The United Nations has a mission mainly about Peace keeping, Security and promoting Human Rights as a whole. It is basically here to create a more peaceful environment for the whole generation to live. It is usually considering the hot and bigger issues in the world  such as countries independency and wars. It is really hard for the United Nations to focus on some smaller but still relatively important issues. This is when social enterprise comes up. United Nations usually focus on Bigger issues while social enterprises can concentrate more on smaller or regional issues. Also the United Nation focus more on the relationship between countries while social enterprise can concentrate more on a specific country’s issue such as poverty in Bangladesh. By dealing with a smaller issue, it can cause a more efficient outcome. Nowadays, Social enterprises has really made a change on things. One which touched me deeply was the microfinance project. The social enterprises saw future and potential in the poor instead of seeing tragic consequences. The poor may not be able to mange their own money so they need someone to teach them or help them to manage. In a article I saw about Zimbabwe, they are suffering a tremendous inflation and a huge lack of health care, these are what we can do or in other words the social enterprises can do. By simply providing them equipments or clean water can make a difference to their lives. An  news report stated that only $27 can prevent a child from starving for a whole year. It would be really complicated and time consuming for the United Nations to deal with these since it is a huge organization and many projects needs to take time to be approved. Each different social Enterprise can focus on a different country or area and make things more efficient and  useful.

Nevertheless, each one of us is a citizen of the world and has responsibility to help others and share our love! United Nations is only one oorganization which would be unrealistic for all of us to participate in. Social enterprises gives a chance for each one of us to share our happiness and love to the world. You don’t have to be a doctor or know any specific knowledge to be a social enterprises, Just show that you want to help. This might be the most important reason why even though the United Nations is here, we still need social enterprises.

Without any hesitation,for the last blog of Com101, I decided to write the man who is the idol and superstar in my heart – Steve Jobs. I still remember 3 years ago when I was watching the documentary” How Steve jobs changed the world”and burst into tears.From that day on,I wrote on my bedside saying“ Do what you love and fight for it“which is inspired by his quote: ” Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. ” I was hugely inspired by what Jobs said and did in his real life.Although he didn’t invent an MP3 or a computer, he has made such technologies available for the general public. He turned what people used to think to be  complicated devices decades ago into simple stuffs.He turned them warm! He knew that it is not that who can produce the most high technological product wins, its the one who produces what the whole world can understand wins. Jobs was so smart that he clearly understood this, he led the computer revolution by touching people’s hearts. He simplified our lives with his products and made us addicted to it.

There was once a survey on Apple’s employees which showed that there was a extremely high employee satisfaction. Nearly 99% of the employees said that they just felt so proud to work for such a charming person.Thousands of people wanted to get in Apple just because of  Steve Jobs.He inspired people to imagine beyond what is possible and think big.Working with him will never let anything limit their thoughts.He saw the potentials in PIXAR and did’t give up them.At that time no one could imagine something like Toy’s story  could be released on the screen.Steve Jobs made it come true and very successful,Almost everyone was moved by the simple and warm story.

What Steve Jobs did inspired millions of people including me and I will fight for my dreams just as what I wrote on my notebook the first day of class.

After reading the article about  Zappo for Class 19, and my classmateRiley’s  blog, a thought occurred to me .

In the blog, she clearly stated two opinions. First, the manger should be responsible for the employee’s mood. Second, there is no one in the world other than yourself who can control the mood. Personally, I prefer the latter opinion. I don’t agree with what Zappo is currently doing. I think it cost too much! Also by providing such a good environment for each worker equally might be really unfair to some hardworking workers and some employees might just take the advantage of this and do nothing. By providing an unlimited amount of free food might let some greedy employees even bring food home for their whole family. Because people’s wants are unlimited so these greedy people will always exist, you just simply can’t prevent it from happening. Also if the employees are used to this kind of working condition, when you decrease the condition a little due to some cost reason or the whole economic condition, they may be really upset and feel unsatisfied.

I also strongly agree with the man which Riley mentioned in her blog”Geoffrey James”. He mentioned that your happiness is your own responsibility; you shouldn’t blame anyone for being unhappy. I saw very poor children in Kenya enjoying their life. So when life is tough or boring,you should try and make yourself happy, you should not rely on you manger to come up with a method. Just like what he mentioned in his article: “There are people in this world who have dream jobs but manage to make themselves so miserable that they commit suicide. And there are freelance garbage collectors who manage to stay upbeat”. This is not saying that the manager should not do anything or provide a bad working condition – what I mean is that the manager could do something but don’t rely on it or think that you deserve all those good things. Try and make yourself happy because no one is responsible for you life except yourself.

The Bank of Japan has surprised the market last week by announcing an ultra-aggressive market monetary policy expansion.It said that a combination of weak demands and falling oil price meant that more actions were needed to banish a deflation mindset.They will mostly purchase longterm government bonds to insure Monetary base rise by $724 billion this year. This caught huge intention in the market and I’ve read several Blogs in Wall street journal,Bloomberg and Financial times stating different opinions about this.

One of the blogs which drew my attention was Bloomberg’s “Japan creates world’s biggest bubble“. It stated negatively about the action Haruhiko Kuroda did and said it is destroying Japan’s Market stand.

In my view, Japan has suffered liquidity trap, or in other words, deflationary trap since the 1990s. Therefore, there is no use to continue opening the liquidity channel (Keynes liquidity preference model), I think the way which the BOJ is doing is kind of like introducing or promoting the inflation channel or other channels which Milton Friedman stated in his well known claim.So in this way,what the BOJ has done is understandable.But I agree with the blog which it stated that Japan is creating a huge bubble in the bond market because a large purchase of long term government bonds. Once the government steps into the the market,it is very hard for them to exit and might lead to a debt monetization which would turn the central bank of Japan into a government tool.

Below is the Central Bank assets of some of the worlds important central banks including the BOJ

What they really need to focus on is to change the expectation of the Japanese which stayed there for 17 years. As I mentioned in my previous blog,never underestimate the power of people’s expectation!

Whether Haruhiko Kuroda is a genius or a madman we cannot judge now, since this is the only better and modern way which Japan could do. Lets just wait and see.

Reference

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-04/japan-creates-world-s-biggest-bond-bubble

After carefully reading my classmates blogs, I found some of them really interesting  and well written, highlighting the current hot issues.

Cassandra’s blog attracted me because it’s an issue which is relevant to me. She stated that online shopping is gradually taking the role of malls and threatening the malls. In an aspect, online shopping indeed can reduce the time spent for customers and the money for gasolines.

Although people might feel it more convenient to stay at home because of the stress and fast-paced life nowadays, I don’t think that this will create a huge threat to the mall. Personally I feel really relaxed if I can shop in the mall with my whole family after a stressful and hard weekday. Sometimes we don’t buy stuff, but only wander around and chat with my family. This is something which online shopping can’t bring us. In order to compete with the online shopping service, malls need to focus more on creating a pleasant shopping environment.  This can be created by decorating the mall related to the upcoming festivals or even try some entertaining activities and lottery draws. This will make the customers feel happier and more satisfied.

Nevertheless, in the mall we can actually feel and touch the product which is a something that online shopping cannot give us. The survey  regarding the major online retailers such as Amazon, Craiglist and Ebay states that Customer’s satisfaction had hit the lowest point in 12 years . People often find the product different to the image on the website and therefore want to require a refund but it would be hard since they need to ship them back again. In this way, it would be far more convenient if they could see the product and feel it.

I agree with Cassandra’s recommendation that for the customers who are really busy, the mall should provide online product pick up services as this saves the customer’s time to pick the product, while allowing them to see the real product.

The professor introduced the Global Financial Crisis in our Comm 101 class this week and asked us to post on pulse press who is it to blame for the crisis: the People, the bank or the government?

In class, I thought it was mainly the fault of the bank because in my opinion, they shouldn’t lend it to the people with high risks, or in other words, those with a high possibility of failing to return the money.

After going home and doing a deep research about this, I realized that it was complicated, and that neither the banks nor the Fed could evade the responsibility.

” You were right, we did it. We are very sorry. But thanks to you,we won’t do it again.” That is what Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said on Milton Friedman’s 90th birthday. What he said was basically about the Great depression which Milton Friedman argue was caused not by stock market crash but by the poor monetary policies.

Ben Bernanke promised that he would not do this again, but in 2008, he did it again!

The transcript of the Fed’s meeting from June 24-25 2008 revealed that there was 468 mentions of inflation but nothing barely taking about the crash of the Money Multiplier. The Fed kept the interest rate constant which just increased bank’s Excess Reserves, instead the Fed should decrease the interest rate to increase liquidity.

Above showed the Crash in Money multiplier which lead to the Huge Financial Crisis in 2008.

Although the Fed has to pay for the wrong policy, the banks could not evade responsibilities as well. No matter how bad the policy was, the CDOs and CDS was the start of the crisis which led to a huge uncertainty and the loss of information in the market.

References

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/03/the-fed-is-responsible-for-the-crash-in-the-money-multiplier-and-the-failure-of-the-economy-to-recover.html

Whether reject or accept the BC Hydro’s $8-billion Site C hydroelectric megaproject has been a hot argument recently.

BC Hydro wants to construct and operate a dam and 1,100-megawatt hydroelectric generating station on the Peace River in northeastern British Columbia.BC has been developing fast recent years,It has been Canada’s third-largest generator of hydro electricity, providing one of the lowest power costs in North America.It is Canada’s second-largest natural gas producer, and the oil and gas industry continues to see tremendous growth in the northeast.In order to develop or with the growing population we need the clean hydroelectricity.But the first nation representative argued that the dam will destroy nature wildlife and farmland which is basically a living for them.

In my point of view,I think we should still build the dam since the BC province industry relies on hydroelectric and using hydro is cheap and environmentally friendly but we could reduce the size therefore reduce the damage of ecosystem.There is always a lot of benefits of using hydroelectric,for example the Tennessee River project in America encouraged the whole economic development of that area and promoted Aqua farming.Also we could try alternative method such as using wind energy,Solar energy or geothermal energy.They could perhaps change a location since Vancouver is near the Rocky mountain which could generate the geothermal energy and near the ocean which could use tide energy to generate electricity.

There must be an optimal solution to develop the industry and protect the first nation,The government just need to think more carefully about the whole situation.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/First+Nation+chiefs+stage+Site+showdown/10215965/story.html

By reading though Money and Banking books during this week I discovered a very intresting term—consumer or market expectation.In the 20 century,governments like to introduce a theory called Fine tunning which is trying to change the short term interest rate and hope an effect on the whole macro economy.Due to the expectation hypothesis,the change in interest rate will not effect the expected interest rate and lead to a very small percentage change of investment which hardly effect the aggregate demand.

So what we really need to do is to change people expectation of future.Thats what Monetary policy is about,Future guidance!Since different people have different thoughts,it is very hard to use one method to change their expectations.Some might judge the future based on the past which is called adaptive expectations and also we have specialized agents which include the risk inside but we cannot simple predict it 100% correct since there are Random errors which can not be eliminated,so people’s expectation is only a best guess to the future.I often feel very confused about how government can work on this to effect someones thoughts,If the interest rate was low,then people might assume it will rise as a common sense and how can government change this?Only by influencing the money supply?Doubt it!

Therefore sometimes the basic economic policies cannot work,As what Hyman Minsky’s model of financial instability states:Good times are boring and people starts to seek higher returns which lead to another uncertain behavior.

In my view,as what I once saw on a documentary,it states that stock market is absolutely random,we could hardly predict few percentage of it,So is expectation,They might change in a sight and influence the economy.

Matching sellers and buyers in the secondary market is the hallmark of a healthy, liquid bond market.But nowadays with the attraction of financial market making huge money or in other words a person without any financial background can make money with the help of a bond manger or simply following the trend.More and more people starts to buy bonds and enter the financial market.Actually this will led to huge influence of the financial market because a rumor might cause huge decline demand of a typical bond.The vice chairman of Loomis Sayles & Co Dan Fuss said that:“I think it is a very good time to be cautious… You have growing geopolitical risks and you have shrinking incentives to invest.”Due to wars and war rumors the credit is rising and therefore bond yields are falling which might not be able to provide people a stable income but since so many people are in the bond market now it is a real big issue.This also put up the liquid premium.

Since yield has drop so much,this led to 2 situations.One is the bond trade decreased,The second is it cause some investors starting to buying the junk Bonds.

In my view people are buying some risks that they aren’t familiar with which is a huge danger,Even thought the investors might be rich but there influence will harm the market.Once the yield curve starts to shift upwards this will led to a crisis.Therefore in order to increase the trade of bonds but lower the yield,Governments should keep on with QE 2 which pulls down the longer time risky bond and this might drive people back to buying the short term bonds with more liquidity.

http://stream.marketwatch.com/story/markets/SS-4-4/SS-4-72085/

A i.t specialist is more important that an analyst or even then the actuary
Cybersecurtity attack
How can me make it more safer?
Online shopping makes it much more convenient but consider the possible drawbacks?
JP Morgan states that said hackers were unable to gather detailed information on accounts, such as account numbers, passwords, Social Security numbers or dates of birth. Customer money is “safe,” the bank said in a statement to customers on Thursday.
But some bank specialist says that it is unlikely to attack customers but instead it will affect the bank instead.
Target Corp.’s cyberattack last holiday season affected 40 million payment cards and 70 million names, addresses, emails and phone numbers. After that,the company’s CEO resigned.Why is the CEO taking the responsibly?The company changed another CEO and hired a lot of i.t specialist.So the company fires employees which they say might forgot to logout there account and don’t blame on the I.t department which is actually in direct control to these stuff and hire more.Does that mean nowadays an I.t specialist in the company becomes more and more important?
Actually,HSBC in Vancouver takes this very carefully.They never let customers plug in the u-disk or access their manger’s email.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/j-p-morgan-says-about-76-million-households-affected-by-cyber-breach-1412283372