The historical and institutional factors Essay Example for Free

The historical and institutional factors Essay The historical and institutional factors that contributed to the differences between the current German party system and the one that existed under the Weimar Republic One of the first major ways in which the current German party differs from that of the Weimar republic concerns the way in which democracy was formed. Whilst the current system was created through a constitution that received the respect and support of all the political parties concerned, the Weimar Republic was formed as a direct result of Germany’s defeat during the second world war. Although the Weimar Republic attempted to create a democratic Germany the economic downturn caused by the repercussions of the First World War entailed that it was difficult for political developments to take hold. The Germany politicians were forced to accept of the Versailles Treaty in 1911 and the inclusion of the ‘War Guilt Clause’ led to compulsory reparations to be paid to the alies. The agreement to this treaty caused a major split between the political parties and the extreme right were able to utiilise this to create an unstable political system. A further difference between the two political entities can be observed in the economic backdrop to their position. Not only did the Versaille Treaty have a crippling effect on the German economy, they were heavily dependent on foreign investment, loans and economic prosperity from the United States. In this vulnerable position the Weimar Republic’s existence was reliant on outside investment, which came crashing to a halt during the Wall Street crash of 1929. Post Wall Street Germany was a country that suffered from mass unemployment, homelessness and hunger and was crippled economically and, by 1933, the economy stood on the brink of collapse, with an economy which should, realistically, have long since declared itself bankrupt (Frei 163). The current German party however, is operational in very different circumstances. Their economy is one of the most advanced market economies and they are largely export led (World Bank, 2007). The people of Germany have a faith in their political system that wasn’t in evidence during the time of the Weimar. Another difference between the two political entities concerns the attitudes and beliefs of the people they governed. During the times of the Weimar, the far right was extremely prominent and had great power through the support they received from the wealthy constitutents (Childers 46). Through such power they were able to instugate violences and coups. Today people more readily accept regime and acknowledge its legitimacy. Extreme right wing politics have been legislated against and radical right wing parties are banned from power. It wasn’t just economic conditions which caused the Weimar Republic to be weak. The Republic also suffered from structural weaknesses. One example of this concerned Article 48 of the constitution which conferred dictatorial powers upon the President during an emergency and did not require collaboration and agreement with the Reichstag ministers. Furthermore, the constitution installed a system of proportional representation which resulted in the multiplication of small splinter parties.This meant that a stable minority in the Reichstag was impossible and there were frequent changes in government. Works Cited: Childers, Thomas. The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919-1933, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983 Total GDP 2007 World Bank. Retrieved on September 17, 2008 from http://siteresources. worldbank. org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP. pdf Frei, Norbert. National Socialist Rule in Germany. Translated by Joel Golb . New York Columbia University Press , 2002

The Electric Chair is Fair Punishment :: Death Penalty, Capital Punishment

This topic is a very controversial one. The paper you are about to read could cause intense arguments between some groups of people. All that doesn’t matter to me because when you finish reading this, you will agree with me if you don’t already. First off, many people consider the electric chair cruel and unusual punishment. What I don’t get is that people think this even though in order to be eligible to get sentenced to the electric chair, they have to be proven guilty of killing someone. Don’t you think that is cruel and unusual punishment? I certainly do. In my eyes, if they don’t get sentenced to the electric chair or some other form of guaranteed death (lethal injection, the gas chamber, etc.) it becomes cruel and unusual punishment on the victim’s friends and family, not physically but mentally. Secondly, in my eyes it is one of the only fair punishments allowed by the judicial system. Personally, I think that the murderer should suffer the exact fate that their victim did. Some people might say to give the murderer life in prison. This is hardly a punishment at all. Today, due to overcrowding in prisons, a lot of prisoners don’t serve their full sentence. Would you want one of these convicts to be a murderer? I can honestly tell you, "no, I wouldn’t." Another thing about today’s prisons is that the prisoners get free meals, clothes, bed, electricity, air conditioning and heating, cable and many other luxuries that make it a comfortable place to live if you get used to the people. My last point is that these criminals should have thought of what the consequences would be before they killed someone. If they didn’t do this or did and still killed someone, they probably aren’t intelligent enough to make any positive impact on the world or they are mentally unstable. They shouldn’t get off the hook for killing someone. You might feel that sentencing them to life in prison is punishment enough but no, not to me.

Credit Rating Agencies Role in Financial Crisis

1. Credit rating agencies present one of the key problems in reconfiguring the global financial architecture. Why? What are the options? What is the most likely solution? * The rating agencies present one of the key problems because they were behind the rating of the complex CDOs as well as taking an active part in creating these mortgage-related products which created conflict of interest. The ratings given to the CDO tranches did not effectively disclose the true credit quality of the underlying securities which contained a much higher default probabilities. * Options: * More regulations by SEC to control the â€Å"issuer pays† model. â€Å"To correct the competition problem within the â€Å"issuer pays† model, the SEC could place limits on the competition that occurs among the rating agencies. † (Acharya & Richardson, 2009) * â€Å"An alternative structure (†¦) would be for the SEC to create a department that houses a centralized clearing platform for ra ting agencies. † (Acharya & Richardson, 2009) * Another option is to deregulate the industry and allow free-market competition forces to shape its further growth and development which could bring in players like Bloomberg that would offer bond rating as a value-added services to its clientele. Most likely solution: * Although it is a very complex situation and it would require a series of regulatory changes, a regulatory oversight agency that would closely monitor the rating agencies and act as an intermediary in matching the issuers with the rating agencies. 2. Greece is in trouble. Why? Fast-forward 5 years and describe the most likely outcome of the current problems and their consequences for global banking and financial markets. * Greece is in trouble because it has failed to keep under controls its ballooning debt and accumulated a total national debt of over 113% of the country’s GDP. In April and May of this year Greece has to repay a total of $23 billion of its maturing government bonds which raised the question of whether it will be able to refinance the debt at its current financial state. * It has come to light that Greece used a series of financial transactions facilitated by Goldman Sachs to make its financials appear much nicer to adhere to the EU requirements of the member countries having to maintain the budget deficit under 3% of GDP. â€Å"†¦concerns about Greece's high level of debt led the three main international credit ratings agencies to downgrade Greek government bonds in January, so when Greece issued its bonds, it had offer them at much higher interest rates (five percent higher than those offered on benchmark German bonds) in order to attract investors. † (Fleeson) * Depending on how EU deals with the Greece problem, the Euro zone could become stronger in the outcome or it could face a moral hazard when more of the problematic EU c ountries (Portugal, Ireland, and Spain) encounter the same problem as Greece and will expect EU to bail them out. If Greece is allowed to default on its international debt it will put pressure on the entire Euro zone and will make it more problematic for Portugal, Ireland, and Spain, who have â€Å"ratios of debt to gross domestic product that are three times higher than the EU ceiling of three percent†, to borrow in the near future. (Fleeson) * If EU backs Greece, it will be more easier for the country to borrow at favorable rates and it will ease the pressure from the speculators which were betting against Greece and aggravating the problem even more. On a more positive note, the fact that the euro has weakened during the past four months as a result of the situation with Greece has the made the European goods relatively cheaper and export conditions more favorable. * Most likely outcome is that EU will eventually back Greece in some shape or form, once the member countries can agree on the measures, to keep it from defaulting and impose stricter economic rules on the members to adhere to in order to create sounder economic environments. â€Å"†¦analysts say that supportive talk (and even credit guarantees) will probably not be enough to salvage Greece’s finances and that ultimately the country is likely to need a package of loans put together by other EU governments and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). † (Fleeson) * â€Å"As part of the deal being forged in Brussels, Germany and France are demanding that the eurozone rewrite its rule book about economic convergence, including sanctions against governments (such as Greece’s) that deceive their EU partners about their real financial situation. (Maudave) * â€Å"The emergence of changes of this sort, including effective measures of discipline against offending eurozone countries, the new fiscal discipline and beginning of collective economic governance among the eurozon e countries, could be an important step forward to the EU’s global clout. Such progress toward economic coherence and credibility could amount to progress on a par with the Lisbon treaty – and, for the long run, a silver lining to the current economic hardship being inflicted on the EU economies. (Maudave) References Viral Acharya, Matthew Richardson. â€Å"Restoring Financial Stability: How to Repair a Failed system. † New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. , 2009. Print Tony Spadaccia. â€Å"U. S. is Resembling Greece’s Economic Decline. † The Breeze, March 18, 2010. Web. Sat. 20 March, 2010 ; http://breezejmu. org/2010/03/18/us-is-resembling-greeces-economic-decline/; Will Fleeson. â€Å"Sovereign Debt Liable to Overwhelm System in the EU’s Five â€Å"PIIGS†. † The European Institute, February 2010. Web. Fri. 2 March, 2010 Will Fleeson. â€Å"Euro Zone Acts to Dodge Greece's Bullet — But More to Come From PIIGS? † The European Institute, February 2010. Web. Fri. 12 March, 2010 http://www. europeaninstitute. org/February-2010/euro-zone-may-dodge-the-bullet-from-greece. html Basil Maudave. â€Å"EU Bail-Out For Greece? Time Has Come, Reportedly, To Do It — With Conditions. † The European Institute, March 2010. Web. Fri. 12 March, 2010 Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr. â€Å"Controlling Systemic Risk in an ERA of Financial Consolidation. †

Narco-Terror the United States, the Drug War, and the...

Narco-Terror: the United States, the Drug War, and the War on Terror Introduction The United States has had a long-standing policy of intervening in the affairs of other nations when the country has thought it within its best interests to do so. Since the 1970’s the United States has tried to impose its will on other nations to combat the most pressing political enemy of the day often linking the war on drugs to the matter to stoke support both domestically and abroad. In the times of the Cold War, this enemy was communism and the government tried to make the connection of the â€Å"Red Dope Menace† insinuating drug links with China, Castro’s Cuba, and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. However, as the world has evolved and communism’s†¦show more content†¦These kingpins consolidated their operations into cartels that would control the entire supply chain of the drug trade to maximize logistical efficiency along with revenues and profits. In the early 1980’s there were two major cartels in Colombia named for the cities th at they were headquartered in. The older cartel was the Cali cartel, an immense enterprise with subsidiaries in banking, real estate, and even an airline (Scott 94). Competing with the Cali cartel for market share was the Medellin cartel led by a man who would become synonymous with Colombian narco-terrorism, Pablo Escobar. The two cartels had vastly different styles with the Cali cartel preferring to view itself as more of a legitimate business with an executive structure that mirrors the organizational designs of many Fortune 500 companies complete with vice-presidents and divisions. Indeed, Colombian police began referring to the Cali cartel as â€Å"Los Caballeros† or â€Å"the gentlemen,† giving rise to the great respect enjoyed by the cartel throughout Colombia. Contrastingly, the Colombia police called employees of the Medellin â€Å"Los Hampones† or â€Å"the hoodlums† (Chepesiuk 23). 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