Assessing the current state of the worlds financial system - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 9 Words: 2836 Downloads: 1 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Economics Essay Type Research paper Did you like this example? The world financial system, has suffered a severe and virtually unprecedented blow leading to the failure of a number of major institutions and forcing government intervention on a massive scale in a number of countries. Adrian Turner, chairman of the FSA in the UK attributes the current financial crisis to: ..an interplay between macroeconomic imbalances which have become particularly prevalent over the last 10-15 years, and financial market developments which have been going on for 30 years but which accelerated over the last ten under the influence of the macro imbalances. Peter J. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Assessing the current state of the worlds financial system" essay for you Create order Wallison observes that the current crisis has three noteworthy elements: It is worldwide, engulfing the economies of nearly all the developed countries. It is comprehensive in that it involves financial institutions of all kinds. Third of all it is characterized by doubts about the stability and solvency of most of the worlds major financial institutions. While he believes that the first two of these elements fit within the conventional notion of systemic risk, the third element is unusual and, perhaps, unprecedented. On the 9th January 2009, the OECD blamed the regulatory framework as very poor because not only did it fail to prevent the crisis but also contributed to it. One of the key triggers was the introduction of a new regime for supervising all banks, the Basle II regime, which significantly boosted the attractiveness to banks of lending money secured on residential property. That led to a rise in loans to sub-prime borrowers, which were then packaged into securities and s old to institutions. The OECD traced the roots of the problem to 2004, when there was a veritable explosion in residential mortgage-backed securities. Furthermore it was made easier for the poor to obtain mortgages. Tougher capital requirements imposed on the mortgage finance groups Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which triggered an invasion of banks into their territory. Thirdly the transition towards Basle II, made mortgage lending more attractive and fostered the creation of off-balance sheet vehicles. The final element was a policy shift by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which allowed investment banks to increase their leverage from about 15 to one to as much as 40 to one. Shortcomings in risk management, bonus schemes, governance structures, liquidity and counterparty risk need to be addressed, the OECD said.  David R. Henderson believes that the triggering cause of the current financial crisis in the United States was the decline in housing prices that began in the summer of 2006. This decline in housing prices caused a large increase in foreclosures because many people owned houses with mortgages almost equal to the initial value of the houses. When the values of those houses fell and went below the amount of the mortgages, lenders often foreclosed on borrowers.  Since so many financial institutions owned securities based on these mortgages- mortgage-backed securities (MBS), the large decline in value of these MBSs led to large losses for their owners. And because so many of the owners were financial firms that held only a tiny percent of the value of their assets in reserve, even a small percentage decline could, and did, destroy almost the whole value, and sometimes the whole value, of the financial firms that held these securities.   Ãƒâ€š Henderson, however believes that: The best evidence is that the problem was triggered by previous government regulation combined with an unrealistic belief on the part of many people that housing prices could only go up. He rules out greed as well as deregulation as the causes for the financial crisis. On the contrary he argues that the culprit is regulation itself such as the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and the Community Reinvestment Act amongst others.  He blames such regulation that placed pressure on banks to lend to people with weak credit histories and sketchy employment prospects.  Moral hazard was another contributor to the crisis. This is because lenders to government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) assumed that the US government would guarantee the loans of Fannie Mac and Freddy Mac.  Fannie and Freddy had taken on riskier loans during the housing boom and were able to borrow, at a very low interest rate, the funds with which to buy these loans.  Because lenders to the GSEs did not bear much risk in case the GSEs bore large losses, they had little incentive to be careful in their lending, and the GSEs had little incentive to be careful in their financial decisions.  Furthermore, there has been an explosion of world macro-imbalances, with very large current account surpluses piling up in the oil exporting countries, China, Japan and some other east Asian developing nations, and large current account deficits piling up in the USA, UK, in Ireland, Spain and some other countries. A key driver of those imbalances has been very high savings rates in countries like China; since these high savings are in excess of domestic investment, China and other countries must accumulate claims on the rest of the world. Since, in addition, those countries are committed to fixed or significantly managed exchange rates, these rising claims take the form of central bank reserves, typically invested not in a wide array of equity, property or fixed income assets but almost exclusively in apparently risk-free or close to risk-free government bonds or government guaranteed bonds. This in turn has driven a reduction in real risk free rates of interest to historically lo w levels. They have helped drive rapid growth of credit extension in some developed countries, particularly in the US and the UK and particularly but not exclusively for residential mortgages with this growth accompanied by a degradation of credit standards, and fuelling property price booms which for a time made those lower credit standards appear costless. Secondly, they had driven among investors a ferocious search for yield a desire among any investor who wishes to invest in bond-like instruments to gain as much as possible spread above the risk-free rate, to offset at least partially the declining risk-free rate. Financial sector innovation. The fundamental macro economic imbalances have thus stimulated demands which have been met by a wave of financial innovation, focused on the origination, packaging, trading and distribution of securitised credit instruments. It was from the mid-1990s that the system entered explosive growth in both scale and complexity. This was due to the huge growth in the value of the total stock of credit securities. An explosion in the complexity of the securities sold together with the related explosion of the volume of credit derivatives, enabling investors and traders to hedge underlying credit exposures, or to create synthetic credit exposures also contributed to the crisis. All of these developments, in different ways, seeking to satisfy the demand for yield uplift, and all predicated on the belief that by slicing and dicing, structuring and hedging, using sophisticated mathematical models to understand and manage risk, to create value by offering investors combinations of risk and ret urn which are more attractive than those available from direct purchase of the underlying credit exposures. This explosion was supported by and in itself drove big increases in the leverage of major financial institutions in particular investment banks and the investment banking activities of some large universal banks. As it developed the rapid growth began to drive and to be driven by one of those self-fulfilling cycles of falling risk aversion where credit spreads on a wide range of securities and loans falling to clearly inadequate levels. This crisis is the first major global boom and bust of securitised credit instruments. One of the crucial questions to ask is whether the originate and distribute model is inherently riskier than the one that it has partially replaced or whether, provided it is regulated more effectively, it is capable of being a more stable system, or indeed of delivering the positive benefits of increased financial stability which its advocates originall y proposed. The IMF Global Financial Stability Report of April, 2008 makes it clear that the majority of the holdings of the securitised credit, and the vast majority of the losses which arose, did not lie in the books of end investors intending to hold the assets to maturity, but on the books of highly leveraged banks and bank-like institutions. What increasingly happened was that the credit securitised and taken off one banks balance sheet, rather than being simply sold through to an end investor, was bought by the   propriety trading desk of another bank, or sold by the first bank but with part of the risk retained via the use of credit derivatives, or used as collateral to raise short-term liquidity creating a complex chain of multiple relationships between multiple institutions, each performing a different small size of the credit intermediation and maturity transformation process, and each with a leveraged   balance sheet requiring a small slice of capital to support that function. Another striking development of the last several decades has been that a growing part of this maturity transformation has been occurring not on the books of regulated banks with central bank access, but on the off-balance sheets of banks, and on the balance sheets of shadow banks or near banks. SIVs and conduits performed large-scale maturity transformation between short-term promises to noteholders and much longer term instruments held on the asset side. While some of these developments in particular the growth of SIVs, and investment bank balance sheets and mutual funds were most prevalent in the US and less important elsewhere, the impact in a global funds market was felt throughout the world. Examples of this are Northern Rock and Bradford Bingley who were directly or indirectly dependent on the maturity transformation function of US mutual funds and SIVs. Therefore the huge growth in securitised credit intermediation and a related increasing r eliance of the total system on liquidity assured by marketability contributed to the credit crisis. In a securitised system, credits become marketable instruments, tradeable in liquid markets. All liquid  markets can be susceptible to swings in sentiment which produce significant divergence from rational equilibrium prices. Bond yields were driven irrationally low and prices irrationally high by irrational exuberance between 2002 and early 2007, and the yields subsequently soared, the prices collapsed. Since banks are highly leveraged they perform maturity transformation which exposes them to liquidity risk and they are involved in a process of continual rollover of new credit supply to the real economy without which economies will contract. It is therefore possible that the growth of the securitised credits intermediation model has increased some aspects of systemic risk in ways which are not just the result of poor execution bad remuneration practices, inadequate risk m anagement or disclosure, failures in the credit-rating process but absolutely innate. The more complex and globalised the world economy becomes, the more complex are the functions which the worlds banks have to perform in intermediating credit and other flows, and in themselves managing and helping corporates manage, the risks that arise from global operations, and fluctuating   exchange rates,   interest rates and commodity prices. The far bigger failure was the failure to identify that the whole system was fraught with market-wide, systemic risk. Regulators were too focused on the institution-by-institution supervision of idiosyncratic risk: central banks too focused on monetary policy tightly defined, meeting inflation targets. And reports which did look at   the overall picture, for instance the IMF Global Financial Stability Report sometimes simply got it wrong, and when they did get it right, for instance in their warnings about over rapid credit gro wth in the UK and the US, were largely ignored. From his end, Lloyd C. Blankfein sees three broad underlying factors contributing to the crisis: First, governments, particularly the U.S., explicitly supported homeownership through a variety of government programs and initiatives. Second, mortgage assets were considered relatively impervious to sharp downturns. And lastly, the creation of more flexible and varied mortgage products attracted even more capital in search of higher returns. These factors, to varying degrees, contributed to a housing bubble not just in the U.S. but in many other countries as well. Furthermore, he believes that: We rationalized because our self-interest in preserving and growing our market share, as competitors, sometimes blinds us especially when exuberance is at its peak. A systemic lack of skepticism was equally true with respect to credit ratings. An over-dependence on credit ratings coincided with the dilution of the coveted triple A rat ing. Furthermore, a lot of risk models incorrectly assumed that positions could be fully hedged and failed to capture the risk inherent in off-balance sheet activities, such as Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs). Lastly, financial institutions didnt account for asset values accurately enough. Given the size and interconnected character of markets, the growth in volumes, the global nature of trades and their cross-asset characteristics, managing operational risk will only become more important. Circumstantial evidence that supervisory boards of many large enterprises in the banking sector do not have the necessary know-how to perform their functions properly is also worrying. To what extent has recruitment been on the basis of connections and political expediency, and not on the basis of merit and know-how? It is widely believed that the current crisis is an example of systemic risk becoming reality and that to prevent a recurrence, greater regulation, covering a wider range of participants in the financial markets, is necessary. However, Peter J. Wallison believes that there is as yet no evidence that the current crisis was the result of systemic risk, which is characterized by a kind of contagion. Instead, he opines that the crisis appears to have arisen from the failure of traditional regulated institutions to limit their risk-taking. Consequently he argues that the current crisis provides support for better supervision of traditionally regulated industries, but no warrant either for a systemic risk regulator or for the supervision of other participants in the financial markets that have not previously been regulated. Wallison believes that understanding the current crisis as a solvency problem seems correct. The underlying cause was the collapse of the housing bubble in the United States, aggravated by the fact that weak subprime and Alt-A loans were major constituents of the housing-related assets held by banks and other financial intermediarie s around the world. These mortgage loans, which are held mostly in the form of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), are defaulting at unprecedented rates. The difficulty of determining the value of the underlying mortgages has caused the market for these instruments to come to a virtual halt, and it has also engendered uncertainty about the solvency of the financial institutions that hold them. Until investors and counterparties are persuaded that these institutions are solvent, they will not be stable. He believes that seeing the crisis as a solvency problem rather than a liquidity problem also clarifies a lot about the major events of the last six months, beginning with the bailout of Bear Stearns. Therefore the underlying problem is not contagion or illiquidity but rather fear that others are not or will not be solvent or stable counterparties. The crisis instead arose from the fact that all these institutions invested heavily in the sam e weak assets-primarily MBS and CDOs backed in whole or in part by subprime and Alt-A mortgages. Conclusion The fact that the current financial crisis is caused by doubts about the solvency of almost all of the worlds major financial institutions sets it apart from any other financial crisis in history. The failure of a large number of insured depository institutions and investment banks shows that better regulation and better regulatory tools are warranted. The current crisis has demonstrated that globalisation is a real and irreversible phenomenon. We have a world market and a world system of trade that are interlinked in many ways. A crisis in the USA, or even in Iceland, is a crisis that affects us all. Solutions cannot be national, as has been adequately demonstrated over the last few weeks. They have to be co-coordinated. Greater preparedness and the ability to coordinate action on a global scale may yet prove to be the lasting legacy of the current crisis. But, across the world, regulators need to continually assess how evolving industry structures and institutional roles are c hanging the nature of risk, both for individual institutions and for the whole system, and if necessary to adapt the coverage of  prudential regulation over time. All along, it has been known that market events and economic trends are interwoven on a global basis. But the events of the last year have shown that the connections are more direct and immediate than previously appreciated. All in all, I believe that it is safe to argue that though failure in regulation did contribute to the financial crisis, other criteria such as bad risk management practices, moral hazard, lack of transparency coupled with the greed of banks and self-interest of investors, lack of knowledge of the financial instruments being dealt with (CDOs) as well as lack of monitoring of the credit rating agencies all contributed and aggravated the crisis to varying degrees.

Soundtrack of Your Life - 1337 Words

Aleesah Brown English 113-51 16 April 2011 Paper 1 â€Å"The Soundtrack of Your Life† Music is a key factor in my life, now and has been for as long as I remember. Music is one thing that can control my mood and emotions unlike any other. The sounds and melodies of the composition have the potential to sway my moods from a dark gloomy state all the way to a joyous and soothing harmonic atmosphere. Music allows me to control how and what I want to be, or represent. Music is almost like picking out a favorite outfit. When one picks out an outfit to wear they most likely pick an outfit that expresses them and how they are feeling at that direct moment. They have the ability to change shoes, accessories, or their hairstyle to make it†¦show more content†¦Finally, I would like to introduce the classic song off of the movie â€Å"Space Jam† that has respectively impacted my life. This song simply is real and to me defies the essential steps in creating growth in myself. 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Part Three Chapter IV Free Essays

IV ‘Very sad,’ said Howard Mollison, rocking a little on his toes in front of his mantelpiece. ‘Very sad indeed.’ Maureen had just finished telling them all about Catherine Weedon’s death; she had heard everything from her friend Karen the receptionist that evening, including the complaint from Cath Weedon’s granddaughter. We will write a custom essay sample on Part Three Chapter IV or any similar topic only for you Order Now A look of delighted disapproval was crumpling her face; Samantha, who was in a very bad mood, thought she resembled a monkey nut. Miles was making conventional sounds of surprise and pity, but Shirley was staring up at the ceiling with a bland expression on her face; she hated it when Maureen held centre stage with news that she ought to have heard first. ‘My mother knew the family of old,’ Howard told Samantha, who already knew it. ‘Neighbours in Hope Street. Cath was decent enough in her way, you know. The house was always spotless, and she worked until she was into her sixties. Oh, yes, she was one of the world’s grafters, Cath Weedon, whatever the rest of the family became.’ Howard was enjoying giving credit where credit was due. ‘The husband lost his job when they closed the steelworks. Hard drinker. No, she didn’t always have it easy, Cath.’ Samantha was barely managing to look interested, but fortunately Maureen interrupted. ‘And the Gazette’s on to Dr Jawanda!’ she croaked. ‘Imagine how she must be feeling, now the paper’s got it! Family’s kicking up a stink – well, you can’t blame them, alone in that house for three days. D’you know her, Howard? Which one is Danielle Fowler?’ Shirley got up and stalked out of the room in her apron. Samantha slugged a little more wine, smiling. ‘Let’s think, let’s think,’ said Howard. He prided himself on knowing almost everyone in Pagford, but the later generations of Weedons belonged more to Yarvil. ‘Can’t be a daughter, she had four boys, Cath. Granddaughter, I expect.’ ‘And she wants an inquiry,’ said Maureen. ‘Well, it was always going to come to this. It’s been on the cards. If anything, I’m surprised it’s taken this long. Dr Jawanda wouldn’t give the Hubbards’ son antibiotics and he ended up hospitalized for his asthma. Do you know, did she train in India, or – ?’ Shirley, who was listening from the kitchen while she stirred the gravy, felt irritated, as she always did, by Maureen’s monopolization of the conversation; that, at least, was how Shirley put it to herself. Determined not to return to the room until Maureen had finished, Shirley turned into the study and checked to see whether anyone had sent in apologies for the next Parish Council meeting; as secretary, she was already putting together the agenda. ‘Howard – Miles – come and look at this!’ Shirley’s voice had lost its usual soft, flutey quality; it rang out shrilly. Howard waddled out of the sitting room followed by Miles, who was still in the suit he had worn all day at work. Maureen’s droopy, bloodshot, heavily mascara-ed eyes were fixed on the empty doorway like a bloodhound’s; her hunger to know what Shirley had found or seen was almost palpable. Maureen’s fingers, a clutch of bulging knuckles covered in translucent leopard-spotted skin, slid the crucifix and wedding ring up and down the chain around her neck. The deep creases running from the corners of Maureen’s mouth to her chin always reminded Samantha of a ventriloquist’s dummy. Why are you always here? Samantha asked the older woman loudly, inside her own head. You couldn’t make me lonely enough to live in Howard and Shirley’s pocket. Disgust rose in Samantha like vomit. She wanted to seize the over-warm cluttered room and mash it between her hands, until the royal china, and the gas fire, and the gilt-framed pictures of Miles broke into jagged pieces; then, with wizened and painted Maureen trapped and squalling inside the wreckage, she wanted to heave it, like a celestial shot-putter, away into the sunset. The crushed lounge and the doomed crone inside it, soared in her imagination through the heavens, plunging into the limitless ocean, leaving Samantha alone in the endless stillness of the universe. She had had a terrible afternoon. There had been another frightening conversation with her accountant; she could not remember much of her drive home from Yarvil. She would have liked to offload on Miles, but after dumping his briefcase and pulling off his tie in the hall he had said, ‘You haven’t started dinner yet, have you?’ He sniffed the air ostentatiously, then answered himself. ‘No, you haven’t. Well, good, because Mum and Dad have invited us over.’ And before she could protest, he had added sharply, ‘It’s nothing to do with the council. It’s to discuss arrangements for Dad’s sixty-fifth.’ Anger was almost a relief; it eclipsed her anxiety, her fear. She had followed Miles out to the car, cradling her sense of ill-usage. When he asked, at last, on the corner of Evertree Crescent, ‘How was your day?’ she answered, ‘Absolutely bloody fantastic.’ ‘Wonder what’s up?’ said Maureen, breaking the silence in the sitting room. Samantha shrugged. It was typical of Shirley to have summoned her menfolk and left the women in limbo; Samantha was not going to give her mother-in-law the satisfaction of showing interest. Howard’s elephantine footsteps made the floorboards under the hall carpet creak. Maureen’s mouth was slack with anticipation. ‘Well, well, well,’ boomed Howard, lumbering back into the room. ‘I was checking the council website for apologies,’ said Shirley, a little breathless in his wake. ‘For the next meeting – ‘ ‘Someone’s posted accusations about Simon Price,’ Miles told Samantha, pressing past his parents, seizing the role of announcer. ‘What kind of accusations?’ asked Samantha. ‘Receiving stolen goods,’ said Howard, firmly reclaiming the spotlight, ‘and diddling his bosses at the printworks.’ Samantha was pleased to find herself unmoved. She had only the haziest idea who Simon Price was. ‘They’ve posted under a pseudonym,’ Howard continued, ‘and it’s not a particularly tasteful pseudonym, either.’ ‘Rude, you mean?’ Samantha asked. ‘Big-Fat-Cock or something?’ Howard’s laughter boomed through the room, Maureen gave an affected shriek of horror, but Miles scowled and Shirley looked furious. ‘Not quite that, Sammy, no,’ said Howard. ‘No, they’ve called themselves â€Å"The Ghost of Barry Fairbrother†.’ ‘Oh,’ said Samantha, her grin evaporating. She did not like that. After all, she had been in the ambulance while they had forced needles and tubes into Barry’s collapsed body; she had watched him dying beneath the plastic mask; seen Mary clinging to his hand, heard her groans and sobs. ‘Oh, no, that’s not nice,’ said Maureen, relish in her bullfrog’s voice. ‘No, that’s nasty. Putting words into the mouths of the dead. Taking names in vain. That’s not right.’ ‘No,’ agreed Howard. Almost absent-mindedly, he strolled across the room, picked up the wine bottle and returned to Samantha, topping up her empty glass. ‘But someone out there doesn’t care about good taste it seems, if they can put Simon Price out of the running.’ ‘If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, Dad,’ said Miles, ‘wouldn’t they have gone for me rather than Price?’ ‘How do you know they haven’t, Miles?’ ‘Meaning?’ asked Miles swiftly. ‘Meaning,’ said Howard, the happy cynosure of all eyes, ‘that I got sent an anonymous letter about you a couple of weeks ago. Nothing specific. Just said you were unfit to fill Fairbrother’s shoes. I’d be very surprised if the letter didn’t come from the same source as the online post. The Fairbrother theme in both, you see?’ Samantha tilted her glass a little too enthusiastically, so that wine trickled down the sides of her chin, exactly where her own ventriloquist’s doll grooves would no doubt appear in time. She mopped her face with her sleeve. ‘Where is this letter?’ asked Miles, striving not to look rattled. ‘I shredded it. It was anonymous; it didn’t count.’ ‘We didn’t want to upset you, dear,’ said Shirley, and she patted Miles’ arm. ‘Anyway, they can’t have anything on you,’ Howard reassured his son, ‘or they’d have dished the dirt, the same as they have on Price.’ ‘Simon Price’s wife is a lovely girl,’ said Shirley with gentle regret. ‘I can’t believe Ruth knows anything about it, if her husband’s been on the fiddle. She’s a friend from the hospital,’ Shirley elaborated to Maureen. ‘An agency nurse.’ ‘She wouldn’t be the first wife who hasn’t spotted what’s going on under her nose,’ retorted Maureen, trumping insider knowledge with worldly wisdom. ‘Absolutely brazen, using Barry Fairbrother’s name,’ said Shirley, pretending not to have heard Maureen. ‘Not a thought for his widow, his family. All that matters is their agenda; they’ll sacrifice anything to it.’ ‘Shows you what we’re up against,’ said Howard. He scratched the overfold of his belly, thinking. ‘Strategically, it’s smart. I saw from the get-go that Price was going to split the pro-Fields vote. No flies on Bends-Your-Ear; she’s realized it too and she wants him out.’ ‘But,’ said Samantha, ‘it mightn’t have anything to do with Parminder and that lot at all. It could be from someone we don’t know, someone who’s got a grudge against Simon Price.’ ‘Oh, Sam,’ said Shirley, with a tinkling laugh, shaking her head. ‘It’s easy to see you’re new to politics.’ Oh, fuck off, Shirley. ‘So why have they used Barry Fairbrother’s name, then?’ asked Miles, rounding on his wife. ‘Well, it’s on the website, isn’t it? It’s his vacant seat.’ ‘And who’s going to trawl through the council website for that kind of information? No,’ he said gravely, ‘this is an insider.’ An insider †¦ Libby had once told Samantha that there could be thousands of microscopic species inside one drop of pond water. They were all perfectly ridiculous, Samantha thought, sitting here in front of Shirley’s commemorative plates as if they were in the Cabinet Room in Downing Street, as though one bit of tittle-tattle on a Parish Council website constituted an organized campaign, as though any of it mattered. Consciously and defiantly, Samantha withdrew her attention from the lot of them. She fixed her eyes on the window and the clear evening sky beyond, and she thought about Jake, the muscular boy in Libby’s favourite band. At lunchtime today, Samantha had gone out for sandwiches, and brought back a music magazine in which Jake and his bandmates were interviewed. There were lots of pictures. ‘It’s for Libby,’ Samantha had told the girl who helped her in the shop. ‘Wow, look at that. I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating toast,’ replied Carly, pointing at Jake, naked from the waist up, his head thrown back to reveal that thick strong neck. ‘Oh, but he’s only twenty-one, look. I’m not a cradle-snatcher.’ Carly was twenty-six. Samantha did not care to subtract Jake’s age from her own. She had eaten her sandwich and read the interview, and studied all the pictures. Jake with his hands on a bar above his head, biceps swelling under a black T-shirt; Jake with his white shirt open, abdominal muscles chiselled above the loose waistband of his jeans. Samantha drank Howard’s wine and stared out at the sky above the black privet hedge, which was a delicate shade of rose pink; the precise shade her nipples had been before they had been darkened and distended by pregnancy and breast-feeding. She imagined herself nineteen to Jake’s twenty-one, slender-waisted again, taut curves in the right places, and a strong flat stomach of her own, fitting comfortably into her white, size ten shorts. She vividly recalled how it felt to sit on a young man’s lap in those shorts, with the heat and roughness of sun-warmed denim under her bare thighs, and big hands around her lithe waist. She imagined Jake’s breath on her neck; she imagined turning to look into the blue eyes, close to the high cheekbones and that firm, carved mouth †¦ ‘†¦ at the church hall, and we’re getting it catered by Bucknoles,’ said Howard. ‘We’ve invited everyone: Aubrey and Julia – everyone. With luck it will be a double celebration, you on the council, me, another year young †¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ Samantha felt tipsy and randy. When were they going to eat? She realized that Shirley had left the room, hopefully to put food on the table. The telephone rang at Samantha’s elbow, and she jumped. Before any of them could move, Shirley had bustled back in. She had one hand in a flowery oven glove, and picked up the receiver with the other. ‘Double-two-five-nine?’ sang Shirley on a rising inflection. ‘Oh †¦ hello, Ruth, dear!’ Howard, Miles and Maureen became rigidly attentive. Shirley turned to look at her husband with intensity, as if she were transmitting Ruth’s voice through her eyes into her husband’s mind. ‘Yes,’ fluted Shirley. ‘Yes †¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ Samantha, sitting closest to the receiver, could hear the other woman’s voice but not make out the words. ‘Oh, really †¦?’ Maureen’s mouth was hanging open again; she was like an ancient baby bird, or perhaps a pterodactyl, hungering for regurgitated news. ‘Yes, dear, I see †¦ oh, that shouldn’t be a problem †¦ no, no, I’ll explain to Howard. No, no trouble at all.’ Shirley’s small hazel eyes had not wavered from Howard’s big, popping blue ones. ‘Ruth, dear,’ said Shirley, ‘Ruth, I don’t want to worry you, but have you been on the council website today? †¦ Well †¦ it’s not very nice, but I think you ought to know †¦ somebody’s posted something nasty about Simon †¦ well, I think you’d better read it for yourself, I wouldn’t want to †¦ all right, dear. All right. See you Wednesday, I hope. Yes. Bye bye.’ Shirley replaced the receiver. ‘She didn’t know,’ Miles stated. Shirley shook her head. ‘Why was she calling?’ ‘Her son,’ Shirley told Howard. ‘Your new potboy. He’s got a peanut allergy.’ ‘Very handy, in a delicatessen,’ said Howard. ‘She wanted to ask whether you could store a needleful of adrenalin in the fridge for him, just in case,’ said Shirley. Maureen sniffed. ‘They’ve all got allergies these days, children.’ Shirley’s ungloved hand was still clutching the receiver. She was subconsciously hoping to feel tremors down the line from Hilltop House. How to cite Part Three Chapter IV, Essay examples

Cover Letter CAP

Question: Write a cover letter to CAP. Answer: From: To: Name: XXXXX XXXX Title: XXXXXXXX Address: XXXXXXXXXXX Organisation: College of American Pathologists Contact Number: XXXXXXX Address: XXXXXXXXXXXX Email id: XXXXXXXXXXX Date: XXXX Respected Sir / Madam, I would hereby like to draw your attention to the fact that the laboratory, XXXXX, in which I have been working for the past three months, has undergone a CAP on-site survey on XX.XX.XXXX. The respected Inspectors had found some Phase II discrepancies. I would like to apologise to the concerned authority and take responsibility of it. Kindly find the attachment, which is an explanation for such discrepancies from our end. I ensure that the problems would be solved soon and definitely before the next round of CAP inspection. Kindly consider my request. Thanking you, Yours Faithfully XXXXXXX XXXXX Subject: Response on the recent On-Site Survey 1) In response to the establishment of PT for ESRs, we have not established (PT) for ESR, wherein the red blood cells are continuously in sediment. The main reason is that there is an ongoing research for developing a more sophisticated tool for management of the PT in the ESR. The researcher working in the laboratory have the hope of coming up with a prefect alternative to PT to be included in the ESR, in order to make it more powerful and resilient. The ESR is being discontinued until the time something is in place and the expected period would be one month for the PT to be implemented. 2) In response to the low score in PT Challenges, the score of 80% in the PT Challenges for the urine creatinine is below acceptable level. However, it should be increased by taking up specific measures like revising the kit. 3) The maintenance of the documents for electrical ground checks for centrifuge have not been undertaken adequately and not replaced. For making sure that no possible risk of electrical hazards remains, maintenance have been undertaken on a regular basis. The earth grounding and the wiring of the wall outlet receptacle has been done. The line voltage is in alignment with the particular voltage required. No three-to-two wire adapter or two-wire extension is used. A two-wire receptacle strip is also not used that is of non-grounding type. These are the guidelines for proper handling of centrifuge and avoiding risks of inconvenience that are adhered to. 4) Receiving no response from the remote location while testing the blood bank refrigerator, is a major concern. It is important to increase the knowledge level of the workers working in the laboratory related to the CLIA requirement of preservation through which they can take these things seriously, and avoid repeating same mistake in the near future (Buppert, 2008). Again, proper check and balance factor is essential in this particular aspect to make the things in the favour of the laboratory. All the employees will be retrained on this aspect and during the training process the employees will be given guidelines on how to manage the operating procedure. It would be stated that the appointed remote location charge person of the day has to respond within 10 minutes to the alarm. There will be a drill conducted twice a year on remote alarm in order to make all employees capable to responding in an appropriate manner. 5) In response of the missing of Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS), we have located the backup files of the missing sheets from the manufacturers websites and placed the MSDS sheets in the respective files. The supervisor will keep a track of all the chemicals in the future and it is the responsibility of the supervisor to make sure that the MSDS sheets are kept in the respective files before the chemicals are used for service. The MSDS sheets will be compared with the chemicals every two months and if any such sheets are foud to eb missing, they will be recovered from the website of the manufacturer. According to the requirement of CLIA, the MSDS that contain the information relating to potential hazards and safety should be maintained accordingly in the file (Gagnon Whalen, 2000). In case of missing, strict probing will be initiated against the people who are liable to maintain and filing of these documents. Legal actions may be taken against the individuals, subjected to the inte nsity of the missing information. 6) We have an idea that as per the requirement of CAP/CLIA, the reticulocyte procedure that contains the information related to the blood cells should be reported and recorded in the files to be used for the audit purpose (Voytek, 2003). Missing of this information from the file is yet again a serious concern, and legal action will be taken against the responsible person. However, much of emphasize would have been diverted on the aspect of gaining the immature red blood cells again. In response to found outdated alkaline phosphatase reagent, we would like to ensure the CLIA inspection team that we are not utilizing the outdated alkaline phosphatase reagent that found in the refrigerator in the back-up Chem analyzing procedure, but we only consider the same for some analysis purpose in particular. We have an idea that using outdated alkaline phosphatase reagent can cause numerous health hazards and no one in the laboratory is even daring to play with the health of the individuals. However, we will take a note of the same, and make sure that similar issue will not rise again. In case of any further clarification, please feel free to contact us Youre truly Manager ABC Laboratory Dated References Buppert, C. (2008). Nurse practitioner's business practice and legal guide. Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett. Gagnon, M., Whalen, R. (2000).CLIA policy on new laboratory instruments. Diagnostic Cytopathology23(6), 435-435. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/1097-0339(200012)23:63.0.co;2-u Voytek, T. (2003). A kinder and gentler CLIA?. Diagnostic Cytopathology, 29(3), 123-124. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/dc.10366