Performance of Goldman Sachs and Financial Ratio Analysis

Performance of Goldman Sachs and Financial Ratio Analysis Conventionally the Bank performance is evaluated by analysis of the financial ratios. However, despite of quite a few number of ratios being calculated, a sculpt that completely convinces the analysis of requirements and bank operations efficiency evaluation is yet to be developed. Hence for these reason, the financial ratio analysis is balance with unlike eminence evaluations, with characteristics such as organization quality, equity structure, spirited position and others which are incorporated in the concluding assessment. In this piece of work we are going to evaluate overall performance of Goldman Sachs and critically analyse how financial ratios are used to evaluate banks performance. The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is a American investment banking and securities organisation which slot in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and erstwhile financial services principally with institutional clients. Goldman Sachs was founded in the year 1869 and its headquarter is at 200 West Street in the Lower Manhattan area of New York City. It has additional offices in major international financial hubs. The Goldman Sachs offers mergers and acquisitions advice, underwriting services, asset management, and prime brokerage to its clientele, which include corporations, governments and individuals. The Goldman Sachs also engages in proprietary trading and private equity deals, and is a primary dealer in the United States Treasury security market (Goldman Sachs Website). Bank Internal Performance Evaluation Strategic planning Goldman Sachs ability to address and tap into important economic and financial trends through roles such as advisor, financier, market maker and asset manager are critical for fulfilling their mission to help spur growth and perform strongly as a firm. Technology Technology is a core part of GS product offering and client experience. GS ability to respond quickly and effectively to address its clients needs with customized systems, products and services helps differentiate the firm. A technological advantage for GS is that they have only one central risk system, which is partially a byproduct of not having done multiple, major acquisitions that often require merging and retrofitting platforms. Personnel development The success of the GSs efforts are measured by how effectively their people act. Over time, effective training and development have enrich their corporate culture and strengthen the values of client service and focus on reputational risk management. Recognition includes compensation, promotion, assignments and mobility opportunities. They have made it clear the link between the behaviour expected of its people and the recognition used to encourage it. This is critically important because it signals broadly the way GS expects its people to behave and conduct business (Goldman Sachs Annual report 2010). Bank External Performance Evaluation Market share GS has frequently performed above the market despite worsening economic conditions. Since the 2008, the company has outpaced the market enough to draw public admiration. With strong profits and expected strong returns, the company has set aside $500M to invest in small businesses. These efforts are a combination to both improve the economy and their public image. Regulatory compliance The Dodd-Frank legislation and new capital and liquidity requirements under Basel 3 are two of the more significant outcomes from the recent focus on enhancing financial stability. Given regulatory implementation is only just beginning, and unclear on how the new rules will ultimately impact the industry. The broad contours of new regulation, however, are clear: improve the safety and soundness of the global financial system, increase the transparency of derivatives markets, limit certain investing activities and reduce the consequences of a failure of a large financial institution. Public confidence Goldman Sachs announced in May 2010 that it formed a Business Standards Committee to reshape its business practices and mend its reputation. Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said at the time that there is a disconnect between how we view the firm and how the broader public perceives our roles and activities. GSs shareholders, BoDs, clients and customers have supported Mr. Blankfein through all the crisis and this shows their faith in bank (Goldman Sachs Annual report 2010). 4.0 Analyzing Bank Performance with Profit Ratios Goldman Sachs financial performance was better in 2009  than 2010 and Q4 2009 was the best quarter since the recession. 4.1 ROE Return on equity (ROE= net income after taxes/total equity) reveal GS capability to produce profits from shareholders equity (further referred as net assets or assets minus liabilities). In other words, ROE shows how effectively a company uses the shareholders money. As seen in graphical representation above, it is clear that Goldman Sachs is tendering a lower return on shareholders equity as compared to year ended in2009. The ROE of GS for the last year was 18.93% as compared to 10.08% this year. There has a been a significant decrease in the ROE which suggests GS is not utilising shareholders money properly. GS return on equity has declined substantially due to deleverage and is only marginally higher than its current cost of capital. 4.2 ROA Return on assets (ROA = net income after taxes/total assets) is how resourcefully a firm uses its assets. From the formula it is quite obvious that higher the ratio, the company is performing more efficiently and thus is generating more profits. A low ROA with enormous assets designate that the firm is handling its asset at a poor rate. As seen in graphical representation above, it is seen that Goldman Sachs has provided a lower ROA of 0.91% this year over 1.58% last year. There is one key differentiation between ROE and ROA and it is debt. In absence of debt, the shareholders equity is same as total assets of the firm which means that in this case, ROE and ROA are identical. Now if the firm come to a decision to take a loan, ROE exceeds ROA. A elevated ROE does not always guarantee a extraordinary performance of a firm. Incidentally, ROA is then a healthier pointer of the financial performance of a firm. With a high ROA and manageable debt, if ROE is also high it means that the company is generating decent profits using shareholders money. But if ROA is low and there is huge debt carried by the company, even a high ROE can only be a misleading figure. 4.3 Net Interest Margin 4.4 Leverage ratio Debt to Equity Ratio 4.5 Decomposition of ROE DuPont Analysis As revealed in Appendix B, The ROE of a bank is dependent on a various factors and thus change in any one of these factor can affect the rate of return on shareholders equity of the bank. As Net Income is the main source to calculate ROE in conjunction with the shareholders equity in the bank, every alteration in the Income and Expense of the bank openly affects the net income and thus influence the ROE of a bank. The detailed DuPont analysis of Goldman Sachs for year 2010 is presented in Appendix B. The ROE is decomposed as follows wrt dupont identity. Now assuming that changes are made in Income or Expense levels of the Goldman Sachs, its effect will be seen on ROA and ROE. Let us consider a case where the Interest Expense for Goldman Sachs goes down by 10% and there are no changes in its Interest Income, following are the effects on ROA and ROE of the bank. Scenario 1 : -5% change in interest expense Change Values after change Interest Expense -10% 6125.4 Interest Income 0% 12309 Effect on NI 6680.6 39841.6 Effect on ROA +0.07% 0.99% Effect on ROE +0.88% 11.68% A few other situations with amendment in Total Non-interest Income and expenses and their outcome on the ROA ROE of bank are given away in the chart below. Scenario 2 : -5% change in non-interest expense Change Values after change Total Non-interest Income -5% 31975.1 Effect on NI -1682.9 37478.1 Effect on ROA -0.19% 0.73% Effect on ROE -1.46% 8.62% Scenario 3 : +10% change in non-interest expense Change Values after change Total Non-interest Expenses 10% 27962 Effect on NI -2542 3160 Effect on ROA -0.31% 0.27% Effect on ROE -4.44% 3.78% Bank Performance Evaluation Based on Economic Profit 5.1 Risk-Adjusted Return on Capital (RAROC) In risk- adjusted return on capital the capital is allocated for two vital motives: (1) risk management and (2) performance evaluation. In support of risk-management rationale, the banks most favourable capital structure can be establish by allocation of capital to individual business units. This course of action entails assessing the amount of the risk (volatility) each business unit chip in to the total risk of the bank and hence to its overall capital requirements. Now, for performance-evaluation function, RAROC structure allocate capital to business units as part of a procedure for shaping the risk-adjusted rate of return and, eventually, the economic value added of each business unit. The EVA of every and each business unit is its adjusted net income minus the amount of equity capital allocated to the unit times the required return on equity. The purpose is to compute a business units input to shareholder value and so to provide a source for effective capital budgeting and incentive compensation at the business-unit level. RAROC is calculated by dividing risk-adjusted net income by the total amount of economic capital assigned which is dependent on the risk calculation. Risk-adjusted net income is calculated by taking the financial data allotment to the bank and fine-tuning the income statement for expected loss. A further modification is also required to take into account the effects on the net interest margin because the attention is moved from book profitability to economic profitability. Thus RAROC = Risk adjusted income / Allocated Capital RAROC for 2010 of Goldman Sachs therefore comes to 2.24 %. Let us consider some scenarios where the risk adjusted income for Goldman Sachs are changed by {-2%, +2%, -5% +5%}, The effect on its RAROC is represented as below. Change in Risk Adjusted Income 2 % + 2 % 5 % Effect on RAROC 2.20 % 2.29 % 2.13 % Economic Value Added (EVA) EVA (Economic Valued Added) is a present day financial dimension instrument which concludes whether a business is earning greater than its true cost of capital. EVA stands out apart from ROA ROE which are most accepted measures of bank performance. This is because it includes cost of equity capital employed. On the other hand, net banking income and the efficiency ratio, also, do not consider the cost of equity capital employed. Therefore, these ratios possibly will propose a banks performance as healthy but in fact it could be deteriorating its value to its shareholders. EVA is essentially a tool that focuses on maximizing shareholder wealth. EVA = Adjusted earnings Opportunity cost of capital {Net operating Profit after Taxes} {Cost of Equity X Equity Capital } With an aim of creating values, the return on invested capital (ROIC) for a bank must be greater than cost of capital. So, the EVA can be possibly increased in quite a few ways, by: 1) Increasing Net operating Profit after Taxes; 2) Lowering the Cost of Equity and 3) Reducing Equity Capital Conclusion Year on year Goldman Sachs revenues have descended by 11.04% from $51.67bn to $45.97bn. This along with an increase in the cost of goods sold expense has contributed to a reduction in net income from $13.39bn to $8.35bn, a 37.59% decrease. In 2010, Goldman Sachs did not generate a significant amount of cash. Cash Flow from Financing totalled $7.84bn or 17.05% of revenues. In addition the company used 6.16bn for operations while cash used for investing totalled $185m. Goldman results were also dragged down by a $465 million one-time expense to cover a U.K. payroll tax and a $550 million outlay to settle  SEC  charges that it favoured certain clients over others.

Macomber

A crowd of natives has just carried Francis Macomber triumphantly into camp. Macomber, a good-looking athletic type, has just blown it on a lion hunting adventure and now everyone knows he's a coward. Macomber's wife can't contain her resentment and humiliation about her husband's breakdown on the hunt. This is not a proud moment for the Macombers. Shmoop Editorial Team. â€Å"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber† Shmoop. com. Shmoop University, Inc. , 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 12 Apr. 2013. Hemingway's Short Stories By Ernest Hemingway Summary and Analysis â€Å"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber†Ã¢â‚¬  Hemingway's Short Stories: Summary and Analysis: â€Å"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber† Wiley Publishing, n. d. Web. 12 Apr. 2013. Hemingway, Ernest. â€Å"FAST-US-1 Intro to American English Reference File. † FAST-US-1 Intro to American English Reference File. Charles Scribner's Sons, 7 May 2010. Web. 12 Apr. 2013. â€Å"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. † Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 04 Nov. 013. Web. 12 Apr. 2013. Gaillard, Theodore L. â€Å"JSTOR. † The English Journal. Vol. 60. N. p. : National Council of Teachers of English, 1971. 31-35. The English Journal. Web. 12 Apr. 2013. I. Francis Macomber and his wife Margaret (usually referred to as â€Å"Margot†), are on a big-game safari in Africa, guided by professional hunter Robert Wilson. Earlier, Francis had panicked when a wounded lion charged him. Margot mocks Macomber for this act of cowardice, and it is implied that she sleeps with Wilson.The next day they hunt buffalo. When they find the buffalo, it charges Macomber. Francis, faced with a buffalo, suddenly becomes a man of courage, but his shots are too high. Wilson fires at the beast as well, but it keeps charging. Macomber kills the buffalo at the last second. At the same time, Margot had also fired a shot from the car, which instead hits Macomber in the skull and kills him. F or once, they are both on the same side, shooting at the same bull, but tragically she kills the man she was trying to save.In â€Å"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,† Hemingway uses his famously sparse prose style and villains with the moral make-up of animals to demonstrate the ironic truth that happiness is fleeting and had better not depend upon others. II. The narrator furnishes details, nothing more, but packs in those details is all the psychological nuance of a session with a psychoanalyst. In â€Å"The Short Happy Life,† a numerous basic actions can go a great distance. The sentences are certainly not fancy, but they reveal a ton about the characters.For example: â€Å"The mess boy had started them already, lifting the bottles out of the canvas cooling bags that sweated wet in the wind that blew through the trees that shaded the tents† (p. 1). Here, Hemingway speaks volumes in one sentence: the feeling in the air is apparent, he sets the visual scene, and he conveys ideas of class and environment. Readers know where they are, and what kind of people they are dealing with. Hemingway also lets the dialogue do a lot of the work. That way readers get to know the characters through what they say instead of having Hemingway tell them what to think.At the story's opening, for example, Margot says, â€Å"I'll have a gimlet too. I need something† (p. 1). This unadorned expression gives the reader their initial impression of Margot: She will drink because she needs something – but something for what? Something, readers soon find out, to dull the rage and disappointment over Macomber's failure and something as in â€Å"my husband gave me nothing, so give me something. † Lastly, this short sentence says â€Å"Macomber's wife,† not Margot, so readers know that this man's wife needs something, and she needs it because of him.That's a whole lot of meaning for eight short words. He omits things because he trust s the readers to be active, and to understand what he is saying indirectly. Hemingway packs a lot of unsaid things into the actual words on the page. III Animals: A technique that emerges as one of the most impressively effective is Hemingway’s use of animals, for behind the scenes of the five-act tragedy that constitutes â€Å"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber† stalks a troupe of inhuman supporting actors whose effect on the understanding of Hemingway’s story is crucial.Wether in the from of a charging lion or, more subtly, in Margot Macomber’s back-handed reference to those â€Å"big cowy things that jump like hares† (p. 9), Hemingway uses his animal menagerie as a standard against which to measure and evaluate his human actors. Francis Macomber’s safari turns out to be quite different from a romantic adventure out of Martin Johnson’s storybook; Macomber’s adversaries are a far cry from â€Å"Old Simba the lion, the b uffalo, Tembo the elephant† (p. 22) and the Natural History Museum that the columnist describes.Hemingway suggests here that Macomber has emerged from the fairytale world of high society into the real world of tooth and claw. It is in conjunction with the animals they themselves hunt that readers can best evaluate Robert Wilson, Francis Macomber, and his wife. Wilson emerges as â€Å"the professional. † He is self-confident and almost detached from the jungle world of his employers. From Margaret’s point of view he seems a killer, but his â€Å"flat, blue, machine gunner’s eyes† (p. 8) ironically seem to raise Wilson into a position of dominance over the brutal struggle for supremacy that he witnesses.Margot Macomber, on the other hand, is deeply enmeshed in this struggle. Her husband labels her â€Å"a bitch† (p. 22) after her return from Wilson’s tent and refers to her â€Å"bitchery† (p. 10) elsewhere in the story, but more s pecific than this implicitly negative criticism of Macomber is Hemingway’s explicit use of animals as a verbal weapon in the mouth of Margot. To Francis’ self-punishment Margot adds criticism of her own. When Francis passes her some cooked eland he shot, she scoffs at his offering with the comment: â€Å"They’re the big cowy things that jump like hares, aren’t they? (p. 9). Rubbing salt into his wounded ego, she facetiously asks, â€Å"They’re not dangerous, are they? † (p. 9). All Francis has been able to shoot by this point in the safari are relatively harmless animals, and he has proved himself a coward in the face of the only dangerous game he has encountered. Although Hemingway links Margot with no specific animal, she does materialize as the condensation of all the most dangerous qualities of female carnivores. To Robert Wilson she is a typical American woman, one of the â€Å"hardest in the world: the hardest, the cruelest, the most predatory, nd the most attractive† (p. 8). Externally she is so â€Å"enameled in that American female cruelty† (p. 9) that she seems even more insensitive than Robert Wilson. While she is seen as cruel and predatory, her husband is compared with a rabbit and is at the end linked with the lion whose head is blown off by Wilson. Hemingway’s subtle identification of Macomber with the lion he is hunting serves a far more important purpose than symbolically to foreshadow his death at the hands of his wife.Indeed, it is through Macomber’s links with both the lion and the buffalo that readers become aware of his transition from emotional adolescence to manhood. Initially, the lion’s bravery and determination are used strictly as a contrast to Macomber’s rabbit-like trembling. In his struggle for survival the lion with half his head shot away kept â€Å"crawling on toward the crashing, blasting thing that had destroyed him† (p. 21). He stare d defiantly with â€Å"yellow eyes, narrowed with hate† (p. 19); similarly, â€Å"Francis Macomber found that, of all the many men that he had hated, he hated Robert Wilson the most† (p. 3). Momentarily facing the challenge posed by the lion, Macomber feels â€Å"sick at his stomach† (p. 16) and cannot control his shaking. â€Å"The fear was still there like a cold, slimy hollowin all the emptiness where once his confidence had been and it made him feel sick† (p. 11). The difference between Macomber and the lionis suggested by the nature of their respective wounds. Macomber’s psyvchological â€Å"wound† can be traced ultimately to his overall weakness and, more recently, to the effects of his â€Å"huntress† wife. But the lion’s wound is more a â€Å"red badge of courage† incurred in combat.Instead of fear, a . 30-06 220 grain solid bullet causes the â€Å"sudden hot scalding nausea† (p. 15) in the lion’s s tomach. In contrast, the nausea of fear experienced by Macomber is one of nothingness. The lion is broken down and fights his fate to the end, whereas Macomber has collasped internally, â€Å"gone to pieces nervously† (p. 8). Macomber bolts like a rabbit, where in the lion â€Å"all of him, pain, sickness, hatred and all of his remaining strength, was tightening into an absolute concentration for a rush† (p. 19) directly at his attackers.In death he becomes almost human. Macomber becomes, by his own admission, a rabbit. But Macomber changes. His metamorphosis from â€Å"rabbit† and â€Å"laddy-buck† occurs after the second crossing of the stream that separates the camp from the hunting ground. Just as we view the initial conflict through the lion’s stream-of-consciousness as he watched Macomber dismount from the car, so we now see Macomber observe â€Å"three huge, black animals looking almost cylindrical in their long heaviness, like big black ta nk cars† (p,27). The situation has been inverted.Where the lion saw the car and its passengers in animal terms, â€Å"bulking like some super-rhino† (p. 15), Macomber sees the animal in car terms. Hemingway’s inversion of style implies the conversion of Macomber to a lion-like figure and foreshadows his courageous birth into his all-too-short â€Å"happy life. † The hunter becomes the hunted; the man with newly achieved lion-like qualities falls prey to the predatory wife who has seen the change in her husband (p. 33) and herself has become white and ill with fear at what it portends.In Macomber’s death he is subtly linked with his own last victim, the buffalo: â€Å"Francis Macomber lay now, face down, not two yards from where the buffalo lay on his side.. † (p. 36). Linked with the buffalo both in the manner of death and by physical proximity, Macomber has, at last, achieved the transition from â€Å"rabbit† to lion, to bull, and to manhood. Hemingway’s subtle use of animals as an evaluative device has helped to turn what would have been a story of pitiableness into one that approaches tragedy.Hemingway is very careful with these details so that the reader can fully explore the extent to which Macomber has sunk. (margot dominant)In addition to Macomber’s embarrassed cowardice, he watches as Margot kisses Wilson on the mouth, calling him â€Å"the beautiful red-faced Mr. Wilson. † After Margot returns from sleeping with Wilson, readers learn about the reasoning for her marriage to Frances. She is too beautiful for Francis to divorce her, and Francis has too much money for her to ever leave him. When Macomber reminds Margot the there â€Å"wasn’t going to be any of that.You promised there wouldn’t be,† readers realize that this deceit has been going on for a long time. In years past Macomber has never been enough for his wife, but being here, on the safari, was supposed t o change all that. Yet Margo’s betrayal is so open and executed in such defiance that Macomber gets to know how very much his cowardice has changed everything. Margot will continue to press her advantage until the end, when she notices that Macomber is gaining courage and a strong sense of his own manhood.The shooting of the first buffalo marks the beginning of the tremendous change in Macomber. In all of his life, he has never felt so remarkable. On the other hand, Margot sits â€Å"very white faced. † She realizes that Macomber is changing, and she fears this change. She fears this change because she is losing psychological control over Macomber. She knows that if Macomber finally gains a sense of manhood, he will have the strength to leave her. She tries to taunt him, but he is oblivious to her existence. She now knows that his future does not include her.

Looking at the Contemporary Generation Essay

The literary historian Malcolm Cowley described the years between the two world wars as a second flowering of American writing. Certainly American literature attained a new maturity and a rich diversity in the 1920s and ’30s, and significant works by several major figures from those decades were published after 1945. Faulkner, Hemingway, Kerouac, Steinbeck, and Katherine Anne Porter wrote memorable fictions. In the post-war period, many Americans felt fractured from reality and found themselves struggling to piece together their identities. The proposed national identity was that of prosperity, hope and success but in the years following the war and in the wake of losing so many citizens, many Americans did not see themselves in the same line. Instead they were experiencing hardship, hopelessness and constant struggle to rebuild their lives in a war torn nation. This attitude is what prevailed in much of the post-war literature along with the various ways in which people sought to recompose themselves. The disillusioned mass found their voice in the page of Hemingway and Kerouac. As it is said that literature speaks for the contemporary society, and as long before P. B. Shelley had once said that Poets are the unacknowledged legislatures of the world, hence it was the serious effort of Hemingway and Kerouac that made the contemporary society to rebuild their world in a new way. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Kerouac’s On the Road; are the two catalogue of contemporary society which makes the world understand the prevailing circumstances of that time. The post World War-II era of the American society witnessed many changes. There was certain change in the socio-cultural outlook of the society. The ideology of Beat Generation emerged during this point of time. Central elements of Beat culture include a rejection of mainstream values, experimentation with drugs and alternate forms of sexuality, and an interest in Eastern religion. The literary movement of the Beat Generation exploded into American consciousness with two books in the late 1950s. The first one was Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, published in 1956. The book achieved notoriety when poet and bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti went to trial for selling it in San Francisco. The second book had an even more profound cultural effect when it was published. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, published in 1957, was viewed as nothing less than a manifesto for the Beat Generation. However the Beat literary movement was short-lived. Most of the work Kerouac published in the 1960s had been written during his creative peak in the 1950s. Beat literature retains its popularity decades later because the writers of the Beat Generation must ultimately be judged by their work, not by any real or imagined influence on popular culture. Allen Ginsberg’s poetry is still revered. The nightmarish visions of William Burroughs continue to influence post-Modern writers. Finally Kerouac’s On the Road is still a campus favorite, and continues to draw scholarly criticism. Jack Kerouac had a major influence on an entire generation of Americans following the publication of On the Road, his semi-autobiographical novel that became the bible of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. Kerouac’s impact continued into the next decade as the hippie movement developed during the 1960s and writers such as Ken Kesey, Tom Robbins, and songwriter Bob Dylan produced works influenced by Kerouac’s spontaneous, confessional, free-thinking style. On the Road is, the story of two young men, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, who travel frantically back and forth across the American continent seeking thrills. The novel is actually a thinly veiled account of Kerouac’s own life in the late 1940s, when he fell under the spell of a charismatic drifter named Neal Cassady (represented by Moriarty in the novel). Every episode in the novel was inspired by real-life events. The book shocked readers in 1957 with its depiction of drug use and promiscuous sex. Many critics attacked the work as evidence of the increasing immorality of American youth. Other critics saw it as a groundbreaking work of originality. American readers, fascinated with the bohemian lifestyle of the characters, turned the novel into a bestseller. This novel is about Sal Paradise, a writer and college student, lives in Paterson, New Jersey with his aunt. He spends much of his time with his eccentric and artistic friends in New York City. One of his friends, Chad King, introduces him to Dean Moriarty, a young man recently released from a reformatory in New Mexico. Dean spends the winter in New York and then he moves back west to Denver in the spring. A few months later, Sal follows him to Colorado. Sal move toward west, learning more about him and the many intriguing people he meets along the way. He arrives in Denver and connects with a group of his New York friends. He moves into an apartment with his friend Roland Major, but Sal is anxious to see Dean who is on a tight schedule, hustling back and forth between his wife, Marylou, and his girlfriend, Camille. Sal roars around Denver with Dean and other friends and goes to a party in Central City. After a few weeks, he leaves on a bus for San Francisco. In San Francisco, Sal moves in with his friend, Remi Boncoeur, and Remi’s girlfriend, Lee Ann. Remi gets Sal a job as a special policeman at a barracks for overseas workers. Sal hates working with the other cops there who are miserable and narrow-minded. After a few months, Sal leaves San Francisco and travels to Los Angeles. On the bus he meets Terry, a young Mexican-American woman, and they fall in love. Sal goes with Terry to Sabinal, her hometown near Bakersfield. He meets her family, moves into a tent with her and her young son, Johnny, and gets a job picking cotton. But he soon realizes that he can’t make enough money to support Terry and her son. He persuades Terry to move back with her family and he returns to his life in New York. Sal’s and Dean’s friendship throughout the novel reflects the buddy themes found in much classic and pop culture. They are two men sharing travel experiences. Their relationship is a part of the male bonding stereotype. Yet, what they have transcends a typical friendship. Through their adventures and travels, they become comrades and brothers. Dean’s madness envelops Sal; Dean can make the mundane extraordinary for Sal. Their deeds and misdeeds bond them together in a way that ordinary friendship rarely does. Friendship also plays a role in the Beat culture that Kerouac describes. It is only when Sal’s group of friends was together that he can truly experience the kind of life they want to live. In On the Road, however, friendship is also a power that can destroy. Sal eventually sees his relationship with Dean as destructive. During their final journey he laments Dean’s coming to take him to Mexico. Dean, and the subculture represented by Sal’s Beat friends, come to represent the destruction of the traditional values of American society like family and relationship. This kind of individualist subversion is one of the themes of the novel, and Sal can sense that something is being lost by this destruction. During the final journey, Sal realizes that the destructive nature of this kind of friendship can have severe consequences for the people surrounding him and Dean. On the Road deals also with the sense of adventure and exploration in two main ways. First, there is the story of exploration. For Sal, the country and towns that lie before him represent new adventures. Through his first journey, Sal understands himself to be one in the long line of explorers and settlers who went west to find a new life. Sal mythologizes much of the American West during his trip. He sees the possibilities of time and existence in the Mississippi River, echoing other great American writers such as Mark Twain. In the Denver mining town he finds a sense of the Old West, a time of cowboys and dangerous frontiers. As he picks cotton with other migrant farm workers, he imagines himself to be a part of that culture and those who farmed and worked civilization into being in the American West. Yet, the second sense in which On the Road deals with the American West takes a much sadder tone. In this way, the novel comments on and criticizes its times. Just a year before the book was published, in 1956, President Eisenhower had signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which formally began the construction of the Interstate Highway System. A plan for the system had been in the works since 1921, and this was just one of many signs that America was taming its West. Sal realizes through the novel that though modernity and technology are bringing greater access to transportation and to places in the West, there are fewer and fewer places to be discovered. Sal confronts this reality as he visits the Wild West Festival in Cheyenne, a tourist attraction that can only simulate the real Wild West. The mining town outside of Denver has also ceased to be a true part of the West, being now a part of tourist culture. Sal and Dean also feel sadness for the Indian cultures of the mountains of Mexico; for they realize that the coming of a highway means the destruction of their culture. By the end of the novel, the reader begins to understand that any road that leads to the American West brings with it the potential destruction of culture even as it gives freedom to the traveler or tourist. The aspect of On the Road that has been most criticized in the decades following the novel’s release has been Kerouac’s portrayal of the relationships between men and women. While Kerouac himself was roundly criticizing the social structures of family and work that kept men from finding a truer way of life, his novel failed to record the plight of the women being subjected to the same pressures and conventions of society. More to the point, the characters seem unsympathetic to the toll that the women have to pay in meeting the appetites and helping with the travels of the men. In the story the life that Sal and Dean want to live is one that rejects all notions of authority and rule. Dean has little regard for the law and conventions of society. Authority is seen in the novel through the pleadings of the maternal characters for Dean and Sal to settle down and fulfill their responsibilities, and it is most clearly understood in the various run-ins that the group of Beats has with law enforcement. Anarchy in the individual eventually confronts the authority of society. Kerouac used mobility, alongside other themes, to express resistance to established norms in the culture of the United States during the nineteen fifties. The use of mobility in both the content and the structure of the novel and relate it to expectations of family, progress and attached sexuality. This resistance is ambiguous in that it rebels against ideals of family and home at the same time as it reproduces the established American mythology of mobile, male outlaws. This interpretation is placed in the context of the counter-culture of the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties in the United States which was a period when many young people were striking out against the presuppositions of rootedness, family values and the ‘-American Dream. Using the insights of new cultural geography and cultural studies and the use of mobility in this story; is a key text in the counter-culture, which represents a contestation of a central theme in American culture. Mobility is clearly an important part of North American mythology and as such it is open to change and challenge from resistant sub-cultures. Apart from Kerouac, it was Hemingway who contributed a lot in the making of emotions of the people in the post World War era. Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises, remains as a romance and a guidebook. It also became a modern-day courtesy book on how to behave in the waste land Europe had become after the Great War. The Sun Also Rises successfully portrays its characters as survivors of a lost generation. In addition, the novel was the most modern an American author had yet produced, and the ease with which it could be read endeared it to many. But for all its apparent simplicity, the novel’s innovation lay in its ironic style that interjected complex themes without being didactic. Generally this novel is considered to be Hemingway’s most satisfying work. The material for the novel resulted from a journey Hemingway made with his first wife, Hadley Richardson, and several friends to Pamplona, Spain, in 1925. Among them was Lady Duff Twysden, a beautiful socialite with whom Hemingway was in love (the inspiration for the novel’s Lady Brett Ashley). There was also a Jewish novelist and boxer named Harold Loeb (source of Robert Cohn) whom Hemingway threatened after learning that he and Lady Duff had had an affair. Lady Duff’s companion was a bankrupt Briton (like Mike Campbell). The trip ended poorly when Lady Duff and her companion left their bills unpaid. The ending of the novel is only slightly more tragic, yet it recovers those precious values which make life livable in a war-wearied world: friendship, stoicism, and natural grace. The Sun Also Rises is as much an extended character study as it is a novel where the story being told is no more important than the characters being examined. The five central characters are expatriates living in Paris and are members of the lost generation, â€Å"You are all a lost generation† [Hemingway, Epigraph] caught up in the sense of despair and disenchantment which followed the First World War. There is no real hero amongst those five; each possesses a flaw which prevents this status being reached. The Sun Also Rises concerns a group of Americans living in Europe during the 1920s. The narrator and principal character is Jake Barnes, a newspaper correspondent. The leading female character is Lady Brett Ashley. In the course of the novel, we learn that her husband, a British officer, was killed in World War I and that she was a nurse in the hospital where Jake Barnes was sent after he suffered a disabling injury in combat. Serving as the narrative voice throughout, Jake begins the story by talking about his past and current relationship to another character, Robert Cohn, who will subsequently figure in the plot but who is not the novel’s protagonist. Jake tells us that Cohn comes from a wealthy Jewish family and that he attended college at Princeton where he distinguished himself on the boxing team. When Cohn’s first wife left him, he took up with a young woman named Frances Clyne, and she went with him to Paris where he wrote his first novel. Although Jake speaks of Cohn as a friend, there is a certain antagonism beneath the surface. Jake characterizes Cohn’s book as poor and admits that he lied to his friend to get out of a proposed trip to South America. It is in the book’s second chapter that Jake fills us in on himself. It is there that we learn the narrator is currently a foreign correspondent working in Paris for an American newspaper. Jake also tells us that he was wounded in World War I and that his injury has left him in the supremely frustrating condition of being impotent without diminishing his sexual desire. Jake brings the tale into the present night at the Cafe Napolitan, a popular haunt of the lost generation and the avant garde in the Left Bank district of Paris. He meets and buys a drink for a local prostitute, Georgette, and when they go to another trendy spot, the Cafe Select, they encounter Robert Cohn and his fiancee, Frances. The high point of the scene comes with the arrival of Lady Brett Ashley accompanied by a group of extraordinarily handsome (and possibly gay) young men. Brett exudes sexuality and sophistication. Cohn is enthralled by her, but she refuses his request to dance and leaves the night club with Jake. The first-person narration of Jake Barnes is sometimes referred to as a roman a clef. A roman a clef is a story understandable only to those who have a key for deciphering the real persons and places behind the story. The story of Jake Barnes resembles the real events of the summer of 1925 in the life of Hemingway and his friends. Still there is enough difference that no key is needed for understanding. The novel stands on its own whether or not the reader knows on whom the character Lady Brett Ashley is based. The Sun Also Rises is an impressive document of the people who came to be known, in as the â€Å"Lost Generation†. The young generation had their dreams and innocence smashed by World War I, â€Å"Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters† [Hemingway, 10] emerged from the war bitter and aimless, and spent much of the prosperous 1920s drinking and partying away their frustrations. Jake epitomizes the Lost Generation; physically and emotionally wounded from the war, he is disillusioned, cares little about conventional sources of hope such as family, friends, religion, and work and apathetically drinks his way through his expatriate life. One of the key changes Hemingway observes in the Lost Generation is that of the new male psyche, battered by the war and newly domesticated. Jake embodies this new emasculation; most likely physically impotent, he cannot have sex and, therefore, can never have the insatiable Brett. Instead, he is dominated by her, as also Cohn who is also abused by the other women in his life. Jake is even threatened by the homosexual men who dance with Brett in Paris; while not sexually interested in her, they have more manhood than Jake, physically speaking. Hemingway’s spare, laconic prose was influenced by his early work as a journalist, and he has probably had the greatest stylistic influence over 20th-century American writers of anyone. The key to Hemingway’s style is omission; we usually learn less about Jake through his direct interior narration, but more through what he leaves out and how he reacts to others. For instance, we understand him much better through his thoughts on Cohn, who shares many of Jake’s traits. As an example of how much Hemingway omits, Jake never even fully describes his war injury, leaving it somewhat open to interpretation. There are two primary questions which Hemmingway asks readers to contemplate in The Sun Also Rises. The first is whether or not unconditional love is a sign of weakness or strength. The second is whether or not the sexual triumphs of a man are indicative of his level of manhood. Both of these questions define the theme of this masterful literary achievement, which centers on the balance of power between the strengths and weaknesses which are battled within us and within our relationships. Both the World Wars resulted in a vigorous change in the society, in term of socio-economic and socio-cultural attitude. It was natural for the generation of that contemporary time to be under immense confusion and disillusionment. However it was the literary genius of both Hemingway and Kerouac to evaluate the current impulse of the generations and they were triumphant in their attempts, which is proved in the success of their concept in both the novel The Sun Also Rises and On The Road, as both these story depicts the real sentiments of the contemporary generations. References: 1. Hemingway Earnest. , 1995, The Sun Also Rises, Scribner, New York: USA 2. Cresswell Tim. , 1993, Mobility as Resistance: A Geographical Reading of Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford: UK 3. Kerouac Jack. , 2007, On The Road, Viking Penguin, USA 4. Elliott Ira. , 1995, Performance Art: Jake Barnes and â€Å"Masculine† Signification in The Sun Also Rises, Duke University Press, USA

Market Identification Essays - Economy, Marketing, Brand Management

Market Identification Essays - Economy, Marketing, Brand Management Market Identification The main questions concerning market identification are provided in the opening quote of Rudyard Kipling- who, buys what,where, how and why?Regarding the main questions, David Tonks mentioned that market can be identified by using a mix of variables which can be grouped into two categories: 'general' and 'behaviour' (1995:3).Table1 shows the different types of 'general' and 'behavior' variables.The trem'general' is used for those variables which define and describe the customers but which do not identify in a direct way acts of purchase, acquistion or consumption.They thus answer the question 'who?.For instance, TV region is a general variable which may or may not be associated with some aspects of buying,owning, or consumption. 'Behaviour' variables answer the left question- what do people buy and where,when,how and why do they buy it?For instance,usage rate for a particular brand is a behaviour variable since it concerns a particular characteristic of consumption. insert taBLE HERE Regarding that market can be identified by using a mix of variables,There are 3 keys to identify market:1)which behaviour variabless can be used 2)which general variables can be used 3)which mix of behaviour and general variables can be used. 1.Which behaviour variables can be used? A first level scan of a market to identify suitable variables should create the form of a list to establish all significant possibilities.Im most cases,the following will be the most useful(David Tonks,1995). 1)Benefit sought: -What particular benefits or needs do they expext from the product? 2)Perception and attitudes: How is the product perceived and what are the attidudes towards the product? 3)Product preferences: What do they prefer and how do they choose between brands? 4)Product usage/purchase rates: Are they non-users, medium users, heavy users? Are they solus users in that they only buy one brand? 5)User/buyer status: Are they current users, former users, non-users, potential users, regular users, first time users? Are the buyers of interest as well as the users? 6)Loyalty status: What degree of brand loyalty do they display?Is it strong,medium,weak? 7)Marketing factor sensitivity? How do they resond to the various marketing influences? Are they susceptibly to price or to advertising? 8)Purchase situation and occasion: Is it an impulse or considered purchase?Is the context social or business?What is the setting for the purchase? 9)Media habits: What media are they exposed to? The last category,Media habits,is a behaviour varible which is not,At least not directly, relevant to the product in question.It is this category which provides an important link with the general variables. From this list, a target segment for men 's aftershave lotion might be identified as potential low brand invovlement and loyalty, who buy on impulse, who are price sensitive and who read particular specialist magazines.May permutations are possible and at this stage, the choice can be considerable.For a broad understanding of the market and its component parts, benefit sought, purchase and usage patterns and brand loyalty will be important. Which general variables can be used? These variables are very improtant to trraget market.Again,there is a mix of measures.In most cases,we usually categorize these measures by objective of them. Geographical region It is very common in marketing to use geographical region to identify market.TV regions have the specific advantage of allowing relatively easy and perhapscheap access to desired target audience.Furthermore,some buying behaviour is strongly relevant to region. Of some interesting,as for multinational brands or global brands,target market is identified crossing geographical boundaries. Demographics Demographics contains the familiar variables of age,sex,social grade,family size,family life cycle, income, occupation, terminal education age, religion, race and nationality.Generally,All these variables have advantages with geographical area.First,they are quite easy to measure compared with some other variable types.Second,they are easy to understand.Third,they are well established.However,the issue extent to which they can discriminate buying behaviour in some way which is useful to the organization implementing a policy of target marketing.For instance,if the concern is with differtiating between users and non-users of men's aftershave lotion then taking a demographic such as age will be of little value if the age profiles of users and non-users are identical. Particularly,family life cycle and social grade are significant ganeral descriptive variables. insert table 2 here While age merely will often discriminate buying behaviour,the existence of children in a family unit will be a prime determinant of lifestyle and later buying behaviour.Table 2 shows a typical transformation of the population into conventional life- cycle segments.With this classification, the 'young, post-family'segment could be interesting to many organization since it contains high income. In the UK,social grade

MOther Courage essays

MOther Courage essays Mother Courage is an unbraidable knot of contradictions: both fearless and feckless, wise and uneducable, maternally caring and emotionally aloof. A camp-following trader, she picks the bones of a war-withered economy to feed her fatherless children. Yet her nose for business leads Mother Courage away from those children when they need her protection, leaving them easy victims of the battlefield scavengers who prey upon the weakest of the human flock. Trapped in a system driven by greed and self-interest, war and profiteering, Mother Courage plays by its rules with the result that she both wins and loses. She succeeds in surviving at the cost of her children. In his production, director Michael Kahn hopes to communicate these contradictions of character that make Mother Courage, in his words, "one of the most extraordinarily interesting and unique characters on stage." To this end, he has cast Pat Carroll, an actress of immense warmth, vitality and humor, in the role of the flinty-hearted tragic heroine. "Mother Courage has an ironic sense of humor that, allows her to survive the most difficult situations. She is also a tenacious fighter, unwilling to be averted from her goal of providing for herself and her children. Certainly, her behavior is disturbing. But she acts out of necessity and her mistakes are the result of character flaws, not vices." Explaining how Mother Courage contributes to her own tragedy, Kahn compares her to the flawed giants of dramatic literature: Oedipus, King Lear and Falstaff. "Like the old figures of comedy and tragedy who are brought low by a fatal flaw, Mother Courage is unable to understand something about herself that ultimately ruins her. Her inability to extend her understanding of the past to the present is a failure she pays for dearly. She never learns from past experience how to avoid mistakes." Rather than calculating an emotional response to Mother Courage;s actions, Brecht intended an in...

U.S. History project 1 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

U.S. History project 1 - Essay Example The perspective of persecuting people who belonged to the other religions motivated hundreds and thousands of people to leave their homes and migrate. People escaping these punishments being conducted by the authorities of the King Charles I mostly settled in the province of Maryland. This religious freedom was the main reason that helped establishing colonies in America which also affected the economic, social and political development in America. Therefore, diversity became the identity of the American nation. Although every individual had the freedom to practice their religion as they pleased but some people looked badly upon other religions. One of them were the close-minded New English settlers in America, it was a good and bad thing at the same time because they brought the other settlers together which later on shaped colonies but it also pushed outsiders away. These colonies accepted many other churches because of the cultural diversity. This proves that these people had much importance for religion and migrating to America provided then the incentive to practice their religion as they pleased. Religion was the basis that brought people together from other countries that belonged to a common religion. The time of the â€Å"great Awakening† when occurred in the mid of the 18th century it provided more reasons and chances to the people to practice their religion. Preachers travelled from town to town and inspired people to accept their religion. As many people believe that religion was the case that sparked revolution in England, at the same time there is a never ending debate that economics was the reason. It is valid to say that not only religious freedom was the cause; in fact economic factor was also a major aspect in the English Revolution that encouraged colonial development in North America. The statement that â€Å"the economic concerns were the major contributor for bring in British settlers† cannot be denied. These economic concern s mostly outweighed the religious concerns for British North America. Christopher Columbus used a term â€Å"New World† for the unexplored lands of North and South America. The economic concerns of the British formed the English colonies in North America; these economic concerns included exploring lands for acquiring the reserves of gold and silver. It also included a waterway that connected North America to China and also for countering dominance of any other nation in North America. The English also sought for obtaining the essential raw materials in North America that they had to buy from the European countries for large amounts of money and gold. Apart from getting a hold of the lands and acquiring valuable resources of North America, English migrates also had other plans like England needed to renew some of its assets to export them to other countries. They also wanted to help them maintain their powerful naval forces through making business ties with the prospect of flo urishing their economy by providing help to the unemployed. Therefore, it is true that both factors motivated British to migrate to North America and establish colonies. PART 2 There are multitude of reason to justify American rebel against the English empire, things that kept adding up to their frustration and then resulted in becoming a painful historical event. It is true that the American colonists

Framework for conflict analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Framework for conflict analysis - Essay Example During the late 90s, a transfer of power in the Kremlin saw the emergence of Vladimir Putin as the head of the State. At about the same time, the tension in Chechnya began to simmer with the repeated skirmishes involving Chechen militants, who had now begun to target people in the neighboring Russian republics (John Russell, 2007). The Situation in Chechnya can be attributed to a similar situation in Africa, where smaller states have been trying to break off from bigger powers. Russia on the other hand, has always resorted to mass bombings and oppressive techniques to keep the region under its control. In doing so, Russia has violated several international conventions in areas such as Human rights, which has added to the animosity within the Chechen population (Bruno Coppieters, 2002). Additionally, it it is the Chechen civilians who have borne the brunt of this long period of oppression and it is thus quite natural for them to rebel any perceived occupation. Since the inception of the Soviet Union, Stalin was of the view that western powers were colluding to overthrow the communists. In doing so, he always viewed the Chechens as collaborators and deported them to Kazakhstan in order to prevent any mass uprising. With Stalin’s death, the Chechens were allowed to return to their homeland. This has been one of the main contribution that has helped keep Chechen nationalism active. Russia began to offensive in 1999 through a massive air campaign which began with the eviction of separatists from the neighboring republic of Dagestan. This was followed by a massive land offensive that consisted of shelling and ground troops. The Chechen rebels launched their fight from the mountains and resorted to Guerilla warfare. They mingled in the local population and carried out surprise attacks on the advancing Russian troops. However, this made