Margin Call Essay Example for Free

Margin Call Essay J. C. Chandler’s 2011 film Margin Call examines the actions of an investment firm’s key decision makers during the earliest stages of the most recent financial crisis. Chandler does a good job with the characters of this movie he isn’t necessarily looking for a villain in a mess like this nor any lengthy explanations; he’s going deeper than that. He goes more for societal costs of high finance, the power of self-rationalization, and the easy embrace of personal corruption. The movie is filled with business lessons that go beyond the investment world. One theme of the film centers on business ethics and whether personal interest should trump customer/employee investment. Clearly, the decision made by John Tuld and senior management demonstrates that everybody is out for themselves. Personal investors are at the mercy of the individuals and the firms they invest with. The ease with which Tuld makes his decisions is scary to any business ethical viewer. With unqualified statements such as, â€Å"its just money† the audience begins to understand that the financial system can be an unfair game. In contrast Peter’s boss, Sam Rogers’ ethical implications of how the company plans to resolve its problems are almost more than he can handle. Sam stumbles upon the issue triggering the crisis, it’s one thing to be shocked at the ramifications of what’s about to unfold. But it doesn’t mean one’s outrage can’t be set aside when personal survival is on the line, an attitude that he quietly maintains but isn’t afraid to tap when the need arises. Moral ethics are thrown out the window in order to salvage a firm that has taken on too much risk in order to increase profits and inflate employee earnings. Management is willing to do whatever it takes to save themselves and protect their personal assets. This includes liquidating entire departments, and ruining the integrity of their own employee’s careers in the process. This film had several big ethical messages from it. In addition, there were many smaller points and messages the film showed. One in particular was the way that the employers used an employees entitlements as leverage to coerce them into doing what the enterprise requires. However, things such as stock options, pensions, bonus promises, and health care plans are simply paper assets. The promise that stands behind them can be broken and that paper is completely worthless at the order of those employers or in other words, blackmail. Ethics never loses its relevance. It must be told and retold as, too often, the mportant lessons that it imparts individuals and institutions unwillingly set aside. Ethical lapses can lead and have led to the irrevocable damage of a firm, its employees and clients. If there are any ethics in the business world, the company’s plan for survival is unethical. But in a world that lacks options, there is only winning and losing. Some of the characters struggle with the little emotional and psychological life they have left. But their choice basically comes down to money or no money. One thing that we must remember from this film is not just the ethical decisions made by the upper management but who is affected by these choices made by upper management. The most damaging fallout from all this is on those who didn’t see any of this coming, mostly the investors and the firm’s employees. Those who had the least involvement in all this mess are hurt the most in terms of financial losses. Even if it may seem like the employees’ participation was limited, they are nevertheless part of all of it, just by the inherent connectedness to the overall whole. Just because they weren’t the ones making the decisions doesn’t mean the decisions made by upper management won’t hurt them. This film is a reminder that business and moral ethics can easily be lost in the shuffle when billions of dollars and entire companies are at stake. Tuld is willing to kill the market to protect his interest, without concern for the company’s investors or even the strength of the global economy. When money is no longer an issue, you lose all concern for the individuals who do not hold the same viewpoint.

Global Warming :: Greenhouse Gases Climate Change

For decades and decades, human factories and cars have discharged billions of tons of artificial greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the climate has begun to show many signs of global warming. On the other hand, some people want you to believe that global warming does not exist. There are many people who are only out for personal gain and are outright liars. According to a scientist at NASA "Global warming is the single largest threat to our planet"(Weier 2002). Over the past two hundred years we have seen significant changes in the effects on our environment, primarily due to humans and both their lack of awareness, or their total disregard for the effects that their actions have on the environment. Global warming is one of our toughest environmental challenges. It threatens the health of people, wildlife and economies around the world. The problem is carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollution. This pollution mainly comes from cars, power plants and other industrial sources that burn gasoline, coal and other fossil fuels. This matter collects like a blanket in our atmosphere. As a result, the planet gets warmer. We can say that the amount of radiation from the sun that reaches the earth each year has been fairly consistent from year to year and century to century until recently. Thirty percent of the total solar energy that strikes the earth is reflected back into space by clouds, atmospheric aerosols, reflective ground surfaces, and even ocean surf. Seventy percent of the solar energy is absorbed by the land, air and oceans.  ¡Ã‚ °The absorbed light is mostly in the form ultraviolet and near infrared solar radiation ¡Ã‚ ±(Weier 2002). Absorption of this solar energy makes life on this planet possible. The energy does not stay bound up forever. If it did our planet would wind up being hotter than the sun. Instead, when the rocks, air, and sea heat up, they give off thermal radiation, which escapes into space and allows it to cool down. This radiation is invisible to our eyes, but our hands can feel it radiating from a fire or a car engine. What we should be worried about now is that over the past 250 years, we have been artificially raising the concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. Factories, power plants, and cars, burn coal and gasoline and spit out a seemingly endless stream of carbon dioxide. Power plants are the largest contributors to global warming.

Agenda Setting Essay

Agenda Setting Patricia Wigington Grand Canyon University COM 126 Introduction The mass media today, no longer reports public opinion, it drives it. This paper discusses how mass media sets the agenda, and what impact this had on the issues that emerged during the 2008 presidential election. According to Donald Shaw and Maxwell Combs, agenda is a theory to describe now the newsmedia can have a considerable impact on shaping the publics opinion of a social reality, on influencing what people believe are important issues. (Shaw&McCombs, 1977) Agenda Setting Media consolidation is one thing that contributes to agenda-setting. As the number of newspapers dwindles and radio and TV stations are sold to one or two conglomerates, the news is in effect being censored because it reflect only the viewpoint of a single organization. If conflicting views are never even mentioned, the public is never aware that there is an entirely different side to the issue than the one being presented. It requires persistence to find out the facts of an issue, and people may not make the effort. Then too, the media itself has changed dramatically in recent years. Many people now get their news from digital media including the Internet, but the flood of electronic information may not make them more knowledgeable, just more informed about issues they may not consider important. Marshall McLuhan once famously argued that the medium is the message; David Considine twists it slightly, to the idea that the â€Å"medium is the massage,† and that we are all being worked over by the media, in particular younger people (Considine, 2009, p. 65). Today’s technology, people using several electronic devices simultaneously,practice widely known as multitasking (Considine, 2009). Time Magazine wondered, however, if people are â€Å"too wired for their own good,† and whether modern media were contributing to â€Å"students’ reduced attention spans, making it harder for educators to reach and teach them† (Considine, 2009, p. 65). There is a legitimate question as to whether this environment of electronic noise and constant co mmunication makes them â€Å"active and informed citizens† or merely â€Å"spectators moving from one distraction to another† (Considine, 2009, p. 65). The answer seems clear when Considine reveals that despite the fact that in 2006, the number of young people ages 18-29 in the U. S. was 50 million, only seven million voted in the mid-term election (Considine, 2009). In other words, they have access to information but don’t transform that information into knowledge or political action. Younger people are a volatile population when it comes to voting. They become wildly enthusiastic for a particular candidate such as Ron Paul or Howard Dean, but fail to show up at the polls (Considine, 2009). Barack Obama was able to energize this group on his own behalf and that of other Democratic candidates: â€Å"Exit polling from the January 2008 Iowa caucus for the Democratic candidates showed a record turnout among eighteen-to twenty-nine year olds, who heavily supported the theme of change promoted by Senator Barack Obama† (Considine, 2009, p. 66). Now of course they seem to have disengaged again and organizations such as Democracy for America and Moveon. org are actively working to re-energize them and get them to the polls in November. Part of Barack Obama’s success in the 2008 election was due to his savvy use of electronic media (Considine, 2009). He was able to â€Å"use new technology to reach and energize voters; his campaign built a substantial database and achieved record-breaking fundraising† (Considine, 2009, p. 66). It also seems logical that part of his appeal is that he does know how to use Twitter and FaceBook, and that he tweets personal messages; his electronic presence immediately makes his opponent look old and out of touch. He further endeared himself to young voters and â€Å"reaffirmed his commitment to communication technology when he insisted on keeping his personal Blackberry† (Considine, 2009,p. 66) The tendency of the media to set agendas was clearly shown in the summer of 2009, when electronic forums such as YouTube and Twitter, along with traditional outlets such as newspaper columns, took up the health-care debate and buzzed about such ludicrous and inaccurate items as â€Å"’death panels,’ socialism, Hitler and fascism† (Jones & McBeth, 2010, p. 29). These scare tactics, which are all completely false, were used to try and discredit both the reform effort and the President, and are a clear example of the way the media sets an agenda. Picking up on the hysteria of the far right, the media repeated the lies without doing any fact checking, leading commentators to wonder â€Å"how these ideas rationally relate to the debate over reform† (Jones & McBeth, 2010, p . 329). The fact that these crazy notions were not only given credence but reported widely, and continue to appear in the media, show how powerful such things can be â€Å"in shaping public opinion and ultimately in shaping governmental action† (Jones & McBeth, 2010, p. 329). The misleading claims about â€Å"death panels,† the idea of Obama being Hitler and leading the country into a Socialist government are all â€Å"elements of larger policy tall-tales that were intentionally used by opponents of health-care reform attempting to derail President Obama’s reform. Obama’s supporters countered these lies with stories of their own: personal accounts from Americans who, for various reasons, were priced out of the heath care system or even denied care (Jones & McBeth, 2010). The use of narratives is a powerful tool in setting the political agenda in the United States. One study found that although TV and internet users had a common agenda (the use of electronic media), their â€Å"ranked agendas† differed greatly from the ranked agendas of the media themselves (Brubaker, 2008). That is, the TV watchers and internet users were not interested in the programming or information that was being presented to them: â€Å"The overall general media audience ranked 10 or the 11 public affairs issues significantly different than presented by the media† (Brubaker, 2008). TV watchers and internet users were interested in â€Å"important public affairs issues,† but the agenda they were following â€Å"significantly differed from the agenda that medium was showing them’ (Brubaker, 2008). This implies that the media â€Å"are not powerful in setting the agenda of important public affairs or political issues. People have particular issues they feel are important, regardless of what the media present† (Brubaker, 2008). This seems to be at odds with the idea that the media sets the agenda. and people simply put up with it. With regard to the 2008 Presidential election, the agenda presented by the media was that of the war in Iraq, but it was quickly displaced by concern about the economy; an agenda driven by consumers’ interests, not those of the media (Agenda setting and the Obama election, 2010). But this source claims that the media set another agenda, a highly visible but totally unnecessary one, that of race. Barack Obama is black, and that became a major issue in the election: â€Å"The measurement of Obama’s potential success didn’t lie in whether or not voters were willing to vote for a black candidate, but whether or not voters, more specifically white voters, could view Obama, or blacks in general, as leaders (Agenda setting and the Obama election, 2010). Had the media been more concerned about Obama’s positions and qualifications and less about the color of his skin, the entire election would have been conducted on a much higher level. This source also notes that the racial issues was studied in swing states like Ohio, where it was deemed to be extremely important (Agenda setting and the Obama election, 2010). In one study, Ohio was measured for â€Å"favorability between candidates in the areas of republicans, democrats, independents, men, women, whites and blacks;† it was found that a vast majority of black voters, as many as 90%, favored Obama, no matter what their previous voting record or party affiliation was (Agenda setting and the Obama election, 2010). The question raised by this result is whether our society â€Å"is the way it is because of the media, or is the media a direct reflection of the way society is †¦ In the case of Obama for President, the media clearly allowed race to chase to the top of the list of exaggerated issues that never should have been a part of the presidential election in the first place† (Agenda setting and the Obama election, 2010). In response to the popularity of Obama, the Republicans tried to set the media agenda to focus on issues such as Iraq and health care, arguing that race should not be consuming the attention focused on it (Agenda setting and the Obama election, 2010). But Republicans also tried to set an agenda favorable to them by introducing Sarah Palin as their vice presidential candidate to appeal to women voters; setting the agenda worked in Ohio, where pollsters noted a shift among women of all races who were not previously affiliated with a particular party (Agenda setting and the Obama election, 2010).

Essay on Ethical Dilemma - 3369 Words

The case study presents a moral dilemma based on potential harm to innocent people. By using Kohlberg’s moral development model and by examining major ethical systems, namely deontology and utilitarianism, a clear understanding of the factors influencing this type of decision-making can be gained. Specifically, utilitarianism, Kant’s categorical imperative and the doctrine of double effect address the decision from differing viewpoints, providing the decision maker with compelling evidence to support both angles of the ethical and moral dilemma presented in the decision at hand. A decision can then be made if it is considered morally justified, depending on the model used to make the decision. Often the solution of an ethical dilemma would†¦show more content†¦The logical reasoning at the Level III, Stage 6 would allow the acting CO to absorb outside influences yet still conclude that the decision to close the hatch is the best. He would no doubt meet resistanc e from the other submariners regarding his decision. By closing the hatch you save the majority of the remaining men and the submarine. There is the personal ethical dilemma where as A/CO, you are consciously aware that you will cause the men to die inside the engineering compartment. The ethical dilemma between closing the hatch or to keep attempting to try to rescue the men at all costs requires further analysis using teleological ethics. Teleological systems are based on person’s acts therefore the result of the act is more important than the nature of the act (Pojman Fieser, 2009). Utilitarianism is defined as a universal system that calls for the maximization of the goodness in society and is considered the dominant version of teleological systems. Pojman and Feiser (2009) describe two main features of utilitarianism; the consequentialist principle and the utility principle. The consequentialist principle is where the moral rightness or wrongness of the act is determin ed by the consequences of the act, not the act itself. As A/CO, the act of closing the hatch will result in presumably saving the lives of other submariners (or at least a better chance of survival). But it also causes the death of three men. Therefore, according to theShow MoreRelatedEthical Dilemmas Of The Workplace1538 Words   |  7 Pages1. Discuss an ethical dilemma that you have had to face in the workplace. Ethical dilemmas often occur when a manager or an employee is faced with two or more conflicting choices. Give as many facts and details as possible in describing your dilemma. The most difficult ethical dilemma I have dealt with was a summer job I had this past summer, while I was working for a bakery in my hometown. This past particular summer really tested what I believe is right and wrong and how to speak up. 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