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-Todays international financial system is private with only marginal official participation. Showdown between government and banks during currency crisis of 1972. ?Smithsonian Agreement ,? allowed greater flexibility in currency values. In the 70?s U.S firms weren?t even loyal to the dollar. Sophisticated speculation playing a major role in international finance. Everyone is trying to cash in on exchange fluctuations ?leads and lags.? (I say why not) Central banks are big losers: their intervention, and inflow of dollars was so large that it was inflationary. Lesson learned is that they cannot control private capital flows. Firms did protect themselves against the anticipated devaluation over a longer term by shifting the currency composition of liquid assets and debts, and by prepaying accounts payable in currencies expected to be devalued. In 1973 we basically exported inflation to Europe. No one is sure how close we came to a financial disaster in the 70?s, but it?s a fact that w e were on the edge. *Franklin-Herstatt failure contained. Floating rates survived. Chapter Four-The Economics and Politics of Global Debt   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  -In the nineteenth century, private banks helped countries cope with swings in the trade cycle and made emergency loans to keep governments afloat. A reason why bankers disliked the Bretton Woods Conference was that it created a competing public sector institution, the IMF, to provide short-term loans to countries experiencing trade and financial difficulties. The Third World owes the Western banking system over half a trillion dollars. Lost cause thinking we will be payed back. Global debt crisis had two fundamental causes-importance of Third World countries in global banking revolution of 60?s and 70?s; series of economic shocks that hit the world economy in the 70?s.Richard Weinert lists four main factors that are responsible for the banks? expansionist thrust into the Third World in the 70?s: servicing client needs, defensive expansion to keep clients, earnings growth, and the opportunities offered by Eurocurrency markets. Economic shock of 70?s: inflation, dr amatic increase in oil prices, and slowdown in world economic growth (recession on 74-75), soaring interest rates.

Computer Information Specialist Essay

Computer Information Specialist, Inc. (CIS) filed a protest of the award of a contract to Open Technology Group, Inc. (OTG). CIS responded to a request for proposals (RFP) No. NLM-030101/SAN by the Department of Health and Human Services for telecommunications support services at the agency’s Bethesda, Maryland facility. The solicitation specified a requirements contract with fixed hourly rates for a base year with four 1-year options. The agency intended to award the contract based on â€Å"best value† with several non-price criteria as the most heavily weighted factors. Proposals were to include fully-loaded, fixed hourly rates for labor categories. The agency received numerous proposals and established a competitive range of four firms after initial evaluation. The range included CIS as well as OTG the eventual awardee. Following the contract award to OTG; CIS underwent an agency debrief and subsequently filed a protest asserting that both its proposal and the propos al of OTG were misevaluated. Issues Agencies are required to evaluate proposals based solely on the evaluation factors identified in the solicitation. Furthermore, according to Federal Acquisition Regulations, they must adequately document the reasons for their evaluation conclusions (FAR § 15.308). GAO recommended to the agency was to, at a minimum reevaluate both proposals to ascertain if they were evaluated based on the evaluation factors and to determine if adequate rationale were articulated. Decisions (Holdings) Anthony H. Gamboa, General Counsel wrote the recommendation. The protest was sustained. Reasoning (Rationale)   GAO concluded that the Department of Health and Human Services misevaluated the proposals of both CIS and OTG, contract awardee. In addition, they found that the agency’s misevaluation was prejudicial to CIS, â€Å"since there is a reasonable possibility that, but for the agency’s errors, CIS might have been selected for award notwithstanding its higher price.† Separate Opinions No dissenting opinion was published with GAO’s decision. Analysis GAO analyzed the proposals from both CIS and OTG against the RFP’s stated evaluation criteria. The Department of Health and Human Services’ source selection team consisted of five evaluators. In the case of the proposal by CIS, the initial evaluation criticized the proposal for not offering personnel that met all of the solicitation minimum personnel experience requirements. CIS revised their proposal to cure this deficiency. In further evaluation, four of the five evaluators scored this area higher than the initial proposal. However, the fifth evaluator scored the proposal dramatically differently. In the first evaluation, only cursory notes were provided to support conclusions. In the second evaluation, most evaluators still provided limited support. However, the fifth evaluator provided comments. Many of the comments were either inaccurate or held not relation to evaluation criteria. With regard to the OTG proposal, GAO determined that the solicitation failed to meet two of the evaluation criteria and should not have been accepted in the competitive range. It was also recommended that the agency terminate the contract awarded to OTG for the convenience of the government and make award to the firm found to be in line for award. Furthermore CIS was to be reimbursed all costs associated with the protest to include legal fees.

Video Game Essay - 923 Words

Have you ever wondered how games impact children? or why kids love to play them? Well your about to find out and the answer may be surprising. Video games were first introduced in the 1970s. By the end of that decade they had become a preferred childhood leisure activity, and adults responded with concern about the possible ill effects of the games on children. Early research on these effects was inconclusive. However, a resurgence in video game sales that began in the late 1980s after the introduction of the Nintendo system has renewed interest in examining the effects of video games. The increasingly realistic and exciting nature of electronic games has helped to make them enormously popular with children and youth. 79% of American†¦show more content†¦Students who had previously played the violent video game delivered longer noise blasts to their opponents (Anderson Dill, 2000). In a study of 8th and 9th graders, students who played more violent video games were also mor e likely to see the world as a hostile place, to get into frequent arguments with teachers, and to be involved in physical fights It has often been suggested that violent video games are not the culprit for these types of behaviors; instead, the cause is underlying hostility. The argument goes, Hostile kids get into more arguments and more fights. They also like to play more violent games. While this is true, it is not the whole story. This study measured children’s trait hostility, and found that exposure to video game violence is a significant predictor of physical fights, even when students’ sex, hostility level, and amount of video game playing are controlled statistically. If hostility were the whole story, then in general, only hostile children would tend to get into fights, and children with the lowest hostility scores would not get into physical fights regardless of their video game habits. Figure 1 shows the percentages of students who report being involved in physical fights within the previous year. Children with the lowest hostility scores are almost 10 times more likely to have been involved in physical fights if they play a lot ofShow MoreRelatedThe Love of the Game: Video Games Essay977 Words   |  4 PagesThe Love of the Game Currently, video games are a part of the lives of nearly all children. Video games are an element of modern life and have a lasting impact. There are various opinions regarding the impact that video games have on young children. For example there are those who believe that video games cause nothing but harm to children. On the other hand, there are others who believe that video games effectively support children’s learning. Educational video games offer children endlessRead More Video Games Essay4473 Words   |  18 PagesVideo Games I. The Video or Computer Game Industry The now multi-billion dollar video game industry starting slowly. In 1972, Atari developed Pong, a simple tennis-like game played on the television screen. Pongwas followed by Space Invadersin 1978 (Griffiths 223). Since then, thousands of games are available over the Internet, on CDROM for personal computers, hand-held units, and television console units like Playstation, Nintento, and Sega. Further, the market has developed beyondRead More video games Essay1559 Words   |  7 Pages The Effects of Video Games on the Body nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;In households with children, sixty seven percent of them own a video game system. The game industry’s worldwide video game annual sales reached over 25 billion at the end of 2004. 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However, a resurgence in video game sales that began in the late 1980s after the introductionRead More Video Game Violence Essay examples2549 Words   |  11 Pagesâ€Å"Video Game Violence Does Not Cause Violent Tendencies† An In-Depth Look at Video Game Violence and its Positives Effects â€Å"On Tuesday, November 2, while the rest of the country was voting, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in Schwarzenegger v. EMA, the landmark case in which the state of California is petitioning for the re-instatement of a California law banning the sale of deviant or morbid violent video games to minors† (Macris). This case is a current example of the