” indicator on your credit report is a huge black mark.
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James Blignaut, James Aronson, Myles Mander and Christo Marais
We describe a proposed large-scale restoration and land use management project planned for a portion of the Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa. Some 250,000 ha of high-lying land in the Drakensberg range are a protected conservation area and also a World Heritage Site. Bordering this conservation enclave is another 250,000 ha of increasingly degraded land subject to a variety of competing land uses. Conflicting land use objectives could, in theory, be mitigated and reconciled by identifying and developing a market for the delivery of ecosystem services such as water use and quality, carbon sequestration, erosion and siltation reduction, combating desertification, and the promotion of biodiversity conservation.
The project we describe here can serve as an example of how long-term investment in the restoration of natural capital (RNC) will benefit both developed and developing countries, with payment for ecosystem services as a key way to finance the restoration work. International investments in the Drakensberg project are being sought in emerging markets for carbon, water, and biodiversity credits—the so-called "umbrella ecosystem services." Food, water, energy, and income security for local people, however, remain top priorities. We argue that this kind of RNC project is a way to simultaneously pursue the objectives of the global conventions on Biodiversity, Climate Change, and Desertification arising from the United Nations’ Rio Summit of 1992, and to help meet the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals for alleviating poverty.
Link to source of abstract:
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A commodity is any good that is identical (or very similar) from any producer, i.e. producers have to compete on price. They are usually used in production of other goods or services.
The most common types of commodity traded on financial markets are:
Commodities are very susceptible to speculation and therefore are frequently volatile. The quantity of a commodity traded is standardized by the Chicago Board of Trade through contract amounts (i.e. one wheat contract is 5,000 bushels).
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Not many have heard about blockchain, even though the technology goes back quite some time. A lot of them know about Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency, however. Interestingly, Blockchains are revolutionising how the exchange of money through BTC takes place, and so it is essential to know about the former as well so you can stay on top of the trend.
Blockchain as a concept predates Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, but it gained prominence only after Bitcoin transactions left few reliable ways to keep track of your money and record exchange between users without revealing personal markers and identities. You’ll be surprised what else it can be used for.
Understanding what a blockchain does is crucial. When you make a transaction using an online currency, you want to keep a secure account of it to produce later if need arises. Blockchain is often employed for this purpose, kind of like an online bank passbook. When you send a bitcoin to someone, the transaction is recorded as a piece of data, and it is unalterable once generated. This record of data is called a block.
Then, this block is replicated in several devices connected to the service, generating an interlinked pattern resembling a chain. This is where the system gets its name from. The data thus becomes available to be withdrawn and verified, so any false claims can be identified. Changing an individual block on one PC will be useless, since there are tens of PCs with a record of your data which can be anywhere around the globe.
The system even turns into a rewarding service for many. The system pays you some amount of fee to compensate you for the CPU resources and electricity costs the service will consume. You can read more about this and applications Blockchain may find itself part of in this infographic from Techiespad.com
Author Bio: Stacy Miller has been blogging ever since she was in high school. Her love for technology and disdain for generic Hollywood movies has only grown over the years.
you can find more of her writing on techiespad.com
Hitesh Malviya is the Founder of ItsBlockchain. He is one of the most early adopters of blockchain & cryptocurrency enthusiast in India. After being into space for a few years, he started IBC in 2016 to help other early adopters learn about the technology.
Before IBC, Hitesh has founded 4 companies in the cyber security & IT space.
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By Amanda Duncan, President, PartnerOne Environmental
There are millions of properties that are vacant or abandoned across the US, and the vacancy rate continues to increase as a result of Covid 19. Real estate is considered a vacant property when it is not currently occupied or in use. Vacant properties can be commercial, retail, industrial, or residential in nature. These properties bring down surrounding property values and hinder redevelopment. In addition, many environmental risks can be discovered, furthering impacting the structure itself or nearby areas.
Potential exposures for vacant properties may include:
- Older buildings may have existing asbestos insulation and tiles, as well as lead paint and lead piping.
- Leaking heating oil tanks, pipes, and appliances are prevalent, as well as any chemicals or lubricants stored on premises in garages or sheds.
- It is possible that unknown underground storage tanks exist onsite as well. Underground storage tanks that are not maintained regularly will most likely cause soil and groundwater contamination at the subject property itself, as well as surrounding real estate.
- Retail shopping centers or commercial office buildings that previously housed dry cleaners, printers, or restaurants have serious concerns pertaining to the improper storage and disposal of chemicals, inks, dyes and grease/oils.
- Poor maintenance, concrete cracks, dilapidated roofing, clogged sewer pipes and broken sprinkler systems can result in water intrusion and mold growth. Mold grows rapidly in warm and moist environments: bathrooms, basements, under carpeting, inside walls and HVAC ducts and can easily spread throughout a commercial, retail or residential structure, impacting others. In addition, weather-related events such as flash flooding can exacerbate indoor water and mold issues, and cause excessive surface water and silt runoff impacting neighboring properties or waterways such as ponds, streams or rivers. Should a waterway become impacted, not only is the quality of water at risk, but the plant and animal life as well (natural resources).
- Vacant buildings and land are very attractive locations to illegally dispose of potentially hazardous waste, drums, and containers. This practice is commonly referred to as “midnight dumping.” The drums and containers are almost never appropriate to properly contain the waste and the contents are easily released onto the property.
- Criminal activity at abandoned sites is a major concern. Illegal methamphetamine labs are established in abandoned properties regularly, with the remnants left behind after those involved move on.
Environmental insurance policies are routinely purchased for exposures associated with vacant properties. Contractors performing any rehabilitation/renovation work come into contact with potential contaminants during the course of debris removal, site preparation, demolition, grading, landscaping, and various other activities. A Contractors Pollution Liability (CPL) insurance policy will protect contractors if a pollution condition occurs as a result of their work, or work performed on their behalf. Property owners and managers purchase Site Pollution (PPL/EIL) policies covering both third party and first party claims, including Defense Costs, resulting from pollution conditions at, on, under, or emanating from scheduled locations (in this instance vacant properties). Environmental hazards associated with vacant sites such as Mold, storage tanks, midnight dumpling, in place asbestos and lead, soil/groundwater contamination, air and noise pollution, and improperly (or illegally) stored waste can be all addressed via a Site Pollution policy.
Vacant properties will remain a large part of our real estate landscape for the next several years and many issues can exist surrounding these sites. While the environmental concerns are many, the risks can be managed with the proper insurance policy in place, leading to future redevelopment and revitalization of the once vacant property.
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Updated time: May 12, 2020, 04:33 (UTC+03:00)
Open banking is a modern way that third parties can access to customer’s data by authorization from banking customers. By this approach, financial organisations and banks can work with retail merchants concomitantly to understand more and satisfy customers deeply. However, open banking still accompanies some drawbacks that many customers are considering in terms of security.
The term can be defined in many different ways such as PSD2 in Europe and Open Banking in the UK; but in general, it refers to the ability for banking customers to authorize third parties to access their banking account data to collect account information or/and to initiate payments. Some particular examples for this definition include streamlined mortgage applications, the weekly shopping or standing orders, money management dashboard or financial tools, trigger event notifications, etc.
Some markets, led by the EU and the UK, have already taken the leading position by creating and passing their own open banking regulation. Other markets, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Mexico, Argentina, Nigeria, Hong Kong (SAR), Japan and Taiwan (jurisdiction), for example, are also moving in that direction.
Credits to Janis Graubins
"Open banking" creates new capabilities and designed applications to help customers live easier. By applying the concept of “open banking”, financial institutions and banks are able to improve their customer service and become customer’s insight-savvy. Indeed, consumers prefer to use fast and seamless financial and payment services, planned payment instructions that help them save time, manage account balance, risk management or even updated promotion based on personal data.
"Open banking" sorts and analyzes data in order to gain better insights from customer activities and interactions, and helps financial firms know more about their customers’ patterns of behavior, financial health, investment plans and goals. Open banking will also certainly allow payment firms to find niche areas of expertise and develop unique products and services.
Source : DSBC Financial Europe
On the other hand, the approach still confronts some challenges. As personal data is confidential and third parties need to be authorised to access this information, the policy makers and regulators have not fully built the standard guidelines and open-minded laws to facilitate information exchange.
Moreover, the trend shows the imbalance regarding information exchanging between financial institutions and retail merchants. While the flow of customer data transfer from banks or financial companies performs easily , there is a limitation in versus direction. For instance, banks are not able to access retailer’s customer data, and this not only creates an imbalance of information, it also mitigates the desire for innovation in the banking sector.
Financial organisations have started to expand their ecosystem in order to better serve customers by quickly and effectively connecting to banking partners and third parties, and data and systems will be the key to company agility.
First step is consumer education. Financial service providers should present more benefits that their customers will gain when it comes to the “open banking” approach. After that, the providers may pay attention to technical and operational capabilities to ensure the whole process works concomitantly. Next phase is focusing on open data and security.
Finally, identify and source partners that can enable compliance and operational readiness as well as create new products, services and experiences.
* Infor source: KPMG report - 2019 trends in review
Whether or not financial organisations will need to deal with the implications of “open banking”? The question should be whether they are ready to make the most of it. At DSBC Financial Europe, our team is well prepared to be a strong catalyst that connects all resources into a dynamic financial ecosystem.
You can learn more information about DSBC services by doing a click to this link
Thank you for regarding the above information. If you have any questions about products and services, please contact us here.
We are always proud of being an experienced Financial Institution in the global financial payment market.
We provide the best payment platform as well as worldwide money remittance service. "DSBC Financial Europe" UAB can assist you with different payment methods, whether it is a personal account or a business account.
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This is a common conversation we have with schools in relation to the accounting function. It’s critical to have effective internal control because it reduces the risk of mistakes and inappropriate actions. Our team has put together a useful guide to help you work through this issue.
Segregation of duties is the concept of having more than one person required to complete a task, ensuring that incompatible jobs within a system are not completed by the same person. Segregation of duties is critical to effective internal control because it reduces the risk of mistakes and inappropriate actions. Not having segregation of duties also places a large burden of trust on a small number of people within your school.
As a guide, for most transactions the following functions should be separated among employees (e.g. for a payment made by your school):
- Initiation (completing a purchase order)
- Approval (authorising purchase order and payment of an invoice)
- Accounting/reconciling (recording of the transaction in the ledger and month end reconciliation process)
A detailed supervisory review of related activities is required as a compensating control activity if these functions cannot be separated.
Examples of segregation of duties:
- The person who requisitions the purchase of goods or services should not be the person who approves the purchase.
- The person who approves the purchase of goods or services should not be the person who reconciles the monthly financial reports.
- The person who approves the purchase of goods or services should not be able to obtain custody of cheques.
- The person who maintains and reconciles the accounting records should not be able to obtain custody of cheques.
- The person who opens the mail and prepares a listing of cheques received should not be the person who makes the deposit.
- The person who opens the mail and prepares a listing of cheques received should not be the person who maintains the accounts receivable records.
No one person should perform all of the following tasks:
- Initiate a transaction
- Approve a transaction
- Record a transaction
- Reconcile balances
- Handle assets
- Review reports
We recognise that in a most schools the number of administration staff is limited. This often means that segregation of duties can be difficult to achieve and that a number of the above functions will be performed by the same person. While this may not be ideal from an internal point of view, it is the reality of the situation.
Where we find that segregation of duties is not occurring, we may raise a note about this in our management letter. The reason being that we believe it is important that your board or the schools senior management team should be aware of this and possibly committing more resources or monitoring more closely to the day to day accounting function at your school. This will normally be through a more detailed than normal review of the monthly financial statements. Such management letter point is in no way a reflection on the people working at your school and is not intended to bring into question their integrity. It is merely a commentary on the systems and internal controls present in your school.
Should you have any questions about internal controls at your school or whether not they are appropriate, we may be able to assist through a detailed review of these systems and suggest ways in which your internal control environment can be strengthened. Feel free to get in touch to discuss the possibilities of how we could help.
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This article describes the different measures and approaches to inflation. There is no single measure of inflation, as there are different ways of looking at changing prices and costs. Instead this article is a guide to the issues and explains the approaches of different measures.Back to table of contents
Following an independent review and subsequent public consultation, the National Statistician published a statement setting out plans for consumer inflation statistics in the UK, to ensure that they meet current and emerging user needs. We have since implemented significant changes to both the presentation and development of these statistics:
our most comprehensive measure of consumer price inflation, the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH), became the lead measure in our publications in March 2017 and was designated as a National Statistic in July 2017
the Household Costs Indices (HCIs) are under development, providing a set of measures that describe the experience of households by measuring changes in costs they face; preliminary estimates were published in December 2017
reflecting the serious shortcomings of the Retail Prices Index (RPI) as a measure of inflation, the publication of RPI-related data has been scaled back to that which is essential to meet existing user needs
In addition to meeting the range of user needs, it is important to ensure that the statistics present a clear and coherent picture, enabling users to make an informed choice over which measure is most appropriate for their purpose. In particular, as we believe RPI is not a good measure of inflation, this article aims to help people understand which measure of inflation might be most relevant for their use. To facilitate this, we have set out three “use cases”, along with how they relate to the measures that we publish.Back to table of contents
The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH) is a measure of changing consumer prices based on economic principles and is designated as a National Statistic. It measures the change in the prices of the goods and services as consumed by households. The price movements of items within this basket of goods are weighted in proportion to their importance to total household spending on these items, meaning that items on which households spend more money will have a greater influence on the rate of inflation.
The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) is also a National Statistic and based on economic principles, but importantly it does not include certain housing costs, which are significant expenses for many households. However, because it is also the UK Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP), it enables us to produce a measure that is comparable across Europe and with other countries.
The CPIH builds on the CPI to include a measure of the costs associated with owning, maintaining and living in one’s own home, known as owner occupiers’ housing costs (OOH), along with Council Tax. CPIH is therefore a comprehensive measure of price change across the economy as a whole and is the lead measure in our publications of consumer price inflation.Back to table of contents
The Household Costs Indices (HCIs) are currently under development and examine how households experience changes in costs by looking at the payments they make for a basket of goods, services and other financial transactions. The changes in costs of items within this basket are aggregated in a way that gives equal weights to all households (CPI and CPIH implicitly give a greater weight to higher-spending households).
Different household groups (for example, pensioners or low-income households) experience different changes in costs. HCIs allow these to be measured, with the aggregate measure covering all households acting as a benchmark. An article, published in November 2017, provides more information on the development of the HCIs and how they compare with other measures. Preliminary estimates were first published in December 2017.
To put these figures in context and to provide a better understanding of the change in the purchasing power of disposable income as experienced by different household groups, we present these changes to household costs alongside corresponding measures of household income.Back to table of contents
The Retail Prices Index (RPI) is not a good measure of inflation, at times greatly overestimating and at other times underestimating changes in prices and how these changes are experienced. The methods used to produce it are not consistent with internationally-recognised best practice, a flaw that led to it losing National Statistics status in 2013. It also has other significant weaknesses, including how it measures housing costs, and its population coverage, which excludes certain households. Shortcomings of the Retail Prices Index as a measure of inflation, published in March 2018, describes these deficiencies.
While we strongly discourage its use, there are a number of long-established uses of RPI, including for index-linked gilts and long-term contracts, which make it impractical to stop its publication. For this reason, while we have significantly scaled back publication of RPI-related data, we continue to publish the minimum necessary to ensure the essential needs of existing users are met.Back to table of contents
Contact details for this Article
Telephone: Consumer Price Inflation Enquiries: +44 (0)1633 456900, Consumer Price Inflation recorded message (available after 9.45am on release day): + 44 (0)800 0113703
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More than two years after the adoption and signing of the historic Paris Agreement on climate change, and following its unprecedented rapid entry-into-force, the hard work of implementing the Paris Agreement is just getting going. Turning this landmark pact into a functioning regime requires adopting the rules of the game to bring the vision of Paris to life in a trustworthy, effective and fair manner.
Beginning April 30, climate negotiators will meet once again in Bonn, Germany to focus on making progress on developing these rules of the game, often referred to in UNFCCC jargon as the implementing guidelines, or colloquially as the rulebook. These negotiations are vital to ensuring a strong framework for international climate action, thus providing an opportunity to strengthen the Paris Agreement’s muscles so that it delivers at the pace and scale needed to prevent irreversible damage from climate change. The current NDCs do not do enough to hold global temperatures rise to the Agreement’s goal of 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), so enhanced climate action is necessary. A weak or insufficient rulebook could undermine efforts to tackle the climate crisis.
Ahead of the Bonn negotiating session, three questions ring loudly:
- What is still being negotiated and why is it important?
- What needs to happen during the Bonn session?
- Why is adopting a strong rulebook necessary this year?
Negotiators will work simultaneously on a number of different topics – including transparency, the global stocktake, the communication of nationally determined contributions (NDCs), market and non-market approaches to reduce emissions, compliance and predictability of finance. They will need to tackle complex technical issues while overcoming political divergences on a number of key topics that will cut across all the various negotiating streams.
One of the top cross-cutting topics is the application of the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities-respective capabilities. The Paris Agreement marks a cornerstone in balancing the requirements between developed and developing countries. Indeed, while the Paris Agreement defines a universal framework to strengthen over time the global response to the threat of climate change, it also acknowledges that countries are at different stages of development. Hence, the importance of implementing its enhanced transparency framework with “built-in flexibility” for “those developing country Parties that need it in the light of their capacities”, while sustaining improvement overtime. Negotiators are therefore expected to identify better ways to take into account diverse and evolving national circumstances, capabilities and vulnerabilities, while developing a common framework to deliver and track the progressive ambition called for in the Paris Agreement.
Another challenge is the fact that some of the issues at stake are more complex than others, such as setting up rules for effective market-based approaches. Other issues are politically sensitive, such as the level of scrutiny on submission documents or the predictability and mobilization of financial support. Negotiators will need to ensure balance across the various elements and a minimum level of guidance to make them operational, and drive improvement and greater action over time.
Ultimately, the various provisions of the Paris Agreement interact to create what we refer to as the cycle of implementation – where national planning and policymaking inform the domestic implementation of NDCs, which is then subject to global review and stocktaking exercises to inform additional national planning in order to continuously close the emissions gap and increase resilience. In developing the rulebook to support this cycle, countries must consider the linkages between provisions and how individual components interact with others.
Finally, by underpinning the Paris Agreement’s implementation for years to come, the rulebook needs not only to build confidence and ramp up the ambition necessary to achieve the Paris Agreement’s long-term goals, but also ensure the durability of the regime. In other words, these guidelines need to support clear long-term signals while being able to adjust to technological, societal and climatic changes.
Expectations for the Bonn negotiations
Limited progress was made during negotiations last November at COP23. Much more progress is needed. Countries must significantly intensify their efforts at the next session in May in order to finalize the rulebook by the agreed deadline of December 2018 at COP24 in Katowice, Poland.
To ensure that negotiations remain on track for adoption this year, countries need to have a negotiating text – a document with legal language for countries to debate – ahead of the additional negotiations in Bangkok, Thailand, scheduled for September. This means that negotiators should ideally leave Bonn with a negotiating text. As this may be challenging, at a minimum, countries should task negotiation facilitators and co-chairs to prepare a text ahead of the Bangkok meeting. It is vital that negotiators move closer to a negotiating text in Bonn or they jeopardize their ability to adopt a robust rulebook by the end of the year.
Why We Need a Strong Rulebook
Like the rules and laws in our societies, the Paris implementation guidelines must be designed to: organize the relationship between countries; create a sense of a level playing field for the domestic actions needed to tackle a global commons problem; and foster cooperation between Parties and their main stakeholders.
The rulebook will support the Paris Agreement’s cycle of implementation: planning and policy making, implementation of national pledges, and the review and stocktake of progress. A weak or watered-down version of the implementation guidelines will undermine efforts to bring the Agreement to life. On the other hand, a well-crafted and robust set of rules will provide clarity to Parties regarding what has been and should be done, confidence in what will happen if countries do not follow the rules, and assurance that support will be offered to countries to fulfill their requirements.
Ultimately, the implementation guidelines should galvanize trust and reinforce the credibility of the multilateral process. What is urgently needed now is a strong Paris rulebook that will signal, drive, facilitate and demonstrate the transformation required to achieve a cleaner, safer and more prosperous future our children deserve.
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US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has urged
all governments to support a global minimum corporate tax rate of at least 21%. The US is working with other G20 nations to get other countries to end the “thirty-year race to the bottom on corporate tax rates”.
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to take an unprecedented human and economic toll, wiping away years of modest and uneven progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Developing countries now need much more support as progress towards the SDGs was ‘not on track
’ even before the pandemic.
Illicit financial flows (IFFs) hurt all countries, both developed and developing. But poor countries suffer relatively more
, accounting for nearly half the loss
of world tax revenue.
IFFs refer to cross-border movements of money and other financial assets obtained illegally at source, e.g., by corruption, smuggling, tax evasion, etc. This often involves trade mis-invoicing
and transnational corporations’ (TNCs) transfer pricing
via ‘creative’ accounting or book-keeping.
COVID-19 has set back the uneven progress of recent decades, directly causing more than two million deaths. The slowdown, due to the pandemic and policy responses, has pushed hundreds of millions more into poverty, hunger and worse, also deepening many inequalities.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is adversely impacting most developing countries disproportionately, especially the United Nations’ least developed countries (LDCs) and the World Bank’s low-income countries (LICs).
Years of implementing neoliberal policy conditionalities and advice have made most developing countries much more vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic by undermining their health systems and fiscal capacities to respond adequately.
Vaccine developers’ refusal to share publicly funded vaccine research findings is stalling broader, affordable vaccinations which would more rapidly contain COVID-19 contagion. The pandemic had infected at least 109 million people worldwide, causing over 2.4 million deaths as of mid-February.
Just before the World Health Assembly (WHA), an 18 May open letter
by world leaders and experts urged governments to ensure that all COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests are patent-free, fairly distributed and available to all, free of charge.
Fiscal and monetary measures needed to fight the economic downturn, largely due to COVID-19 policy responses, require more government accountability and discipline to minimise abuse. Such measures should ensure relief for the vulnerable, prevent recessions from becoming depressions, and restore progress.
The United Nations’ renamed World Social Report 2020
(WSR 2020) argued that income inequality is rising in most developed countries, and some middle-income countries, including China, the world’s fastest growing economy in recent decades.
While overall inter-country inequalities may have declined owing to the rapid growth of economies like China, India and East Asia, national inequalities have been growing for much of the world’s population, generating resentment.
The World Bank has finally given up defending its controversial, but influential Doing Business Report
(DBR). In August, the Bank “paused” publication of the DBR due to a “number of irregularities
” after its much criticized ranking system was exposed as fraudulent.
US third quarter GDP numbers released two weeks ago delighted stock markets and President Trump. Output had picked up by 7.4%, annualised as 33.1%, the largest quarterly economic growth on record, almost double the old record of 3.9% (annualised as 16.7%) in the first quarter of 1950, seven decades ago.
After accusing the World Health Organization (WHO) of pro-China bias, President Donald Trump announced US withdrawal
from the UN agency. Although the US created the UN system for the post-Second World War new international order, Washington has often had to struggle in recent decades to ensure that it continues to serve changing US interests.
The World Bank leadership must urgently abandon its ‘Maximizing Finance for Development
’ (MFD) hoax. Instead, it should resume its traditional multilateral development bank role of mobilizing funds at minimal cost to finance developing countries.
Developing country debt has continued to grow
rapidly since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis (GFC). Warnings against debt
have been reiterated by familiar prophets of debt doom such as new World Bank chief economist, Carmen Reinhart
, once dubbed the ‘godmother of austerity
International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has warned
that developing countries would need more than the earlier estimated
US$2.5 trillion to provide relief to affected families and businesses and expedite economic recovery.
With uneven progress in containing contagion, worsened by the breakdown in multilateral cooperation due to mounting US-China tensions, recovery from the Covid-19 recessions of the first half of 2020 is now expected to be more gradual than previously forecast
Pandemic response measures
In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, many governments, especially of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) economies, have introduced massive fiscal and monetary packages for contagion containment, relief and recovery.
Covid-19 is expected to take a heavy human and economic toll on developing countries, not only because of contagion in the face of weak health systems, but also containment measures which have precipitated recessions, destroying and diminishing the livelihoods of many.
The recent explosion of private finance has nursed the hope
, dream or illusion that it can be mobilized for the public good, e.g., to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, associated with Agenda 2030. However, such hopes ignore how changes in financial investing have deeply transformed corporations, national economies and prospects for the world economy and social progress.
In his early February annual State of the Union address
, US President Donald Trump typically hailed his own policies for increasing wages and jobs to achieve record low US unemployment. Directly appealing to labour for a second term, Trump claimed exclusive credit for the US “blue-collar boom”.
Seventy-five years ago, on 26 June 1945, before the Japanese surrender ending the Second World War, fifty nations gathered at San Francisco’s Opera House to sign the United Nations (UN) Charter
Over the course of his presidency, US President Donald Trump’s racism
has become more evident with more leaks of his private remarks, which he has been generally quick to deny, qualify and explain away.
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The upside of the lockdowns sparked by Covid-19 has been the dramatic clearing of the air as the level of pollutants from industry and transport dropped dramatically, setting a target we should aim to maintain when the pandemic is over.
In theory, this is possible and business analyst Dr Lee-Ann Terblanche believes it is achievable to reduce carbon emissions by as much as 46% by subscribing to four main pillars of operation to reduce carbon emissions from road freight transportation: moving freight from road to rail, introducing efficiencies in the logistical route or network, introducing operational and mechanical efficiencies and developing a culture of compliance with the industry’s self-regulation scheme, the Road Transport Management System (RTMS).
According to Eckart Zollner, Business Development Head at EDS Systems, road transport is a major source of air pollution that harms human health and the environment. Vehicles emit a range of pollutants including nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM).
In addition to vehicle emissions, household fuels, oil refineries, cement producers and coal mining are also significant contributors to air pollution. The World Health Organisation estimates air pollution results in 20 000 deaths a year in South Africa alone.
“Scary numbers” he says. “What’s even scarier is the fact we are considered the world’s 14th largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and while the majority of our CO2 emissions result from our overreliance on coal, the road freight industry has a lot to answer for.”
By implementing a framework of decarbonisation, companies can visualise carbon footprint, monitor and manage the effectiveness of interventions and reduce their carbon emissions and save nearly R1,5-billion on carbon taxes in South Africa.
“However, in order to start reducing carbon emissions, logistics and freight companies first need to know what their output on Greenhouse Gas (GHS) emissions are in order to put a plan of action together. Yet this can be a difficult and complicated task.”
In case freight and logistics companies were tempted to disregard their environmental responsibilities, the South African government has implemented the Carbon Tax Act, which levies a charge on carbon-heavy businesses. This seeks to incentivise reluctant industries to implement measures that will reduce their carbon footprint in order to reduce their carbon tax liability.
Although the carbon tax filing and payment deadline has been extended for three months in an effort to stabilise the economy, the tax will still be enforced going forward. Non-compliance is an issue the South African Revenue Service will not take lightly.
“To reduce the administrative burden of calculating their tax liability and visualising their carbon footprint, transport industry players should be smart about their use of technology in achieving their objectives,” says Eckhart.
“Carbon tax analytics tools are indispensable in accurately assessing tax liability based on the organisation’s carbon footprint. These tools provide a detailed visualisation of emission sources. Using an analytics-driven calculator, businesses can upload their process or emissions data in order to obtain a clear overview of their carbon footprint, and an accurate assessment of their liability, taking into account offset discounts.”
With exorbitantly high emission levels equivalent to 16,8-million tonnes, research has shown this can be almost halved through the implementation of a decarbonisation plan. This is an opportunity for businesses to shake the business-as-usual mindset.
“Given the gravity of the climate crisis we are trying to avert, change is unavoidable and must be embraced instead. Not only will decarbonisation strategies improve the environmental efficiency of each business, it is also an opportunity to improve operational efficacy and to investigate outdated business practices.
“While this might be costly to achieve in the short term, the risk and cost of doing nothing is far higher. The benefits of environmental and operational efficiency will ultimately have a positive effect on profitability and business sustainability in the form of lowered costs and enhanced productivity, essentially achieving more with less.”
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- What are examples of capital improvements?
- Are buildings depreciable assets?
- Is a building a capital asset?
- What is included in a renovation?
- What is the purpose of renovation?
- Are renovations an asset or expense?
- Is building improvements a fixed asset?
- What is difference between renovation and renovation?
- Is it better to build a house or renovate?
- Is painting an expense or capital improvement?
- Can renovation costs be capitalized?
- Is fencing a fixed asset?
- What costs can be capitalized when an asset is acquired?
- What are some examples of land improvements?
- What type of expense is renovation?
What are examples of capital improvements?
For example, building a deck, installing a hot water heater, or installing kitchen cabinets are all capital improvement projects.
Repairing a broken step, replacing a thermostat on a hot water heater, or painting existing cabinets are all examples of taxable repair and maintenance work..
Are buildings depreciable assets?
Depreciable property includes machines, vehicles, office buildings, buildings you rent out for income (both residential and commercial property), and other equipment, including computers and other technology.
Is a building a capital asset?
A capital asset is generally owned for its role in contributing to the business’s ability to generate profit. … On a business’s balance sheet, capital assets are represented by the property, plant, and equipment (PP&E) figure. Examples of PP&E include land, buildings, and machinery.
What is included in a renovation?
In a renovation, a kitchen remains a kitchen and a bedroom remains a bedroom, but repairs and updates are made. This generally includes such things as painting, installing new flooring, and switching out items like cabinet knobs and faucets. Renovation also includes structural rebuilding.
What is the purpose of renovation?
Renovation refers to the process carried out to upgrade an existing structure to improve performance by either altering the scope of structure, providing additional facilities or improving existing facilities.
Are renovations an asset or expense?
4. Renovation, Remodeling, Additions and Improvements. These categories may be considered as betterments which are expenditures having the effect of extending the useful life of an existing fixed asset. Capitalization Guidelines: Expenditures in this category costing $75,000 or less should not be capitalized.
Is building improvements a fixed asset?
Movable property consists of those capital assets that are not fixed or stationary in nature. They are those assets that are not land, land improvements, buildings, building improvements, or infrastructure. In general, movable property includes furniture & fixtures, machinery and equipment, and automobiles.
What is difference between renovation and renovation?
The words “renovate” and “remodel” are often used interchangeably when it comes to real estate, contracting, and interior design. … Essentially, the difference between them is that a renovation refers to restoring something to a previous state, while a remodel refers to creating something new.
Is it better to build a house or renovate?
When you want to build new, which is not cheaper than your remodel option, you’ll see a better lifetime value if you’re not planning to move. … Most people save money with the cost of a single construction event instead of paying for multiple, individual remodeling projects over a longer period.
Is painting an expense or capital improvement?
Painting is usually a repair. You don’t depreciate repairs. … However, if the painting directly benefits or is incurred as part of a larger project that’s a capital improvement to the building structure, then the cost of the painting is considered part of the capital improvement and is subject to capitalization.
Can renovation costs be capitalized?
Building improvements, such as major office renovations, should also be capitalized. Small maintenance projects should not be capitalized, however, but should rather be expensed as a period cost.
Is fencing a fixed asset?
Include expenditures that add functionality to a parcel of land, such as irrigation systems, fencing, and landscaping. Leasehold improvements. These are improvements to leased space that are made by the tenant, and typically include office space, air conditioning, telephone wiring, and related permanent fixtures.
What costs can be capitalized when an asset is acquired?
If a company borrows funds to construct an asset, such as real estate, and incurs interest expense, the financing cost is allowed to be capitalized. Also, the company can capitalize on other costs, such as labor, sales taxes, transportation, testing, and materials used in the construction of the capital asset.
What are some examples of land improvements?
Examples of land improvements include paved parking areas, driveways, fences, outdoor lighting, and so on. Land improvements are recorded separately from land, because land improvements have a limited life and are depreciated. Land is assumed to last indefinitely and will not be depreciated.
What type of expense is renovation?
A capital expense generally gives a lasting benefit or advantage. For example, the cost of putting vinyl siding on the exterior walls of a wooden property is a capital expense. Renovations and expenses that extend the useful life of your property or improve it beyond its original condition are usually capital expenses.
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Table of Contents
You may be wondering what the electricity tariff history in your country is, particularly if you live in Singapore. This article will go into some detail about this topic, so you can better understand the electricity tariff history.
Singapore is a nation that depends heavily on electricity. Almost all major domestic appliances such as washing machines, air conditioners, and computers are powered by electricity. This reliance on electricity for the nation’s daily life has prompted the government to create a detailed electricity tariff for the country’s power users.
Knowing the Electricity Tariff History
In Singapore, the electricity tariff is computed using a formula that varies from one area to another. There are two parts to the price calculation, which is the retail cost and the electricity consumption per kilowatt-hour.
To be sure that the electric bill is within budget, it is advisable to check how much electricity one needs each month and how much one needs to pay for a given hour of use. Once this is done, you can easily identify the average electricity usage in any given period.
Singaporean electricity tariffs are part of a large number of similar electrical tariff comparison reports being circulated in Asia. Singapore and other Asian countries are competitive concerning electricity tariffs.
If you are a customer in Singapore, you should check out what are the best deals for your electricity tariff. It is important to note that electricity prices vary widely from area to area.
Understanding the Electricity Tariff History
The electricity tariff history is indeed important because it decides the rate at which electricity is sold to consumers. Each area will be able to offer customers different rates of electricity.
A standard electricity tariff can vary from ten dollars per kilowatt-hour in some areas to twenty dollars per kilowatt-hour in others. Some areas may be as low as four dollars and five dollars per kilowatt-hour, while some areas may be up to fifty dollars per kilowatt-hour.
Because of these variations, the electricity tariff history is not uniform, as each tariff will come with its version of the rates for electricity. While this is an inconvenience for a customer, it is important to remember that the charges differ from area to area.
Additional Detailed Power Information
In Singapore, the charges are intended to make sure that people will be able to pay a reasonable amount for electricity. The pricing of electricity for each area is taken into consideration when the prices are set.
While electricity tariffs are a way for the government to ensure that electricity prices are fair and equitable, there is a concern that the charging rates are not very beneficial to customers. There is a great deal of competition between providers, and the amount of money that customers are paying for their electricity is no longer a level playing field.
With the rise of electricity tariffs in Singapore, consumers need to know what they are getting into before deciding whether or not to sign up for their electricity. Electricity tariffs in Singapore are different from the tariffs in other countries because of the limitations imposed by the government.
It is important to be aware of these restrictions when choosing an electricity tariff in Singapore. If you are a Singapore resident and you want to know more about the options that you have, you should know the type of electricity tariffs that you can get in Singapore. Each of these tariffs is based on how much power you will be paying.
Now that you know more information about what goes into the electricity tariff history, you might be interested in learning more about power usage in Singapore. This information can be had by one of the leading power companies in Singapore, Senoko Power Station. It’s the largest power station based in Singapore and has been around since 1976.
Most of the time, the charging rates are higher in Singapore than in other countries. This means that a higher amount of money is going to the lowest bidder, which means that the average person who only pays a couple of dollars per kilowatt-hour is paying too much for their electricity. Know the right information so you can make the best decision with your purchase.
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Summer 2019 – Staying Power
Puerto Rico’s financial cooperatives led the economic recovery after Hurricane María
By Pablo DeFilippi and René Vargas Martínez
In September 2017, Hurricane María’s category-5 winds and torrential rains ravaged Puerto Rico. Basic infrastructure was destroyed; water and electricity were disabled. Downed power lines and fallen branches blocked roads, isolating rural communities. Electronic payment systems were offline, and businesses that were able to open their doors only accepted cash. Food, water and gasoline were scarce. The aftermath of the storm was chaotic, costing Puerto Rico’s economy more than $139 billion.1
In the days that followed, Puerto Rico’s financial cooperatives immediately responded, becoming critical to the survival of the island’s underserved communities in a time of crisis. Now — stronger than ever — these cooperatives are poised to transform the island’s economy.
An integrated cooperative ecosystem
Puerto Rico has an extensive network of community-owned financial cooperatives deeply rooted in its rural communities, where most traditional financial institutions do not have a presence. These institutions promote financial inclusion through affordable banking services and access to credit. Today, there are 113 state-chartered financial cooperatives and nine federal credit unions on the island. As a whole, Puerto Rico’s financial cooperative system has $8.8 billion in community-owned assets and over 1 million member-owners.2
Puerto Rico’s cooperative movement has existed for more than a century, but the cooperative way of life can be traced back to the Taíno Indians, who organized collectively to fulfill their basic needs. It wasn’t until the 19th century that the cooperative principles took hold in Puerto Rico. The first cooperative on the island was established in 1873, when it was still a Spanish territory. The “Los Amigos del Bien Público” used collective savings to help members during difficult times, such as health crises or deaths in the family. The cooperative also offered financial education and other services to its members.
After the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico experienced a lull in cooperative development due to changes in colonial administration. But in 1906, Puerto Rican lawyer and politician Rosendo Matienzo Cintrón established the framework for a cooperative movement and, in 1920, the House of Delegates approved the first law that established the structure and operation of consumer cooperatives in Puerto Rico. In the 1940s, consumer cooperatives expanded in rural towns and cities across the island. In 1946, the General Law of Cooperatives of Puerto Rico was approved and, in 1948, the Puerto Rico League of Cooperatives was established.3
Puerto Rico’s financial cooperative system has $8.8 billion in communityowned assets and over 1 million member-owners.
The cooperative business model enjoyed support from prominent institutional and political figures in Puerto Rico who actively promoted the movement and even helped establish cooperatives across the island. These men and women were the most important political figures of the era, and are still remembered today. The Catholic Church, too, played a pivotal role in promoting the cooperative philosophy early on, helping create more than 35 cooperatives across the island.
After these breakthroughs, the expansion of the cooperative movement in Puerto Rico was unstoppable. Additional laws were approved to regulate all sectors and types of cooperatives. A cooperative bank, Bancoop, was created to support cooperative activities. Cooperative loan funds such as Fidecoop4 were also established, along with other institutions that are now central to the cooperative movement.
This strong cooperative tradition, rooted in more than a century of growth and development, has created an integrated cooperative ecosystem. Financial, worker, service and housing cooperatives work together to help finance and promote one other. They also invest in new cooperatives structures and maintain joint ventures that serve the movement as a whole. There is a cooperative loan fund for new co-op development, two cooperative insurance companies, co-op supermarkets and pharmacies. This vast cooperative ecosystem sustains itself and works for the benefit of the communities in which it operates.
What makes Puerto Rican financial cooperatives unique
Financial cooperatives in Puerto Rico are very similar to credit unions in the U.S. They were organized with the same mission: To serve people who have been excluded from the financial mainstream and offer quality community-owned financial services. Members of financial cooperatives are called socios and, just like credit unions on the mainland, they are member-owners. Yet there is a distinct difference between the two models.
In a credit union, members deposit their money in regular shares. By doing so, they are owners of one share of the credit union, and can run or vote for their respective board. Members of financial cooperatives also deposit money in regular shares, but in order to maintain their membership, they must also make monthly deposits to a restricted share account. These shares are separate from regular shares deposits, and are called acciones. This contribution is considered restricted capital, and if the financial cooperative is profitable, the members get a percentage of their shares. Members can also apply for low interest loans based on their restricted share balance, and part of the interest they pay goes to this account. They can withdraw their shares if they decide to end their membership in the cooperative, or if they have a financial emergency.
This difference is key because it means members of financial cooperatives have a vested financial interest in their institutions. They actively participate in the development of the financial cooperative by attending annual meetings and engaging in lively debates about the cooperative’s financial well-being and its new initiatives. They consider the financial cooperative to be their property. This sense of ownership means the employees and executives who work at the financial cooperative are hyper-focused on the members and communities they serve.
Financial cooperatives during and after Hurricane María
Financial cooperatives’ response to Hurricane María was multi-pronged. Telecommunications systems were down, representing a challenge to financial cooperatives whose members depended on direct deposit and ACH transfers to access desperately-needed funds. To ensure that these electronic deposits were processed, local financial cooperatives each sent a representative—in many cases, their CEO—to the National Cooperative Bank in San Juan, where ACH transfers are cleared, with a thumb drive to exchange the ACH files. This strategy was critical during the first three weeks after the storm, when most communications systems were down.
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- Project plans
- Project activities
- Legislation and standards
- Industry context
Last edited 01 Dec 2020
Traditionally, in Scotland, a feu charter was a document that would create a new feu – a feu being the most common form of land tenure in Scotland. It held that the tenure of land was held in perpetuity in return for a continuing annual fee (feu) paid to the landowner. Conveyancing in Scottish was dominated by feudalism from the Middle Ages until the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000.
A feu charter created a feudal relationship between those selling and those buying a property. The theory behind the feudal system was that all land was ultimately held by the Crown, and the majority of people ‘held’ their land from someone of greater nobility (known as the vassal) to whom they had to provide a fee, goods or a service. The vassal would have a similar obligation to a lord or the monarch.
The vassal, who granted a feu charter to the grantee, would retain an interest in the property, known as the superiority (or dominium directum). This meant that instead of selling the property outright, they would retain the right to impose and enforce conditions over it. Provided that they did not breach any of the charter’s conditions, the grantee had the right of dominium utile – to possess the property.
Prohibitions were often placed on the use of property, such as causes of nuisance or anti-social practices. There could also be limits on the height of buildings, the activities that could be carried out, rights to minerals, instructions on how the building should be designed and maintained and so on.
The clause in the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000 which brought the feudal system to end read:
Since this time, feudal burdens have not been enforceable, although, whilst the Land Register could remove them, they have tended not to do so. This is because, in theory, where burdens are common to a group of similar buildings, they could be enforceable by neighbours, although it is likely that in practice the burdens could be extinguished.
In April 2019, the Scottish Law Commission suggested that the legislation providing a legal basis for real burdens (section 53 of the Title Conditions (Scotland) Act 2003) following the abolition of feudal tenure was too difficult to apply and needed be reformed. Ref https://www.scotlawcom.gov.uk/files/8515/5542/7539/Report_on_Section_53_of_the_Title_Conditions_Scotland_Act_2003_Report_254.pdf
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Despite their varied nature, when viewed as a whole, the mechanisms at work in 2015 in international finance were so significant that they could alter the entire architecture of the global financial system in 2016. And it is unlikely that there is along period of transition ahead. Chances are that the global financial transformation will happen quickly and dramatically.
These days are very reminiscent of the 1930s-1940s. At that time, the global economic crisis triggered several events, such as the economic and financial disintegration of the world, the fragmentation of the global financial system into currency zones and blocs, and the erosion of global trade and other forms of international economic ties. The monetary and financial disintegration was only halted in the summer of 1944 at the international conference at Bretton Woods, where the decision was made to establish a global monetary system based on gold and the US dollar. Shifting the global monetary and financial system to this new mode required a 15-year cycle of work, beginning with the onset of the crisis in October 1929. And even after the Bretton Woods conference, at least another five years passed before the new system was operational. Overall, the transition cycle to move the system from its old state to its new one took about two decades.
Now fast forward to our era. The starting point of the transition of the global financial system to its new role can be dated to 2007, when the global financial crisis began. Almost nine years have passed since then. The beginning of the “new era” of global finance can be seen as the point at which the process of financial globalization came to an end, and it was no longer possible to build the Tower of Babel of global debt any further. A retrenchment began, which took the form of a crisis, and multitude of “excessive” debts burned up in its flames.
The first wave of the financial crisis (2007-2009) has already led to significant financial disintegration worldwide. But judging by the statistics from the International Monetary Fund, the Bank for International Settlements, and other international institutions, higher levels of trading were seen on global financial markets in 2015 than in 2007. According to the assessments by the renowned consulting firm McKinsey & Co., debt in early 2015 also surpassed its pre-crisis levels –worldwide as well as in individual countries and groups of countries. McKinsey & Co. identified three potential epicenters of the second wave of the global financial crisis – the US, the European Union, and China. The world is anxiously awaiting an imminent financial tsunami. Worrying signs emerged in August in China, where the stock market indices began to fall sharply. Chinese officials succeeded in halting the destructive developments (primarily through direct administrative actions), but the bubble in the Chinese stock market hasn’t gone anywhere.
Bubbles in the financial markets continued to expand in 2015 in the US and EU as well. This is the first time that the world of global finance has been faced with bubbles that have been growing for so long, and it can be explained by the fact that the central banks’ printing presses have been working more energetically than ever before. Plus, the Federal Reserve, ECB, and other central banks in the industrialized world have been keeping their interest rates close to zero. This kind of free money was not available even at the height of the economic crisis in the 1930s.
Many experts had predicted other upheavals for last year as well, including the collapse of the dollar-based system, the full or partial destruction of the eurozone (the exit of a number of countries from the euro area), a full-fledged default in Ukraine, the paralysis of the International Monetary Fund, the dissolution of the G20, etc. Most of these predictions did not come true in 2015, but no one has given up on them – they have simply been held over until 2016.
Allow me to briefly characterize what I feel are the most important events in the life of international finance in 2015.
1. The end of the London Gold Fix on March 20, which had existed intermittently since 1919, and the transition to a new system for determining prices for gold. This event has not yet had a very significant impact on gold prices, but its effects will be felt in the future.
2. The announcement by Greece that it was defaulting on its obligations to the International Monetary Fund (it did not make its scheduled payment of approximately 300 million euros). In July Greece again defaulted and the fund did not receive about 1.5 billion euros that had been slated for debt repayment. In August, after negotiations between the Greek government and the Big Three creditors (the ECB, European Commission, and the IMF), an agreement was reached to provide Greece with a third bailout package worth 85.5 billion euros. That package will be distributed over the course of three years, assuming that Greece does not deviate in any way from its program of austerity, reforms, and privatization of state assets (totaling 6.2 billion euros).
3. The creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). China spearheaded the project and is its biggest shareholder. The first phase of its creation ended in the spring of 2015. A total of nearly sixty states have joined the bank. It is worthy of note that 20 of these states lie outside of Asia (including the United Kingdom and some other major European countries). In reality, the AIIB is not a regional organization, but a global one. The bank should begin its operations in 2016.
4. China’s yuan acquired the status of an official reserve currency. That decision was made by the International Monetary Fund on Nov. 30. The yuan became the fifth official reserve currency, joining the US dollar, euro, Japanese yen, and British pound sterling. It is telling that based on the weight set for it, the yuan was immediately ranked third in the IMF’s basket of reserve currencies, ahead of the yen and pound sterling.
5. The change to some of the basic principles of the International Monetary Fund. Dec. 8 decision allows the fund to finance countries that do not meet their obligations to their sovereign (official) creditors. The fund’s decision was timed to coincide with the impending Dec. 20, 2015 repayment of Ukraine’s debt to Russia. On one hand, the fund’s decision encouraged Ukraine not to meet its obligations to Russia; but on the other hand, it also shattered decades-old precepts that guide the work of global finance.
6. The Dec. 18 announcement by officials in Kiev of a moratorium on the repayment of Russia’s $3 billion loan. For all intents and purposes, this means a full-fledged default by Ukraine. After the New Year’s holidays, the story of Ukraine’s default will probably blow up in the global media.
7. Congressional approval in the US of the budget for the next fiscal year. Washington passed a spending package that includes an important clause agreeing to reforms for the International Monetary Fund (the review of the quotas of capital and voting shares assigned to its member countries, as well as the doubling of the fund’s capital). This was a significant event, since the decision to reform the fund had been approved back in 2010, but had been blocked by the United States for five years.
8. On Dec. 17, the IMF’s managing director, Christine Lagarde was summoned to appear in a French court. She is suspected of abusing her official position when she served as finance minister under President Nicolas Sarkozy. This démarche against Christine Lagarde looks like psychological pressure against the fund’s highest officer in order to make the IMF a more obedient tool in the hands of Washington.
My list of events is quite varied. Many of them might not currently seem very significant. For example – the elimination of the famous London Gold Fix. Outwardly, this even looks like a weakening of the role of gold in international finance. However, this is merely an issue of the reorganization of the system for managing the global market for the yellow metal, under the auspices of the same Rothschild family.
The biggest struggle for influence in the world of international finance will develop between Washington, which is attempting to salvage the dollar system, and Beijing, which is trying to squeeze American banks and corporations out of global financial markets. Some experts see this confrontation as a tussle between the two biggest clans of money masters – the Rockefellers, who are using the state power of the US, and the Rothschilds, who are seeking to establish control over China.
Returning to potential changes in the global monetary and financial system, I cannot rule out the fragmentation of a unified system into separate zones and blocs, which is exactly what happened in the late 1930s, on the eve of World War II. At that time trade and economic ties within the zones and blocs were maintained with the help of the currencies of the suzerain states (the British pound sterling, French franc, US dollar, etc.). Trade between the blocs fell by a huge ratio and inter-bloc ties were based on barter, clearing accounts, and gold.
The second wave of the global financial crisis will wreak only minimal damage on countries that are able to navigate the global financial chaos and protect their economies using import duties and restrictions on the cross-border movement of capital, sheltering themselves behind the walls of their regional economic, financial, and currency blocs.
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Imagine a situation in which you are presented with an Excel sheet in which a number of monetary values are placed in a certain column. You might need to convert the currency for all those values in the column and display them in a separate column. This could be important for financial organizations and those in import-export businesses. While many free and paid tools are available, which could help in converting currencies across columns directly, we will discuss the way to convert currencies in Microsoft Excel using a basic formula in this article.
Convert currencies in Excel
You can convert currencies like Dollar, Euro, Pound, INR, etc., in Microsoft Excel, without using a currency converter. Use this formula to get the work done.
To convert one currency to another currency, you would need to use 3 columns on the Excel sheet. The first column for the target currency, the second for the exchange rate and third for the converted currency.
The syntax of the formula to be used for currency conversion is as follows:
= <Location of the first cell>*$<Column for exchange rate>$<Row for exchange rate>
Where <Location of the first cell> is the location of the first cell in the column of cells with the monetary values of the target currency. <Column for exchange rate> and <Row for exchange rate> are the column letter and row number for the cell in which the exchange rate is mentioned.
Basically, this formula is for simple multiplication of the target currency with the exchange rate.
How to find the exchange rate between two currencies
Finding the exchange rate between two currencies is easy. Open Bing.com and search “first currency to second currency.” It would automatically display the exchange rate per unit of the first currency. Eg. If I search for “Dollar to Euro” in the Bing search bar, the converted value for $1 would be the exchange rate from Dollar to Euro.
Eg. Let us assume the following case. Suppose you have a column of values in dollars with the values placed from cell A3 to A7. You need the corresponding values in Euro in column C, starting from cell C3 to C7.
First, find the exchange rate using the currency convertor in Bing. Write the exchange rate in cell B3.
Now, write the formula = A3*$B$3 in the cell C3 and press Enter.
Click anywhere outside cell C3 and then back on cell C3 to highlight the Fill button. Pull down cell C3 till cell C7, and it would display all the values in Euro sequentially.
One of the difficulties with this method would be adding the currency unit. However, it is better than buying a paid tool specifically for the purpose.
Hope it helps!
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Human expectations occur in a ratio that approaches Phi.
Changes in stock prices largely reflect human opinions, valuations and expectations. A study by mathematical psychologist Vladimir Lefebvre demonstrated that humans exhibit positive and negative evaluations of the opinions they hold in a ratio that approaches phi, with 61.8% positive and 38.2% negative.
Phi and Fibonacci numbers are used to predict stocks
Phi (1.618), the Golden Mean and the numbers of the Fibonacci series (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, …) have been used with great success to analyze and predict stock market moves, known as retracements. Forbes ASAP featured a story on the work of scientist Stephen Wolfram in cellular automata (underlying rules that determine seemingly random phenomenon) stating “This seashell may hold the secret of stock market behavior, computers that think and the future of science.”
Markets may be as geometrically perfect as a spider’s web
Ermanometry Research shows the markets to be perfectly patterned, explaining that humans, being part of nature, create perfect geometric relationships in their behaviors, not unlike a spider spinning a geometrically perfect web with no conscious awareness of its amazing feat. Ermanometry applies the logarithmic spirals found in sea shells with dynamic ratios in 3D to relate one market move to others.
Phi, or Golden Ratio, patterns often define the timing of highs and lows and price resistance points
The golden ratio, or phi, appears frequently enough in the timing of highs and lows and price resistance points that adding this tool to technical analysis of the markets may help to identify fibonacci retracements, the key turning points in price movements. The photos below illustrate how the Golden Mean Gauge and Phi-based analysis software (PhiMatrix) can be used to identify these turns in the market. The middle arm of the gauge keeps the phi point of the outer arms as the gauge is opened and closed. The lines of the phi-based software are all in phi relationship to one another. The ratios of Fibonacci numbers, commonly used in technical market analysis, converge on phi as explained on the Fibonacci Series page. Click on each photo to enlarge.
|DJIA Daily Chart |
|DJIA Monthly Chart |
using a Golden
Phi and Fibonacci numbers define the price movements of stocks in Elliott Wave Theory
Fibonacci numbers were used by W.D Gann and R.N. Elliott, pioneers in technical analysis of the stock market. In Elliott Wave Theory, all major market moves are described by a five-wave series, adding to the potential to identify the turns described above. The classic Elliott Waveseries consists of an initial wave up, a second wave down (often retracing 61.8% of the initial move up), then the third wave (usually the largest) up again, then another retracement, and finally the fifth wave, which would exhaust the movement. In addition, each of the major waves (1, 3, and 5) could themselves be separated into subwaves, and so on, and exhibit other Fibonacci relationships.A sample stock price wave analysis could look something like this:
Major, minor and sub waves are shown in red, yellow and green, and the total number of increases and decreases (2, 5 or 8) is a Fibonacci number. Note too that the predicted end result is based in the Fibonacci series as well as the end price is 61.8% of the high and 0.618 is equal to 1/Φ and 0.382 is 1/Φ2.
For additional information on Elliott Wave Theory, its application and related concepts, please consult the resources below.
Elliott Wave Principle – Described as the “the definitive textbook on the Wave Principle,” this classic is the most useful and comprehensive guide to understanding and applying the Elliott Wave Principle. Click HERE to order.
Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction – Illustrates the historical correlation between patterned shifts in social mood and their most sensitive register, the stock market. It also includes essays, based on over 20 years of research, that correlates social mood trends to music, sports, corporate culture, peace, war and macroeconomic trends. Click HERE to order.
How to Forecast Gold & Silver Using the Wave Principle – Robert Prechter’s work in publishing specific gold and silver forecasts for 22 years during one of the metals’ most historically baffling periods and his correct calling of nearly every major turn and trend during that time. The years in question ran from 1979-2001, a period book-ended by gold’s $850 all-time high in 1980, and its low near $250 in 2001. “How to Forecast Gold and Silver” will shows what matters and what doesn’t when you want to invest in precious metals, looking in one place to predict where precious metals would go: to those markets themselves, and how to do it right.
Other books click HERE.
Tutorials / extracts
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The World Bank has predicted that by 2030, about nine out of 10 extremely poor people in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa, which includes Nigeria and others.
The Bretton Woods institution, which gave its forecast in its report named Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018, affirmed that the forecast for 2018 suggested that Nigeria would take over from India as the country with the poorest people.
According to the report, the rate of extreme poverty and the number of poor in South Asia, which has been constantly declining, would continue, resulting in a shift in poverty from South Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa.
“In a sign of change, however, forecasts for 2018 suggest that India’s status as the country with the most poor is ending; Nigeria either already is, or soon will be, the country with the most poor people.
“By 2030, the portion of the poor living in Sub-Saharan Africa could be as large as 87 percent on the basis of historical growth rates,” the new report noted.
The World Bank in this report themed: “Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle,” stated that, even if every other country in the world had zero extreme poverty by 2030, the average rate in Sub-Saharan Africa would have to decrease from the 2015 rate of 41 percent to about 17 percent for the global average to be 3 percent.
The World Bank lamented that, the huge progress against poverty in other regions contrasted sharply with the much slower pace of poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa. It explained that extreme poverty is becoming more concentrated there because of the region’s slower rates of growth, problems caused by conflict and weak institutions, and a lack of success in channeling growth into poverty reduction.
The number of people living in poverty in the region has grown from an estimated 278 million in 1990 to 413 million in 2015. Whereas the average poverty rate for other regions was below 13 percent as of 2015, it stood at about 41 percent in sub-Saharan Africa. Of the world’s 28 poorest countries, 27 are in sub-Saharan Africa, all with poverty rates above 30 percent. In short, extreme poverty is increasingly becoming a sub-Saharan African problem,” the report noted.
“African countries have struggled partly because of their high reliance on extractive industries that have weaker ties to the incomes of the poor, the prevalence of conflict, and their vulnerability to natural disasters such as droughts.
Despite faster growth in some African economies, such as Burkina Faso and Rwanda, the region has also struggled to improve shared prosperity.
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This note examines the latest OECD data (Taxing Wages 2014-2015) on the progressivity1 of the Irish income tax system in comparison with other OECD countries. It finds that according to OECD measures the Irish system is the most progressive and that taxes in Ireland are relatively low on those with average incomes and below.
Ireland has the most progressive income tax system (including employee social insurance contributions) in the EU. The tax paid by a single person on two-thirds average earnings(average earnings are just under €35,000) is the fifth lowest in the OECD (out of 34 countries) after Mexico, Chile, Korea and Israel. If raised to Danish levels a single person in Ireland would pay almost €4,700 more in tax on an income of about €23,000.
The tax paid by a single person on average earnings is the 27th highest in the OECD. A single worker on an average income pays about €14,600 in income tax and social insurance contributions in Belgium compared to over €6,850 in Ireland a difference of over €7,750.
The tax paid by a single person on one and two-thirds average earnings (€58,000) pays €18,700 in tax which is slightly above the OECD average. A person at the same income level in Belgium would pay €28,500 in tax- just under €10,000 more.
A major reason for the relatively low direct tax burden in Ireland is that PRSI is lower here. In many countries PRSI funds pay-related unemployment and pension benefits while the Irish system provides flat-rate benefits only. Irish employees (and their employers) have to fund supplementary pensions separately. For example, Irish employees pay about €2 billion (after tax relief) towards their pensions annually. In many higher tax countries, these are funded through the tax system.
If we look at the tax payable (excluding PRSI), the tax paid by a single person on one and two-thirds average earnings is the 9th highest in the OECD .
Marginal Tax Rates
How do marginal tax rates in Ireland compare with other countries ? For a single person on two-thirds average earnings, the marginal rate in Ireland is 31 per cent compared with an OECD average of 32.1 per cent. The UK rate is 32 per cent. We are the 20th highest in the OECD at this level of income where rates range up to 55 per cent found in Belgium.
At average earnings a single person in Ireland faces a marginal tax rate of 51 per cent: the third highest in the OECD (average 36.2 per cent). Again Belgium is the highest at 55 per cent while the UK rate is 32 per cent.
At one and two thirds average earnings, the marginal rate of tax in Ireland (51 per cent) is the 8th highest in the OECD and significantly above the OECD average of 40 per cent. Belgium is highest at almost 60 per cent and the UK is at 42 per cent.
If we compare Ireland with other countries, the problem is not so much the level of income tax that we pay, but rather than the top marginal rate applies at a relatively low level of income.
Source: Taxing Wages 2014-2015, OECD 2016
1 The measure of the progressivity of the tax system is obtained by comparing the tax due by a single person on 67% of average income with that payable on 167% of average income. Tax includes income tax, universal social charge and employee social security, contributions.
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There are various finance degree programs around which provides you various kinds of qualifications. Using the right program will grant you best use of the ideal job. Plus, knowing which program can help you choose which finance degree schools you can look at. Essentially, the kind of program that you select depends upon your current education status along with the career goals you aspire to achieve.
In many careers in finance, you will require no less than a bachelor’s degree, the undergraduate foundational study. Using the bachelor’s degree in finance, you will be educated on using complex statistical reasoning, detailed analysis, and technological skills. While students having a business or economic bachelor’s degree may also pursue the finance line, getting a bachelor in finance particularly concentrates on finance, allowing students to gain access to to more in-depth understanding and skills on the bottom. The program can require 4 years to accomplish.
The Master of business administration in finance is a well-liked selection of a graduate degree to pursue for a better job into managing positions. Some may also take this degree so they’re in a position to learn other facets of business too, allowing them to utilize their available finance skills in individuals areas. However, the Master’s amount of finance is really a more narrowed degree, concentrating on the advanced concepts in finance, and it is appropriate for individuals who’re interested in focusing on the finance alone.
Should you aspire to pursue an instructional career in teaching finance in college level, you are able to choose a PhD in finance. While other levels tend to be more practical and career-oriented, the doctorate concentrates on the greater theoretical aspects like financial methods and ideas. Throughout the many years of study, you will have to conduct researches on topics that may evolve a business, like financial modeling or financial management.
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A central business banking system allowed issuing of capital and underwriting associated with low interest rate funding to countries around this world is quite possible in this new fiscal surroundings connected with Market Internationalization, Great Capitalization and Rising Production as soon as all these new improvements are capitalized by this almost all developed countries simply by imposing new economic regulations and demands to the rest of the earth to boost the much less developed and developing markets’ “security” and make these kind of “markets” play under this same guidelines, but very first, these fiscal, business enterprise and other financial regulations should be implemented by the most made countries and markets their selves (as explained around Portion Economics-Philosophy of typically the Economy’s articles). The key bank lending strategy is to help finance not just less developed and developing places and markets but as well any market which existing projects complying with this common policies of World-wide development such as environmental protection, replenishable energies, and many others.
World Bank, IMF and even WTO we all know well occur and do what exactly they are believed and tell to complete: give on high interest rates around tight deficit, social costs and infrastructural matrix; these types of kinds of policies were being very well justified by:
Initially, political electoral division in a new Cold conflict World, remoteness and politics struggles, distance, isolation, unapproachability and socialization created oftentimes great instability and disturbances of global relations to the extend associated with disrupting paybacks of foreign loans.
Second, closed and self-employed market structures such as Communist of Eastern Stop nations around the world and China, or even often the constantly changing market structures of South America, Parts of asia and Africa shifting quit or right triggered regular inflations and various other economics turbulences as numerous of these less developed in addition to undeveloped markets got very diverse system of economics consequently effected the wanted “security” for the financing institutions therefore the car finance rates were to be fixed high enough to help offset the projected danger.
Third, low work productivity plus marketplace remoteness could bring to a new less developed or even undeveloped country a “quick” switch to a recession in the event economic discipline is certainly not used
Which new economic improvements in the world are making low fees lending possible?
Obviously, the on-going market globalization plus rising productivity are location the prejudice in often the techniques of global progress where fresh possibilities connected with central bank loans using “controlled” deficit matrix in addition to “very low” rates of interest may be possible to be the fresh economic tools to get these kinds of global development of which could enable “quantum” leaps from underdevelopment onto large tech environmentally friendly enhancement; The new “Quantum Economics-Philosophy in the Economy” is definitely not only “production” related (tighten to) as the Marx’s systems are but that (Quantum Economics-Philosophy of typically the Economy” is related (tighten to) the money connected with (limited and controlled deficit) social and infrastructural charges, the return on this invested funds and the particular value of intellectual components.
What is “quantum leap” within “Quantum Economics-Philosophy associated with the Economy? Eyal nachum is definitely some sort of simple jump in fiscal enhancement based on “artificial (externally)” financed projects for virtually financing and loan maintenance environmentally friendly projects in a World-wide scale. Segment leap is financed by way of a capital issuing middle banking system more like the World Bank and IMF on a very poor interest rate, because of the particular enhanced “security” in the different Global marketplace. This particular funding is done and promoted through private commercial uses very low margin plus set matrix.
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While every country has a system in place of providing care for sick individuals there are extreme differences between how these systems manifest. For example, in Great Britain, healthcare is provided from governmental bodies. In turn, taxes are collected and specifically allotted to ensure that people receive the healthcare they need without paying exorbitant costs for insurance plans or, in some cases for individual procedures and services. While there are private options in place for people who wish to extend their healthcare beyond what the government provides, these plans are often costly and unnecessary for those who do not have complicated medical problems. In fact, the traditional system of healthcare is enough for over 90% of the population who do not choose to utilize any privatized insurance at all. In the context of this system, the government is also able to house a greater level of control on the costs of medical devices and advances. For example, no citizen pays more than $12 for prescriptions in Great Britain (National Center for Health Statistics, 2015). This is, of course, not handled the same way as it is in counties such as the United States where the majority of people receive healthcare through their workplace via a private company as opposed to via the government. Prescriptions in the United States can often cost upwards of hundreds of dollars even for those needed daily or those that are considered life saving. That is not to mention costly procedures and hospital visits that are not always covered by particular branches of private insurance.
While the healthcare system in the United States may not negatively affect people who are overall healthy with jobs that provide affordable access to healthcare, there are certain people in any population that deserve extra consideration when it comes to the issues of healthcare. For example, the United States has specific programs in place for young people, elderly people and those who cannot work due to unemployment. For example, young children are protected under the Medicaid system, a separate governmental branch of insurance that protect healthcare rights for young children. Medicaid allows young people to receive a range of services despite their parents socioeconomic or job status. Similarly elderly people who are retired or people with a disability, who are not able to work for a living can receive benefits in the United States through Medicare. This answers some of the problems of lacking insurance coverage in the U.S., the programs are still state specific, as the federal government doles out specific allowances to each state to manage their own program accordingly (Anderson, 1992). This also leads to disparities between the healthcare received by each state some, for example covering a larger percentage of durable medical equipment, others supporting preventive healthcare visits, and still others covering surgical procedures to a greater extent. Unfortunately this system leaves children and elderly people at the whim of the state they live on to determine in part how effective their healthcare coverage is. One staple consideration among states is that people who are married have different healthcare rights than those who are single. Married individuals can receive a variety of tax benefits including the ability to name one another for services in healthcare obtained from one spouse’s employment. This need not be a consideration in socialized medicine where everyone already receives care through the government.
This is in stark contrast to the British healthcare system in which an elderly person has the same access to treatment as a newborn. That is not to say that every single type of treatment is as effective as any other. Great Britain has often been criticized for its long wait lines, perhaps a consequence of the simple number of people the system is able to accommodate. Similarly, in the British system patients must first funnel through general practitioners and be sent to a specialist covered in their national system which, are the majority of center. In the United States the process may or may not be similar. For those people with an HMO plan, any specialist visit will require a script or referral to said specialist from a general physician. Individuals who opt for a PPO plan can often see a specialist without this added step. Finally, those people with pre-existing medical conditions in Great Britain will be covered as usual. In the United States, those people suffering from an illness or condition who did not have insurance used to suffer high penalties to enroll in health insurance, if a company would take them on at all. With the advent of Obamacare, this rule is no longer legal. Anyone who wants healthcare through Obamacare can receive it even if they have a preexisting condition.
Even though the United States may not have the most widely effective mechanism for healthcare, there are specific areas in which the country as a whole thrives. Cancer research is one area that has received an immense amount of new innovation in recent years (Rahib, Smith, Aizenberg, Rosenzweig, Fleshman & Matrisian, 2014). While known to be particularly astute in the United States compared to many other developed countries cancer treatment still has a standard in place in Great Britain. There are positive and negative aspects of universal healthcare just like any other. The most important thing is to remain considerate of other cultures so we can learn from one another about the best ways to promote health and longevity with the lowest costs and highest effectiveness possible.
- Anderson, O. W. (1992). Health care: can there be equity? The United States, Sweden, and England. Health care: can there be equity? The United States, Sweden, and England. Retrieved from: http://www.cabdirect.org/
- National Center for Health Statistics (US. (2015). Health, United States, 2014: With special feature on adults aged 55–64. Retrieved from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26086064
- Rahib, L., Smith, B. D., Aizenberg, R., Rosenzweig, A. B., Fleshman, J. M., & Matrisian, L. M. (2014). Projecting cancer incidence and deaths to 2030: the unexpected burden of thyroid, liver, and pancreas cancers in the United States. Cancer research, 74(11), 2913-2921.
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Here is your opportunity to dream! Choose a vacation destination anywhere in the world (to which you must fly) for a two week trip (assume you have vacation time from work to take the trip) that you would like to take exactly ten (10) years from today. This can either be an individual vacation, a couple trip or a family excursion, depending on your life circumstances. After you?ve picked your destination (dream big), determine the following:
- Travel expenses for all members of the group
- Lodging expenses for the entire time period of the trip
- Estimate of daily food expenses
- Make a list of activities that you would like to engage in every day of the trip. Determine a cost for each day?s activity list (for example, tickets to amusement parks, museum entrance fees, boat trips, scuba diving, deep sea fishing, entertainment venues, etc.)
- Make a list and associated cost estimate of any other expenses that you believe should be included in a total cost estimate for your vacation (e.g., pet boarding, house sitting, airport parking fees, etc.)
- Would only someone who makes a high income be able to afford this trip? Or would someone who makes the minimum wage be able to afford this trip?
NOTE: You must research all aspects of your list to substantiate your cost estimates; that is, you must demonstrate and/or document how you derived each cost estimate in the list.
After gathering and organizing all collected data, prepare a document describing your destination (including your reason for choosing that location), listing (and substantiating) all costs of the trip (this can be done in a table or bullet point format, but it must be clear and provide sufficient detail so that the reader understands your interest and passion for your vacation), and determining a total cost of your dream vacation from the time you leave to the time you return.
Assuming that your estimated total cost will grow by 2.5 percent per year (due to inflation), demonstrate how you would compute the expected future cost of your dream vacation.
Suppose that you can invest money every month into a fee free mutual fund and that this fund is expected to have a 10 percent nominal annual rate of return. Using your estimated future cost (including inflation) as a future value, determine the amount of money you must save each month for the next 10 years (i.e., 120 months) to achieve your goal. Then determine the monthly amount you must save if you delay your trip for an additional five years (that is, you will take the trip 15 years from today = 180 months) instead of 10 years from today (note: be sure to add 5 additional years of inflation to the estimated future cost). Write an explanation for your calculations so the reader is completely clear on how you derived your required monthly deposits.
Based on this numerical representation of your dream vacation, write a well contemplated critical analysis of your trip. For example, explore questions such as: is this something that you think is worth saving for, have you changed your mind after seeing the reality of the required sacrifice, are you rethinking the location or luxury level of your accommodations or daily outings, and so on.
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While household debt is still below its pre-crisis levels, it began to rise relative to incomes in early 2015 and remains high by historical and international standards, according to the Bank of England.
With the current uncertainty surrounding the economy following the EU referendum, there are concerns that household indebtedness could present a big risk to the UK economy.
So what do the statistics mean and just what impact could they have on the economy? A recent House of Commons briefing paper highlights the latest statistics and forecasts for household debt in the UK, including international comparisons, and the effects on the economy.
The level of household debt more than doubled from £725 billion in early 2000 to £1,600 billion in late 2008. The global financial crisis resulted in a decline in the household debt-to-income ratio, however, from 168% at its peak in early 2008 to just over 140% in recent years. The levels of debt have increased again over the last couple of years, with annual rates of growth of around 3% recorded since 2014.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts that the household debt-to-income ratio will increase in coming years, peaking at 167% at the start of 2020, close to the pre-recession peak. However, this has been revised down on earlier forecasts, such as December 2014, when it was forecast to reach just under 184%.
Despite these increases, the costs of household debt is expected to remain low relative to household income, and much lower than pre-recession levels, due to continued low interest rates. As a result, the debt burden is more affordable for households.
The negative effects of debt on individuals has been highly publicised, but low levels of household debt can also provide benefits to individuals and the economy, as highlighted in the briefing paper:
“It allows people to buy things, like a house, that they would not be able to pay for in one go, raising their standard of living. In other words, it allows people to smooth their consumption over time, including during periods when their incomes temporarily fall. This can provide stability to the economy.”
Consumer spending can obviously be good news for retailers and the high street and high levels of mortgage approvals is good for the housing market.
The paper highlights evidence that the accumulation of household debt from 1996 to 2003 contributed to economic growth, with indebted households adding roughly 0.35% points a year to overall consumer spending growth of about 4.5% per year over this period. So a total of 2.5% was added to the level of consumer spending from 1996 to 2003.
Nevertheless, higher levels of debt can make households more vulnerable if an economic downturn occurs. And as the briefing paper shows, the households most likely to have debt (excluding mortgages) are those in the lower wealth quintiles – who are already vulnerable.
As the Bank of England has warned, the ability of some households to service their debts would be challenged by a period of weaker employment and income growth, which could have a wider economic impact through reduced expenditure. And higher interest rates may also lead to further reductions.
This could then have a knock-on effect on businesses which, faced with reduced revenues, may have to cut back on costs such as labour costs by reducing wages or the workforce.
Indeed, research on the impact of household debt on the economy highlighted in the briefing paper suggests that large increases in household debt prior to recessions tend to lead to longer and more severe downturns. And this is as a result of households with high debt levels cutting back on their spending by more than other households during and after a recession.
According to a 2012 OECD working paper, high debt levels can create vulnerabilities by impairing the ability of households and companies to smooth their spending and investment. The paper also found that when household debt levels rise above trend, so does the likelihood of recession.
Other research has also found that large increases in household debt have preceded more severe and protracted recessions. And recovery following a recession was found to be typically slower in countries that carry the legacy of a large private credit boom.
So it would seem that perhaps a certain extent of household indebtedness is good for individuals and the economy, in terms of maintaining growth. But when it rises above a certain level in relation to incomes, the evidence suggests it becomes a serious concern.
And with the current economic uncertainty, increasing household debt isn’t something to be ignored.
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A brief vademecum to not be disorientated and to better know the world of the START-UP.
Unlike the incubator, that supports the startup in the phase of primordial growth, an accelerator supports the startup in its passage from startup to ripe enterprise. An accelerator can ask a share of the company in exchange for small financial backings and mentorship. Usually the programs of acceleration last more than those of incubation.
Break even Point
The business turnover that guarantees the coverage of fixed and variable costs and that the deficit is extinguished.
The “break-even” point is calculated in the following manner: the price of sale less the sum of the variable and fixed costs.
It’s the model with which the startup works and that it allows her to produce value in the time. The model with which the start-up works and that allows it to produce value in time. It consists in the explanation of the mechanism with which the start-up makes to interact with the following elements: Key Partner, Key Activity, Key-Resources, Value Proposition, Business Relations with the clients, market Channels, Clients' Segments, Structure costs and proceeds Flow. Usually, it is represented by the Business Model Canvas.
The description of the entrepreneurial idea (Business Model), a market research and the resources, the objectives of the firm and also the suitable measures and the key-passages (Milestones) of the business progress. This information is included in a global financial plan. Investors, banks and other Partners ask for these financial plans.
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Trading in the stock market involves a lot of factors and you should acquire deep knowledge of these factors to trade without any inconvenience. Initially, you should spare some time to understand the fundamental principles according to which the stock market works.
After that, you will have to open demat and trading accounts to participate in share trading. A demat account is where you will hold your shares and securities in electronic form whereas the trading account will provide a platform for selling and purchasing shares easily.
Although both these accounts help you to invest and trade in shares, they are quite different from each other. Let us analyze the difference between demat and trading account based on their functionality, use, and other aspects:
- The primary function of a demat account is to hold the securities in electronic form. It allows you to convert the physical shares into electronic form and similarly, physical certificates of electronic shares can be obtained easily with a demat account.
- On the other hand, without a trading account, it would be impossible to perform any transaction. This means that you will also need a trading account while buying or selling shares in the stock market.
- Whenever you buy or sell shares, they will be credited or debited from your demat account. You can also open a demat account with zero shares. Moreover, it enables you to store all the securities like mutual funds, ETFs, equities, bonds, etc. in one place.
- A trading account serves as a bridge between your demat and bank account. While buying shares, they get transferred to your demat account and the money will be deducted from your bank account.
- Similarly, while selling the shares, they will be transferred from the seller’s demat account and money will be credited in the bank account.
Let us learn this better with an example:
Suppose that you want to purchase shares from a specific company. Initially, you will place a ‘Buy’ order from your trading account. After that, the money will be deducted from your bank account and the request will be forwarded to the exchange. The trade will be executed, and you will receive the shares in your demat account, after T+2 days, where T is the day on which the order got executed.
Now, if you want to sell your shares then the shares will be transferred from your demat account by the broker. Once the trade is executed, the share will get credited to the demat account of the buyer and you will receive money in your trading account after T+2 days, where T is the day on which the order got executed. The transferred money can be further withdrawn to your bank account later.
To ensure smoother transfers, you will need the help of a depository partner or broker who is registered with a depository body. DPs offer depository services and demand brokerage fees in return.
Account maintenance charges and some other charges might be also levied every year. It is better to choose a broker who charges a fixed brokerage fee and provides a modern trading platform to track your investments.
Discount brokers are the ones who allow you to pick a subscription package as per the services and products you need. Modern-day brokers provide the facility of an app for easy access to trading options, yearly packages, and also help you to open an online demat and trading account at once.
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A state in which the price of a futures contract is lower than the eventual or expected spot price of the underlying commodity or security.
In the futures market, a situation in which the price of the nearest, or active contract, is higher than the price of contracts further in the future. Typically, prices increase as the delivery months extend into the future. Backwardation occurs because, as a commodity or financial instrument is held for a longer period of time, it carries charges (such as storage charges), interest expenses, and insurance that have to be paid. Backwardation occurs only in unusual circumstances. A current shortage of product is one situation in which backwardation occurs.
1991: gold has never gone into backwardation in any currency "” Reginald H. Howe, The Golden Sextant.
Origin of backwardation
- backward +"Ž -ation
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On November 18, 2015, the findings of the landmark Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services Global Financial Literacy Survey were released at Gallup headquarters in Washington, D.C. This is the most extensive measurement of financial literacy around the world.
The survey probes four basic financial concepts: numeracy, risk diversification, inflation, and compound interest. The data was collected in 2014 by Gallup as part of its Gallup World Poll survey and was analyzed by researchers from the World Bank and GFLEC. The survey results come from interviews conducted with more than 150,000 adults in 143 countries.
Director Lusardi joined a panel that discussed the survey findings and that included Jon Clifton, Managing Director, Global Analytics, Gallup; Leora Klapper, Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank; and Diane Vazza, Managing Director, Head of Global Fixed Income Research, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services. The panel was moderated by Jason Gold, Chief Operating Officer, McGraw Hill Financial Global Institute.
Click here to visit GFLEC’s webpage about the global survey and the event. You can also watch a short video in which Director Lusardi speaks about the survey, the key findings, and their implications.
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Guide to Saving for College
One of the traditional forms of financing a college education is savings. It is generally assumed that you will use saved money as part of your financial strategy for getting through college, and it is even possible (although difficult) to finance your entire education using saved money. This page will discuss some important tips on how to succeed in saving as part of your plan for college.
Many people preparing for higher education rely solely on grants, scholarships, and loans, but none of those resources is as secure or easy to obtain as money in the possession of you or your family. Some prospective students worry that having money saved at college time will disqualify them for financial aid, but that is not necessarily the case.
Remember, the less debt you incur in attending school, the sooner you can begin a debt-free life and enjoy the financial benefits of your professional education.
Before you begin to save toward your child's education (or your own education), it is important to have a clear plan and well-defined goals in mind. For instance, how much will tuition cost by the time your child goes to college, adjusting appropriately for inflation? Which schools should be included in that calculation? And how much money would you like to save by the time you help your child move into a dorm room?
A good way to start is to figure out the total amount you'll require and how much of that you can reasonably expect to save. If you decide to try to save this amount, you will then need to calculate how much you should put away per year, and then per month, toward your child's education. You'll find working toward an established benchmark makes it easy to measure your progress.
Or, if you'd rather just aim at saving a large sum of money, come up with a percentage of your income with which you can consistently afford to part, then save it regularly as an investment in your child's college fund. If you make saving a habit, it will become painless.
Contrary to popular belief, saving for college does not have to be an ordeal. If you approach it systematically, you'll find the process quite simple. Here are some ways to begin integrating a savings account into your routine financial life, so you'll grow accustomed to making regular deposits in short order.
One of the biggest hindrances to any savings plan is waiting to start. Even if your child is just a baby, now is the very best time to start saving for college. There are no drawbacks to starting early, because that will not only benefit your child by setting aside a larger fund to provide a good education, but the early start will make it possible to earn more money on your savings through the miracle of compound interest.
You may also consider setting up a custodial account to pay for college.
You don't have to cut back on the essentials or eliminate entertainment from your budget just because you're saving for college, but you should evaluate your spending habits thoroughly. You'll probably find several areas in which it's possible to cut back, and those will be your sources of extra money.
Or consider finding a part-time job and devote that paycheck to the college savings account. Remember, small financial sacrifices made now can produce large benefits in terms of savings later on.
Setting up automatic deposits from your checking account into the college savings account will make it easy to adjust to the idea of saving money regularly. At intervals you specify, money will be diverted directly from your personal budget into your savings. The automatic nature of the process helps you establish the saving habit with no extra effort on your part, and removes the temptation to spend it. The old adage "Out of sight, out of mind" applies to automatic fund transfers.
Another simple way to find money for a college account is to dedicate bill or loan payments to the savings account when your debt has been retired. When you make that final payment, continue to keep that money out of your personal budget by saving it. You have managed without the money to date, so you know how it's done.
If you resolve to add it (or at least a portion of it) to the amount you save for college each month, you can gradually increase the total you save and watch your college fund grow. For example, when you finish your own student loan payments, put them not in your household budget but in your child's college savings account.
There are many ways you can save for college that don't have to be difficult. Figure out what methods work best for you, design your own customized savings plan, and then stick to it!
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Consumer Equilibrium : –
Consumer Equilibrium refers to the situation, where a consumer, with limited income, achieves maximum satisfaction , without changing the manner of spending on existing expenditure.A consumer, who wants to consume a particular good, may have limited income. Such consumer has to pay a price for each unit of commodity he purchases. Given the limited income, the consumer can only buy limited quantity of goods. We also know that as per the law of Diminishing Marginal Utility, the additional utility derived from each successive unit, keeps on decreasing. Due to these reason, every rational consumer , tries to achieve maximum satisfaction by incurring expenditure accordingly.
Consumer equilibrium can arise in the following two scenarios : –
- Consumer’s entire income is spent on single commodity.
- Consumer’s income is spent on two
Lets discuss these two in detail : –
Consumer’s equilibrium in case of single commodity : –
Where a consumer purchases a single commodity, the equilibrium is said to exist at the point where the quantity purchased by consumer gives him the maximum satisfaction, or in other words, when marginal utility of the commodity is equal to price paid for the commodity.
The number of units of a commodity , which a consumer would consume would depend on two factors :-
- Price of the given commodity
- Expected Marginal utility from each successive unit.
Marginal utility in money terms
MU of one extra unit of money (say rupee in India) is the additional utility obtained by a consumer, when he spends an additional rupee on other goods.
Marginal utility in terms of money =
Equilibrium condition in case of single commodity :-
Consumer who consumes a single commodity (say x), will be at equilibrium when Marginal utility of the commodity (MUx) is equal to price paid (Px) for the commodity.
- Marginal utility of the commodity Mux > Price Paid (Px)
This means that the benefit obtained by consumer on additional unit purchase (Mux ) is greater than the price paid for commodity and consumer will keep buying additional units of goods. As consumer keeps buying additional units of goods, MU will fall due to the operation of the law of diminishing marginal utility. When Mu is equal to price, the consumer gets maximum benefits , and is in a state of equilibrium.
- Marginal utility of the commodity Mux < Price Paid (Px)
This means that the benefit obtained by consumer on additional unit purchase (Mux ) is less than the price paid for commodity . The consumer will keep reducing the consumption of commodity ‘x, until his Marginal Utility is equal to price.
Consumer’s Equilibrium in case of Two commodities.
Where the consumer spends income on two commodities, he achieves maximum satisfaction when the following conditions are satisfied : –
- MU of two commodities and their respective prices are equal –
For two given commodities x and y
- MU falls with an increase in consumption – If this condition is not satisfied, the consumer will keep buying only one good , which is unrealistic and consumer will never reach the equilibrium position.
This law is also know as the “Law of Equi-Marginal utility”.
For Example : –
Lets say the total income of a consumer is Rs.20. He intends to purchase two commodities x and y, which are priced at Rs. 4 each per unit .
Consumer’s equilibrium in case of commodities x and y is as under :-
|Units Consumed||Mux (“units”)||MUy (“units”)|
From the above table, given that commodity ‘x’ has utility of 40 utils as against 32 utils of commodity y, consumer would spend first rupee on commodity x. Similarly, the second rupee will be spent on commodity ‘y’ to get utility of 32 utils, as utils of commodity x for second rupee is 28. The consumer would reach equilibrium when : –
- MU of last rupee spent on each commodity is same – 4 units consumed
- MU falls as consumption increases
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What is the Compound Interest Formula?
To start, it’s important to understand first what compound interest is. Compound interest is taken from the initial – or principal – amount on a loan or a deposit, plus any interest that has already accrued. The compound interest formula is the way that such compound interest is determined.
Compound interest accrues over the period a loan or a deposit is outstanding. How it accrues depends on how often it compounds. The compound interest will be higher, the more compounding periods there are. What exactly does that mean? If, for example, a $1,000 loan comes with a 2% semi-annual compounding interest rate, it will generate a more accrued compound interest than the same loan amount that is compounded at 4% annually.
- Compound interest is based on the amount of the principal of a loan or deposit – and interest rate – which accrues in conjunction with how often the loan compounds: typically, compounding occurs either annually, semi-annually, or quarterly.
- The compound interest formula is the way that compound interest is determined.
- Compound interest is valuable for those who make deposits because it is an additional income for them the longer the deposit sits without withdrawals. It is valuable to lenders because it represents additional income earned on money lent.
How to Calculate Compound Interest
The compound interest formula is as follows:
- T = Total accrued, including interest
- PA = Principal amount
- roi = The annual rate of interest for the amount borrowed or deposited
- t = The number of times the interest compounds yearly
- y = The number of years the principal amount has been borrowed or deposited
Let’s put some numbers into the above formula to make it clearer. For this example, let’s say that a $1,000 loan is offered, with an interest rate of 5%, which is compounded semi-annually. If the loan is extended for five years, what would the balance for repayment be?
After five years, the total amount owed would be $1,280.08. The calculation would work in the same way when speaking of a $1,000 amount deposited into a bank receiving the same compounded interest. After five years, the total would be valued at $1,280.08.
It should be noted that in solving only for compound interest, the principal amount of the loan or deposit would need to be subtracted from the total.
Compound interest is of great importance for those who have deposited money or made an investment because it enables them to earn an increasing amount of income off of an initial investment. It is valuable to lenders because it adds additional income on top of the amount lent to a borrower.
CFI offers the Financial Modeling & Valuation Analyst (FMVA)™ certification program for those looking to take their careers to the next level. To keep learning and advancing your career, the following CFI resources will be helpful:
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Agroforestry is widely perceived as a long-term sustainable land use practice that can help meet a range of rural development objectives in sub-Saharan Africa. Expected benefits include increased crop yields and more effective adaptation and mitigation responses to climate-change impacts (Mbow et al., 2014). Favorable Zambian agricultural policy has encouraged Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), and a number of organizations have actively promoted conservation agriculture and agroforestry to encourage food security, especially in Eastern Province. However, uptake of CSA practices, in particular agroforestry, remains limited and dis-adoption is high, despite the expected benefits to Zambia’s small holder farmers who struggle with low yields, unreliable access to fertilizer and limited resilience.
Insecure resource tenure is hypothesized to constrain smallholder investment in the long-term productivity of their fields. Many studies provide empirical evidence of the benefits of tenure security for promoting greater field investment outcomes (Deininger et al., 2011; Deininger and Chamorro, 2004; Feder et al., 1988; Holden et al., 2009; Jacoby et al., 2002; Rozelle and Swinnen, 2004). A basic premise of stronger and more secure land tenure is that the enforcement of these rights lessens the risk of forcible displacement and allows for a level of long-term security and a sense of permanence that encourages land-related investment (Besley, 1995).
Consequently, land tenure security and property rights governance issues represent a central focus in Zambia for a range of rural development initiatives to address agricultural livelihoods and poverty reduction. In Zambia, where the majority of the land is under customary management by traditional chiefs, smallholders commonly have no documentation of their land rights, which can result in complex land disputes over boundaries or defense of rights in the event of divorce, death of a family member or arbitrary reallocation of land by chiefs or headmen. Uncertainties over land allocation processes within villages also contribute to ongoing land conflicts. This is an especially pressing issue in the rural areas of Zambia, where insufficient access to arable land is a recognized driver of continued impoverishment. Prior research indicates large variation in the size of farmer landholdings among village households, significant numbers of land constrained households even in villages where unallocated land is present and widely varying perceptions about land availability and ease of acquisition for farmland expansion (Jayne et al., 2009). Nevertheless, many questions remain around the efficacy of activities that are hypothesized to strengthen farmer perceptions of the tenure security of their farm holdings, as well as the extent to which strengthened land tenure security incentivizes farmers to undertake longer-term sustainable land investments such as agroforestry. Although some studies have found strong evidence of positive impacts for land formalization (Deininger et al., 2011; Goldstein et al., 2018), no clear consensus has emerged from empirical studies across varying sub-Saharan Africa contexts on whether and how stronger tenure security may, as a whole, incentivize farmer decision-making and pursuit of different land investment strategies on their farms (Place, 2009).
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The impact of covid-19 has been largely felt across different sectors and not evenly spread. In fact the effect has been heterogeneous. The Covid-19 pandemic has infected millions of people around the globe and spread with alarming speed and bringing economic activity to a near-standstill. As a consequence the world of cargo has suffered losses due to tighter regulation and border closures to halt the spread caused economy downturn due to blank sailings, grounded planes, containers piling up on quays and congestion and demurrage. It had serious impact on Logistics transportation. In this article we will discuss the implication of COVID-19 on transportation, which is part of Logistics.
Transportation is the key element of the logistics chain, it occupies nearly one-third of the amount in the logistics cost and takes a crucial part in the manipulation of logistic. Without transportation no movement of goods or freight can happen. Transportation is required in the wholeproduction process, from manufacturing to delivery to the final consumer and returns.
The Demand for Air Freight
Demand is picking as China and most of the countries in Europe start to recover from the pandemic. Fifty percent of world’s cargo for air freight actually is transported in the belly of passenger planes. Some of the major airlines have started limited travel, and due to limited capacity companies are scrambling to get the products in, causing the freight rates to double.
Due to surge of demand many passenger airlines are providing freight services adapting the passenger aircraft to transport medical supplies such as PPE, medicines, baby wipes, health care systems such as ventilator. This trend may continue for a while until all travel restrictions are eased. With the grounding of many airplanes and provide patient access to medication and treatment, Pharmaceutical Industry, with some innovation, can use available temperature controlled containers, which can hold temperature for 120+ hrs or so. The two diagrams below show the passenger airplane that was used as a freight carrier.
The Change in Transportation Demand Pattern
As Air freight transportation becomes more expensive, to save cost suppliers will plan for using Premium ocean transport and certain boats that are smaller and faster and lesser days transit time (10days) than normal vessel does (21days). Prior to COVID-19 pandemic, transportation demand pattern was more seasonal such as CNY, Christmas, Olympic games etc. Post COVID-19, demand has become unpredictable.
As the cure for virus is ongoing, it is difficult to predicate the exact resurgence of the economy. To mitigate the effect of virus, most country governments advice their citizen, staff of companies and corporate to WFH(Work From Home). Ordering online, Video conferencing, become the new norm, essentially disrupting the supply chain especially the trucking industry. Many companies are holding trucks and this long tail trucks were redeployed to supply to restaurants or retailers such as food and beverages industry etc to ease the financial burden of under-utilization.Using technology trucking industry can reallocate capacity across the country in the right corridor, at the right spot, on the right lanes to reduce empty miles.
Supply Chain Disruption
It is predicted that container transport may drop by 30% and will remain weak for the rest of the year. The shipping industry is facing formidable challenges for reduced available capacity, equipment coupled with congestion in specific ports with related surcharges and blank sailing. As a result of which this disruption due to COVID-19 would reshape the shipping industry, especially the effect of COVID-19 on global supply chain network. Companies should start looking at restructuring their supply chain, such as reduce the risk of dependence on particular regions for supply, hence shipping industry should be prepared for this structural change.
Shipping industry should enable itself to implement digitization and innovation within the industry. This enables good collaboration amongst the different stakeholders. Investment in intelligent freight technologies should become a priority, to effectively manage efficiency, capacity and cash to ensure a comfortable position in the post COVID-19 period.
Recovery by Mode of Transport
Recovery for Less-than-truckload (LTL) and full-truckload (FTL) will be faster than other mode of transports because both shipping carry a heavy proportion of fast-to-return agriculture, food, and services and benefit from growth in e-commerce. FTL’s freight mix also contains 16% of fast-to-return basic commodities. Air cargo will take few years to recover because the two largest shipper for light machinery and electronics will be slower to return. Rail transport will take more than four years to return, due to high exposure to slower-to-return coal, oil and gas. All mode of transport are facing downturn and the recovery will start may be next year.
Dispersion or Diversification of network route
COVID19 has got shipping companies rethink their strategy. Countries now want diversification of operation to shift from china to India, Mexico or SE Asia. These routes, namely US-India or US-South East Asia being east coast is geographically more closer than US-China, i.e. Trade through west coast.
China is increasing their share of trade by collaborating with other countries other than U.S. Furthermore freight movement is happening via rail shifting from sea or road also called as ‘Modal Shift’ to reduce congestion. This is also termed as freight diversity, minimizing of depending on a major mode of transport. This is evident by China doing trade with Europe via rail . The rail takes between 15 and 18 day from China to Europe, roughly half the time to move container via ship. Rail transport is one of the feasible option for companies to send and receive goods between the regions as fast as possible. This modal shift from Sea, which accounts for 90% of freight transport to Rail, enables quick response to market demands.
Forecast by World Trade Organization
World Trade Organization has predicted that global trade could fall between 13 and 32 %. This could result in regions suffering double-digit percentage declines in trade. Exports to North America and Asia will be the hardest hit. Consequences such as reduced cargo shipment, missed port call, blank sailing will have a negative impact on the financial capability of organization. Cash flow, liquidity risks, will leave shipping uncertain about additional financing where it is required and/or terms are acceptable for refinancing.
Mitigation and Forward Planning
Countries like Singapore have introduced various measure to mitigate the effects of COVID-19, such as “GREEN LANES” for trucker for faster clearance. Introducing new information system(SAFE Entry) and data initiative. Providing stimulus to ease financial impact on freight sector etc. Transportation via Sea remains open to ensure continuity of trade by sea, hence global supply chains remain undisrupted. To better cope up with such pandemics, Singapore has taken the initiative of implementing new information systems. Key infrastructure projects were identified for further advancement to prevent congestion due to such pandemic situations.
A more agile solutions should be deliberated by logistics solution providers to form a dynamic core of speciality solutions. This could be plans for air charters, dynamic route changes and may be alternative border entry points. This could better prepare future companies such as manufacturers and bio-pharmaceuticals to develop broader supply chain networks for both transport and storage.
This disruption cause radical changes in the shipping industry. COVID-19 has illuminated over-dependence on China for demand and supply. It would lead to diversifying the supply chain routes, increased regionalization and also increased investments in freight technologies such as artificial intelligence software, big data analysis etc. This would help to manage supply chains and autonomous shipping.
Jeff Condon, et.al. (2020). “Global freight flows after COVID-19: What’s next?” Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/travel-logistics-and-transport-infrastructure/our-insights/global-freight-flows-after-covid-19-whats-next, accessed on 12/09/2020.
Jeremy Ng, DPSM. (2020). “Key Considerations for Hotel Procurement Post Covid-19”. Retrieved from SIPMM: https://sipmm.edu.sg/key-considerations-for-hotel-procurement-post-covid-19, accessed on 11/09/2020.
Lee Meng Yin, DPSM. (2020). “Mitigating Global Sourcing Risks in a Pandemic”. Retrieved from SIPMM : https://sipmm.edu.sg/key-considerations-for-hotel-procurement-post-covid-19, accessed on 13/09/2020.
Mazars, Singapore. (2020). “What will transport and logistics look like in the post Covid-19 era?” Retrieved from https://www.mazars.com/Home/News-and-Insights/Covid-19-Mazars-Global-Resource-Centre/Covid-19-Mazars-insights/Economic-impact/What-will-T-L-look-like-post-Covid-19, accessed on 11/09/2020.
Monique Giese. (2020). “Troubled waters for the shipping sector , In the wake of COVID-19 these could lead to opportunities in the newreality”. Retrieved from https://home.kpmg/xx/en/blogs/home/posts/2020/06/troubled-waters-for-the-shipping-sector.html, accessed on 11/09/2020.
World Courier. (2020). “How will COVID-19 impact specialty logistics now and in the future?” Retrieved from : https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/sponsored/how-will-covid-19-impact-specialty-logistics-now-and-in-the-future/, accessed on 12/09/2020.
Xchange. (2020). “COVID-19 : The Shipping Industry and the call for Force Majeure” https://container-xchange.com/blog/the-call-for-force-majeure/, accessed on 12/09/2020.
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Statement of Cash Flows Defined
The Statement of Cash Flows is a basic financial statement, required in a company's annual report. It explains the changes in cash and cash equivalents during a period. It also reconciles net income with cash flows from operations.
Statement of Cash Flows is presented by classifying business activities as Operating, Investing and Financing.
There are two methods of presenting Statement of Cash flows; direct or indirect method.
- In the direct method, cash flows are reported by major classes of receipts and payments, resulting in a net amount.
- In the indirect method, a business reports net cash flows indirectly by adjusting net income to net cash flows from operating activities. AccountEdge uses the indirect method.
In the indirect method, Adjustments are made to the profit for non-cash expenses such as depreciation, gains and losses on disposal of assets, for changes in working capital such as inventories, receivables, payables and other items to arrive at cash flows from operations.
The Statement of Cash Flows classifies business activities resulting from operating, investing and financing activities.
- Operating activities are those that involve the production and sale of merchandise or the performance of services. Examples of operating cash inflows are cash sales, collections of receivables, cash received from interest. Cash outflows from operations include cash paid to buy raw materials, payments to suppliers, employee payroll taxes paid. Investing Activities include making and collecting loans, buying and selling debt and equity securities, and acquiring and disposing of property, plant and equipment.
- Cash inflow from investing activities includes collection of loan principal, sale of debt or securities of other entities, and sale of property/plant and equipment. Cash outflows from investing activities include making loans to other entities, buying debt and securities and purchase of plant property and equipment.
- Financing activities apply to receiving equity funds and providing owners with a return on their investments. It includes the issuing and paying off of corporate debt. Cash inflows from financing include funds obtained from issuing debt. Cash outflow includes the payment of dividends, paying principal payments on long-term debts and purchasing treasury stock.
How the Statement of Cash Flows (SCF) is calculated in AccountEdge
First, generate the following Reports:
- A Profit and Loss Statement (Account tab) for the time period in which you wish to generate a Cash flows Statement. Let's make this October.
- A Balance Sheet (Account tab) including the period for which you wish to generate the SCF, and for the period just prior to that. For example: If you want an October Statement of Cash Flows, run a Balance sheet spreadsheet including September and October.
- Finally, generate the Statement of Cash Flow (Banking tab).
The first figure on the SCF is the Net Profit/Loss figure from the Profit and Loss. This is the starting point for the Statement of Cash Flows.
Next, using the Balance Sheet, AccountEdge calculates the differences in assets, liabilities and equities between the report period and the period just prior. In our example, we compare asset and liability balances on September 30 to their balances at the end of October. Asset increases are subtracted from and decreases are added to the net income. For liabilities and equities, increases in balances are added to the net income, while decreases in liability and equity balances are subtracted from the net income.
This process is performed on all accounts classified as Operating, Investing or Financing. Other than banking and credit card accounts, all Balance Sheet accounts must be classified for the Statement of Cash Flows as either Operating, Investing or Financing. A sub-total for each of these 3 classifications is listed on the Statement of Cash Flows. The total of all 3 classifications equals the net change in cash for the reporting period. The Cash at the end of the period on the SCF reconciles with the Total Cash on Hand on the Balance Sheet for the same period.
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Patents and applications must be viewed as assets. You would not invest money in a new facility or project without a detailed business plan.
An asset-based approach
To get value from an asset you must first understand the asset. A patent is a grant by a government of exclusive rights to make, use or sell an invention. An invention is not necessarily a “ground-breaking” or “landmark” product or technical leap. Most patents are issued for very narrow incremental improvements over existing technology. On a stand-alone or individual basis, most patents are of limited value. In fact, some patents have been criticized as down right silly, such as U.S. patent 6,368,227 Method of Swinging on a Swing.
A patent does not give a patent’s owner the right to actually make, use or sell anything – including the invention. A patent owner’s invention might be an improvement on someone else’s prior invention. Ownership of a patent on some features does not authorize the patentee to make a product without a license on other patented features also in the product as made.
Some patents and applications are valuable in their own right, some for their potential for additional patents to issue in the future, some for specific product or feature coverage, and some only for the fact that they add an additional patent to the “thicket” of coverage in a portfolio. Because most patents are narrow, generally, they are much more valuable as a collection or portfolio, than individually. When building a group of patents to defend against some other company that might be looking for royalties from your company, remember that patents on improvements that you have made to another company’s original invention will bar even the original inventor from using the improvements without a contract or license from the owner of the patents on the improvements. In many ways, patents on improvements are as important as patents in the original device or software.
Patents are often compared to real estate or an option for real estate. As with real property, patents can have different value to different potential users. Owning the land needed to get to the road is sort of like having a patent on an improvement to the original device or software – it can become just as important for both parties to cooperate. Timing is also important to maximize the return on any asset, like in a “hot” real estate market. For example, a patent on a technology used to conserve memory in a video game might be valuable when memory is expensive, but becomes irrelevant when the price of memory goes down or video game software becomes more efficient.
Regardless of scope or timing, a patent that is not being exploited is like a piece of raw land – the owner is losing rent, sales revenue, or profits from operations from the property, if the owner is not doing something to leverage its value. Another analogy is an unenforced patent or a lapsed application is like an option on real estate that has been allowed to expire even though it may have value to someone who has a different use for the property.
Putting your patent assets to work
There are many uses for patents and patent applications in business, including:
Deterring competitors – A Patent can deter competitors from implementing a product or service features using the protected invention. This can distinguish your product from competitors, enhancing the marketing or branding of your patented product event if the feature is very minor.
Generating revenue – Selling or licensing patents and related technology can generate revenue. (And of course one way to get valuable patents is to buy them).
Defensive purposes – Your patents may deter your competitors from enforcing their patents against you in feat that you may respond by seeking enforcement of your patents against them.
Build value – Show potential investors, shareholders and partners the progress of your research and development, including milestones achieved. Patent applications and patents are assets a new company can create early in its life to build value.
Increase borrowing potential – Patents and applications may be collateral that increase your borrowing ability. (In the U.S., some companies have secured large bank loans using only their patents as collateral).
Protect your invention – Patents can be used to exclude others from using your invention or forcing them to pay for it. (This protects your inventions, your brand, an gives you negotiation leverage.)
It’s your property: use it or lose it
Patent prosection in key foreign markets is also important. Right now, countries with strong patent systems (Germany, U.K., Italy, France, and Japan) can offer substantial immediate benefit. However, since a patent typically lasts up to 20 years from the date of filing of the original application, patents in China, Brazil, and India may become increasingly valuable as their enforcement systems evolve over the life of a patent. Indeed, foreign patent rights are often much cheaper to enforce because many foreign court systems do not permit for U.S. style “discovery,” nor do they permit for common law or equitable defenses to patent enforcement as developed by the U.S. courts. Finally, foreign patent systems still generally permit all patent owners to obtain injunctions against infringers, while in the U.S. system, trial courts now are limited in granting injunctions to where a non-monetary harm can be established by the patent owner (e.g., harm to a competitive business). (The International Trade Commission, which is a federal agency, remains a forum in the U.S. where injunctive-type relief is available to exclude imports of infringing products for patent owners who exploit their patents in the U.S. through a “domestic industry,” but it is an expensive process).
Patent Prosecution in the Europe could become more valuable in the near term because EU countries have reached an agreement in principle to have a single patent enforcement system for EU countries. This would potentially eliminate the cost of separate national patents, and allow for one patent suit in one of the prospective “patent courts” to provide EU-wide enforcement. In additional, all EU countries already permit for pre-suit seizures by local customs of allegedly infringing goods, which is a powerful tool for patent enforcement.
For example, Samsung in the late 1980s and early 1900s purchased patents from U.S. companies to use in negotiations and lawsuits until it could build up its own group of patents. However, today, Germany is also a large distribution center for most products, and the Netherlands is the largest port of entry for goods into Europe. Purchasing U.S., German, or Netherlands patents is a good way to start to build a group of patents to use in self-defense: Many patent brokers will help you identify these patents. In addition, European patents are often less expensive than U.S. patents. Finally, if a U.S. patent is purchased that allows for additional claims to be sought, this adds value.
Cut costs, produce more revenue
Just as you might buy patents to build a group of patents, if you exit a business, or if your business is not using all of the rights of your patents, for any reason, you should consider selling or licensing any issued patents or additional applications that come from that original application, just as you would sell any other obsolete asset.
Sometimes a company is not in a position to enforce a patent against others for business, financial or political reasons. For example, your company might be concerned about its own exposure to a counter-infringement lawsuit or other type of lawsuit against you in relataliation for trying to enforce your patent. If so, another idea to explore is organizing a subsidiary or affiliate to own, jointly own, or be the exclusive licensee of the patent, which will then license or sub-license the rights to others. By putting the rights into another separate entity, you can insulate your existing, primary businesses from liabilities or obligations that may arise fro the patent-related transactions of your separate affiliate. However, since the affiliated entities will remain under your common control, you retain the ability still to use the patents for deterrence against the competitors of your primary business. While a patentee cannot get an injunction based on harm to an affiliate, you can get a remedy similar to an injunction in the International Trade Commission or another country. Further, your new entity may be organized in a tax-advantaged jurisdiction or in a jurisdiction where new businesses qualify for government grants, tax abatements or subsidies.
Another idea is to donate the patents to an organization, which as a university, trade association, standard-setting group, for the tax advantages your company can realize from the donation – as well as any goodwill or positive PR you can generate from supporting a worthy cause. If your company can donate a patent to a standard-setting group for use in a standard, you become the technology leader for that standard.
Bottom line: use it or lose it.
Reprinted with permission of China IP Magazine
The opinions expressed are those of the authors on the date noted above and do not necessarily reflect the views of Fish & Richardson P.C., any other of its lawyers, its clients, or any of its or their respective affiliates. This post is for general information purposes only and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is formed.
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People desire abundance and work hard to seek a prosperous life. When others achieve financial success, they often wonder- how this happen for them? Did someone bestow them with a trust fund or were they born under a lucky star? Here's ten things the financially smart people do:
Imagine: Financially smart people imagine big success. They create a dream, and do what it takes to cultivate it until it becomes a reality. They don't visualize disaster.
Listen: Financially smart people deeply listen to others. While they may not adapt someone's recommendations they listen to the feedback others provide. They are interested in another perspective.
Learn: Financially smart people are willing to learn. They look at every opportunity- a conversation, a lecture, an email as their chance to broaden their knowledge base.
Unbounded Potential: Financially smart people know that they have the unbounded potential to change the world. They do not place limits on their expectations and goals.
Mindfulness: Financially smart people are aware of how their decisions impact others. They are willing to give back anonymously. They don't need to have their name on a plaque.
Inspire: Financially smart people are inspired by small and large things. A book may inspire them as well as a major life event. They remain in touch with their source of inspiration, and it is what drives them to success.
Nurture: Financially smart people know they must nurture their ideas until their goal is met. They understand that there will be times when no one is around to give feedback or praise, and yet, they continue to cultivate their ideas.
Align: Financially smart people are aware of their own weak spots and align themselves with people who are strong in these areas. The financially smart know their deficits and align themselves with people who are competent in these areas.
Engage: Financially smart people engage in behavior that support their goal. This may mean that they attend conferences where they are they are there as a student and not a speaker. They read articles to help them deepen their understanding of a subject or have dinner with other like- minded individuals.
Next time, you hear about a financially successful person, chances are they are still actively practicing these ten things- illuminate.
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India is well recognized as a well-endowed minerals and metals resource in the world. India ranks 4th among mineral producing countries after China, US and Russia. However, India ranks 8th on the basis of value of mineral production.
Mining sector in India contributes to 2% of GDP in 2012-13, which is declined from 2.3% of 2009-10, 3% of 1999-2000 and 3.4% of 1992-93. India produces around 88 types of minerals including 4 fuel minerals, 10 metallic, 47 non-metallic, 3 atomic and 24 minor minerals.
The reason for the low contribution of mining to Indian economy is its underdeveloped nature. Despite the underdeveloped nature of its mining sector India is 2nd biggest producer of Steel, Barite and Chromite and the 3rd largest producer of Coal and Limestone in the world. These statistics would improve even further when foreign investments start coming in which at present are quite low. To put things in perspective India holds a percent of the world’s population and a massive 20% of the total minerals in the world. But despite little foreign investment India has put capital into the mining sector and managed to become self-sufficient in various essential commodities like steel. But becoming self-sufficient is a very small achievement for a country which possesses such massive mineral deposits.
Government policies is the biggest problem which mining industry is facing from a long time. Mining projects across the country remain stuck owing to environmental, regulatory and land acquisition issues. High borrowing cost is also a factor responsible for problems in mining industry. With recent decline in Inflation and reduction of repo rate in India, borrowing is becoming easy and the issue is looking to get settled in few months.
The cost of investment would be low due to the commodity slump being seen around the world. Hence this sector presents a golden opportunity for companies around the world. The Mining industry in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of XX.XX% till 2020.
What the report offers
The study elucidates the situation of India and predicts the growth of its Mining industry. Report talks about growth, market trends, progress, challenges, opportunities, government regulations, technologies in use, growth forecast, major companies, upcoming companies and projects etc. in the Mining Sector of India. In addition to it, the report also talks about economic conditions of and future forecast of its current economic scenario and effect of its current policy changes in to its economy, reasons and implications on the growth of this sector. Lastly, the report is segmented by various types of Minerals and Metals available in the country.
1. Research Methodology
2. Key Findings of The Study
3. Executive Summary
4. Market Overview
4.1 Market Overview
4.2 Industry Value Chain Analysis
4.3 Industry Attractiveness – Porter’s 5 Force Analysis
4.4 PESTEL ANALYSIS
4.5 Industry Policies
5. Market Dynamics
5.2.1 High untapped reserves
5.2.2 At par production and consumption
5.3.1 Global commodity slump
5.3.2 Underdeveloped Infrastructure
5.3.3 Mining Scams
5.4.1 Mineral distribution units
5.4.2 Mining machineries suppliers
6. India Mining Market
6.1 Technology Overview
6.2 Segmentation By Type
6.2.1 Iron ore
7. Investment Analysis
7.1 Recent Mergers And Acquisitions
7.2 Investment Outlook
8. Future of India Mining Industry
9. Competitive Intelligence – Company Profiles
9.1 Sesa Sterlite
9.3 Rohit Ferro Tec
9.4 Shirpur Gold
9.5 Indian Metals
9.6 Gujarat Minerals
9.8 Maithan Alloys
9.9 Impex FerroTech
9.10 Ashapura Mine
9.11 Ferro Alloys
9.12 Coal India
9.13 Sandur Manganes
9.14 20 Microns
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By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions
SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY
For entrepreneurs around the world, acquiring finance to start or expand a small business has become harder and harder as the global financial crisis has bitten hard. Across the globe, people with good ideas or successful businesses that need funds to expand are finding the door closed by traditional banks.
As banks and governments have focused on reducing debt and building up cash reserves, it is small businesses and small-scale entrepreneurs – often without business or family connections – who suffer the most. Opportunities are being missed to create new jobs and enterprises and lift poor communities out of poverty.
In that climate, the search is on for alternative ways to build up wealth. In Iran, a new phenomenon has arisen to address the lack of bank loans for small businesses brought about by the economic crisis. Iran is suffering under international sanctions as well as outstanding bank loans exceeding US $45 billion, according to the Financial Times.
The domestic banking crisis this has provoked has resulted in a tightening of credit for loans.
But in response, middle class Iranians are forming their own savings clubs to help each other with loans.
The savings clubs work like this: each member buys a share in the club costing around US $2 per day (around US $620 over 10 months). Each share makes the saver eligible for one loan during the year. For example in a club of 30 Tehran taxi drivers, every month four members of the club receive US $600 each in loans. The fund lasts 10 months and each member is guaranteed one loan per share.
“It is a savings fund and doesn’t have the uncertainty of the banking system, which might or might not give you a loan,” club member Ahmad told the Financial Times newspaper. As one of the drivers, he has four shares and is eligible for four loans.
“My mother is also saving money in a fund of housewives among our female relatives.”
The fund is managed by the head of the taxi agency and a driver who is a retired teacher. Both are trusted. “The retired teacher receives the money every day and puts a check mark by the names of those who pay. He is trusted by the head of the taxi agency, while other drivers respect him as an educated, honest man.”
Savings clubs are also good for the local economy, helping people to be able to buy goods on loans they would never be able to purchase otherwise. Another driver used the fund to “buy the things we cannot afford under normal conditions, like a washing machine, for instance, for which we have zero chance to get bank loans.”
Overdue loans by Iran’s banks grew by 66 percent from last year according to Asghar Abolhassani, the deputy economy minister.
The Financial Times reported that an estimated 25 percent of bank loans are outstanding, making Iran’s banking system technically bankrupt. International sanctions are also blocking the country’s banks from accessing global financial markets for support.
“Stagnation has gripped many parts of the economy,” said Hamid Tehranfar, the central bank’s director-general for banking supervision.
Turning to savings clubs can be an excellent alternative saving and loans model, but it requires very specific trust guarantees in place to ensure the holder of the funds doesn’t just take the money. For those who can’t find somebody local they trust, there are a number of online social lending and fundraising alternatives for raising funds and borrowing money. These include Kiva (www.kiva.org), which connects poor people looking for loans with people around the world willing to lend.
As the crisis continues and banks and governments hoard wealth for their own needs to pay down debt, alternative sources of loans will become ever more important for the poor.
1) Zopa: “Where people meet to lend and borrow money.” Website: www.zopa.com
2) Kiva: Kiva’s mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty. Website: www.kiva.org
3) Betterplace: Started in 2007, Betterplace is an online marketplace for projects to raise funds. It is free, and it passes on 100 percent of the money raised on the platform to the projects. Website: www.betterplace.org
4) Kickstarter: Kickstarter is a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, and explorers. Website: http://www.kickstarter.com/
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
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Paying for college is too complicated. A lack of clear and correct disclosures concerning college costs and financial aid causes confusion about college affordability. Some of the more egregious problems include:
- Colleges often talk about loans as though they cut college costs or make college more affordable. Loans only postpone paying college expenses.
- Financial aid award letters often blur the distinction between grants and loans.
- Loans are mixed in with grants, without any distinction between the two types of aid.
- Loans are not identified as loans and do not present important details like interest rates, fees, repayment terms, monthly payments or
- Loans list the annual limit as the award amount, without any indication that the family can choose to borrow less, making it too easy to borrow to the limit.
These problems cause students and parents to take on too much debt or the wrong type of debt. It shouldn’t be surprising that some students graduate with too much debt.
To figure out how much to borrow and what types of loans to use, follow these four steps:
- Minimize debt. Enroll at a lower-cost college, such as an in-state public college or a college with a “no loans” financial aid policy, to reduce the amount of student loan debt. Maximize free money, such as grants and scholarships. Every dollar you save and every dollar you win is about a dollar less you’ll have to borrow. Since about half of college costs at an in-state public college come from living expenses, try to economize by buying used textbooks, renting them, and/or selling them back to the bookstore, minimizing the number of trips home from college and getting a roommate to split the rent. Live like a student while you’re in school, so you don’t have to live like a student after you graduate. Consider using tuition payment plans, which break up college costs into equal monthly installments, as a less expensive alternative to long-term debt.
- Choose lower-cost loans. The most important difference between different types of education loans is in the cost. The eligibility criteria, borrower and cosigner requirements, loan limits and repayment plans also matter, but ultimately you should concentrate on minimizing the cost of the debt. Generally, students should borrow from the federal government first, because federal student loans are cheaper, more available and have better repayment terms.
- Don’t borrow too much money. When a student has exhausted the loan limits on the Federal Stafford loan, it may be a sign that the student is over-borrowing. Total student loan debt at graduation should be less than the student’s expected annual starting salary. If total student loan debt is less than annual income, the student should be able to repay his or her loans in 10 years or less. Otherwise, the student will struggle to repay his or her loans, and may need alternate repayment plans like extended repayment or income-based repayment to afford the monthly loan payments. These repayment plans reduce the monthly payment by increasing the term of the loan to 20, 25 or even 30 years. This means you may still be repaying your loans when your children enroll in college.
- Shop around when federal student loans are not enough. FederalParent PLUS loans, private student loans and private parent loans may be options when a student has reached the annual and/or cumulative limits on federal student loans. Depending on the credit history of the student and parents, as well as credit scores and debt-to-income ratios, private loans may be less expensive than the Federal Parent PLUS loan. But, borrowers must consider the tradeoffs. Borrowers with very good or excellent credit may be able to save a percentage point or two on the interest rate and fees.But federal student loans offer other benefits that may be lost, such as flexible deferments and forbearances, income-dependent repayment plans, loan forgiveness options, and death and disability discharges.
Mark Kantrowitz is Senior VP and Publisher of Edvisors.com, a free web site about planning and paying for college. He is the author of Filing the FAFSA and Twisdoms about Paying for College, a collection of 400 concise, practical rules of thumb and insights about college costs and student financial aid.
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The ever-increasing size and cargo volumes for commercial vessels require ports to be growingly digital, sustainable and connected. These requirements highlight the complexity of today’s port infrastructure and define the competitive environment. 5G, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, autonomous transport and blockchain technology are the necessary tools of this competition. However, to become more efficient and handle higher volumes of goods, it is not enough to adopt these technologies. Instead, they must be fully integrated and connected throughout the logistics chain.
How technology is revolutionising port logistics
Every port is characterised by a complex system of people, goods and means of transport, which produce and require large amounts of data. In this context, the 5G connection, thanks to a volume of data traffic a thousand times higher than 4G and extremely low latency times, will increasingly be essential for any further technological application. Indeed, 5G combined with the Internet of Things makes it possible to connect trucks, ships, cranes and even containers into a single network so that they can exchange digital information with each other. The techniques for analysing Big Data then allow them to be used in models that track the object's movement and state and work out the best combinations of goods' routes and storage. According to UNCTAD estimates, applying these technologies could save $300 per delivery in customs clearance costs, equivalent to, for example, $5.4 million on the cargo of an 18,000 TEU ship. Besides, blockchain technology offers a way to securely and transparently link the different systems used to record and track goods. Unnecessary intermediaries can thus be excluded. The burden of document management, which accounts for around 50% of the transport cost, is greatly reduced. Consequently, day-to-day operations will become increasingly automated, efficient, and sustainable.
Global and European benchmarks
In the absence of an internationally recognised Smart Port Index, we need to look at logistics performance to identify the ports that are best implementing the digital transition. The port of Singapore is the busiest in the world in terms of ship tonnage, with more than 130,000 ship calls per year. Its state-of-the-art vessel traffic management system has enormously contributed to this result. It uses intelligent algorithms to predict high-traffic areas and enables autonomous and uninterrupted information exchange between ships, even if they are unmanned. The collaboration with the National University of Singapore is further pushing the port and, in particular, the Tuas terminal towards the technological frontier. When completed in 2040, it will be the largest fully automated terminal in the world, thanks to machine-driven shipyard and quay cranes and self-driving vehicles. Looking at Europe, the port of Rotterdam is a reference point in the field of technological innovation. Hence, the European Horizon 2020 plan aims to replicate some of the Dutch model's best practices on a larger scale. With the help of IBM's IoT technology, Rotterdam's port has equipped itself with its own digital twin. This exact virtual copy of the port includes real-time data on all its infrastructure, ship and rail movements, weather conditions and sea currents. The system will keep an eye on the assets' technical condition and conduct digital inspections. Furthermore, by 2030 it will be able to automatically guide ships, even unmanned ones, to their berths, reducing waiting times. The Port of Rotterdam Authority estimates that this platform's use can save operators up to $80,000 every time they dock. In addition, Rotterdam's port can also provide to shipping companies 10-20 euros savings per container and a 20% drop in waiting times thanks to its native software Pronto, Portinsider and PortXchange. These optimise the port call processes through standardised data exchanges. Last year, the port of Rotterdam also launched the Boxinsider and BlockLab programmes. By applying blockchain, they allow shippers and forwarders to track their containers at any point in the shipment, which becomes paper-free. This cost and time edge contributes to the Port of Rotterdam's continental lead in physical size and throughput. With 439.6 million tonnes, the port accounts for 23% of the total goods traffic of the top 20 European ports, according to Eurostat data from 2019.
Several memoranda of understanding between the two ports' authorities have been signed during recent years. The objective is to develop data standards and API (Application Programming Interface) specifications to facilitate port and maritime services transactions. A further step towards the realisation of the PortForward project, conceived by the port of Rotterdam, with the ultimate goal of creating a global network of smart ports.
The Italian context
The World Bank's Logistic Performance Index, which considers the time and costs associated with logistics, ranks Italy 19th in the world. On the other hand, looking at the UNCTAD Port Liner Shipping Connectivity Index, which reflects a port's connection to the global logistics network, the first Italian port, Genoa, is in 31st position. Its score is 40% lower than the one of the first European port in the ranking: Rotterdam. Only for cargo controls in the port area, 177 administrative procedures are required by 17 different public administrations. These numbers translate into a loss of 20,000 working hours per year in Italian ports. According to Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, this logistical inefficiency results in 11% higher costs for Italian logistics companies than the European average, and the dissipation of €70 billion a year for the Italian budget, €30 billion of which is attributable to bureaucratic burdens and digital delays. Therefore, there is enormous potential in applying technology to Italian port logistics, which is still largely unexpressed due to the difficulty in developing long-term strategic coordination. The “Strategic Plan for ports and logistics” presented to the Parliament in 2015 has so far failed in the realisation of a national Port Community System integrated into the National Logistics Platform. However, some positive signs can be identified in the recent agreement between the “Agenzia delle dogane” and “Assoporti” for the digitalisation of customs procedures relating to the entry and exit of goods in national port areas. Furthermore, the latest available version of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan schedules to make 360 million euro available for the "Digitalisation of the country's logistics systems". These funds should be aimed at developing:
- Platforms of dialogue with customers for the management/monitoring/tracking of individual shipments.
- Artificial intelligence systems for planning, scheduling and optimising loads.
- The complete digitalisation of transport documents.
The intensification of container traffic in the Mediterranean, +22% compared to 2014, especially along the Europe-Far East route, represents a growth vector for its ports. Given its strategic position in the Mare Nostrum and its geopolitical importance in the Belt and Road initiative, Italy could strongly benefit from this trend. However, last decade's delays in the modernisation of ports and the digitalisation of logistics, have led to a decrease in Italian ports' competitiveness. Italy's share of the total number of TEUs exchanged between Europe and the rest of the world has decreased, in contrast to the rise recorded in the MED area. The Italian port and logistics system is now called upon to speed up the digitalisation of its processes to respond to a competitive context characterised by the technological superiority of the Northern Range ports and the opportunity represented by the Next Generation EU resources.
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MidAmerica St. Louis Airport - Foreign Trade Zone No. 31
What is a Foreign Trade Zone?
A Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) is a site within the United States where foreign and domestic merchandise is in the stream of international commerce. Foreign and domestic merchandise may enter this Zone without a formal customs entry, the payment of customs duties, or Federal and State use/excise taxes and personal property taxes. Firms may also perform manufacturing or processing operations, packing or inspection checks, and a variety of other activities using imported goods before duties are paid. Scrap or rejected goods not entering the commerce of the United States are never taxed. By using several cost saving strategies, firms may use Foreign Trade Zones to decrease operational costs associated with customs duties.
What are the advantages of using a Foreign Trade Zone?
- Limit the requirement to pay customs duty on arrival of merchandise
- Eliminate duty on re-exported merchandise
- Eliminate duty on damaged or unmarketable items
- Defer duty payments until goods are ready for sale
- Limit non-value-added costs while manipulation or processing merchandise in the FTZ
- Store both bonded and non-bonded merchandise within the FTZ
- Reduced insurance rate on merchandise stored in the FTZ
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International Workers’ Day, celebrated annually in May, comes at a time of high unemployment and under-employment, rising job insecurity and income inequality.
The International Co-operative Alliance believes the co-op movement—representing almost 10 percent of the global employed population—is poised to solve these issues by acting as “a large laboratory experimenting with innovative and sustainable forms of work.”
“Technological changes, the knowledge-based economy, big data and delocalization are factors that are quickly impacting the world of work,” ICA president Ariel Guarco said. “We still have to take into account issues such as the gender pay gap and modern slavery, which affects people of all genders and all ages across the world.”
He added that “cooperatives offer another paradigm, where inclusion, participation and growth go hand in hand.”
The Alliance has welcomed the International Labour Organization’s Centenary Initiative and the formation of its Global Commission on the Future of Work. The cooperative movement has presented a position paper, Cooperatives and the Future of Work, and made policy recommendations to promote the role of co-ops.
The report Cooperatives and Employment: A Global Report from CICOPA (the Alliance’s sectoral body for industry and services), found that people working in co-ops feel “a combination of economic rationale, a quest for efficiency, shared flexibility, a sense of participation, a family-type environment, pride and reputation, a strong sense of identity and a focus on values.”
Co-ops have also been working with vulnerable groups such as migrant workers and refugees, contributing to job creation and work integration, the ICA said.
The UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda advocates full employment, but the Alliance warns that macroeconomic policies focus instead on monetary and price policies, austerity and flexibilization.
This means co-ops offer an important alternative because they “tend to prioritize long-term effectiveness over short-term managerial efficiency, both because they are driven by citizens’ needs and aspirations, and because they involve those same citizens in an enterprise which the latter jointly own and democratically control.”
It says co-ops around the world are taking advantage of the new opportunities in the “white economy,” “green economy,” “circular economy” and creative industries.
“In many of these activities,” the ICA said, “the cooperative model has a comparative advantage because decentralized and democratic management is often conducive to their delivery.”
Its policy recommendations on the future of work are to:
- Actively promote the cooperative model as a creator of quality jobs and collective wealth at the local, national and international levels;
- Change the conditions of access to social protection so that all workers can have access to it, independently from their work status;
- Approve legislation allowing for the monitoring of the proper functioning of cooperatives, including in the field of workers’ rights;
- Strongly encourage dialogue and alliances between the cooperative movement and the trade unions.
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Why is a circular economy for capital equipment important?
Capital equipment is the buildings, machines, and infrastructure we use to keep our societies running. It includes everything from computer servers to medical scanners, power plants to cars, trains, and ships. They are generally expensive to produce, and they are products that are designed, built and acquired to last, often staying in use for several decades.
A circular economy for capital equipment is important because its production uses 7.2 million tons of raw materials every year, including large amounts of high value metal and mineral resources. Because of the higher value at stake, the capital equipment sector is leading the way in many aspects of the transition to a circular economy. For example, their customers, mostly in a business-to-business setting, are more used to service-based business models which can lead to higher circularity. This means capital equipment can offer important lessons to other industries.
What could circularity for capital equipment look like?
In a circular economy for capital equipment
Products and their components use fewer resources and are recycled back into use at end-of-lifeProducts are designed with reuse in mind, using fewer resources in production—especially non-renewable resources—and more refurbished or reused components and recycled materials, as well as materials that can be economically recycled, reducing demand for natural resources and pollution.
Products and their components are used for longer, through the use of digital technology and innovative new ‘as-a-service’ modelsDigitally-enabled maintenance, shared access, and services that see beyond one-off sales to focus on functionality instead of material goods offer innovative ways to keep products in use for longer, reducing waste.
End-of-use equipment and components are returned for reuse through high-quality systemsInstead of being sent to landfill or uncontrolled incineration, products no longer suitable for use are refurbished, remanufactured, repurposed or used for parts harvesting—extending the lifetime of other products that are still in use.
How to transition to a circular economy for capital equipment
Companies, governments and civil society organizations all have a role to play in creating a circular economy for the capital equipment industry. These 10- calls-to-action can help us accelerate the transition, and make it as impactful as possible.
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Renewable electricity and Community Choice Electricity
The Community Choice Electricity program provides renewable electricity to its customers. The program does this through the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). You can find questions and answers below about how that works.
Renewable electricity questionsRenewable electricity questions
The CCE program buys Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) on behalf of its electric customers. RECs are certificates issued to renewable energy generators. These are based on the amount of renewable electricity they generate and feed into the power grid. When an electric customer buys a REC, they (and only they) are buying the right to that renewable electricity.
Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) create a system of energy accounting. They track who generates renewable electricity and which customers can claim a right to that electricity. RECs solve a fundamental challenge with the power grid. The challenge is that when energy generators feed their electricity into the grid, all the electricity mixes together. It’s impossible to know whether the electricity you receive was originally generated by a dirty or clean energy source. It would be like putting a drop of water in one end of a swimming pool and trying to remove that exact same drop of water from the other end of the pool. It’s not possible.
By introducing a system of energy accounting, RECs overcome this barrier. RECs are not unique to the Community Choice Electricity program. It’s how many electricity suppliers provide renewable electricity to their customers.
In Massachusetts, electric suppliers must provide their customers with a minimum amount of renewable electricity. This state requirement includes the:
- Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), and
- Clean Energy Standard (CES).
Together, these two standards require electric suppliers to provide 49% renewable electricity to their customers.
Renewable electricity can take different forms. Renewable electricity can come from generation sources that vary by:
- the technologies they use
- their age, an
- the amount of carbon they emit.
That is why state law goes into even greater detail about the 49% renewable electricity customers must be provided.
State law requires that 18% of the electricity customers receive come from buying Massachusetts Class I RECs. This type of REC represents the “gold standard” for renewable electricity. Meanwhile, 31% of a customer’s electricity must come from other renewable electricity sources. These include:
- existing clean energy sources
- waste-to-energy sources, and
- sources that qualify for RPS Class II RECs.
Massachusetts Class I RECs certify that the electricity you receive came from an energy generator built after 1997 that uses one of the following technologies:
- Solar photovoltaic
- Solar thermal electricity
- Wind energy
- Small hydro
- Landfill methane and anaerobic digester gas
- Marine or hydrokinetic energy
- Geothermal energy
- Eligible biomass fuel
Massachusetts Class I RECs come from energy generators within New England (MA, CT, RI, NH, ME, VT).
The CCE program satisfies the 49% state requirement for renewable electricity. But, it focuses on the 18% requirement for MA Class I RECs when marketing its three products. We want CCE customers to know that when they sign up for the Optional Green 100 Product, they are getting 100% renewable electricity from MA Class I RECs.
Other electric suppliers may simply state that they satisfy the state minimum of 49% renewable electricity. Be aware that only part of that renewable electricity comes from MA Class I RECs.
The CCE Program’s Standard Product and Optional Green 100 Product surpass the state requirement for renewable electricity by 10% and 82%, respectively. This voluntary renewable electricity comes from buying additional MA Class I RECs. However, these voluntary RECs exclude carbon-emitting energy sources such as:
- Landfill methane
- Anaerobic digestion
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There are several places that you can read about the blockchain technology that underpins modern cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, and the Ethereum Virtual Machine. However, you can easily get inundated in technical details about block confirmation times, mining difficulty, double spending, 51% attacks, consensus algorithms… … …see, I told you.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed, because blockchain explanations can start to get tangential rather quickly. If you’re just starting to learn about “crypto”, then you’re probably just looking for a simple answer to a simple question. It’s a good thing that Mr. Gwei can temporarily set aside his unbounded enthusiasm about all that the blockchain makes possible and answer your simple question.
How Do Blockchains Work?
A blockchain is a record of transactions that is recorded by and agreed upon by multiple parties and then made unalterable via mathematics. Seriously, it’s as simple as that. You’re dismissed…
But… if you want… you can certainly hang around just a minute and we’ll unpack that simplistic answer just a little bit.
You don’t need the internet or even computers to have a blockchain. You and a friend could have a very simple blockchain with nothing more than two sheets of paper, some pens, and a little free time. See, a blockchain is just a distributed ledger of transactions.
- So you could pay your friend ten dollars, write that transaction down, and you’d be off to a good start.
You’d have a ledger. A record of a transaction.
- Then, if your friend would just write down that transaction too, you’d already be halfway there.
Because now you’d be distributed. See, two copies of identical ledgers.
- At this point you could agree that the single transaction is enough to make a “block”. In which case you’d simple need to apply a little math to the transaction and move on. The math step can be complicated, but it needn’t be too complicated in your simple case. You just need to reduce your transaction to a number that will help you check for any errors quickly and accurately, because you’re going to use that number to complete your blockchain.
- If you assigned yourself a number, say the number 5.
- And you assigned your friend another number, say number 7.
- And you assigned the grocery store another number, say 3.
- And then you put these together with your transacted amount, you might end up with a number like this: 10.57
- $10 transacted, from you (5) to your friend (7). As long as we agree and are consistent, this method would work fine in our simple case.
- Next transaction rolls along: your friend pays the grocery store fifteen dollars. You both record. You both follow the same plan for assigning a number to your transaction. You both end up with 15.73. Congratulations, you now have two transactions and two blocks.
- Here’s the fun part. You need to chain them. For simplicity, let’s say that you add your numbers to make a chain. So you add 10.57 + 15.73. You get 26.30. This number is recorded alongside your second block, and it is then used to chain your next block.
- You’re done. You have a distributed ledger of transactions that you can now be sure that your friend can’t simply edit at will without being quickly detected. Any attempts at editing a transaction towards the front of the ledger will necessarily change the block check number that you’ll compare at the end of every block.
- You can add another person to your network and they can follow along, too. You all will always be on the “same page”, and any bad actors or even legitimate accounting errors will be caught right away.
There you go. You can mull on that rudimentary scenario for a while and let the simplicity of the blockchain sink in.
Of course, the actual math involved is non-trivial. The whole system exudes mathematical complexity. If you can follow the logic here, then you’ll be well on your way for tackling real-world blockchain designs later… or, at the very least, you might be more comfortable buying in to something that you somewhat understand.
As always, if you want to get more academic about the topic, Wikipedia is your friend: Blockchain.
I’m passionate about blockchains. I’m excited about decentralization, autonomous organizations, cryptocurrencies, and uncensorable dApps.
I’m also overwhelmed – with questions about these cutting edge technologies. I want to understand the tech, the politics, and the implications of the blockchain revolution.
Most of all, I want to share what I discover – because broader understanding will lead to greater participation, more rapid adoption, and, subsequently, a better world.
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Measuring farm households’ vulnerability and resilience to climate shocks now possible, new research shows
A farmer on his parched land in India. Photo: L Vidyasagar, ICRISAT
A household’s vulnerability to climate shocks and its resilience to recover can now be measured, suggests a recently published study. The study’s authors have turned their measurement approach into an easy-to-use framework using data from smallholder households facing droughts in India.
Vulnerability and resilience are two interrelated factors in climate change research. The authors say vulnerability is determined by exposure, sensitivity and a pre-existing capacity to adapt to the climate shock (in this case, drought), resilience is the ability of households to recover.
For their study, the researchers analyzed data from 2006 to 2014 from the ICRISAT Village-Level Studies in three semi-arid tropical regions of India. Results, from 256 households, revealed that smallholders with smaller landholdings were more vulnerable to drought. Also, a higher cropping intensity (more crops per year) and crop risk (greater reduction in yield/income due to drought) increased their vulnerability, whereas larger farms were less vulnerable.
However, small farms were able to recover more quickly from drought compared to larger farms. Diversification of farm activities – livestock rearing, diverse cropping systems – for extra income generation played an additional factor in increasing their recovery. Other factors which affected resilience included the choice of cash/risky crops, borrowing capacity, liquid investments and the ability to regain yields.
The study’s results will enable policymakers to design policies that help farmers adopt risk management strategies and access credit. Resilience-building plans can target risks at specific time scales, e.g. before, during and after drought.
However, in this study, authors are of the opinion that ultimately it is the farmer household that is the main actor in coping with adverse climate conditions. Therefore, their study on the household-level adaptation will help direct attention where it is needed i.e. at the financial and physical capabilities of the households themselves.
This paper, published by Drs Shalander Kumar, Soumitra Pramanik, Sravya Mamidannaa, Anthony Whitbread of ICRISAT, and Dr Ashok K Mishra of Arizona State University, USA, can be accessed here: http://oar.icrisat.org/11512/
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The Standard & Poor's 500, often abbreviated as the S&P 500, or just the S&P, is an American stock market index based on the market capitalizations of 500 large companies having common stock listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ. The S&P 500 index components and their weightings are determined by S&P Dow Jones Indices. It differs from other U.S. stock market indices, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the Nasdaq Composite index, because of its diverse constituency and weighting methodology. It is one of the most commonly followed equity indices, and many consider it one of the best representations of the U.S. stock market, and a bellwether for the U.S. economy. The National Bureau of Economic Research has classified common stocks as a leading indicator of business cycles. The S&P 500 was developed and continues to be maintained by S&P Dow Jones Indices, a joint venture majority-owned by S&P Global.
Standard & Poor's 500 (S&P 500) is a stock market index in the US that consists of 500 company's stocks. The stocks included in the list vary according to market size, industry, liquidity and other factors. The S&P 500 stock index is considered to be the benchmark that represents risk and return of the large cap market.
The S&P 500 is regarded as the representative of the overall stock market in the US. At one time the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was considered to be the most popular index among investors. However, the number of companies included in DJIA is small that is less than 30. As a result, S&P 500 was formed, and today is considered by most investors to be the definite representation of the US stock market.
S&P 500 is maintained by a joint venture company, S&P Dow Jones Indices, which is owned by McGraw Hill Financial. A team of economists and financial analysts of the S&P Index Committee select stocks for the index based on market value. Every stock's weight in the index is proportionate to the market value.
S&P index is adjusted regularly to keep it consistent over time. The adjustment is required to capture changes in the market such as issuance of shares or dividends, corporate restructuring such as mergers, acquisitions, and bankruptcy filings. Moreover, the stocks included in the index are changed from time to time to ensure that the list continues to reflect the overall market.
Every change in the market mentioned above results in adjustment of the divisor to ensure that the index remain consistent overtime. The divisor is changed during calculation of the closing value as well after close of trading.
The weighting methodology and diverse consistency of the stocks listed in the S&P 500 makes it different from other stock indices such as the Nasdaq Composite index or Dow Jones Industrial Average. Due to the large number of stocks present in the index, it better reflects the market position in the US. And this is the same reason that investors value the index more as compared to other indices.
Investors use the movements in the S&P 500 index to gauge the overall market sentiment. If the index is moving upwards it means that there is a bullish trend in the market, while a downward sloping index indicates a bearish trend.
Additionally, a number of financial companies offer financial products including exchange traded funds (ETFs) and index funds that are linked to S&P 500 index. These products act as if the individual has bought the entire 500 stocks, which is not possible for an individual investor.
Apart from S&P 500, there are other types of S&P indices that include S&P 600 (a stock index of companies having market caps between $300 million and $2 billion), and the S&P 400 (a stock index having market caps between $2 billion and $10 billion).
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How Can You Cure Crypto – What is Cryptocurrency? Put simply, Cryptocurrency is digital cash that can be used in place of standard currency. Basically, the word Cryptocurrency comes from the Greek word Crypto which suggests coin and Currency. In essence, Cryptocurrency is simply as old as Blockchains. However, the difference between Cryptocurrency and Blockchains is that there is no centralization or ledger system in location. In essence, Cryptocurrency is an open source procedure based on peer-to Peer deal innovations that can be carried out on a dispersed computer network.
One specific way in which the Ethereum Project is trying to fix the issue of clever agreements is through the Foundation. The Ethereum Foundation was developed with the objective of developing software application services around clever agreement performance. The Foundation has released its open source libraries under an open license.
What does this mean for the wider neighborhood interested in taking part in the advancement and implementation of wise agreements on the Ethereum platform? For beginners, the major distinction in between the Bitcoin Project and the Ethereum Project is that the former does not have a governing board and therefore is open to factors from all strolls of life. However, the Ethereum Project delights in a far more regulated environment. For that reason, anybody wishing to contribute to the job needs to adhere to a standard procedure.
As for the projects underlying the Ethereum Platform, they are both striving to provide users with a brand-new way to take part in the decentralized exchange. The major differences in between the 2 are that the Bitcoin procedure does not utilize the Proof Of Consensus (POC) procedure that the Ethereum Project utilizes.
On the one hand, the Bitcoin neighborhood has actually had some struggles with its attempts to scale its network. On the other hand, the Ethereum Project has taken an aggressive approach to scale the network while also taking on scalability issues. As a result, the two projects are intending to offer various methods of proceeding. In contrast to the Satoshi Roundtable, which concentrated on increasing the block size, the Ethereum Project will have the ability to carry out improvements to the UTX procedure that increase deal speed and decrease costs. In contrast to the Bitcoin Project ‘s strategy to increase the total supply, the Ethereum group will be working on reducing the rate of blocks mined per minute.
The major difference between the 2 platforms comes from the operational system that the 2 teams utilize. The decentralized element of the Linux Foundation and the Bitcoin Unlimited Association represent a conventional model of governance that puts a focus on strong neighborhood involvement and the promo of agreement. By contrast, the ethereal structure is dedicated to developing a system that is flexible enough to accommodate modifications and add brand-new functions as the requirements of the users and the industry modification. This model of governance has actually been adopted by several distributed application groups as a means of managing their jobs.
The major difference between the 2 platforms originates from the reality that the Bitcoin community is mostly self-dependent, while the Ethereum Project anticipates the participation of miners to support its advancement. By contrast, the Ethereum network is open to factors who will contribute code to the Ethereum software application stack, forming what is called “code forks “. This function increases the level of participation preferred by the neighborhood. When it was utilized in forex trading, this design also differs from the Byzantine Fault design that was embraced by the Byzantine algorithm.
Similar to any other open source technology, much debate surrounds the relationship in between the Linux Foundation and the Ethereum Project. Although both have actually adopted different perspectives on how to best use the decentralized element of the innovation, they have actually both however worked hard to establish a positive working relationship. The developers of the Linux and Android mobile platforms have actually honestly supported the work of the Ethereum Foundation, contributing code to protect the performance of its users. The Facebook group is supporting the work of the Ethereum Project by supplying their own framework and developing applications that incorporate with it. Both the Linux Foundation and Facebook see the heavenly project as a method to further their own interests by supplying an expense effective and scalable platform for users and developers alike.
Merely put, Cryptocurrency is digital money that can be used in place of standard currency. Basically, the word Cryptocurrency comes from the Greek word Crypto which implies coin and Currency. In essence, Cryptocurrency is just as old as Blockchains. The distinction between Cryptocurrency and Blockchains is that there is no centralization or journal system in location. In essence, Cryptocurrency is an open source protocol based on peer-to Peer transaction technologies that can be executed on a dispersed computer network. How Can You Cure Crypto
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What Does The Crypto Market Mean? – Just put, Cryptocurrency is digital cash that can be used in place of traditional currency. The difference in between Cryptocurrency and Blockchains is that there is no centralization or ledger system in place. In essence, Cryptocurrency is an open source procedure based on peer-to Peer transaction innovations that can be carried out on a dispersed computer network.
As an open source protocol, the protocol is extremely versatile. This indicates that unlike Blockchains, there is a chance for the community at big to modify the core of the protocol to fit their needs. As such, a lot of development has actually taken place around the globe with the objective of providing tools and strategies that assist in wise agreements. However, one specific way in which the Ethereum Project is attempting to fix the issue of smart agreements is through the Foundation. The Ethereum Foundation was developed with the goal of developing software application solutions around clever agreement functionality. As such, the Foundation has launched its open source libraries under an open license.
For starters, the significant distinction in between the Bitcoin Project and the Ethereum Project is that the previous does not have a governing board and therefore is open to contributors from all strolls of life. The Ethereum Project delights in a much more regulated environment.
As for the jobs underlying the Ethereum Platform, they are both aiming to supply users with a brand-new way to take part in the decentralized exchange. The major distinctions between the two are that the Bitcoin protocol does not utilize the Proof Of Consensus (POC) process that the Ethereum Project uses. In addition, there will be an effort to integrate the newest Byzantium upgrade that will increase the scalability of the network. These 2 differences may prove to be barriers to entry for potential business owners, however they do represent important distinctions.
On the other hand, the Ethereum Project has taken an aggressive approach to scale the network while likewise tackling scalability problems. In contrast to the Satoshi Roundtable, which focused on increasing the block size, the Ethereum Project will be able to implement improvements to the UTX protocol that increase deal speed and reduction fees.
The decentralized aspect of the Linux Foundation and the Bitcoin Unlimited Association represent a traditional design of governance that puts a focus on strong neighborhood involvement and the promo of agreement. This design of governance has been adopted by several dispersed application groups as a way of handling their jobs.
The major difference between the two platforms comes from the truth that the Bitcoin neighborhood is mainly self-dependent, while the Ethereum Project anticipates the involvement of miners to subsidize its advancement. By contrast, the Ethereum network is open to factors who will contribute code to the Ethereum software application stack, forming what is referred to as “code forks “. This function increases the level of involvement wanted by the neighborhood. This design likewise varies from the Byzantine Fault model that was adopted by the Byzantine algorithm when it was used in forex trading.
Similar to any other open source technology, much debate surrounds the relationship between the Linux Foundation and the Ethereum Project. Although both have adopted different perspectives on how to best utilize the decentralized element of the technology, they have actually both nevertheless striven to establish a favorable working relationship. The designers of the Linux and Android mobile platforms have openly supported the work of the Ethereum Foundation, contributing code to secure the performance of its users. Likewise, the Facebook group is supporting the work of the Ethereum Project by offering their own structure and creating applications that integrate with it. Both the Linux Foundation and Facebook view the heavenly project as a method to further their own interests by providing a cost scalable and effective platform for users and developers alike.
Simply put, Cryptocurrency is digital money that can be utilized in place of traditional currency. Generally, the word Cryptocurrency comes from the Greek word Crypto which suggests coin and Currency. In essence, Cryptocurrency is simply as old as Blockchains. The difference in between Cryptocurrency and Blockchains is that there is no centralization or journal system in location. In essence, Cryptocurrency is an open source protocol based on peer-to Peer deal technologies that can be carried out on a dispersed computer network. What Does The Crypto Market Mean?
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Creation of agency : Judicial Interpretation
Authored By : Amrutha Valli
Agency is a fiduciary arrangement between an employee, who decides to conduct duties and jobs, and a supervisor, who manages the jobs and compensates the employee for it in most cases. The partnership focuses primarily on the interests of third parties, with whom the agent must work on the principal's behalf. The agent-principal arrangement is contractual, with the two parties agreeing on the general outlines of how the agent will behave, subject to the principal's consent and control. During this partnership the agent has a responsibility to remain faithful to the principal and to function only in the best interests of the principal.
· There is an agency so that one person can act lawfully on another's behalf. The law of the agency determines who is responsible in different cases for the harms resulting from the agency. The participants in a relationship with an entity are a source, an employee and third parties who communicate with the client.
· The agent's characteristics will influence whether the principal is responsible for the actions that the agent is taking. Agents act with the actual authority or apparent authority and either type of authority may bind a principal in contract and for certain torts.
· There need not be a formal document to create a relationship with the agency. Then, the agent has only to act on behalf of the principal, with the assent of the principal, and for the good of the principal. No compensation is required to establish a partnership with an organization.
· An agency relationship occurs when an agent decides to act on behalf of a principal, performs the action, acts for the good of the principal, and has the principal's assent.
Agency, Actual Authority or Apparent Authority, Create an agency Relationship, Agency Relationship, Fiduciary duties, Duties to the Agent, The legal right.
What is agency?
If one party transfers any power to another party through which the latter carries out its acts in a more or less autonomous manner, the arrangement between them is considered an entity on behalf of the first party. It can be express or inferred to the Department. Section X of the Indian Contract Act, 1872, discusses Commission rules. Both companies, whether large or small, carry out their work by organization. Consequently, regulation relating to the agency is an important area of company law. Principal and employee linked partnerships include three primary parties: the principal, the Agent and a third party.
Who is agent?
One which is an agent is:
Ø Employed by another (maintainer);
Ø For the principal to do some act; or
Ø To represent him in third-party dealings.
An agent is a person hired to conduct certain actions for another person or to represent another person in relations with other persons. The person by which these actions are done or who is so represented is called the 'maintain.'
The Agent has other responsibilities under the Indian Act. An officer is obligated to Conduct the business of its principal in the manner stated by the Principal, or, in the absence of any such instructions, whichever custom Prevails. It is the responsibility of each agent to satisfy his principal's mandate. An agent is bound to make proper accounts to his principal on demand. It is the responsibility of the agent, in the event of difficulty, to use all due caution in dealing with his principal and in trying to obtain these accounts. A special agent has no clear power outside the limits of his appointment and the principal is not bound by his actions outside those boundaries, whether or not the other contracting party is aware of them.
This was seen with Palestar Electronics Private Limited v. Additional Commissioner binding on the principal is the agent's actions within the framework of his authority. Contracts signed by an agent and duties arising from actions performed by the agent can be applied in the same manner which would have the same legal implications as if the contracts were signed and the acts performed by the agent in person. It is important for this intention to be fulfilled that the agent must have committed the act within the scope of his jurisdiction.
The uncertainty is due in large part to the fact that an agent 's authority is not according to one source. In the case of Ramlesh v. Jasbir Singh it was rightly held that the agency was established to facilitate and not to impede trade.
An agent's authority stands for his ability to bind the principal. It alludes to "The sum of the actions agreed between the principal and the agent that the agent will conduct on behalf of the principal." If the agent does any such actions, it is claimed that he has acted within his authority, as was seen in the case of Nand Lal Thanvi v. LR of Brij Bhushan Goswami.
An agency contract is a type of general contract. As such, an agency may terminate except where the agency is irrevocable in the same way that a contract is discharged. The principal and agent partnership may only be terminated by the act or agreement of the parties to the agency or by the rule of law. An agency, if proved to have existed, would be believed to have ended, in the absence of anything to indicate its termination, until such a period of time has passed as removes the presumption agency may be put to an end either by the act of the parties, or through the rule of law. Subsequent events can terminate the Organization. This may be physical, such as when the subject matter is lost, or the principal or agent dies, or becomes insane, for example. Alternatively, they may be legitimate, even if the principal or agent is bankrupt or the relationship is illegal (e.g. if the principal is an foreign enemy).
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Abstract and Keywords
Free trade has long been accepted as a central component and coordinating element of international commerce and exchange. Adam Smith and later David Ricardo described the policy as enhancing economic efficiency, maximizing wealth, and promoting harmonious international relations. Ricardian theories of comparative advantage claimed that all nations could share the benefits of free trade. Despite the great theoretical advances of Smith, Ricardo, and the classical economists who followed them, free trade has always been contested, and there have been consistent challenges to its intellectual hegemony. Yet most alternative policy proscriptions have foundered in the face of the ideological strength of free trade, which retains strong associations with wealth creation and economic efficiency. The free trade idea’s success owes much to the intellectual rigor of Smith and Ricardo; and although it has been refined and adapted, it remains the theoretical foundation of modern internationalist conceptions of open markets’ benefits.
Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.
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How to set ambitious goals for sustainable agriculture
Food production in the Netherlands is an economic success but has led to many environmental issues, including nitrogen pollution. Recently, the policy to allow economic growth while reducing nitrogen losses was disapproved by the highest court in the Netherlands, casting the country into a nitrogen crisis. In a new article in the sustainability science journal One Earth, Jan Willem Erisman proposes more integrated policies for global future sustainable food production.
Ambitious goals for the commons
'Although many players in the global food chain have a responsibility to make agriculture more sustainable, there is a special task for governments', writes Erisman. 'In my view, the government in the Netherlands, as well as in other nations, should paint an inspiring picture of the future for sustainable agriculture and food chains. The government can make its vision of circular agriculture more concrete by introducing principles such as soil health as the basis for sustainable agriculture and spatial planning as a tool to produce food with less impact on nature, biodiversity, and the climate: our shared commons.'
Targets and indicators
Erisman believes the government should set clear legal (environmental) targets within which farmers (and other entrepreneurs) are free to operate. In instances where targets are not met, the government should then intervene. These targets should be concrete, science-based goals based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and recognise the vital roles of our commons: healthy soil, air, and water; a stable climate; the conservation of biodiversity; and the protection of nature, our landscapes, and animal welfare. 'Instruments such as key performance indicators (KPIs), commonly used in the business domain, can be used to integrally steer indicators toward targets.'
In instances where performance—or success—can be measured unambiguously, it is possible to reward farmers, Erisman explains. 'For example, through interest rebates on loans, a higher price through customers, or lower taxes. This stacking of rewards provides additional incentives to farmers to score well on KPIs.'
The abbreviation KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. KPIs are variables or measures used to analyse the performance of a company or organisation, for example. A KPI is quantitative and measures the extent to which the organisation achieves a target. For example, a company can measure the loyalty of its customers by looking at the number of followers on social media.
KPIs for farmers
In the case of farming, we can use KPIs to steer towards sustainable agriculture. For example, the nitrogen efficiency of a farm could be an important KPI: the ratio between the nitrogen in the products that leave the farm and the input of nitrogen in concentrate, fertiliser and other fertilisers. Another KPI could be the net CO¬2 emission of a farm per hectare, including the compensation by carbon sequestration in e.g. soil or vegetation.
Global sustainable food production
Erisman predicts that the nitrogen challenge in the Netherlands will certainly be followed in other areas in the world. 'Current food policies encourage farmers to produce as much food as possible against the lowest costs in a global food market with low prices. A KPI system can stimulate them to produce food sustainably provided that clear environmental targets are set. Governments can balance farmers in environmental sensitive areas by using the KPIs to reward the preservation and protection of ecosystems and the services they provide, such as carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and landscape resilience. Without such measures, the nitrogen crisis will continue and worsen.'
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- On June 30, 2020
- By Travis L. Palmer
Balance Sheet vs. Income Statement
Balance Sheet vs. Income Statement
Together with the balance sheet and cash flow statement, the income statement provides an in-depth look at a company’s financial performance. Although this brochure discusses each financial statement separately, keep in mind that they are all related. The changes in assets and liabilities that you see on the balance sheet are also reflected in the revenues and expenses that you see on the income statement, which result in the company’s gains or losses.
The most important financial statement for the majority of users is likely to be the income statement, since it reveals the ability of a business to generate a profit. Also, the information listed on the income statement is mostly in relatively current dollars, and so represents a reasonable degree of accuracy. However, it does not reveal the amount of assets and liabilities required to generate a profit, and its results do not necessarily equate to the cash flows generated by the business. Also, the accuracy of this document can be suspect when the cash basis of accounting is used. Thus, the income statement, when used by itself, can be somewhat misleading.
Income Statement Formula and Calculation
The resulting shareholder’s equity is considered a company’s book value. This value is an important performance metric that increases or decreases with the financial activities of a company. The income statement, like the cash flow statement, shows changes in accounts over a set period. The balance sheet, on the other hand, is a snapshot, showing what the company owns and owes at a single moment. It is important to compare the income statement with the cash flow statement since, under the accrual method of accounting, a company can log revenues and expenses before cash changes hands.
Financial statements are written records of a business’s financial situation. They include standard reports like the balance sheet, income or profit and loss statements, and cash flow statement. They stand as one of the more essential components of business information, and as the principal method of communicating financial information about an entity to outside parties. In a technical sense, financial statements are a summation of the financial position of an entity at a given point in time.
The Balance Sheet Formula
The balance sheet provides a snapshot of an entity as of a particular date. It list the entity’s assets, liabilities, and in the case of a corporation, the stockholders’ equity on a specific date. The income statement presents a summary of the revenues, gains, expenses, losses, and net income or net loss of an entity for a specific period. This statement is similar to a moving picture of the entity’s operations during this period of time. The cash flow statement summarizes an entity’s cash receipts and cash payments relating to its operating, investing, and financing activities during a particular period.
The main purpose of the income statement is to convey details of profitability and the financial results of business activities. However, it can be very effective in showing whether sales or revenue is increasing when compared over multiple periods. Investors can also see how well a company’s management is controlling expenses to determine whether a company’s efforts in reducing the cost of sales might boost profits over time. An income statement is one of the three important financial statements used for reporting a company’sfinancial performanceover a specific accounting period.
Generally, financial statements are designed to meet the needs of many diverse users, particularly present and potential owners and creditors. Financial statements result from simplifying, condensing, and aggregating masses of data obtained primarily from a company’s (or an individual’s) accounting system. One can use the income statement to calculate several metrics, including the gross profit margin, the operating profit margin, the net profit margin and the operating ratio.
Items Included in the Balance Sheet
- The balance sheet provides a snapshot of an entity as of a particular date.
- It list the entity’s assets, liabilities, and in the case of a corporation, the stockholders’ equity on a specific date.
- The income statement presents a summary of the revenues, gains, expenses, losses, and net income or net loss of an entity for a specific period.
Also known as theprofit and loss statementor the statement of revenue and expense, the income statement primarily focuses on a company’s revenues and expenses during a particular period. The financial statements are used by investors, market analysts, and creditors to evaluate a company’s financial health and earnings potential. The three major financial statement reports are the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows. Review the key financial statements within the context of the relevant accounting standards. In examining balance sheet accounts, issues such as recognition, valuation and classification are keys to proper evaluation.
The main question should be whether this balance sheet is a complete representation of the firm’s economic position. When evaluating the income statement, the main point is to properly assess the quality of earnings as a complete representation of the firm’s economic performance. For large corporations, these statements may be complex and may include an extensive set of footnotes to the financial statements and management discussion and analysis.
Using Financial Statement Information
Cash flows provide more information about cash assets listed on a balance sheet and are related, but not equivalent, to net income shown on the income statement. And information is the investor’s best tool when it comes to investing wisely. The balance sheet is a report of a company’s financial worth in terms of book value.
It is broken into three parts to include a company’s assets,liabilities, andshareholders’ equity. Short-term assets such as cash and accounts receivable can tell a lot about a company’s operational efficiency. Liabilities include its expense arrangements and the debt capital it is paying off. Shareholder’s equity includes details on equity capital investments and retained earnings from periodic net income. The balance sheet must balance with assets minus liabilities equaling shareholder’s equity.
In its income statement it must report cumulative revenues and expenses from the inception of the enterprise. Likewise, in its cash flow statement, it must report cumulative cash flows from the inception of the enterprise.
The first part of a cash flow statement analyzes a company’s cash flow from net income or losses. For most companies, this section of the cash flow statement reconciles the net income (as shown on the income statement) to the actual cash the company received from or used in its operating activities. To do this, it adjusts net income for any non-cash items (such as adding back depreciation expenses) and adjusts for any cash that was used or provided by other operating assets and liabilities.
What are the four basic financial statements?
There are four main financial statements. They are: (1) balance sheets; (2) income statements; (3) cash flow statements; and (4) statements of shareholders’ equity. Balance sheets show what a company owns and what it owes at a fixed point in time.
The notes typically describe each item on the balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement in further detail. Notes to financial statements are considered an integral part of the financial statements. The P&L statement is one of three financial statements every public company issues quarterly and annually, along with the balance sheet and the cash flow statement.
What is included in a financial statement?
Financial statements are written records of a business’s financial situation. They include standard reports like the balance sheet, income or profit and loss statements, and cash flow statement. In a technical sense, financial statements are a summation of the financial position of an entity at a given point in time.
A statement of changes in owners’ equity or stockholders’ equity reconciles the beginning of the period equity of an enterprise with its ending balance. A development stage company must follow generally accepted accounting principles applicable to operating enterprises in the preparation of financial statements. In its balance sheet, the company must report cumulative net losses separately in the equity section.
Financial accounting calls for all companies to create a balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement which form the basis for financial statement analysis. The cash flow statement provides an overview of the company’s cash flows from operating activities, investing activities, and financing activities. Net income is carried over to the cash flow statement where it is included as the top line item for operating activities.
Its statement of stockholders’ equity should include the number of shares issued and the date of their issuance as well as the dollar amounts received. The statement should identify the entity as a development stage enterprise and describe the nature of development stage activities. During the first period of normal operations, the enterprise must disclose its former developmental stage status in the notes section of its financial statements. are both important financial statements that detail the financial accounting of a company. The balance sheet details a company’s assets and liabilities at a certain period of time, while the income statement details income and expenses over a period of time (usually one year).
It is often the most popular and common financial statement in a business plan as it quickly shows how much profit or loss was generated by a business. The income statement recaps the revenue earned by a company during the reporting period, along with any corresponding expenses. This includes revenue from operating and non-operating activities, allowing investors and lenders to evaluate profitability.
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Dire Straits – Shipping and Climate Change
Shipping brings us 90% of everything we buy and consume, from our clothes to our TVs to our cars. And yet recognition of the impact of shipping on the environment is shockingly low. Shipping is one of the fastest growing sources of transport greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, accounting for approximately 3% of annual global CO2 emissions, with a projected increase of 50-250% in the period up to 2050. By comparison, the much maligned Aviation industry only accounts for 2% of global CO2 emissions .
And yet because shipping is such a fundamental part of global trade, there is little appetite by governments and regulators to introduce programs to reduce emissions. In fact, the head of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) argued at the climate talks in Paris last year that a cap on emissions for shipping would damage the world economy.
So the question arises – is there an opportunity to reduce shipping emissions without impacting growth?
Seas-ing the opportunity – from kite-surfing to “kite-sailing” with SkySails
One company that thinks so is Skysails GmbH from Hamburg. Chosen by the World Economic Forum as a 2008 Technology Pioneer , their innovative solution uses automated kites to tow large container ships. Think kite-surfing, but on a highly advanced scale.
Skysails has equipped five ships so far, enabling them to increase speed, cut fuel consumption, and significantly reduce emissions. “Wind is the cheapest, most powerful, and greenest source of energy on the ocean,” says founder Stephen Wrage, “and kites are by far the most efficient system of generating that energy.”
The Skysails propulsion system consists of three main components: a foil towing kite, a launch and recovery system, and an electronic control system for automated operation. It can be installed on new builds and existing vessels. The 150-1000 m2 kites (1,615-10,764 sq. ft.) aren’t cheap – they cost anywhere from $450,000 to $3 million. However the company says they pay for themselves within three to five years through reduced fuel consumption and emissions.
Speaking of which, how effective are they? Skysails say one kWh of SkySails power costs $0.06, or half as much as one kWh from the main engine. Their first partnership with Beluga Shipping produced an average fuel savings of 10-15%. The IMO estimates that SkySails technology can eliminate up to 100 million tons of carbon emissions every year – equivalent to 11% of Germany’s CO2 emissions.
A lack of sails – structural issues
So why has SkySails not attracted interest from ship companies? According to Henning Kuehl, head of business development at SkySails, “There’s a structural problem slowing down the process: ship owners (who have to make the investment) often don’t pay for the fuel – that’s the charterer’s duty. The charterer on the other side doesn’t charter the ship for long enough a period to make low-carbon technologies pay back.” Combine this with low fuel prices and little political incentive (there is currently no regulation limiting shipping carbon emissions), SkySails is finding it difficult to get lift-off.
Crowd on more sail – additional steps for the existing operating model
SkySails’ operating model is based on two principles – reducing fuel cost & improving a company’s sustainability image. SkySails needs to do more in these areas if it is to have any chance of developing a global business:
- Target a business’s sustainability brand: Consumers are increasingly aware of environmental issues and this is starting to influence companies. Kraft Heinz and Coca-Cola for example are committed to increasing sustainability in their supply chain. In 2009 Toyota’s shipping partner, NYK Line, installed solar panels on some of their ships in a move towards ‘greener shipping’. SkySails can work with these importers to improve the sustainability of their supply chain.
- Lobby governments: Without formal regulations requiring caps on emissions, it is unlikely that shipping companies will be incentivized to invest in costly solutions. Skysail could work with organisations like the Transport and Environment organisation to promote a change in transport regulations.
Changing tack – alternative operating models
SkySails is also looking at expanding their operating model to use high-altitude kites to replace conventional wind turbines:
- Using high-altitude winds can generate more energy than comparable offshore wind turbines, making wind power generation cheaper
- The SkySails system floats, allowing it to beinstalled in extremely deep water inaccessible to traditional offshore wind turbine
- Kites can be retracted and replaced easily for repair and maintenance, reducing costs and downtime
Around 50 million euros have been invested in the technology to date, with a 3.5MW product and test farm already developed. Diversifying into this area allows SkySails to develop an environmentally friendly and recognizable brand. Only time will tell if it will get off the ground and truly soar.
Tom Levitt, “Why aren’t ships using wind-power to cut their climate footprint?” The Guardian, August 16, 2016, [https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/aug/16/shipping-emissions-low-carbon-wind-power-climate-change], accessed November 2016
Transport & Environment, “Shipping and Climate Change,”, https://www.transportenvironment.org/what-we-do/shipping/shipping-and-climate-change, accessed November 2016
Megan Darby, “UN shipping chief warns against emissions cap,” ClimateChangeNews.com, August 28, 2015, [http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/09/28/un-shipping-chief-warns-against-emissions-cap/], accessed November 2016
Jennifer L. Schenker, “SkySails: Greener Shipping with Kites,” Bloomberg, November 29, 2007, [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2007-11-29/skysails-greener-shipping-with-kitesbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice], access November 2016
Matthew Saltmarsh, “A fuel-saving system for ships relies on kites,” The New York Times, August 9, 2006, [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/business/worldbusiness/09iht-transcol10.2427239.html], accessed November 2016
Schenker, “SkySails: Greener Shipping with Kites,” (see above)
SkySails GmbH, “SkySails Propulsion for Cargo Ships,” http://www.skysails.info/english/skysails-marine/skysails-propulsion-for-cargo-ships/, accessed November 2016
Levitt, “Why aren’t ships using wind-power to cut their climate footprint?” (see above)
John Konrad, “SkySails – Marine Environment Initiatives At Work,” gCaptain, May 26, 2009, [http://gcaptain.com/skysails-marine-environmental/], accessed November 2016
SkySails GmbH, “SkySails Propulsion for Cargo Ships,” http://www.skysails.info/index.php?L=1, accessed November 2016
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Improving Everyday Financial Decisions: Brief, specific and targeted education could help the poor make better choices
In Uganda, nearly half of surveyed adults were unable to correctly answer a question about interest rates according to a recent Finscope study. When asked “If you were offered a loan with 5 percent monthly interest rate and a loan with 20 percent annual interest rate, which loan would offer better value?” Forty-nine percent ended up choosing the more expensive loan option or were unsure of the right answer.
The Bank of Uganda in collaboration with the German Development Agency (GIZ) is hoping to address these types of gaps in financial literacy with targeted programming and outreach. Its strategy for financial literacy officially launched in August 2013 includes guidance on the following priority topics among others—loans, savings, personal financial management, insurance, and investments.
A recent piece published in the Independent magazine speaks more about this strategy and synthesizes some of the empirical experimental research on financial education and literacy programming in the context of financial inclusion in Uganda. The authors, Annette Kuteesa and Corti Paul Lakuma from Makerere University’s Economic Policy Research Centre, highlight an evaluation conducted by affliates of Innovations for Poverty Action (where the author is employed) in the Dominican Republic that compares two types of financial education training for micro-entrepreneurs. It turns out that a simplified rule-of-thumb training is more effective than a standard accounting training when it comes to encouraging good business practices and business performance.
The authors comment that in general:
[Financial education] programs that are simple in terms of content, short in terms of time commitment and specific, [i.e.,] targeting a particular behavior, can be successful.
The article concludes with a note advocating for the use of randomized evaluations in “testing better approaches to financial education and product design” with the objective of improving access to and usage of financial services and products:
These findings offer some mechanisms or at least point policymakers and planners to a starting point when it comes to considering the way in which financial education might be leveraged; whether they should just consider the timing of the intervention, or nuance of training and product design, or both—to promote financial inclusion in Uganda.
IPA has supported research studies on some of these key financial inclusion topics in Uganda and around the world. In fact, with the support of the Citi Foundation, the Global Financial Inclusion Initiative at IPA is currently co-sponsoring a second study on the rules-of-thumb training program for micro-entrepreneurs with Ideas42, the Small Enterprise Finance Center, and Janalakshmi in India to understand how the same approach affects outcomes among Indian micro-entrepreneurs. In this study, researchers are testing whether delivering a heuristics-based financial education program via mobile phone voice messages might offer a more scalable, sustainable, and cost-effective solution for financial training.
If you are interested in learning more about these issues, check out some of our ongoing and completed studies on financial education.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published on IPA’s blog. It is cross-posted with permission.
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Is Bitcoin And Ethereum Crashing – The term “Ethereum Cryptocurrency ” is a fairly brand-new term in the world of financing and is associated to digital currency itself. Well, it is a type of currency that is built on the “Ethereum ” platform.
Put simply, the task wishes to reinvent how cash is sent out worldwide. Now, digital currencies are truly just digital transactions in between individuals. All you do is transform the currency you ‘re utilizing into whatever currency the recipient is using if you desire to send cash abroad. This can be a costly and really slow procedure, especially when you require to use different currency rates to make your transaction worth your while.
What is needed is a way for people to make transactions without having to deal with any currency at all. Generally, this implies you can take your cash and make a transaction that includes no currency at all. In order to achieve this, you would require to utilize something called “cryptocoins “. These are little clever agreements that operate on the “blockchain “. They are accountable for making the entire transaction as protected and safe as possible. Many individuals still aren ‘t quite sure what the “blockchain ” is, so this becomes their big concern.
Essentially, the “blockchain ” is like the Internet with money. Think of it as a journal where anything that ‘s been done is logged in. Any new transactions are then added to the journal. Much like the Internet, there ‘s a great deal of capacity for abuse with the ledger, which is why there ‘s constantly somebody who ‘s attempting to get a piece of it. That ‘s why we require cryptography in order to make sure that the journal stays safe.
The problem with the majority of digital currencies is they have a lot of resemblances with traditional currencies. For example, all of the significant economies print their own currency. This makes them very simple to track. Even if you understood how to find all of the different federal governments ‘ currency logs, you still wouldn ‘t have the ability to figure out their rate of interest, their political activities, and even their most current financial reports. With this information, you could easily manipulate the worth of the cash and take advantage of their weaknesses.
By using a digital currency based upon cryptography, you ‘ll have the ability to make protected transactions that will be hard to foil. You ‘ll likewise have the ability to ensure that you aren ‘t spending more than you should, given that there won ‘t be any paper trails left behind. As you know, federal governments around the globe are fretted about terrorism, which is why they keep a close eye on any type of transactions that are made online.
There are some companies out there that are working on establishing brand-new types of cryptography that will be used on the Internet. In the mean time, there are a number of widely known cryptosystems that you can use in the meantime. Some popular examples of these include Zcash, Vitalik, Prypto, and ECDSA.
Prior to you select any particular company or item to purchase, you must make certain that they have stayed in business for a minimum of a couple of years. Considering that the Internet is utilized worldwide, you want to make certain that there isn ‘t going to be an issue when sending out personal messages in between your computer systems. Make certain that they also offer the highest level of security readily available. That ‘s what it ‘s actually all about. The right tool can help you make the ideal choice about whether to utilize cryptography or not.
When searching for this kind of service, look for something called a private essential service. It ‘s very similar to what you would utilize for an ATM, only it ‘s much more sophisticated and personal. The majority of the time, you can get this sort of cryptography totally free, but if you ‘re prepared to spend for it, you ‘ll have the ability to get more security than ever in the past. This is simply among the numerous features that come with using this type of system.
Even though there are plenty of places to purchase this innovation, you should make sure that you ‘re handling a genuine company that has an excellent credibility. You don ‘t want to put your financial details at threat. There are plenty of phishing websites out there that will promise to let you in on some highly classified info, only to rob you blind. Find a trusted professional to manage your looking for ERC Cryptography.
What ‘s fantastic about it is that it ‘s been shown to be protected, so it shouldn ‘t be tough to make the modification from using passwords and codes to making this kind of personal recognition system obligatory. There ‘s nothing even worse than having all of your info stolen, isn ‘t it? It ‘s certainly not a really excellent feeling when somebody gets hold of your social security number or other individual info.
The term “Ethereum Cryptocurrency ” is a relatively new term in the world of financing and is related to digital currency itself. Numerous individuals still aren ‘t quite sure what the “blockchain ” is, so this becomes their big concern.
Just like the Internet, there ‘s a lot of capacity for abuse with the journal, which is why there ‘s constantly somebody who ‘s trying to get a piece of it. You ‘ll likewise be able to make sure that you aren ‘t costs more than you should, given that there won ‘t be any paper tracks left behind. What ‘s fantastic about it is that it ‘s been shown to be safe, so it shouldn ‘t be difficult to make the change from utilizing passwords and codes to making this kind of personal recognition system obligatory. Is Bitcoin And Ethereum Crashing
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India-Luxembourg Virtual Summit: Key Facts
On November 19, 2020, India and Luxembourg held the first stand alone summit in two decades.
The countries appreciated the launch of four Luxembourg satellites by Indian Space Research Organization in 2019. India welcomed Luxembourg’s decision of joining International Solar Alliance. Luxembourg has agreed to extend its full support to India during its term in United Nations Security Council (2021-22).
Why is Luxembourg important to India?
- Luxembourg is the third largest source of Foreign Portfolios after US and Mauritius. The country accounts to 8.5% of FPI of India.
- Luxembourg is the world’s most important financial centres of the world. Indian companies are raising huge capital through the Global Depository Receipts on Luxembourg Stock Exchange.
Luxembourg is the second richest country in the world. The average GDP per capita of Luxembourg is 79,593 USD. The country is rich because the majority of the population is working in Germany, France and Belgium but living in Luxembourg. Therefore, France, Germany and Belgium are the major trading partners of the country. Also, the financial sector of Luxembourg is huge.
Why is financial sector in Luxembourg big?
Luxembourg attracts as much FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) as that of the United States in spite of holding just 6 lakh citizens. Around 4 trillion USD of FDI comes into the country. This is mainly because, the country is a big tax haven. (Tax Haven is a country where taxes are levied at very low rates).
Luxembourg is one of three major Tax Havens of the European Union. The other two are Ireland and Netherlands.
The diplomatic relations between the countries was established in 1947. The bilateral trade between India and Luxembourg between 2000 and 2015 was at 1,383 million USD. Luxembourg has invested in software, chemicals and automobiles in India.
Category: International Current Affairs
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For many years, scientists have promised a bright and shiny future filled with intelligent devices and machines capable of autonomous thought and behavior. However, while once Artificial Intelligence (AI) was largely considered the stuff of science fiction, today in 2020, it is rapidly becoming science fact.
Without realizing it, you likely already use AI to some extent. For example, if you use Google Photos, you’ll have no doubt seen how the platform can automatically collate your photos by type or people; or perhaps you’ve received an automatically-generated e-mail confirming a recent e-commerce purchase; or maybe you just like how Spotify can autonomously recommend tracks and artists, without you needing to search.
The potential for AI across all areas of society
AI is beginning to make dramatic in-roads to all areas of our lives and is increasingly serving to augment our digital experiences – everything from how we shop online to helping us choose our next Netflix boxset. However, where AI is categorically starting to prove its worth is in the workplace. These days, AI tech is being used to help arrange schedules, process payrolls, compile end-of-year accounts and even maintain Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
However, while the above examples are all undoubtedly useful applications of AI, really the greatest potential for the tech lies in the production and manufacturing sectors where it promises to revolutionize how goods are made in the future.
Streamlining processes and reducing costs
The holy grail of all production processes is to manufacture goods in the quickest time possible with the smallest financial outlay to achieve the greatest possible profit. All companies exist to make money and manufacturing firms are constantly striving to find ways to improve their efficiency, reduce production times and increase the reliability and durability of the goods they produce.
AI can be used in all facets of your production process – from the back-end, elbow-grease manufacturing activities right through to your front-facing e-commerce website and ordering procedures. Where once these tasks were the responsibility of human staff with all their inaccuracies, mood swings and need for time off, AI can work tirelessly, without a break and at a fraction of the cost.
Moreover, while the initial outlay of installing AI systems might seem quite high at first, in the long-run, machines have a considerably higher Return on Investment (ROI) ratio than any human staff ever will – particularly when used in highly repetitive or time-consuming tasks. It also has the additional benefit of freeing up the time of your staff, allowing them to concentrate on more beneficial and profitable activities.
A real-world example of AI in action
To better understand just how AI could benefit your business, it’s perhaps a good idea to consider a real-world example – let’s say, an assembly line producing flat-screen TVs. Using a combination of AI and a conveyor system like those supplied by fluentconveyors.com, you could automate more or less all aspects of the production route – everything from the initial assembly of the set through to the packing and boxing process and even labeling to send the set to your consumer. Indeed, as AI continues to increase in sophistication, it could even be used in the R&D process with Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) capabilities.
Moreover, AI systems installed in your office environment could look after everything from your e-commerce website and client ordering system to company accounts, network security, automatic social media updates and email marketing.
As outlined above, AI technology has wide-ranging implications for all aspects of business and can dramatically streamline a company’s operations. Isn’t it time you got on board?
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Fire enhancers within the financial system
For many people, the explanation of the financial crisis is simple: Blind with greed, bankers gambled on low-quality, subprime mortgages in the United States. A look at the numbers, however, indicates that there still is a puzzle. As of October 2008, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated the total losses on these mortgages at some 500 billion dollars. This figure seems both too low and too high.
by Martin Hellwig; in MaxPlanckResearch 3/09
The figure of 500 billion dollars in losses is too low to explain why the global financial system, with bank assets of 80 to 90 trillion dollars, was dragged into the abyss. Back in 1990, the losses incurred by the US savings and loan associations were said to amount to some 600 to 800 billion dollars. In the Japanese banking crisis of the 1990s, the banks’ actual losses amounted to more than 500 billion dollars. In neither case did the crisis have any repercussions for the global financial system as a whole.
At the same time, the figure is too high to be explained by lowered expectations of debt service on subprime mortgages. As of October 2008, the IMF estimated the total volume of non-prime mortgages at some 1,100 billion dollars.
Losses of 500 billion would imply a loss rate of 45 percent. If borrowers initially had, on average, 5 percent equity in their homes, a loss rate of 45 percent on the mortgage would imply a loss rate of 50 percent on the value of the underlying real estate. Between mid-2006 and mid-2008, however, real estate prices in the United States dropped only 19 percent on average, with the worst hit metropolitan areas recording a 33 percent decline.
The architecture of the international financial system is fundamentally flawed
Admittedly, this back-of-the-envelope calculation is over-simplified, but the main point is that the IMF’s loss estimates refer to market prices of mortgage-backed securities, not to the debt service on the underlying mortgages. The two are not the same and, as the IMF points out, there are good reasons to believe that market values are significantly below present values of expected returns on the underlying mortgages, either from the borrowers’ debt service or from foreclosure proceeds. The fact that market values are too low is due to systemic interdependence. The financial crisis is thus not just a matter of subprime mortgages and gambling bankers. The crisis is also due to some fundamental flaws in the architecture of the international financial system. Indeed, many devices that were supposed to serve as fire extinguishers have in fact worked as fire enhancers, adding yet more fuel to the flames. Part of the blame for this must be given to statutory regulation. In principle, it is a good idea to shift some of the risks of real estate finance to third parties. Problems in real estate markets have always been among the most important causes of financial crises, as was the case in the banking crises of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Real estate finance is problematic because, in terms of economic aggregates, the values involved are high relative to the overall wealth of the economy. Moreover, the economic lifespan of a typical real estate investment extends far beyond the time horizon that the typical saver envisages for his investments.
The discrepancy between the economic lifespan of a real estate investment and the time horizon of the typical saver is a major source of risk. If a real estate investment is financed by short-term loans, the borrower faces the risk that, when these loans come due, he may be unable to refinance the property. If the investment is financed by long-term loans, the financier faces the risk that, if he wants to liquidate his holding prematurely, he may not be able to do so, or the price may be quite low.
Many borrowers could not cope and defaulted on their mortgage debts
Experience has shown that neither the banks nor the mortgage borrowers are well suited to bear these risks. Around 1980, for instance, when refinancing rates had risen to over 15 percent, many savings institutions in the United States were technically insolvent because the 6 percent they earned on the 40-year fixed-rate mortgages they had issued in the 1960s were far below their refinancing costs. This insolvency was the ultimate cause of the US savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Much of the interest rate risk of mortgage financing was subsequently passed on to debtors by means of adjustable-rate clauses. However, when market interest rates rose to another high in the late 1980s, many borrowers were unable to cope with the ensuing rate adjustments and defaulted on their debts; the banks that foreclosed on the mortgages then found that, with interest rates high, property values were relatively low.
The securitization of mortgages provides a means to pass risk on to third parties. This makes sense if these third parties are better able to bear the risk. For risks arising from the longevity of real estate finance, this is actually the case: these risks are better placed with life insurers or pension funds because the liabilities of these institutions also have very long-term horizons.
In principle, it is also a good idea to use the typical securitization procedures of packaging and tranching. If one puts a large number of individual mortgages into a package, the returns on the package do not depend very much on the specific characteristics of any one mortgage. The resulting standardization contributes to making the mortgage-(package-)backed securities tradable. If one divides the returns on such a package into different pieces by issuing different kinds of debt with different priorities against this package, then, ordinarily, the default risk on the senior debt will be low. Selling this debt to a third party will thus not have much of an effect on the issuer’s incentives to assess the credit risks of the underlying mortgages. In contrast, the owner of the so-called equity tranche – that is, the residual returns that are left after all debt has been serviced – is very much affected by the incidence of credit risk on the underlying mortgages and thus has a strong incentive to assess this risk beforehand. If the equity tranche is retained by the initiating mortgage bank, this bank will put a lot of effort into assessing the mortgage borrower’s creditworthiness. This corresponds to the construction of the German Pfandbrief, where the initiating bank is fully liable for the debt it issues, and bears all the credit risk in its mortgage lending. Alternatively, if the bank that performs the securitization takes on the liability for the credit risk of the underlying mortgages, this bank at least has an incentive to impose some quality standards for the mortgages it accepts, and thus to impose some discipline on the initiating mortgage banks.
When mortgage securitization was introduced in the United States, there was no provision to make the mortgage banks liable for credit risks in their mortgage lending. In the beginning, this omission had no further consequences. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage banks that first introduced large-scale mortgage securitization, provided guarantees for the debt service on the mortgages they securitized. At the same time, they imposed a minimum standard for the quality of the mortgages they would accept for securitization. The term prime mortgages describes mortgages that meet this standard.
After 2000, however, New York investment banks moved aggressively into mortgage securitization. Unlike Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, these banks did not provide any guarantees for the debt service on the mortgages they securitized. Moreover, they focused on mortgages that did not meet the quality standards of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – the so-called subprime mortgages. No attention was paid to the incentive implications of the fact that, now, neither the mortgage banks nor the securitizing institutions bore any liability for the credit risk of the underlying mortgages. The investment bankers seem to have known all about market risks and nothing about credit risks.
Subprime mortgage lending and securitization grew rapidly in importance. By 2006, these mortgages accounted for more than 40 percent of new mortgage lending (2000: 9 percent) and 14 percent of the overall stock of outstanding mortgages (2000: 7 percent). Their quality declined steadily. Up to 2006, however, the quality deterioration was masked by the rise in property prices. These prices grew about 9 percent per year from 1999 to 2003, and about 15 percent per year from 2003 to 2005. The leap from 9 to 15 percent in 2003 coincided with a massive expansion of private investment bank activity in mortgage securitization.
The expansion was fuelled by expansionary monetary policy. In the years from 2002 to 2004, money market interest rates in the US were between 1 and 2 percent, compared with 6 percent in 2000 and 4 percent in 2001. Long-term interest rates on government securities dropped from 6 percent in 2000 to just over 4 percent in 2003 to 2005, and interest rates on fixed-rate prime mortgages from 8 percent in 2000 to just under 6 percent in 2003 to 2005. The difference between this mortgage rate and the money market rate thus actually rose from 2 percentage points in 2000 to 4 percent between 2003 and 2004.
Investors buying the mortgage-backed securities do not seem to have exerted any “market discipline” that might have compensated for the lack of liability on the side of the mortgage-initiating and mortgage-securitizing institutions. Whereas the quality of mortgage debtors was steadily going down, risk premiums for fixed-rate subprime mortgages dropped from 3 percent in 2001 to 1 percent in 2004. In contrast, there was no such change in the risk premiums for corporate bonds in these years. Investors in mortgage-backed securities seem to have focused on yields without paying much attention to risks. Among these investors, three groups are noteworthy:
First, hedge funds and investment banks bought the equity tranches; the fact that, for incentive reasons, mortgage initiating and mortgage securitizing banks should have retained these tranches was ignored. Second, other investment banks bought subordinate debt, the so-called mezzanine tranches, and securitized them again by forming packages and issuing different debt instruments against these packages. Finally, so-called conduits and special-investment vehicles (SIVs) created by European and American banks bought all sorts of mortgage-backed securities, refinancing themselves by issuing asset-backed commercial paper, or very short-term securities; these vehicles had practically no equity.
But the assessments of the rating agencies were seriously flawed. These agencies exaggerated the effects of diversification across securities, neglecting correlations arising from the dependence of different risks on common underlying factors such as movements in market rates of interest or movements in real estate prices. They also seem to have believed that real estate prices could only go up, and that credit risk on the underlying mortgages was thus negligible. They failed to appreciate that at least some of the observed increases in real estate prices were due to one-time changes in the environment that would not be repeated, such as the decline of interest rates from 2000 to 2003, or the influx of funds into mortgage finance that was caused by the innovation of subprime mortgage securitization.
In 2005, monetary policy became more restrictive, and by 2006, short-term interest rates had gone up to 5 percent again. In mid-2006, real estate prices began to fall and the problems of subprime mortgages came out into the open. In April 2007, these problems were fully understood – and clearly explained in the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report. Remarkably, however, this analysis by the IMF concluded with the assessment that there was only a small probability of the subprime mortgage crisis spilling over and upsetting the rest of the financial system.
Precisely such a spillover came in August 2007: The rating agencies downgraded mortgage-backed securities, some by as much as three grades at once. This caused a fall in the market prices of these securities. The conduits and SIVs that held such securities had no equity to buffer their losses and became de facto insolvent. Financing for these companies from the money market collapsed and they had to call on the sponsoring banks to make good on the promises of liquidity assistance that they had previously given. Some of the sponsoring banks were unable to meet these demands and became insolvent themselves. On the whole, the liquidity assistance from sponsoring banks was not sufficient to fully replace the vanished financing from the money markets.
There were thus two shocks that markets had to absorb: first, the drastic downgrading of mortgage-backed securities by the rating agencies, and second, the sudden breakdown of the mechanisms by which SIVs had financed their holdings of mortgage-backed securities. The importance of these “shadow banks,” on the order of 1,000 billion dollars, took everybody by surprise.
These two shocks triggered a downward spiral of the financial system that went unchecked until October 2008. This downward spiral is characterized by the interaction of the following elements: First, many markets were not functioning properly. Asset prices fell drastically but, even so, there were few buyers. Many investors feel vulnerable with respect to their own financing and do not want to enter into new commitments; many investors expect prices to fall even further, and many also fear that, in terms of the selection of assets offered for sale, they may be taken advantage of by the sellers.
Second, under fair value accounting for market risks, the banks are obliged to immediately adjust the values at which they carry these securities on their balance sheets. The resulting write-offs diminish the banks’ equity.
Third, most banks had virtually no equity capital in excess of regulatory requirements. In order not to fall afoul of regulatory requirements, they had to react immediately to the write-offs, either by raising new capital or by selling assets. Raising new equity is difficult in a crisis. Selling assets, however – deleveraging – puts additional downward pressure on market prices.
Beyond the lack of “free” equity capital, many banks in fact had very little equity capital at all, and the write-offs that they had to take soon raised questions about their solvency. Under the so-called model-based approach to capital regulation, the required capital of a bank is determined on the basis of the bank’s own quantitative risk model. The banks used this regulatory scheme to “economize” on equity – more precisely, to expand the activities supported by the equity they had. At UBS for example, before the crisis, equity accounted for 2.5 percent of the balance sheet total, or 40 billion out of 1,600 billion Swiss francs. The bank’s losses on mortgage-backed securities have been substantially higher. If it hadn’t received new equity capital from the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation and the Swiss Confederation, UBS would long since have been declared insolvent.
Doubts about solvency made banks less and less willing to lend to one another
As doubts about solvency grew, banks became less and less willing to lend to each other, and interbank markets ceased to function properly. This created additional problems for US investment banks that had been accustomed to financing themselves through short-term money-market instruments that had to be continually rolled over. For Bear Stearns, this method of financing dried up in March 2008. Lehman Brothers suffered a similar fate in September.
To alleviate doubts about their solvency, many banks tried to improve their equity positions – by deleveraging. Fears about their ability to refinance thus had a similar effect as capital regulation, inducing banks to sell assets in order to maintain their equity ratios. Fourth, deleveraging added to the downward pressure on market prices of securities. The resulting price declines forced further write-offs and further deleveraging from other banks, with yet further repercussions for prices and write-offs. This downward spiral characterized developments from August 2007 to September 2008. On several occasions, liquidity injections by central banks relieved acute crises. These injections, however, could not actually stop the downward spiral. At last, with the insolvency of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the financial system imploded altogether and was kept working only by government subsidies and guarantees. These interventions seem to have stopped the downward spiral, at least for the time being.
As yet, it is impossible to say what comes next. The real economy turned down only in the last quarter of 2008. This downturn will impair the debt service of nonfinancial firms to the banks, which will further damage the banks. If this induces another round of deleveraging, there is a risk of a new downward spiral, this time in the interaction between the banks and the real economy.
The questions raised at the beginning of this article regarding the estimated 500 billion dollar losses on securitized subprime mortgages can now be answered: declines in securities prices were higher than the declines in present values of expected returns because securities markets were not functioning well. The effects on the financial system were greater than in other crises because the interaction of price declines, fair value accounting, lack of equity, and deleveraging acted as fire enhancers.
In thinking about causes and responsibility, one must distinguish between misbehavior and flaws in the system. Misbehavior is a behavior that ultimately works against the person or institution in question. Flaws in the system are flaws in the rules and institutions that govern individual behavior such that, if individuals abide by the rules – while pursuing their own self-interests, the results are detrimental for the institutions involved, or even for the financial system as a whole. For flaws in the system, the question of who is responsible is of a different character than for individual misbehavior.
Individual misbehavior: Investment bankers were so focused on sales growth and market shares in mortgage securitization that they neglected the risks of this business. Investors of all sorts were so focused on yields that they neglected the risks that come with higher yields. Large banks combined an active stance in mortgage securitization with holdings of mortgage-backed securities on their own account without analyzing the risks that this combination implied. The rating agencies likewise had no adequate model of the relevant risks.
Another form of misbehavior involved the excessive practice of “borrowing short to lend long,” by the SIVs of the German state banks (Landesbanken), as well as US investment banks, without concern for refinancing risks. Monetary policy induced short-term interest rates to be very low and yield curves to be very steep in the years 2002 to 2004, and thus made the practice of “borrowing short to lend long” even more tempting than usual.
Flaws in the system: The fact that banks involved in initiating or securitizing mortgages bore no liability for the credit risk of these mortgages was a major reason for the drastic deterioration in the quality of mortgage borrowers. The effect was reinforced by a lack of quality control from yield-hungry buyers. European investment banks keen on securitizing mezzanine tranches created an uncritical demand for these securities – though, economically, such further rounds of securitization served no useful purpose.
German public banks had no sustainable business model and were “gambling for survival” – without any regulatory intervention. Like US investment banks, the conduits and SIVs of these institutions were outside the domain of statutory supervision, so no one had any idea of the magnitude of their overall commitments and of the extent of maturity transformation they had engaged in. At private banks, both internal and external risk management and control systems failed: Internally, there was a failure of risk control over investment banking. Externally, there was a failure of market discipline by shareholders, analysts and the media, all of whom paid more attention to returns than to risks. Yet a 25 percent rate of return on equity, taken as a benchmark in banking, must involve a risk premium, most likely reflecting the risks stemming from the bank’s being undercapitalized.
Bank risk management was based on the assumption that, through their quantitative risk models and stress tests, they had all important risks under control. Some risks, however, cannot be adequately captured by such models. Thus, it is practically impossible to obtain reliable estimates of correlations between the credit risks on different mortgages and different mortgage-backed securities, or of the correlations between the counterparty risks in a hedge and the underlying risk against which the hedge is taken – or of the risks of systemic repercussions emanating from the maturity transformation of conduits and SIVs.
The accusation that too little account was taken of the inadequacies of quantitative risk models can also be leveled against the supervisory authorities. Since 1996, their rules have permitted banks to determine their capital requirements for certain risks exclusively on the basis of risk models. This is why some banks were able to expand their operations so that their balance sheets totaled 30, 40, or even 60 times their equity. “Ten percent core capital” doesn’t mean 10 percent of the balance sheet total, it means 10 percent of risk-weighted assets, with risks based on the bank’s risk model.
The model-based approach to capital regulation was introduced in the 1990s after a long process of “regulatory capture.” The banks insisted that equity requirements had to be adapted to risks and that their own risk models provided the proper basis for doing so. Faced with the expertise of the banks, the regulators gave in. In the process, however, very little was said about the effects such regulation would actually have on risks in banking, or about the difference between the public interest in financial stability and the private interests of the bank.
If equity requirements had been higher overall, and if there had been a less mechanical approach to applying the regulation in the crisis, there would have been less need for deleveraging, and doubts about solvency would have been less urgent. But bank regulators and supervisors can be criticized for not thinking in systemic terms. They focus on the solvency of individual institutions and the need to protect investors in these institutions, without realizing that the survival of these institutions depends on the systemic environment. The lack of reporting duties for hedge funds, conduits and SIVs can be defended if one thinks only about investor protection, but not if one thinks about the systemic implications for other financial institutions. The requirement to deleverage by selling assets if write-offs erode a bank’s equity can endanger the bank itself if the systemic repercussions on prices and on other institutions induce further declines in the value of the bank’s remaining assets.
At this point, there is widespread agreement that financial regulation must be extended and strengthened. To date, however, there is little appreciation of the fact that the current system of banking regulation has itself contributed a lot to the downward spiral in the crisis. It is thus necessary to rethink the conceptual basis of this system.
Prof. Dr. Martin Hellwig has been a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn since 2004. Among other stops, his career has taken him to Stanford, Princeton, Harvard and Basle Universities. Prof. Hellwig is interested in the economics of information, public goods and taxation, and financial markets and institutions.
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MIT Close to Presenting a Feasible Nuclear Fusion Reactor
The MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has announced that they have received a final push in the form of a $64 million investment, which will allegedly help them take the final step in the development of a working nuclear fusion reactor. The investment group includes MIT’s internal financial support organization called “The Engine”, the Italian energy company Eni, and the “Breakthrough Energy Ventures” investment consortium.
After 25 years of research, MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center has presented a new reactor technology to the investors, called the “ARC” (affordable, robust, compact), and which costs only a couple of billion dollars. This may sound like a lot, but fusion reactors are very efficient, work on fuel that is abundant on Earth (like deuterium for example), give out significantly more energy for a given weight of fuel compared to fission reactors, and are generally much safer.
Contrary to nuclear fission reactors that split the atom into two smaller ones while releasing heat, fusion is the merging of elements into a new whole which is heavier than the mass sums of the two. For example, deuterium is combined with tritium, and the fusion generates helium, neutron, and a massive amount of energy which is released in the process. This is exactly what happens in the Sun and
MIT, however, promises that they have solved almost everything by now, and by 2025 they will be able to introduce a safe, scalable, carbon-free, and limitless energy source that is going to solve humanity’s growing energy supply problem, open new possibilities in space exploration, and change everything forever. First, the team will build a 50-megawatt prototype fusion reactor, while the first wave of commercialized solutions will be at the level of 200 megawatts. If these promises prove to be accurate, the arrival of the ever-elusive nuclear fusion reactor technology comes in a critical time when humanity is under threat from the drastic climate changes that are attributed to conventional fuel pollution.
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What are Derivatives? How Derivatives are Traded?
A derivative is a financial contract or products that derive their value from a relationship to another underlying asset.
So essentially derivative is a contract between two or more parties whose value is based on an agreed-upon underlying financial asset, index or security.
The most common types of derivatives are futures contracts, forward contracts, options, swaps, and warrants are commonly used derivatives.
Derivatives can be used to either mitigate risk (hedging) or assume risk with the expectation of commensurate reward (speculation).
Example, a stock option is a derivative because its value is "derived" from that of the underlying stock.
It is considered that derivatives increase the efficiency of financial markets. By using derivative contracts, one can replicate the payoff of the assets. Therefore, the prices of the underlying asset and the associated derivative tend to be in equilibrium to avoid arbitrage opportunities.
Derivatives can help organizations get access to otherwise unavailable assets or markets. By employing interest rate swaps, a company may obtain a more favourable interest rate relative to interest rates available from direct borrowing.
Typically, derivatives require a more advanced form of trading, including speculating, hedging, options, swaps, futures contracts, and forward contracts. When used correctly, these techniques can benefit the trader by carefully managing risk. However, there are times that the derivatives can be destructive to individual traders as well as to large financial institutions.
The high volatility of derivatives exposes them to potentially huge losses. The sophisticated design of the contracts makes the valuation extremely complicated or even impossible. Thus, they bear a high inherent risk.
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Sun Investment Group Poland predicts that Europe’s solar energy will see increased outputs due to future heatwaves in the summer; 2018 marked a 20% increase in solar energy production during one of the hottest summers on recent records
The heatwave caused fires in Sweden, the melting of a glacier in Austria, and some deaths in southern Europe. Meanwhile, farmers are fearing a food supply crisis. The drought has also negatively impacted the continent’s wind-power industry.
However, solar irradiance data from July 2018 shows a negative correlation between deviations in wind speeds and solar irradiance. This means that when wind power dropped below average, solar power was above average. European renewable energy experts are predicting that the future summers in Europe will be similarly warm and dry, which will be beneficial for the output of solar energy.
“The continent’s solar energy market enjoyed a 20% increase in output as a consequence of the stationary high-pressure weather system that caused one of the hottest summers on modern records,” said Dr. Rafał Rzeszotarski, General Manager at Sun Investment Group Poland.
“We are concerned about climate change and the likelihood of increased droughts in Europe. This kind of heat wave used to happen once every 10 or more years, but now they are more frequent, and this frequency is likely to increase. But we see the advantage of hotter summers for solar energy production and expect higher than predicted outputs here in Poland.”
Poland recently committed to meeting the 2020 renewable energy targets laid out by the European Union after its president, Andrzej Duda, amended the country’s renewable energy law. Poland’s Minister of Energy, Krzysztof Tchórzewski, also confirmed that the country will build its last ever coal block in the town of Ostrołęka as the Polish government works towards meeting the EU’s objective of having its member states source 15% of their total energy consumption from renewable sources.
“Talking about Poland, solar energy will actually benefit the country’s main traditional energy sources. Due to the higher temperatures during summer, the water needed to cool coal-fired power plants is too warm and the extra air temperature can cause energy blackouts. Due to the “plug in and play” nature of solar power, it can be used to stabilise the country’s energy system,” added Rzeszotarski.
Sun Investment Group opened the first of its 43 Polish solar energy plants in Gralewo in July 2018. Upon completion of all 43 plants, SIG’s Polish solar energy portfolio will represent 15% of the total of the Polish solar energy market and deliver an estimated 45.1GWh annually to Poland’s national grid.
“Those who invest in renewable energy should think about diversification. Investing solely in wind could lead to lower energy production in summer months, while solar production is likely to increase due to current climate changes,” finalised Rzeszotarski.
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- Due to an aging population, combined with a pandemic of chronic degenerative disease, costs are escalating out of control and threatening to bankrupt our governments.
- Driving the US towards third-world status
- Health costs in the US are increasing faster than GDP.
- By 2030, 75% of the US federal budget will be allocated to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
- More than 3 out of 4 Americans have a diagnosable chronic disease.
- Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other chronic diseases are all preventable and reversible.
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An asset class is a group of securities that show similar characteristics, behave in a similar way in the market and are governed by similar rules and regulations. Each asset class has its own risk and return profile, cash flows and perform in different ways in different environments.
Due to these differences, asset classes can be used for the purpose of diversification by investors. By investing in different asset classes, the investors can diversify their portfolio risks and increase their probability of receiving high returns.
Some of them are equity or stocks, fixed income securities or bonds, cash or marketable securities, commodities and derivatives. There are a few other alternative asset classes as well as artwork and real estate, but because of being alternative they are less liquid.
The purpose of different asset classes is to make it easier and more organised for the investor to know which class has what amount of risks and returns and then to make his portfolio accordingly.
When an investor decides to build an investment portfolio, he is actually deciding what proportion of his capital will be invested in which asset class, depending upon his short term and long term objectives, liquidity requirements, capital availability, risk appetite, age and other personal factors.
Going by the definition of an asset class, Derivatives are an asset class.
It is because the entire derivatives market has its own unique characteristics, rules and regulations and all the derivatives behave in a particular way in the market.
Derivatives offer risks and returns that are unique to them. Derivatives derive their value from the underlying assets so it can be sometimes misconstrued that those underlying assets like stocks, currency, interest-rate are an asset class and derivatives are not.
But, in a true sense, the way how derivatives with underlying assets as stocks behave are very different from how stocks in general behave.
Derivatives form a separate asset class because of its own different characteristics. The kind of risk management and returns derivatives provide is way different from the risk and returns of an underlying asset.
For example, how an investor deals with and is affected by the shares of a company varies from how he deals with the futures of that company.
Although, the spot price and future price of a stock are related to each other and move in the same direction, however, the kind of risks and returns an asset provides are not similar to what its derivative provides.
Therefore, when an investor wishes to decide on the diversification of his portfolio, if he chooses stocks as one asset class due to high liquidity, high returns but high risks, he may also add derivative of that stock as another asset class to diversify risks of his portfolio by choosing an asset class which helps in hedging risks that he decided to take over by choosing stocks.
Additionally, by being an asset class, derivatives give an opportunity to the investor to get exposure to all forms of underlying assets like stocks, commodities, foreign exchange, real estate and so on.
Thus, the investor’s portfolio gets more diversified as he is not just investing in a separate asset class but the one that gives an understanding and taste of different categories.
Therefore, derivatives are an asset class and an important one to that. They help an investor in the diversification of his risk profile and get unlimited profits by keeping the losses limited.
The market exposure provided by derivatives is very different and unique as compared to the exposure provided by the underlying assets like currency, stocks, gold, real estate and so on.
In case, you are looking to get started with share market trading – just fill in some basic details in the form below.
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Mining is, by its very nature, a dirty business—it excavates and processes billions and billions of tonnes of rock and dirt every year to extract a wide variety of metals and minerals demanded by modern industrial and technological society. These include metals used in pipes, electronics, buildings and gadgets, such as copper, zinc, iron, nickel and lithium, as well as energy resources for heating and electricity, such as coal, gas and uranium. Australia has, without doubt, a vast resource base in these metals and minerals and we commonly export most of our production to overseas customers who aren’t so luckily endowed. The great scale of modern mining, however, comes at a real cost whether on the local landscape, public health or the global environment, and it is understanding these real costs and how the environmental and social impacts intertwine with economic issues that is the crux of the great mining debate in Australia and globally.
This paper will briefly review the basics of mining, present some important statistics on Australia’s cumulative mining to date, discuss the present state of known mineral resources and link these to the great debates at present: What commodities should (or could) Australia mine? Where should we allow such mining? How are the impacts to be identified? How should such impacts be monitored, regulated and managed? These are the crucial questions of the day, and it is not just environmentalists asking them, but farmers, city dwellers, Indigenous people and ordinary people all over the country. This is placing unprecedented pressure on politicians, the mining industry and increasingly the investment community to recognise that, in the mutated words of Bill Clinton, ‘it’s about the IMPACTS STUPID’.
A Brief History of Mining in Australia
Australia has gone through numerous cycles of boom-bust periods of mining often led by a new commodity being discovered (e.g. gold) or a major new mineral field being found and developed (e.g. Broken Hill). Coal, Australia’s first ever export, was mined near Sydney in New South Wales, and sent to Bengal in India in 1799. Almost every decade from the 1840s to the 1900s was the focus of a new mining rush or boom. A brief timeline is given below:
- 1840s—copper in South Australia (Kanmantoo, Burra Burra), lead (Glen Osmond)
- 1850s—gold across eastern Australia (Bendigo, Ballarat, Bathurst)
- 1870s—tin rush across eastern Australia (Mt Bischoff, Chillagoe, New England)
- 1880s—silver-lead rush at Broken Hill, gold in the Kimberley and Mt Morgan
- 1890s—gold in central Western Australia (Kalgoorlie, Coolgardie), copper-gold at Mt Lyell
- 1900s—iron ore in South Australia (Middleback Ranges)
The early twentieth century saw a period of consolidation, with major companies emerging such as Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP) and the Zinc Corporation (later to be merged into Rio Tinto). With the 1930s Depression, gold mining entered a mini-boom as people sought to prospect for gold to eke out a living and Mt Isa’s lead-zinc-silver mining and smelting complex in western Queensland emerged. The post-war booms, however, have redefined and changed the mining industry forever, including the following:
- 1950s—uranium (Rum Jungle, Mary Kathleen), bauxite (Gove, Weipa), copper (Mt Isa)
- 1960s—manganese (Groote Eylandt), iron ore (Pilbara, Savage River, mid-west WA), nickel (Kambalda, Mt Keith, Greenvale), oil and gas (Bass Strait, Cooper Basin, North West Shelf)
- 1970s—uranium (again) across Australia (Ranger, Jabiluka, Yeelirrie), copper-uranium-gold (Olympic Dam)
- 1980s—return of gold (Australia wide), major growth in metals, coal and oil-gas
- 1990s—nickel laterite boom (Murrin Murrin, Cawse, Bulong), copper (Nifty), copper-gold (Ernest Henry, Cadia-Ridegway)
- 2000s—mega-boom in coal and iron ore and emergence of coal seam gas (CSG).
Production, Exports and Resources
The primary steps involved in the mining chain are mining and milling, with additional smelting and refining for most metals. Mining can be either by underground or open cut methods, with the two primary materials being ore, containing the minerals or metals of interest, plus waste rock (often called overburden in coal). Open cut mining can produce up to 10 tonnes of waste rock or more for every tonne of ore, while underground mining produces a fraction of a tonne of waste rock for every tonne of ore. For most ores, the concentrations or grades range from grams per tonne (g/t, such as gold or silver) to per cent (e.g. uranium at 0.3 per cent U3O8; copper at 0.5–3 per cent Cu; lead-zinc at 0.5–5 per cent Pb or 2–12 per cent Zn) or the majority of the ore (e.g. iron ore at 50 per cent Fe). Coal processing generally extracts 80 per cent of the raw coal as saleable coal. After ore processing, the remaining solid wastes are called tailings and, depending on ore grade, can range from minor fractions of the ore (e.g. iron ore, bauxite, coal), to most or all of the ore as tailings (e.g. gold, copper). Thus, to generate a tonne of a given metal or mineral, the amount of waste rock and tailings (i.e. total mine wastes) can range from one tonne to several million tonnes.
By 2012, Australia has developed a large mining industry across a wide range of commodities combined with a substantial resource base. A compilation of cumulative production, 2012 production, mining method (based on proportion of ore), exports, economic resources and sub-economic resources is shown in Table 1. In production tonnage terms the coal, iron ore and bauxite sectors stand out, with the dominance of open cut mining clear across most sectors.
Throughout Australia’s colourful mining history, different commodities have dominated export volumes and values at different periods (such as gold in the mid-1800s). The big shift in recent years is the rise of iron ore as the dominant mineral export, reaching $54.8 billion in 2012 and overtaking coal at $41.6 billion. Uranium, despite dedicated political support and literally glowing industry and government rhetoric, curiously doesn’t even reach a measly billion dollars and on average over the past decade has earnt less per year than wine and cheese. Based on existing and future mines and market prices, it is most likely that iron ore will continue to dominate mineral exports as well as Australia’s exports in general.
Mine Yer Wastes
If you were to ask a member of the public about solid wastes produced annually in society, they would almost definitely think of the garbage we commonly dump in landfills, some might even add construction wastes, while many might even acknowledge the rubbish which ends up in waterways, but rarely would anyone be able to give a reliable estimate of the solid wastes from mining. The mining industry has been very adept at minimising public perception of this aspect of the solid wastes debate for a long time, but the sheer massive scale of modern mining makes it a gigantic source of solid wastes, in Australia as well as globally. Based on extensive research on historical statistics for the Australian mining industry, an estimate of 2012 and cumulative ore, tailings and waste rock is given in Table 2.
As can be expected, the total mine wastes are dominated by the giant coal and iron ore industries, although considerable data remains incomplete and not documented. For 2012, total mine wastes are of the order 6.5 billion tonnes—dirty business indeed. Assuming a low ratio of 2:1 for waste rock to ore for the iron ore sector suggests a bare minimum cumulative waste rock of some 15 billion tonnes. Adding up these sectors alone, and allowing for crude estimates of the missing data, suggests that the Australia mining industry has already produced in the order of 100 billion tonnes of solid mine wastes, making the scale of landfills pale into insignificance at just hundreds of millions of tonnes.
Short and Long Term Impacts
Mine wastes can be tricky stuff—a lot of it may be relatively benign rock, but some of it may be chemically reactive or even simply contain elements of concern if they were to escape into the environment.
In the early days, Aussie miners often dumped tailings and waste rock onto adjacent ground, allowing the wastes to erode into nearby rivers and streams and leading to sedimentation problems and sometimes chemical pollution risks (e.g. mercury exposure). These impacts were relatively local due to the generally modest scale of wastes involved. By the twentieth century, miners realised that tailings often still had some metals left and that dumping wastes into rivers was not really the done thing and so practices evolved to include dams to store tailings with waste rock dumped into specific piles (though with minimal engineering). There were the aberrations though, such as the Mt Lyell copper-gold mine in Tasmania continuing to dump tailings into rivers until 1994 (the Tasmanian government passed legislation in 1929 banning riverine tailings disposal—except at Mt Lyell !!) or the Rum Jungle uranium mine dumping tailings and liquid wastes to the adjacent floodplain and creek system for several years in the 1950s–60s. Meanwhile, by the 1970s, the growing scale of mine wastes combined with ongoing environmental impacts from abandoned mines led to the need to more forcefully regulate mining, and require rehabilitation after mine closure. Since this time, the mining industry has been very proactive in promoting its environmental credentials and successes—all the time carefully avoiding the issue of the exponentially growing scale of modern mine wastes.
In general, for most mineral commodities, ore grades or quality are in terminal decline, meaning you have to mine ever more ore to produce the same amount of a metal or mineral. Gold and copper ores are now ten times lower than a century ago and while others have not declined as much, sometimes it is ore quality and impurities which matter—some ores are very fine grained or rich in arsenic, both requiring more expensive processing. As ore grades decline, this means yet more tailings—more dirt work for engineers.
Why should we even care about mine waste? Simple—it can leak pollution for centuries or even millennia. This pollution can be in the form of wind-blown dusts or sediment eroded by water scouring waste rock dumps or tailings dams, or it can be more pernicious in the form of seepage from mine wastes into groundwaters or surface waters. A major form of seepage is called acid and metalliferous drainage, or more commonly known as acid mine drainage (‘AMD’). AMD can form when sulfide minerals, mostly pyrite (iron sulfide and its close mineralogical cousins), are exposed to water and oxygen in the surface environment, causing sulfide oxidation and the formation of sulfuric acid, which in turn leaches salts and heavy metals (including sometimes radionuclides). If AMD leaks into a stream, the metals concentrations are often hundreds or thousands to hundreds of thousands times higher than the levels which can kill most biodiversity, effectively wiping out the ecology of that stream. As the AMD flows downstream, it will be diluted along with chemical reactions removing some or most of the metals (especially as the acid is removed) and so at some point there will be a return to a ‘normal’ ecosystem. The distance a stream can be impacted varies depending on the size of the AMD source, hydrological characteristics (especially rainfall and flow frequency), the geochemical nature of the mine wastes and geology of the catchment, among other factors.
There are numerous mines across Australia which are famous—or more to the point infamous—for their AMD impacts on streams: Rum Jungle, Northern Territory; Mt Lyell, Tasmania; Mt Morgan, Queensland; Brukunga, South Australia; Captain’s Flat, ACT (to name but a select few). There are also heaps of virtually unheard of abandoned mines which are causing AMD pollution problems: Redbank, Northern Territory; Mt Todd, Northern Territory; Tabletop, Queensland; Mt Oxide, Queensland; Canyon, New South Wales; Teutonic Bore, West Australia; Luina-Cleveland, Tasmania; Mt Bischoff, Tasmania; to name but a small selection. Many modern mines are having to manage sulfidic tailings and waste rock with careful attention to AMD risks, including iron ore mines, gold mines, copper mines, coal mines and others.
In a bizarre twist of fate, or perhaps a twisted sense of irony, the very name Rio Tinto effectively translates from Spanish to ‘tainted river’. The lead and copper mines of the Roman era were still causing pollution more than a millennia later in the 1870s when a bunch of British investors founded a new company to mine copper in the southern Tinto region of Spain. They used the process of sulfide oxidation to leach the copper from the ore and produce copper cheaply, making a tonne of cash and creating the profitable foundation of a global mining empire we now call Rio Tinto Limited. The Tinto region of southern Spain is still polluted from the collective history of intense mining. Rio Tinto has gone on to be involved with AMD impacts at Rum Jungle and Bougainville (Papua New Guinea), let alone other mines and they have still never paid a cent towards clean-up at any of these sites. It is incorrect to say miners never understood AMD, of course they did, they just ignored the severe environmental impacts from it.
In fact, the severe pollution from the Rum Jungle uranium mine was one factor, and an important factor, which led many people to actively oppose new uranium projects in the 1970s such as Ranger. After some $25 million worth of engineering works to try and rehabilitate the Rum Jungle site in the mid-1980s, environmental monitoring was conducted for a decade, showing some short-term success in reducing pollution loads to the Finniss River and even some biological recovery. For the past decade I have regularly visited Rum Jungle to observe the ‘success’ of the rehabilitation and all you can see is ongoing and severe AMD pollution of the Finniss River. Reluctantly, the Australian government has recently allocated several million dollars to undertake further assessments before deciding on yet more rehabilitation.
The gold-copper mine of Mt Morgan—the mountain of gold—was so rich in its early 1880s–90s that the original investors went on to found the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research andinvest in oil exploration in Persia, leading to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company which was later to become British Petroleum (BP). Mining at Mt Morgan, just 45 kilometres west of Rockhampton, lasted from 1882 to 1982—a rare feat to last a century, but the mine was never rehabilitated and continues to cause extreme AMD pollution of the Dee River, which is a minor tributary of the mighty Fitzroy River (the Dee is about 0.5 per cent of the Fitzroy’s annual flow). Once mining in the open cut stopped, AMD-rich waters began to fill the open cut. To be fair the Queensland government invested in detailed technical studies in the late 1990s to early 2000s to examine rehabilitation options – and has even built and operates pit water treatment facilities (the current government has not slashed this funding for Mt Morgan either, although in reality the current funding is minimal compared to the scale of the problems). But in early 2013, the inevitable happened – a massive storm swept through the region and for the first time in history the pit over-flowed and locals claim this allowed AMD polluted waters to push further down the Dee River than living memory can ever recall. The rehabilitation plan of 2003 estimated costs could be of the order of a hundred million dollars or so, which you could probably multiply to several hundred million dollars now, given a decade of inflation and big cost increases across the mining industry. Dirty business indeed.
In the southern coal fields near Wollongong, AMD is allowed to go on unabated from former underground or longwall coal mines, sometimes it’s even approved by regulators from existing mines. And the coal (and coal seam gas) industry still finds it perplexing to understand why so many communities are opposing mining near or even inside drinking water catchments?
The modern mining industry now acknowledges and even includes AMD risks in its environmental impact assessments, and on rare occasions even publishes conference papers on environmental management of AMD issues. For example, the iron ore industry of the Pilbara is now mining progressively deeper and below the regional groundwater table, leading to mining of the shales which contain some reactive sulfides (e.g. Mt Whaleback, Mt Tom Price). The AMD risks were identified due to explosives detonating early (due to the heat released by sulfide oxidation) – not exactly a safe outcome for an active mine. Hence even iron ore mines are forced to manage AMD risks. Given the massive scale of waste rock now being mined in the Pilbara alone, this is a daunting engineering challenge. But where is the government or industry data on the proportion of mine wastes prone to AMD risks? Simple—nowhere, not even collected. No data, no problem.
Of course, if you visit intensive mining regions like the Hunter Valley, the Pilbara, Kalgoorlie or the Latrobe Valley, there are many other critical issues associated with mine wastes. These include dusts, surface water risks from saline water discharges, or even discharge of fresh waters changing the hydrology of creeks, let alone the aesthetic impacts from the creation of entirely new mountain ranges. As waste rock dumps are built, they can fill valleys or obscure them from view, leading to significant social impacts and risks such as soil erosion and AMD seepage.
In my experience of visiting many mining communities around Australia, ranging from locals next to a single mine to large communities with intense industrial scale mining (and now coal seam gas) smothering their region, it is mine waste which is the Achilles heel of modern mining. If someone was to run focus groups on mining, I wholeheartedly believe that it would convincingly show that mine waste is a core environmental concern for those familiar with the mega-industrial scale of modern mining. It is also this mega-massive scale of modern mining which brings with it mega-massive environmental risks which need to be carefully assessed, monitored and managed.
In my mind, visiting small, sometimes rehabilitated sites twenty years after they were cleaned up is important—has the rehabilitation worked, and if not, why not? If we can’t even get the rehabilitation right on smaller polluting mines, why then should we believe that similar engineering techniques on larger mines, sometimes a thousand times bigger in mine waste terms than their nineteenth to mid-twentieth century cousins, would work any better? Where is the industry and government evidence of assessing mine rehabilitation performance five, ten or twenty years after rehabilitation?
Given that sulfidic mine wastes can cause AMD pollution for centuries to millennia, why aren’t we factoring in such thinking when approving new mines? Why wasn’t this used as a great moral and scientific justification for the (inept attempt at a) mining tax?
Let’s do some simple maths. Assume engineers can provide a rock solid, rolled gold guarantee that they can successfully rehabilitate mine wastes say 95 per cent of the time—and by success I mean with no future risks whatsoever. Now think of the 5 per cent we fail to rehabilitate or that needs ongoing monitoring and maintenance—this is 5 per cent of billions of tonnes growing exponentially annually. This means as much mine waste as was mined at Mt Morgan over a century being produced every year. Imagine this building up across the landscape and affecting rivers and groundwater and you can begin to understand why so many informed locals and communities are concerned about the sheer scale of modern mine wastes. Let alone the fact that no intelligent engineer could ever seriously provide a 95 per cent or higher guarantee on perfect mine waste rehabilitation.
The Bougainville and Ok Tedi copper-gold mines in Papua New Guinea have each dumped about a billion tonnes of tailings and waste rock into rivers (or are allowing such wastes to erode into rivers). While these are truly infamous mines for the severe human and environmental impacts they have caused, the Ertsberg-Grasberg mine in Indonesia has reached a massive total of some 1.4 billion tonnes of tailings dumped to the Ajkwa River, as well as some 4 billion tonnes of waste rock—a single mine with more mine waste than Australia’s entire copper sector. It is worth pointing out that Rio Tinto states it will not operate mines using riverine tailings dumping (they may have learnt their lesson from Bougainville), it only owns about 9 per cent of Grasberg (Freeport McMoRan is the 82 per cent owner and operator) and is therefore not responsible for riverine tailings dumping there—how convenient for Rio.
Finally, let’s think of some of the other pollution impacts from mining such as carbon dioxide pollution from coal (and coal seam gas) or high level nuclear waste from uranium. If you look at Australia’s coal exports in 2012, these alone are responsible for some 800 Mt of greenhouse gas emissions—nearly double Australia’s emissions. Unfortunately, it was Australian-origin uranium in every reactor at Fukushima at the time of the nuclear meltdowns in March 2011—not something the Australian uranium industry should be proud of, especially given the fact that thirty years of uranium sales to Japan were probably only worth a few billion dollars while the financial costs of cleanup alone to Japanese taxpayers is amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars (excluding social and other economic costs). A related issue is the radioactivity found in almost every rare earth (RE) deposit, due mainly to thorium but sometimes uranium too. When poorly managed, the radioactive wastes from RE mining and processing can cause significant public health and environmental impacts, just ask Malaysians about the former Bukit Merah RE refinery and you’ll understand why they are so concerned about Lynas Corp’s Kuantan RE refinery recently built and opened (after protracted court cases bought by the local community to stop the facility).
The Australian mining industry has grown dramatically in the past sixty years to be a major export-driven industry. Based on our extensive mineral resource base, almost all commodities could be expected to have a bright future, but one of the major issues and constraints which already faces the industry and will increasingly dominate public debate is mine wastes and their management. In fact, such issues were already documented by German scholar Georgius Agricola in his famous 1556 book De Re Metallica:
… the strongest argument of the detractors is that the fields are devastated by mining operations … Further, when the ores are washed, the water which has been used poisons the brooks and streams, and either destroys the fish or drives them away. … Thus it is said, it is clear to all that there is greater detriment from mining than the value of the metals which the mining produces.
Increasingly, the Australian mining industry will be forced to address mine waste either by regulation or by social opposition. In the digital age of the internet, it is even easier to document mine waste impacts, or for industry and government to make monitoring and rehabilitation data publicly available and even incorporate it into mapping systems (like they do for geoscience and mineral exploration already). Although acid and metalliferous drainage risks and impacts are already substantial, based on infamous sites such as Mt Morgan, Redbank and others, the scale of the problem is growing exponentially.
Just because we have billions of tonnes of coal resources does not mean we have to mine them and produce mega-billions of tonnes of mine wastes (and greenhouse gas emissions). Sure, the world will need iron ore for steel, copper for electricity, rare earths and a variety of minerals and metals to meet reasonable needs and demands, but not at the mindless expense of communities, their local environments and the planet’s climate stability.
After all, in looking at the modern mining debate, IT’S ABOUT THE IMPACTS STUPID.
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What is Data Glossary?
A glossary is a list of terms and their definitions that gives context and helps organize knowledge. A data glossary serves the same purpose for all the data assets in an organization. It contains business terms, phrases, and concepts that help define the data.
Apart from providing context, a data glossary can help organize and thus make it easier to discover data assets. For example, terms like “cost”, “profit”, and “revenue” can be used to define and group all financial data assets.
A data glossary is more commonly referred to as a “business glossary”, and these two terms can be used interchangeably. Why? Because the terminology used in a data glossary is consistent with business concepts. A useful business glossary will help prevent confusion and create a common language to communicate about data across the organization.
Curious how a data glossary is different from a data dictionary? Read about it here: What is a Data Dictionary?
Why do you need a data glossary ?
A data glossary or a business glossary is the bridge between the IT and the business teams — those who maintain and create data, and those who use data to drive actions. If you do not understand the data or cannot locate it quickly, you can never use it effectively.
A well-maintained data glossary can become a single source of truth and thus increase an organization’s overall trust in data.
Here are five ways in which a data glossary can help your organization:
- Improves understanding of data
- Makes data visible
- Enables collaboration
- Powers search
- Promotes data governance
Improves understanding of data
By linking the right data glossary terms to data, you can figure out what is inside the data without even opening it. For example, say that a data table has glossary terms like “region”, “sales”, “quantity”, “brand”, and “year” attached to it. You can easily infer that this table has data related to sales, and the quantity is probably given brand-wise at a regional level.
Makes data visible
A useful data glossary gives all business users visibility into data without worrying about whether they have full access. It promotes awareness about existing data and makes the organization more data-driven.
The first step to overcome data communication and collaboration challenges is to create a business glossary. It creates a common ground of contextual knowledge that is accessible to everyone. As the chances of misunderstanding decrease, data scientists and analysts will be able to communicate better with other teams.
The glossary terms linked to data assets improves data discovery. A data glossary provides additional metadata that helps generate more accurate search results. This makes searching for data faster and easier.
Promotes data governance
A good data glossary can pave the way for a successful data governance initiative in your organization. Standardizing data terms and definitions helps improve the quality of both data assets and the organization’s data knowledge. An ideal data glossary can even help an organization to maintain access policies using the glossary terms.
A well-maintained data glossary can become a single source of truth and thus increase overall enterprise data trust.
Four ways to build a useful data glossary
To reap all the benefits listed above, a data glossary has to be useful. Your data colleagues should be able to use it quickly and easily.
Here are some practical tips for creating a useful data glossary:
1.Follow industrial best practices
Instead of starting from scratch or inventing new terminology, follow the existing industrial standards. This will make your data glossary generic across your organization, rather than changing it for each new type of data or use case. For example, you can use the Financial Industry Business Ontology as a standard glossary for financial data. You can always tweak the terminology based on your requirements. But starting a business glossary from blank paper can become a daunting task.
2.Link data glossary with your data ecosystem
Bring your data glossary and data together. The glossary terms should be linked to your data. This helps a data steward or admin see how the glossary helps them in their daily work; otherwise, they will stop maintaining it. You can even use intelligence bots to auto-suggest glossary terms for your data assets.
3. Assign a business owner to enrich the data glossary
Make sure someone (like a data steward) is responsible for regularly updating your data glossary. It’s also important that it is easy to update and add glossary terms. Ideally, the data users should be able to suggest glossary terms (i.e. crowdsource them) for their data assets, since they have the full context on that data.
4.Maintain a hierarchical glossary structure
A hierarchical glossary structure will allow data glossaries from multiple domains to co-exist. For example, an enterprise may have data related to both finances and retail. The terminology of each will be different; hence, it will need a folder structure to nest glossary terms for each separately. Apache Atlas can be a useful tool to create a data glossary with a folder-like hierarchical structure.
A useful data glossary can be a significant step to drive good data governance in your organization. Check out the resources below to learn more about how to create a great data glossary.
- Business glossary basics - Dataversity
- Open business glossary community - OpenSource
- A step-by-step guide on building managing and sharing a business-glossary - DGPO
- Selection criteria for business glossary tools - Dataversity
- You probably don’t need a data dictionary - LocallyOptimistic
- Data glossary - Atlan
And that’s it! Time to go forth and jumpstart your data governance strategy create one source of truth for your data.
Are you looking for an intelligent Data Glossary solution?See the demo
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What is Consumer Law?
Consumer Law is the legal field whose primary jurisdictional responsibility is the regulation, oversight, and review of any and all actions undertaken on a commercial basis involving interaction between consumers and vendors. Within the legal spectrum of consumer law, the two primary classifications exist in the form of ‘Consumer’ and ‘Vendor’; individuals or entities named a consumers are defined as parties undertaking the purchase or patronization of goods and services offered within the setting of the commercial market.
Types of Consumer Law
Within the setting of Consumer Law, two primary classifications of legislation exist; these are defined as legality protecting the rights of the consumer, as well as the regulation of ethical commerce. Although these two classifications may share certain similarities, legal precepts and tenets innate to these genres of consumer law address different ideology and methodology existing within the Commercial Market:
Consumer Law and Consumer Rights
The engagement of an individual or entity within the Commercial market allows a consumer the agency to purchase products or services in a fair and legal fashion; consumer rights provide legislation disallowing any prospective fraudulent or exploitative measures undertaken by vendors; as per the development of Consumer Law, statutes have been enacted and adjusted in order to ensure that the commercial market within a country or nation provides a setting for legally-sound commerce:
Product Liability is a field within Consumer Law that provides for both the financial protection, as well as the health and wellbeing of consumers engaging within the commercial market; the instrument of product liability provides an agreement that products or services will operate and function in the fashion advertised contingent on proper usage – this field of Consumer Law protects consumers from injustices ranging from financial loss to personal injury
Warranties are instruments that purchased by consumers in an indirect fashion in tandem with the purchase of an individual product or service; within the setting of consumer law, a warranty is provided by commercial vendors in order to substantiate the viability and integrity of a product or service available for purchase – a warranty ensures that products or services purchases will be refunded, fixed, or replaced in the event that they fail undertake a reasonable life span of operation
Consumer Law and Ethical Commerce
Ethical Commerce is an ideology that is regulated, required, and overseen by institutions responsible for the administration of Consumer Law; Ethical Commerce is defined as statutory regulations of the commercial market in order to prohibit any or all commercial practices considered to be unethical or in direct violation of a fair and free market economy:
False Advertising, which is a classification of fraud that exists within the realm of Consumer Law is defined as the misrepresentation of products or services offered resulting in the defrauding of a consumer; however, within the nature of a false advertising charge, the notion of intent accounts for an expressed and purposeful action undertaken in order to commit fraud – however, regardless of intent, a vendor accused of false advertising will be expected to furnish financial restitution to the victims of that crime
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What is SGreen Initiative?
We aim to both improve the rate of plastic recycling in domestic households and improve the cleanliness of plastic waste, so as to reduce the presence of contaminants.
To achieve this, we will use blockchain as a basis for a green token economy to incentivize recycling. We will also use smart recycling bins (“SRBs”) that can screen and sort plastic waste to improve the efficiency of the recycling process. We eventually want to replace the blue recycling bins (see picture), which people misuse by throwing non-recyclables in them.
Through this, we aim to reduce our impact on the environment and aid in fighting climate change.
Our Vision and Mission
Vision: A green token economy where every Singaporean has a role to play in the sustainable use of plastics.
Mission: To encourage recycling, incorporate accountability and increase efficiency in Singapore’s plastic recycling industry through the use of SmartMesh technology.
Who are we?
Bio: Jeremy Koo, 25, NUS Law
Hobbies/Interests: Water polo, singing, pro-bono
Future Aspirations: Serving causes that reduce income inequality and combat climate change
Bio: Ronnie Gao, 24, NTU Business
Hobbies/Interests: Piano, dance, calisthenics
Future Aspirations: To be a management consultant and help businesses expand and be strategically efficient
Bio: Zhang Cheng, 24, NUS Computer Science
Hobbies/Interests: Football, basketball, singing
Future Aspirations: To be a successful software engineer and be at the forefront of technological disruption
Why plastic? What about other materials?
In terms of recyclable materials, plastic is one of the most commonly used, and yet it is recycled at far lower rates at other materials.
These are some statistics showing just how far away we are from recycling plastic sufficiently.
Furthermore, the Covid-19 pandemic has led to greater plastic use, such as in item packaging, worsening the problem.
Who is involved in the recycling effort?
Our project targets 3 main stakeholders: consumers, recycling companies, and the government.
Consumers: To increase consumers’ recycling rate, and to clean the plastic they recycle so that the recycling process can be more efficient.
Recycling companies: To lower their financial and environmental costs on sorting & chemically cleaning the plastics.
Government: To help improve their monitoring of recycling efforts within the ecosystem. Currently, the monitoring process of recycling is inefficient because government officials have to conduct manual checks at recycling plants.
How will we employ SmartMesh technology in our solution?
In terms of hardware, we propose a smart recycling bin (“SRB”) which integrates MeshBox and IoT capabilities.
The SRB ensures that no foreign waste is thrown inside through identity verification to open the bin, and the use of IoT sensors and ML learning to detect the contents thrown inside.
Plastics are also sorted internally so that the sorting process in recycling plants will be more efficient.
When SRBs are in wider use, sensors to track the volume of the bin will also be introduced, which will enable users to be informed if nearby bins are full.
In terms of software, we will be using the Spectrum blockchain to create a green token ecosystem involving the government, users, and eventually, recycling intermediaries.
This diagram shows the flow of green tokens from the government to people who recycle via the SRBs.
The Mesh network (via the MeshBoxes attached to the SRBs) allows for tokens and information to be transferred efficiently.
The Photon channels are a secondary layer to the Spectrum blockchain, which allows user data to be stored at fixed intervals (e.g. total plastic recycled per month), instead of storing every single transaction, and this helps reduce the blockchain space required.
This is how intermediaries will collect the plastic and send it through the recycling supply chain. This will be introduced in later phases when green token usage has picked up.
This demonstrates another use case for Photon in later phases when there are more SRBs in use. When SRBs are full, users can be notified and be redirected to other nearby SRBs that still have storage space.
Using plastic recycling as a basis for our green token economy, we want green tokens to be used on other green goods and services, creating a virtuous cycle that uplifts other eco-friendly initiatives.
This is a screenshot from our beta SGreen app, which illustrates how green tokens can be used to support other green practices. These can be carpooling, reducing food waste, bike-sharing, and many more!
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There's no doubt a college education can end up costing quite a bit of money, but chances are excellent it'll more than pay for itself over a lifetime. According to the College Board, if students enter a public university after high school and graduate with a degree four years later, they'll typically recoup the full cost of their education -- and the money they would have made working during that time period -- within 11 years [source: The College Board]. But better than that, as of 2005, graduates with a four-year degree working throughout their lifetimes will typically earn more than 60 percent more money than someone with only a high school diploma [source: The College Board].
Since not everyone has the spare money on hand to pay for college, many take advantage of financial aid to help foot the bill. Most kids shouldn't hold out too much hope that they can get a free ride through financial aid alone, but many can significantly defray the cost of their education with smart financial planning.
Some of the things financial aid can help pay for include tuition and fees, room and board, books and computers, supplies and transportation, and even childcare for dependents if there are any. Potential resources run the gamut from federal, state and local governments to a multitude of private sources and the colleges themselves.
These institutions offer a variety of grants, scholarships, fellowships and work-study programs -- four closely related terms that often overlap in form and function depending on the source -- so it pays to spend some time reading about everything that's offered. Chances are, it'll be pretty easy for potential students to narrow down the field once they start reviewing the requirements for each option. Additionally, students can consider routes like student loans, parent loans and the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC).
On the next page, we'll look at some of the steps students can take to help keep the cost of their college education under control.
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When soybean growers buy a bag, or a bulk bin of soybean seed they are getting many months of planning, complex logistics, and cutting-edge technology and genetics. Soybean seed cannot be carried over from one season to the next, therefore seed producers must manage risk at each step of the process to prevent production issues and meet growers' needs.
Soybean products must be grown in areas where they are adapted. Soybeans are bred to adapt to growing conditions in a relatively narrow geographic range, known as a maturity group. The vast majority of seed soybean produced in the United States are within the maturity group they will be planted in the following year.
Soybean seed companies' contract with local growers to produce a specific number of acres of seed and specific varieties. Seed companies look for fields that have a history of producing high-quality seed.
Soybean fields contracted for seed have the same yield expectations as commercial fields. The goal is to place the soybean varieties with a grower's who incorporate best management practices for producing high quality seed. Contracting seed production on entire fields helps reduce the risk of contamination by mixing varieties.
Growers harvest the seed and, in most cases, store the seed in their facilities until the seed company requests it be delivered to their processing plants. After harvest, several tests are done to ensure consistency and quality. Growers receive the market price as well as a premium based on seed quality.
There are many challenges to seed production. Wet weather after planting is the primary cause of lower plants stands and in some cases the loss of the production field. Very dry conditions at harvest are also a concern, low seed moisture effect the seed coat and potential germination potential. Seed companies grow their production in geographically diverse locations to help mitigate weather risk. Many companies will produce seed volumes that exceeds customer demand to help mitigate the risk in the case the grower needs additional seed for replants or changes in their cropping rotation.
Customer choice has become a factor in production demand. As the soybean trait pipeline has increased, and growers needs change, companies must continually revise which products growers will want to purchase. This includes forecasting customer demand and producing soybean products a year in advance before they are sold.
Marketing high quality, and good germinating seed requires additional effort from seed producers. Here is a list of some of the areas that attention must be focused on.
Plant seed fields on land that did not grow soybeans the previous year.
Give special attention to genetic purity, freedom from weed seeds, and overall quality of the seed planted. Certified seed growers must use foundation or registered seeds.
Make every effort to control weeds. Even with good results from chemical weed control, there will often be some “escapes” of hard to kill weeds, may require additional post spray treatments to get all weeds under control. Weed control is as much for prevention of weed seed in what would be sold to the customers as for yield.
Start harvest as soon as the soybean reach 13 percent moisture. Harvest as much of the crop as possible at 12 percent moisture or above to avoid cracked seed coats and “splits”. Stagger planting dates of the same variety. Use varieties with different maturity dates. As a rule of thumb, a 10-day delay in planting date during the main planting season results in a 5-day delay in maturity.
Consider using foliar-applied fungicides during the reproductive stages if heavy pathogen infection is predicted.
Pay special attention to combine adjustments, keeping cylinder speed as low as possible while still doing a good job of threshing. Rotary combines will handle the seed more gently and reduce splits.
If possible, avoid harvesting during hot, dry afternoons when pods are beans tend to be brittle. Many good seed producers harvest only at night and in the morning. Harvesting at night and in the early morning should be avoided because when dew sets in it causes dust to stick to the soybean seed, giving them a dirty appearance, which can get associated with poor seed quality.
When moving beans from the combine to storage and in handling and conveying them while cleaning, drop the beans as few times and as short a distance as possible to reduce seed coat cracks.
Avoid using auger elevators that can damage seed coats.
Seeds are living organisms, therefore, if their intended final use will be as propagating material, all management operations (in the field, during harvest, cleaning, storage, and commercialization) should be focused on maintaining those seeds as viable, undamaged, pure, healthy, and vigorous for optimum germination. Certified seed has the highest quality available for crop production; therefore, seed certification requires quality controls in every step of the seed chain. Seeds purchased from reputable dealers come with a level of quality assurance that farm-saved seed may lack.
Soybean Production In Missouri, Zane R. Hesel and Harry C. Minnor, Department of Agronomy, https://extension2.missouri.edu/g4410
Bin-run Seed: Associated Risks for Soybean Production. https://extension.psu.edu/bin-run-seed-associated-risks-for-soybean-production
Web verified 10/10/19
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- 12 Dec 2020
- 9 min read
This article is based on “Pointing the finger at parliamentary scrutiny” which was published in The Hindu on 12/12/2020. It talks about the lapses in the management of the legislative work in the Indian Parliament.
The new Farm laws passed by Parliament have led to a serious confrontation between the government and the agitating farmers.
Although the government is reportedly willing to amend these Acts, the protesting farmers want these laws to be repealed and if necessary, fresh laws to be enacted after discussions with the farmers and other stakeholders.
The demand for the repeal of the laws passed by Parliament only recently essentially points to a serious lapse in the management of the legislative work in Parliament. These lapses can be witnessed in frequent bypassing of parliamentary committees and use of ordinances.
As the parliament is the symbol of democracy, it is the responsibility of the government to check the decline of parliament and restore the people’s trust.
Parliamentary Committees: Background
- Improving the pieces of legislation through detailed scrutiny by Parliament through its committees is historically an ancient practice.
- In fact, the British Parliament has been doing it since the 16th century.
- The Indian experience of legislative scrutiny of Bills goes back to the post-Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms.
- It is interesting to note that the Central Legislative Assembly which was the Parliament of British India, had set up three committees:
- Committee on Petitions relating to Bills,
- Select Committee of Amendments of standing orders
- Select Committee on Bills.
- Thus, even the colonial Parliament recognised the need and usefulness of parliamentary scrutiny of Bills brought to the House by the government.
- Free India’s Parliament established a vast network of committees to undertake scrutiny of various aspects of governance including the Bills.
- Prior to the formation of Departmentally-related Standing Committees (DRSCs), in 1993, the Indian Parliament used to appoint select committees, joint select committees, etc. for detailed scrutiny of important legislative proposals of the government.
Significance of Parliamentary Committee System
- Inter-Ministerial Coordination: They are envisaged to be the face of Parliament in a set of interrelated departments and ministries.
- They are assigned the task of looking into the demands for grants of the ministries/departments concerned, to examine Bills pertaining to them, to consider their annual reports, and to look into their long-term plans and report to Parliament.
- Instrument For Detailed Scrutiny: Committee reports are usually exhaustive and provide authentic information on matters related to governance.
- Bills that are referred to committees are returned to the House with significant value addition.
- Besides the standing committees, the Houses of Parliament set up ad hoc committees to enquire and report on specific subjects that are assigned the task of studying a Bill closely and reporting back to the House.
- Also, in the discharge of their mandate, they can solicit expert advice and elicit public opinion.
- Acting As Mini-Parliament: These committees are smaller units of MPs from both Houses, across political parties and they function throughout the year.
- Also, Parliamentary committees are not bound by the populistic demands that generally act as a hindrance in working of parliament.
- As committee meetings are ‘closed-door’ and members are not bound by party whips, the parliamentary committee work on the ethos of debate and discussions.
- Moreover, they work away from the public glare, remain informal compared to the codes that govern parliamentary proceedings, and are great training schools for new and young members of the House.
Marginalization of Parliament Committee System
- Bypassing the Parliament Committee System: According to data by PRS Legislative Research, while 60% of the Bills in the 14th Lok Sabha and 71% in the 15th Lok Sabha were referred to DRSCs concerned, this proportion came down to 27% in the 16th Lok Sabha.
- Apart from the DRSCs, there are negligible bills referred to Select Committees of the Houses or Joint Parliamentary Committees.
- The last Bill referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee was The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Second Amendment) Bill, in 2015.
- Role of Speaker or Chairman: The reference to the committees is within the discretion of the Speaker or the Chairman. The Rules of the house held that important Bills should go before the committees for a detailed examination.
- However, many times, the speaker or chairman have exercised their discretion not to refer to the committee an important Bill which has serious implications for society.
- For example, in the recent farm bills which were enacted through ordinances, were passed from Lok Sabha within three days without being referred to a Standing Committee.
- Revitalising Parliamentary Committee System: Parliament should revitalise its committees to enable wider public participation.
- It should insist that every Bill is deliberated upon in a committee, much like what the British Parliament does.
- Acting With Responsibility & Amending Rules: Apart from the Speaker or the Chairman acting with probity, there is need to amend rules of procedure in both Lok Sabha and Rajya sabha, so that all major Bills should be referred to DRSCs.
- Setting Up New Committees: Given the increasing complexity in matters of economy and technological advancement, there is a need for setting up new parliamentary committees. For example:
- Standing Committee on Federal issues to provide analysis of all the matters that overlapping in the Union List, Concurrent List and State List.
- Standing Constitution Committee to scrutinise Constitutional Amendment Bills before they are introduced in Parliament.
The primary role of Parliament is deliberation, discussion and reconsideration, the hallmarks of any democratic institution. However, Parliament deliberates on matters that are complex and therefore needs technical expertise to understand such matters better.
Thus, Parliamentary Committees help with this by providing a forum where members can engage with domain experts and government officials during the course of their study. There is a need to strengthen the parliamentary committees rather than bypassing them for the betterment of the parliamentary democracy.
Drishti Mains Question
Discuss the significance of the parliamentary committee system in India and recent issues relating to their functioning.
This editorial is based on “A Harsh lesson: Five years after the Paris Agreement, the world gets serious again” which was published in The Times of India on December 10th, 2020. Now watch this on our Youtube channel.
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Last week, First Solar Inc. and Enbridge Inc. announced an agreement to expand the Sarnia Solar Project in Canada from its current generation capacity of 20 megawatts to 80 megawatts (MW), costing about CDN $300 million.
When the Sarnia Solar Project will be ready (in the second half of next year), it would generate enough power to meet the needs of over 12,800 homes and will help save the equivalent of 39,000 tons of CO2 from being emitted annually through traditional means of power generation.
The Sarnia Solar Project will cover a huge surface, approximately 240 acres of land, consisting of 1.3 million thin film solar panels. According to the researchers, the annual power generation is expected to be about 120 million KWh.
Due to this investment that is added to its portfolio, the Enbridge company will have interests in more than 470 megawatts of green power capacity from four waste heat recovery facilities, five wind power projects, other projects and the world’s first commercial application of hybrid fuel cell technology.
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For many Americans, building the financial assets to transition from daily work to retirement later in life stands apart as a top goal. The concept of retirement is deeply ingrained in today’s culture, but it’s actually a relatively new idea.
In 1900, the average global life expectancy was just 31 years. By 2017, that number jumped to 72.2 years, largely due to developments in modern medicine, sanitation, and work conditions. For most of human history, people had short lifespans and were expected to work until death. There was simply no driving societal need for retirement as we know it.
Modern-day retirement was necessitated and made possible through lengthening life spans, expanding prosperity, and population shifts tied to the Industrial Revolution. Interestingly, the concept of retirement started during the Roman Empire, eventually evolving into its current state.
One of the earliest records of retirement can be traced back to Roman Emperor Augustus. He instituted a pension program for a select group of Roman Legionnaires who had served 20 years in the military in 13 B.C. Financed by taxes, this early pension was an effort to ensure that retired soldiers would not rise up against the Roman empire. Other military pensions are scattered throughout history, usually conferred on victorious armies or navies by grateful monarchs. During this period, most elders depended on family care or alms from benefactors to survive as pensions were not widespread.
The Industrial Revolution shifted much of the population away from small family farms and villages to industrial and urban centers around factories and large cities. Various technological advances redefined the means of production and paved the way for mass-produced goods. Prosperity and life expectancy grew, but physically demanding jobs became harder to sustain with age. Farmers could pass demanding tasks to younger family members, but such transitions were not practical in factories, workshops, and mills.
In 1889, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck developed our modern concept of retirement. To stave off an uprising by young unemployed Marxists, he decided to pay citizens aged 70 and older to leave the workforce voluntarily. “Those who are disabled from work by age and invalidity have a well-grounded claim to care from the state,” he said. This initiative created the idea of a set retirement age and widespread government payments to elderly individuals who elected to exit the workforce.
In the U.S., the private sector led the way for introducing retirement benefits. The first employee contribution plan was established in 1880 by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company. They combined company contributions and employee salary deferral to generate future retirement benefits, giving both parties a stake in the process. The American Express Company established the first corporate pension in 1875. Over the years, pensions grew in popularity as a way for companies to reward long tenured loyal employees while simultaneously opening space to recruit a younger workforce.
By the 1920s, 84% of railroad workers were covered by a defined benefit plan. Railroad pension plans were the gold standard for retirement well into the 1930s. Some railroad pension plans even provided housing, like the Order of Railway Conductors retirement home, which was constructed in 1927 on Oatland Island in Savannah for retired train conductors.
Social and Employer Retirement Programs
The carnage of World War I, the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, the Wall Street crash of 1929, and the Great Depression upended the U.S. economy in the 20th century. Company-sponsored pension programs were cut as fast as people lost their jobs, creating an uneasy economic situation for older Americans.
In an effort to provide for elderly American workers, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1935 Social Security Act established retirement benefits at the federal level. When Social Security was originally conceived, the official retirement age was 65, but the average life expectancy for an American man was just 58. Over the years, the Social Security system expanded to include disability benefits as well as benefits for a worker’s children and spouses.
After World War II, the U.S. economy rebounded sharply, and pension benefit plans again grew in popularity as a vital employee recruitment and retention tool. By the 1950s, the popular image of a retirement filled with leisure activities, golf and sunshine was firmly planted in the American imagination.
The federal government began offering Medicare health benefits to older Americans in 1965 and made a huge step in 1978 by creating IRS code section 401(k). The creation of the 401(k) enabled employees to defer income taxes on funds directed into retirement accounts. Since their creation, 401(k)s have grown in popularity, with approximately three quarters of U.S. companies offering a 401(k) or similar plan today.
As 401(k) plans grew in popularity, traditional pension plans started to phase out by companies from coast to coast. By 2013, fewer than 10% of large U.S. companies offered the classic defined benefit pension to employees.
401(k) plans have given employees greater control over their retirement savings, but also transferred a greater responsibility. Employers often offer matching contributions, automatic enrollment, and retirement savings education to encourage employees participation. Employees and employers have benefited from 401(k) tax benefits. In recent years, the federal government has promoted financial health with additional benefits for retirement savings including Roth IRAs and Health Savings Accounts.
Life expectancy and time in retirement has continued to lengthen much longer than when the Social Security program first debuted in the 1930s. Since the long-term future of Social Security is uncertain, it’s more important than ever to take an active role in strategically planning for retirement.
The concept of retirement continues to develop in the United States, reflecting larger sociological trends. Today’s workers don’t necessarily want to retire and do nothing. A growing number of Americans are pursuing career shifts in their 50s or 60s away from highly compensated careers to “dream jobs.”
This career pivot may not produce as much income but instead prioritizes greater personal fulfillment and satisfaction. Many workers find such pursuits to be natural bridge from a high-stress, high-income career to an active and fulfilling semi-retirement doing something they love. The second career is meant to better align with their passions and values and to give their life purpose and meaning.
A more recent trend among a select few younger American workers is the method of “Financial Independence, Retire Early” or FIRE. The main premise is to save and invest extremely aggressively—somewhere between 50 to 75% of your income—in order to retire in your 30s or 40s. Those who are seeking FIRE always do three things: keep their expenses extremely low, make significant financial sacrifices early in their careers and increase their income as much as possible so they can achieve financial independence—good advice no matter what your goal.
Regardless of how our concept of retirement evolves over time, diligent planning is always a key component for success. Please reach out to our team if we can help you and your family plan for the future.
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In the most simple terms the insurance premium is defined as the amount of money the insurance company is going to charge you for the insurance policy you are purchasing. Insurance premiums are paid for policies that cover healthcare auto home and life insurance.
Insurance premium is a fancy term for the cost of your insurance policy.
Insurance premium kid definition. The loss constant helps protect insurers from losses associated. An amount added to an insurance policy with a low premium designed to cover higher than expected loss experiences. Usually insurance companies give you a monthly price such as 5 month.
A health insurance premium is a monthly fee paid to an insurance company or health plan to provide health coverage. An insurance premium is the monthly or annual payment you make to an insurance company to keep your policy active. Then have your child give one dollar to each insurance company.
An agreed amount of money that you pay to an insurance company for insurance either as one payment. The insurance premium is the cost of your insurance. Explain that this money is the insurance premium.
An insurance premium is the amount of money an individual or business pays for an insurance policy. To explain how an insurance company works give your child fake money such as from a board game and have your child divide the money into several piles. The scope of the coverage itself i e the amount that the health insurer pays and the amount that you pay for health related services such as doctor visits hospitalizations prescriptions and medications varies considerably from one health plan to another and there s often.
Here are the basics to help you understand what an insurance premium is and how it works. Explain that each pile of money belongs to a different insurance company. To find out how much it costs to insure your apartment or home aka your insurance premium you need to get a quote which generally requires filling out info online talking to a customer service.
Premiums are required for every type of insurance including health disability.
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The winds of change are blowing towards renewable energy, and nations are becoming increasingly more creative in how they can capitalize on the growing trend. At present, the most popular sources of renewable energy come from either solar or wind. Both, however, require tracts of land for their infrastructure. With real estate for wind farms becoming increasingly expensive and scarce, Dutch power grid and energy network operator TenneT wants to build wind turbines on the sea.
Well, not on water per se: rather, on shallow areas in a region in the North Sea called the Dogger Bank. Located some 125 km (78 miles) off the East Yorkshire coast, Dogger Bank is supposedly a windy enough site, allowing the company to optimize wind energy generation.
The Dogger Bank project is effectively what’s called an offshore wind farm, but what makes this project radical is the artificial island built in the middle. This would serve as a hub for the vast offshore farm, expected to be even bigger in scale than the current largest windfarm in Gansu, China. TenneT expects the Dogger Bank project to be able to handle a capacity of 30GW.
What’s more, TenneT’s proposed project might give wind energy a necessary push towards continuing to lower the price of wind energy.
“It’s crucial for industry to continue with the cost reduction path,” Rob van der Hage, TenneT’s offshore wind grid development program manager, told The Guardian. “The big challenge we are facing towards 2030 and 2050 is onshore wind is hampered by local opposition and nearshore is nearly full. It’s logical we are looking at areas further offshore.”
The Dogger Bank project isn’t the first to propose building far-offshore wind farms. A similar plan has been unveiled for the U.K. by the largest energy company in Denmark. Scotland, meanwhile, recently opened the world’s first floating wind farm. Where TenneT’s proposed project differs is in how it plans to manage the energy generated by the farm.
The wind farm island hub would collect energy from the wind turbines through short cables. Converters would then turn the electricity into direct current, so as not to lose power over the long distance travel towards the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and later on perhaps even to Germany, Denmark, Belgium, and Norway.
The long-distance cables would also allow electricity to travel to whichever country needed it most at any given time. This setup makes sure that energy generation is consistent and cost-effective, and that nothing would be wasted.
“Is it difficult? In the Netherlands, when we see a piece of water we want to build islands or land. We’ve been doing that for centuries. That is not the biggest challenge,” van der Hage told The Guardian.
Building the artificial island and the hundreds of wind turbines for the project would be a burden shared by Tennet with offshore wind farm developers like Denmark’s Ørsted and Germany’s Innogy. Tennet would shoulder some $1.8 billion (€1.5 billion) to build the island.
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Bitcoin Cryptocurrency is humming throughout the world, whether you are on the web or any media. It’s one of the very most fascinating and craziest points happened that has living within the last few years only. More importantly, you can make a wonderful reunite by bitcoins trading or you can hold it for a long term. You may well be heard about Stocks, Commodities, Forex, and today a brand new currency named Bitcoin trading that impacts considerably on our lives. In this beginner’s guide to Bitcoin cryptocurrency, you can get to learn the A W C of Bitcoin.
The emergence of Bitcoin remains not known but a paper was printed in April 2008 beneath the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto used from Japan. His identification remains not known and believed to possess around one million bitcoins appreciated a lot more than $6 billion USD by September 2017.
Bitcoin is just a digital currency popularly called cryptocurrency and is clear of any geographical boundary. It is not governed by any government and all that’s necessary is an internet connection. As a newcomer, Bitcoin engineering may confuse you and a little bit hard to understand about it. Nevertheless, I will allow you to get it deeper and how you can even do your first Bitcoin trading at ease.
Bitcoin Cryptocurrency works on blockchain engineering which really is a digital public ledger and distributed by anybody in the world. You may find your transactions here once you do any Bitcoin trading and anyone can utilize the ledger to confirm it. The transaction done is likely to be fully translucent and is approved by blockchain. Bitcoin and different cryptocurrency will be the parts of blockchain and are an incredible engineering that works on the internet only.
When you prepared to possess your first Bitcoin , it is way better to know the main element terms linked to bitcoins. It is also termed as BTC which is really a part of bitcoin and 1 bitcoin equals 1 Million bits. With the emergence of bitcoins, some other substitute cryptocurrencies also evolved. They are widely named Altcoins and includes Ethereum(ETH), Litecoin(LTC), Ripple(XRP), Monero(XMR) and several others.
To be able to learn how to work with a free bitcoin generator, first open the bitcoin application in your desktop screen. Today join it to your web machine, since it is secured and unknown it is simple to create or dual your trouble without any trouble. So the key step in increasing your bitcoin would be to first deposit the sum. For depositing the cash, you will need to enter your bitcoin wallet address in the deposit bar. Today your wallet window is exposed, from there move your sum to the deposit bar.
For this reason, click the deliver key and paste your bitcoin deposit address to send the money to the bitcoin computer software for doubling your amount. You will see a notification of successful cost transfer in your bitcoin pc software window. Today, this bitcoin currency will get changed into the software currency, following a few momemts the quantity will be doubled automatically. Today press the button deposit, to see the amount placed and the amount of money doubled.
Afterwards click on the key refresh, to obtain the entire overview of your exchange, for instance, if you transferred 0.10 bitcoins the quantity doubled is going to be 0.20 bitcoins in your wallet. Today to withdraw your bitcoin income, you will need to go to your bitcoin wallet, from there click obtain button and duplicate the handle swallowing on your window. Next thing would be to stick the handle on withdraw bitcoin bar and press the withdraw button. The complete process can take a moment, but following the completion, you will see a notification taking on your monitor stating ” Bitcoin obtained” and bitcoins will appear on your own wallet.
A bitcoin turbine is really a simple way of getting simple money. Bitcoin operates on the foundation of the cryptographic protocol. Bitcoins are the mark of currency through which individual makes the deal of getting and giving the profit bitcoins as opposed to true money. Bitcoin turbines are a coding application that doubles or triples your bitcoins in 5 to 10 moments with minimal harmony in your bitcoin storm south africa. There are lots of companies supplying a free bitcoin turbine, but before trading do the thorough study as many are frauds. Bitcoin is the new currency for the newest technology and features a large range in coming future.
XBT and BTC are the same things and commonly abbreviated for bitcoin. Mining is still another expression applied a whole lot and it is actually a process done by pc electronics for the Bitcoin networks. You will have the ability to trade, transact, take and store bitcoin. You are able to deliver it to friends and family, demand from a pal and store it in your electronic wallet. Actually, now you can top-up your mobile/DTH right by paying through bitcoin.
Transaction charge is minimal when compared with PayPal, Credit cards, and different on line intermediaries. Moreover, in addition it protects your solitude that will get released on the net while using the credit cards. It is incredibly protected and nobody may seize or grab coins. Because of its transparency in the device, it is also difficult to control due to the shared public ledger. You can confirm purchase from everywhere and at any time.
Need probably will increase as the sum total generation of bitcoins is usually to be limited to 21 million only. China has already legalized it and different nations might follow it shortly and the cost might walk further.
I will be covering more on Bitcoins at length in the impending days where you’ll learn good material of bitcoin trading. You are able to review your opinions and ask anything highly relevant to bitcoins.
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What is the reasonableness test?
When is the test of reasonableness used?
How is it applied in contract law, criminal law, tort law, audit and accounting?
In this article, we will break down the notion of “reasonableness test” so you know all there is to know about it
We will define it from a legal and accounting perspective, look at its applications in different areas such as criminal law, tort law, contract law, audit, finance and accounting.
Be sure to read this post in full as you’ll learn things on this topic that you’ll find highly valuable.
Let’s get started!
What is the reasonableness test
The reasonableness test is a test used in different fields, particularly in law and accounting.
Let’s look at what the reasonableness test entails by looking at the legal definition followed by the accounting definition.
According to Investopedia, the legal definition of reasonableness test is as follows:
A benchmark used in court when reviewing the decisions made by a particular party. The reasonableness standard is a test which asks whether the decisions made were legitimate and designed to remedy a certain issue under the circumstances at the time.
In law, the reasonableness test is performed by assessing a legal dispute or issue through the eyes of a “reasonable person”.
The reasonableness test or reasonableness analysis in accounting refers to an examination procedure intended to verify the validity and reasonableness of accounting information.
One example of how an accountant may perform a reasonableness test is by comparing a company’s gross margin percentage to that of its peers in the same industry.
Reasonableness testing is an audit technique allowing an auditor to validate accounting records, numbers reported in a financial statement, inventory reports, account receivable reports and so on.
Reasonableness test in contract law
In contract law, there are many instances where the court must use the reasonableness test to assess whether the actions or conduct of the parties were reasonable in the circumstances.
The reasonable man test or reasonable person test is used to determine contractual intent or whether a contractual breach was the result of a person violating the standard of care.
Courts evaluate a contractual party’s intent
Once the intent of a contracting party is determined and the reasonableness test used, then the court can better evaluate the consideration, expectations, conduct and circumstances of the dispute.
Reasonableness test in criminal law
The “reasonable person” legal fiction and reasonableness test is crucial in criminal law giving the courts a process or a mechanism to evaluate a person’s negligence and level of care or prudence exercised by a person.
The gravity of a person’s actions or omissions can be compared to that of a reasonable person in the same circumstances.
Reasonableness test in tort law
In lawsuits and cases involving negligence and tort law, the courts have devised the test of reasonableness to draw the line between the standard of care versus negligent conduct.
Courts assess a person’s exercise of the standard of care versus negligent conduct
When the court finds that a person failed to abide by the proper standard of care, that person can be held liable for damages caused as a result of his or her actions.
In the law of negligence and tort law, the courts use the legal fiction of a “reasonable person” to test whether the conduct was tortious or not.
A reasonable person is a person who exercises ordinary prudence, care and diligence in normal circumstances.
Reasonableness test in audit
The audit reasonableness test is a common test used to audit, accounting and finance to assess income and expenses recorded in a company’s income statement or other events and transactions.
An auditor will consider data from two different sources or two different data points to assess the validity of the numbers reported.
There is a high correlation between the inventory data or the cost of goods sold with a company’s reported income.
An auditor may assess the inventory data or cost of goods data to assess the validity or reasonableness of the reported income.
The objective of an audit reasonable testing or reasonability test is to use an accounting transaction or event to forecast the reasonability of related events or transactions.
Be sure to read our post on system audit to better understand the auditing process.
The reasonableness check is a process used when a professional needs to examine the validity of any type of data.
A data scientist may use the reasonableness check to ensure the validity and quality of data in a particular data set to ensure that the data is complete or relevant.
Reasonableness check is like a common-sense check
Reasonableness test FAQ
What is the reasonableness standard?
The reasonableness standard in commercial contracts and contract law is the standard used by the court to interpret contracts and the intention of the parties when they entered into a contract.
What would a reasonable person having all the relevant information and knowledge at the time of signing of the contract do or act during the execution of the contract?
Courts consider the reasonableness standard in evaluating the intention of the parties upon signature of the context of a breach of contract
The duties of a contractual party can also be derived from the exercise of reasonable care, skill and prudence.
A reasonable test may also be used in evaluating the standard of care of a contractual party during the execution of the contract and post-contractual obligations.
What does reasonableness mean in law?
The reasonable test law is a benchmark used by the court to evaluate the actions of a party in comparison to that of a person exercising a proper standard of care.
Reasonableness in law means to what extent the actions and conduct of a person were justified as opposed to negligent or careless.
John gets into a car accident and causes severe injuries to another.
Did John drive recklessly and with negligence or was it a pure accident?
The courts will look at the reasonableness of John’s actions and conduct in the circumstances to evaluate if his actions tipped him over to the side of “negligence” or not.
Is reasonableness a validation check?
Yes, in fields where data is being analyzed such as in accounting, finance and audit, reasonableness can be a validation check to verify the validity or reasonableness of numbers reported.
An auditor will assess a company’s inventory reports and the cost of goods sold to assess whether the reported income looks fair and reasonable.
A comptroller may use an interest reasonable test to validate whether or not the interest charged on an inter-company transaction can be deemed reasonable
A programmer may look at data in a database and exercise a reasonableness test to validate the quality of the data.
In law, on the other hand, the reasonableness test is a benchmark or evaluation of a person’s conduct or the reasonability of contractual language, contractual clauses or obligations of a party.
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Companies use financial modelling to check assumptions and forecasts. These financial models can extrapolate data to assess what scenario might result from changing one or more variables. Typically created within spreadsheets, companies can build financial models on which all manner of business judgements can be based.
What is Financial Modelling?
Financial modelling is a form of financial forecasting. It’s a tool that takes historical and forecast data and applies a set of assumptions to it. These variables can be changed and tweaked – together or singularly – to view the likely outcomes. Each scenario can be compared to check for favourability, and the necessary changes that will bring about those results can then be implemented by the company. Assumptions used can include sales volumes, prices, expenditure, margin and so on.
Financial models are most often created in spreadsheets – typically Excel, which is the world’s most used spreadsheet software. They can be created to analyse different scenarios. Some are very complex and have many inputs and variables. Others are simple and may track just one key figure.
Some companies integrate their spreadsheet models with other software that optimises the process. NetSuite, for example, comes with integrated financial planning functionality that has a powerful modelling tool. It collects your prior data to create a predictive model. It can even incorporate industry benchmark data and with just a few clicks can generate a dashboard that displays your key modelled figures and forecasts.
Why Use Financial Modelling?
Using a model is the simplest way that you can predict how a certain factor might affect the future performance of your company. It can be used to create different scenarios – each with varying factors – and then used as a basis for decision-making in the company. Models help you to evaluate the risks of instigating certain changes.
They can also be useful in preparing financial statements for potential investors, banks or insurance providers. With the relevant modelled projections, you can confidently pitch for funding or a loan, for example.
Ultimately, a financial model can help you more clearly see where your business is at right now, and where it could be in the future.
Examples of Financial Models
There are many different types of financial models. Here are some that are commonly used:
- The three statement model takes your profit and loss (P&L), balance sheet and cash flow statement and links them into a model on which many other models can be built. It takes your assumptions and models the effects on each of these three central aspects of your finances.
- A mergers and acquisition model combines the financial information from two companies, so that the valuation of the joint entity can be presented.
- An IPO model uses a number of inputs to value a company before it goes public.
- If you are seeking investment, you might build models that show the growth that your company is projecting as a result of that investment. This would also demonstrate the return that those investors might see.
- A budget model can be used to project internal expenditure, with variables based on the number of locations and staff, capital expenditure, marketing spend and so on.
- Finally, financial models can project how changes to your pricing, or your distribution strategy, or your headcount will affect cash flow or revenue or profit.
Best Practice in Financial Modelling
Within finance, there are some accepted norms when it comes to building and customising financial models. These best practices result in financial models that are flexible to being adapted, are easy to understand and which aid business decision-making. Here’s what you should be sure to take into consideration:
- Ensure you understand the problem at hand, who will use the model and what you aim to achieve with it.
- Try to build the model within single worksheet, to avoid errors and improve how it is understood.
- To make your spreadsheet clearer to read, gather your data into logical sections. First bring all your assumptions together, then add in your balance sheet and P&L account.
- Use a standard colour-coding or formatting convention. For example, clearly distinguishing data that comes as an input by formatting the font colour and also the cell fill or border style.
- Keep number formats consistent. For example, throughout your models, use the same formatting for negative numbers, stick to the same number of decimal places, and use the same currency symbols.
- Each value should appear in its own cell and not be repeated elsewhere. This helps prevent errors and maintains your model’s clarity and readability.
- Don’t embed your assumptions into formulas in case you forget where they are when you come to make adjustment. Instead, keep the assumptions separate and label them clearly.
- Try to ensure the formulas you use are simple by breaking them down into separate calculations where possible.
- Double check all your figures and formulas. Your model’s accuracy depends on you building a quality tool.
- Finally, put your model to the by building and assessing a number of different scenarios. Testing these to see if the model fails allows you correct errors and refine the model before you properly use it.
Financial Planning and Budgeting Resources
Here are two practical resources to help you put your financial planning and modelling into practice:
- This webinar recording introduces and explains the capabilities of NetSuite’s planning and budgeting tool. It increases forecasting accuracy by 12%, reduces planning times by 38% and optimises management reports creation by 32%.
- This ebook, High Impact Planning and Budgeting for All Types of Growth, explains an approach to planning and budgeting for midmarket companies looking to grow
Dynamic financial modelling using these best practices can greatly assist with calculating future predictions. Financial models help companies to identify the improvements they can make to their business, as well as secure funding and loans. They make goal-setting easier and ensure companies have the right data on which to base business-critical decisions.
If you would like to know more about using an ERP system that has built-in financial modelling functionality, and which seamlessly incorporates your financial data to create complex spreadsheet models, let us show you what NetSuite can do. Book an appointment now or contact us today.
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The impacts of the patchwork of jurisdictional carbon prices have had major impacts on hundreds of organizations around the world. As of 2019, “about 1600 companies disclosed that they currently use internal carbon pricing or that they anticipate doing so within two years”. Internal carbon pricing is the process of implementing a carbon price at an organization in order to operationalize and incorporate the cost of carbon into business decisions. Here is a summary of five methodologies that an organization could use to establish its internal carbon price:
This is a notional value that is chosen to be attached to carbon emissions from business activities and used as an internal management tool to support decision making. Attaching a shadow price to business decisions around CAPEX and OPEX can help an organization to assess its climate risk exposure as well as understand how external/jurisdictional carbon pricing could potentially impact its operations and supply chain. One way to implement a shadow price is to add an expense line item on projected income statements, so potential investments that have a big carbon footprint will show a reduced net income projection as compared to low-carbon investments, and thus guide internal decision making. The key to success in shadow pricing is to influence strategic planning, risk management, and capital investment decisions, and surface the otherwise invisible long-term impact of carbon emissions. Two examples of organizations that have been using a shadow price for over a decade now are oil and gas company, Shell, and mining company, BHP.
2. Implicit pricing
This method is based on an organization’s existing efficiency and/or emissions reduction initiatives because these projects have associated costs and are an implicit price for emissions reduction. Therefore, any organization that has public or private emissions reduction targets, or other organizational goals to continuously improve operational efficiency, is already using an implicit price for its carbon emissions. In fact, organizations that are already implementing emissions reduction projects, but not with an explicitly stated internal carbon price, likely have several different implicit carbon prices because the cost of different projects varies drastically. An organization should compile a list of emissions reduction projects and their associated costs, and build marginal abatement cost curves to help prioritize high impact projects. By explicitly stating an implicit carbon price, all emissions reduction opportunities can be systematically evaluated based on a threshold cost-effectiveness per unit of carbon emissions, or be implemented at a stated average ‘blended’ cost. Perhaps the most well-known organization using this approach is Microsoft.
3. Peer benchmarking:
Organizations should pursue mitigating transition risks associated with climate change similar to other competitive issues in their industry/industries. An individual organization can stay ahead of the competition by using an internal carbon price that is higher than its peers, and thus improve the business case for developing new innovative products and services. The internal price on carbon can also help an organization to futureproof its assets and investments against climate regulation.
4. Political regulation
As of May 2020, the World Bank counted over 60 carbon pricing initiatives implemented and scheduled for implementation around the world. Many other jurisdictions are monitoring the existing carbon tax and ETS programs to assess their effectiveness and consider their own options to implement carbon pricing. Organizations should consider adding new or updated jurisdictional carbon pricing to their regulatory policy tracking and use data analytics to support these efforts.
5. Social cost of carbon
While this is not the primary methodology that any individual company has followed to establish its own internal price on carbon, we would be remiss to not mention this carbon pricing methodology. The social cost of carbon is a measure of the economic harm to society from climate impacts, expressed as the net present dollar value of the total damages from emitting one ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The current central estimate of the social cost of carbon is over $50 per ton in today’s dollars. However, the full range of social costs of carbon can vary drastically from one dollar to over $200 per ton of carbon dioxide depending on model inputs and social costs included. This methodology has been used by some government agencies as an internal tool for calculating the impacts and costs of their initiatives.
Regardless of which methodology is used to facilitate internal carbon pricing at an organization, it is worth noting that the stated carbon price can be shifted over time as organizations internalize the costs associated with carbon emissions. The most appropriate methodology for an individual organization will depend on its business objective(s) for establishing and operationalizing an internal price on carbon. Table 1 below shows a list of business objectives to navigate climate risks on the path to achieving a low carbon economy and the associated pricing mechanisms.
Table 1. An organization’s goal for internal carbon pricing can include one or more of the mechanisms listed below. The corresponding pricing mechanism is meant to give greater definition to how each objective is manifested.
Take a moment now to think about which of the business objectives above resonates most with your organization and how your company will benefit most from getting started on its internal carbon pricing initiative. Can you tell which approach is the most suitable for your company? Our team at Sinai Technologies is eager to discuss the best approach to starting your organization’s internal carbon pricing dialogue, as well as share with you how our platform can support your emissions and price modeling, and help you adapt your decarbonization potential by uncovering insights from your carbon data.
Sinai Technologies Inc. is helping companies to mitigate climate change by enabling more intelligent carbon emission measurement, monitoring and trading. We are building the world’s first platform-as-a-service to measure, price and evaluate carbon risk, using science-based methodologies and artificial intelligence. For more information and to schedule a demo, visit https://www.sinaitechnologies.com/request-a-demo.
1. CDP. “CDP Disclosure 2019”. Retrieved from https://www.cdp.net/en/climate/carbon-pricing/carbon-pricing-connect.
2. Partnership for Market Readiness. (January 2015). “Preparing for Carbon Pricing: Case Studies from Company Experience: Royal Dutch Shell, Rio Tinto, and Pacific Gas and Electric Company”. Retrieved from https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/21358/PCP.pdf?sequence=4.
3. Ahluwalia, Majyot Bhan. (September 12, 2017). “Companies set their own price on carbon”. Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. Retrieved from https://www.c2es.org/2017/09/companies-set-their-own-price-on-carbon/.
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How does California compare to other states?
California represents the fifth-largest economy in the world and its 39.25 million residents give it the largest population in the United States. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate dropped to 3.8% as of October 2019 as the economy has recovered. Total nonfarm employment grew 1.7% and government employment grew 1.5% from January to December 2019. The sector that saw the greatest growth over the time period is Education and Health Services, growing 3.4% over the 12 months.
California has the 20th-highest poverty rate of 14% under the traditional poverty measure. Mississippi has the highest at 20%, while New Hampshire has the lowest of 7.6%. Due largely to the high cost of housing, California has the highest poverty rate under the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which takes cost of living into account. California’s SPM rate is 18.1% in 2020, compared to a national average of around 13.1% (three year average 2016-2018). Louisiana has the next highest SPM rate at 16.5%, followed by Florida at 16.2% and Mississippi at 15.8%. California's SPM rate has been gradually improving, from a recent peak of 20.4% in 2018.
Comparison of Tax Rate by Type
California spends more total dollars for public services than other states largely due to its large population, so per-person (or "per capita") comparisons are the most useful. As of 2018, California ranked 23rd in spending per capita with $6,834. Alaska spends the most with $14,016 and Florida spends the least with $3,696. The U.S. average is $6,135.
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On-farm power generation - options for vegetable growers (VG13051)
What was it all about?
With the price of electricity rising, vegetable producers face growing costs across the production space, including from irrigation, heating and cooling processes to powering processing and packing plants. At the same time, some renewable energy sources are becoming significantly cheaper to install, which, together with incentive schemes on offer, have made them more appealing.
This project, which was carried out in 2014, investigated the feasibility of various on-farm power generation options to help growers make an informed decision about the economic, technical and operational costs and benefits of different technologies. It produced fact sheets describing key options and considerations (see the ‘act now’ section for these).
The project began with a review of possible options for generating electricity including solar photovoltaics, wind power, natural gas generation, LPG generation, woody biomass power generation and, where relevant, battery storage to support intermittent power generation options. (Meanwhile, biogas generation was the subject of its own project, through VG13049).
The research team developed six detailed case studies of the different methods in order to analyse the specific costs and benefits, and went on to report on the return on investment and any practical implementation considerations such as incentive schemes and regulatory requirements.
A considerable amount of data was generated by the team in the process of narrowing down options to the four most promising power generation technologies:
- Solar photovoltaics
- Wind turbines
- Natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) generation with a reciprocating engine, potentially with cogeneration or trigeneration
- Woody biomass power generation.
All of these technologies are established and deployed around the world. With the exception of trigeneration and biomass generation, these technologies are already being used in the horticulture or related sectors in other countries.
The researchers encourage growers interested in on-farm power to seek the assistance of an appropriate energy consultant to establish costs and benefits for their enterprise.
Four fact sheets on the major considerations for on-farm power generation can be found below:
This project has been funded by Hort Innovation
Copyright © Horticulture Innovation Australia Limited . The Final Research Report (in part or as whole) cannot be reproduced, published, communicated or adapted without the prior written consent of Hort Innovation (except as may be permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth)).
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by Emil Morhardt
The Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) release into the atmosphere is what you need to know if you want to make a case for reducing its output. Down the road sometime, there may be social consequences [costs] that will cause us to regret not doing something to reduce our current carbon output, but if it would cost less to do something about it then then to to make the investment now, we might as well wait. So there are two basic questions to ask: What will the social costs of our carbon emissions, if any, be? And how much more or less will it cost to mitigate them when we experience them than it would to avoid them in the first place by cutting carbon emissions? Pizer et al. (2014), writing in Nature, discuss the impact of different estimates of the SCC and the importance, if difficulty, of getting a correct estimate, observing the contrast between the estimate made by the US government in 2008 which suggested that we might as well wait, versus the one made in 2013 which showed the costs of waiting are triple those of doing something now. They also note that above all, the assumed discount rate in the economic models is crucial to the calculations, concluding that it would be ideal if both social costs and discount rates were routinely recalculated on a 5-year basis by multiple government agencies and reviewed by the National Research Council. Their goal is to use the best possible social and natural science and economics, free of political input.
Most of us would like all policy made this way. The authors are particularly keen on more aggressive research into the translation of the physical impacts of carbon dioxide into the social ones (they are, after all, social scientists, who are routinely on the short end of climate change research funding.) They are especially interested in estimating damage from extreme climate change—the sort resulting from reaching a tipping point. I would certainly support this—the social costs could be staggering and they have not been very well examined or publicized yet. A proper understanding of them might be far more instrumental in causing politicians to take climate change seriously than the current prevailing apparent belief in the US Congress that Americans will be able to solve whatever problems occur, and since it is not certain that any large ones will, we should do nothing.
Pizer, W., Adler, M., Aldy, J., Anthoff, D., Cropper, M., Gillingham, K., Greenstone, M., Murray, B., Newell, R., Richels, R., 2014. Using and improving the social cost of carbon. Science 346, 1189-1190.
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In this informative article, you are going to learn about the simplest and quickest method to choose different topics for your economics assignment in an instant manner. As we all know that economics is a kind of a subject that is based on certain spectrums that leads to the negative and positive impact on the economy and financial decisions of the specific region or area. At the same time, the particular subject is taught in various educational institutions as well. In order to learn about part and parcel of the following subject, educational institutions and tutors tend to give multiple assignments to the students every day and due to the shortage of time, students fail to deliver the desired results. However, students can also take assignment help from any reputed academic institution in order to complete their work on time with efficiency.
Easy topics of economics which you can use for your assignment
Here are some of the common topics which can be taken for the economics assignment:-
- Demand and Supply:-These are the most basic terms of economics which are inter-related with each other as it is a common fact that demand gives rise to supply. The price of any good or service consumed by the consumer is set according to its demand then demand decides the supply of the same commodities.
- Scarcity:-The meaning of this word is “Deficiency” in terms of resources and this leads to the efficient distribution of the limited availability of such resources. Also, all resources tend to face scarcity at some point in time or the other.
- Microeconomics:-It is an extended part of economics that studies various individuals as single or standalone units such as households, individuals, and enterprises who all are running an economy and affecting the financial decisions in a bad or a good way.
- Wealth:-in general this term denotes the value of your property, gold, and money. On the other hand, in economics, this means the value of tangible and intangible assets owned by an individual, company, country, and community.
These are the major subjects that can work well for your economics assignment. If by any chance you require further economics assignment help then all you need to do is ask to do my homework online and take the professional’s guidance who holds ample knowledge in the same subject area and strives to provide you valuable advice anytime, anywhere.
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So these are some of the perks and benefits you can avail if you choose any academic writing service. But there are so many websites which makes it difficult for the students to choose one, it would be suggested to choose an assignment writing service by knowing the following things:
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What is a Payment Gateway and How Does It Work?
Online payments have become a part of our daily lives in no time. We’re transacting online not only through debit or credit cards but through numerous other modes like net banking, wallets, etc.
Online invoice payment helps companies save time, is faster and saves maximum efforts for the clients. It helps in reducing,
- excessive costs involved in physical transactions
- significant amount of paper invoices that will be printed and used to send invoices.
Online payments allow you to buy products and services from all over the world. If you are a seller, you can sell to anyone in the world with a decent internet connection. Your customer doesn’t even need to have a computer; a smartphone is enough.
But what exactly is a payment gateway? Is it safe to transact through a payment gateway? Does it make sense for your business to have a payment gateway integration? Let’s find out.
What is a Payment Gateway?
Payment gateways are software and servers that transmit transaction information to acquiring banks and responses from issuing banks (such as whether a transaction is approved or declined). Essentially, payment gateways facilitate communication within banks and plays the role of a third party that securely transfers your money from the bank account to the merchant’s payment portal.
How do payment gateways work?
The transaction flow is the same whether you’re using a physical or virtual payment gateway, but mobile and online payments use digital capture files for packaging the credit card information rather than output from a credit card reader:
- The buyer makes a credit card payment through the merchant’s credit card reader or e-commerce site.
- The payment gateway:
- Pushes the transaction information to the acquiring bank (the merchant bank or acquirer)
- Determines which credit card network (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, or American Express) issued the buyer’s card
- Routes the transaction information to the correct payment switch
- The payment switch routes the request to the bank that issued the buyer’s credit card (the issuing bank) and pushes the transaction information onto the correct credit card network.
- The issuing bank applies fraud detection procedures to determine the legitimacy of the transaction and confirms the buyer has sufficient credit in their account to accommodate the purchase.
- The issuing bank approves (or rejects) the transaction and sends this information back through the credit card network to the merchant bank and the payment gateway.
Security is an integral component of all payment gateways, as sensitive data such as credit card numbers need to be protected from any fraudulent parties. The card associations have created a set of rules and security standards that must be followed by anyone with access to card information including gateways. This set of rules and security standards is called the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS or PCI).
Submitting an order is usually completed using the HTTPS protocol, which securely communicates personal information through the parties involved in the transaction.
Opening Your Payment Gateway for Business
Once you understand the importance of a payment gateway and its impact on your sales and security, it’s time to take the next steps:
- Research with key priorities in mind. Check the PCI compliance of your potential payment solution to ensure its security, and always look for per-transaction prices to get a sense of how a gateway will impact your bottom line.
- Understand what your customers want. Even if you don’t have a payment gateway, there are insights you may already have that you need to leverage. Which payment services do your customers prefer, and what’s the most convenient way to facilitate these preferences?
- Stack multiple gateways to fill gaps. You don’t have to commit to one gateway for the rest of your days. You can even stack multiple gateways at once to ensure maximum coverage for most customer needs.
- Like with almost any service, there are fees associated with them. You’ll have to pay transaction fees for your business — so pay attention to your gateway’s costs and do your research before integrating it into your site so you’re not slammed with surprise fees.
- Different fees charged can include transaction, statement, chargeback, merchant account fees, and likely more — such as fees to customers for using a certain payment method. And not surprisingly, customers do NOT like hidden costs so read the fine print.
With a better knowledge of price, function, and gateway security, your business will be in the position to choose the right option for your business needs and add a new level of security (and peace of mind) that customers need when making a purchase online.
Top Payment Gateways for Ecommerce Businesses In 2019
BDM | Offshore Business/Software Solution Consultant | Branding | Driving Sustainable Growth | Mobile & Web AppsAll stories by: Varun Markanday
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Economic Impacts of Climate Change in Florida
By Mahadev G. Bhat, Ph.D.
How does climate change affect Florida's Economy?
With global climate change, Floridians can expect extremes in rainfall, hurricanes,
drought, sea level rise, and increasing temperatures over the next few decades. All
these climate-related issues will pose challenges for our state’s economy, as well as
our daily lives.
When looking at Florida’s economy, the effects of climate change will be most
noticeable in four key sectors: tourism, real estate, agriculture and health.
How Will Climate Change Affect Tourism in Florida?
More than 131 million visitors came to Florida in 2019, and out-of-state visitor spending was nearly $94 billion in 2018. This vast number of tourists supported 1.5 million jobs for Floridians. Now, consider what would happen if Florida would lose part of its beautiful, sandy beaches, its scenic state parks, and iconic national parks like Everglades National Park – a World Heritage Site and International Biosphere Reserve. A four-foot sea level rise by 2070 could eat up thousands of square miles of the Florida coast and low-lying wetland areas. This could significantly impact this important source of revenue for Florida: tourism income and jobs. To make matters worse, increases in storm surges and high-tide flooding could also compound the potential economic losses from sea level rise. Realizing this potential threat, Miami Beach, one of the most at-risk cities in the world, has made more than $500 million in infrastructure investments to protect its roads, buildings, and water pumping systems from high-tide flooding.
How Does Climate Change Affect Our Health?
Climate change can have a major impact on the health of Floridians, projected to increase risks for cardiovascular-related deaths, heat stroke, and mosquito-borne illnesses like Zika, Dengue fever, and West Nile fever. In 2012 alone, ten climate-sensitive events (e.g., an algal bloom in Florida, extreme heat in Ohio, etc.) in the U.S. contributed to 917 premature deaths, and thousands of hospital admissions, emergency room visits, and outpatient cases. Florida residents endured total health care costs of $557 million due to the toxic algal bloom in 2012. Extended extreme heat conditions in Florida, which can exacerbate human mortality and sickness, are predicted to increase in the future. Unfortunately, Florida’s annual health care expenditures have continued to climb, reaching $228 billion in 2019 with no sign of a slowdown.
How do we mitigate the impact of climate change?
Can Floridians do anything to mitigate the impact of climate change? The answer is a
resounding yes! First, we can become involved in our communities and take an active role to address the consequences of climate change. We can take responsibility for our own greenhouse gas emissions, managing our travel and household utilities and supporting political leaders who believe in moving away from sole dependence on fossil fuels. We should support public expenditures for infrastructure to make our cities and towns more resilient and help private businesses make climate-friendly economic choices.
We can advance restoration of America’s Everglades, an effort that will help to protect
its stock of carbon from being released into the atmosphere and mitigate the impacts of saltwater intrusion. Finally, climate education has never been as important, and you can become a climate educator as well as an activist. After all, there is no climate readiness without climate literacy.
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In economics, the definition of competition refers to when several private companies go to a market to offer their products or services to a group of consumers who act independently and who integrate the demand. It also refers to the rivalry between firms that take part in a certain market developing their best strategies with the aim of increasing profits, minimizing costes and thus be able to compete in the best possible conditions with the rest of the companies in the sector.
The concept of competition is a logical derivative of free markets, where the decision-making power of exchange rests with consumers and the valuations that they make of the products that interest them.
One of the essential aspects of economic competition lies in the freedom of people to produce and market the products they want and in the way they want. This ends up generating a number of competitors based on the preferences of the buyers. Without a doubt, what ends up being influential in a competitive market is prices. Those businesses that place less value on their items and are willing to make a lower percentage of profit from sales tend to be the most successful. However, they sometimes face a certain business risk that can jeopardize the future of the company.
To better understand the definition of competence, just read the following example of competence. Some supermarkets offer a series of offers and cheaper prices compared to other stores and hypermarkets in order to attract the attention of potential customers.
However, competition can also be determined by other aspects such as the quality of the articles, innovation, customer service or the exclusivity of products. The greater the competition, the greater the advantages for the consumer, since the companies participating in the market will have to offer a greater number of attractions to convince the end customer.
To know which are the competitors that a company or product has, it is necessary to carry out a competition analysis that allows you to know what each of them are doing to reach the public. Find out what a competition analysis consists of and how to do one step by step.
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The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has experienced a period of sustained economic growth, averaging about 9 percent between 2013 and 2015. Although the DRC has made significant progress towards sustainable economic development, 88 percent of its inhabitants live on less than $1.25 a day. This wall chart, currently only available in French, explains how a demographic dividend can promote accelerated economic growth to improve the living conditions of Congolese citizens.
To succeed, the country needs to first focus on improving reproductive health indicators that will aid in lowering fertility, leading to a subsequent change in the age structure of the population. The number of working-age people must increase, and at the same time, births must decrease. In order for the DRC to see a more empowered working-age population, a multisectoral approach to national investments is key. From health care to job creation to improved education, calculated investments must be made in order to advance development and realize a demographic dividend in the DRC.
You can learn more about the demographic dividend on our partner site.
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