Alternatives of interest and usury Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Alternatives of interest and usury - Essay Example Sweden has given a thought to implement a variant of an interest free system. As mentioned in Islam (2008), 35000 members of JAK Bank have saved 97 million Euros, of which 86 million were given as loans. JAK does not charge or pay interest on its loans. Administrative and developmental costs are paid by membership and loan fees. JAK has a variety of banking products all of which come into action by balancing the individual's saving point system. Carrie (2004) researched the work of JAK and concludes that the bank provides affordable and responsible finance and enables its members to have a say in where and how their money is invested. This shows that the outcome of interest free banking does not always relates to a dominantly Muslim country and can exist viably in a western capitalist state. Interest is generally thought as an extra amount charged over and above the principal amount which is accepted as unethical or unfair in Muslim world. A borrower is a person who is needy and a le nder exploits them by charging them with interest so a simple question of justifying the ethical basis of interest arises? This question may be answered by another question, is it alright that an already needy person is being oppressed? Our banking systems ultimately covert into an ugly vicious cycle consisting of a borrower and lender thus there exists a genuine need to find alternatives where interest speculation and gambling can be avoided with debt-like financing, futures and option like contracts and insurance/assurance-like products. Now coming over to debt financing, it is a kind of transaction that is solely dependent on interest! for example a person A needs to raise working capital for their company so they only way they have is to issue notes or bonds of, say $1000 to everyone now that investor will receive an interest of 10% of 10000 after four months. In simpler terms you can say that debt is borrowing money from an outside source with the promise to return the principa l, in addition to a agreed upon level of interest. Debt financing is one of the most used methods of financing. The reason why debt financing is so commonly used is that it helps maintain ownership because when you borrow from banks then you have to return the agreed amount on time however here you can choose the time of repayment for yourself without anybody else's interference. Moreover the most attractive factor is that you can decide the amount of interest rate yourself, it is an open option for you according to your budget, but we do need to find ways of excluding interest on it. Here the question is that is this possible? The best alternative is interest free equity financing. Equity financing is an act of raising money for company activities by selling common or preferred stock to individual or institutional investors. In return for the money paid, shareholders receive ownership rights in the corporation. In most cases equity financing is preferred over debt financing especia lly where the company wants to move on an interest free basis. Here there is no interest cost, the company does not has to pay any interest to the amount provided by the owners ( the stockholders) in fact the cost of production remains low as there is no burden of interes

African Americans in the U.S. Essay Example for Free

African Americans in the U.S. Essay African Americans (American Blacks or Black Americans), racial group in the United States whose dominant ancestry is from sub-Saharan West Africa. Many African Americans also claim European, Native American, or Asian ancestors. A variety of names have been used for African Americans at various points in history. African Americans have been referred to as Negroes, colored, blacks, and Afro-Americans, as well as lesser-known terms, such as the 19th-century designation Anglo-African. The terms Negro and colored are now rarely used. African American, black, and to a lesser extent Afro-American, are used interchangeably today. Recent black immigrants from Africa and the islands of the Caribbean are sometimes classified as African Americans. However, these groups, especially first- and second-generation immigrants, often have cultural practices, histories, and languages that are distinct from those of African Americans born in the United States. For example, Caribbean natives may speak French, British English, or Spanish as their first language. Emigrants from Africa may speak a European language other than English or any of a number of African languages as their first language. Caribbean and African immigrants often have little knowledge or experience of the distinctive history of race relations in the United States. Thus, Caribbean and African immigrants may or may not choose to identify with the African American community. According to 2000 U. S. census, some 34. 7 million African Americans live in the United States, making up 12. 3 percent of the total population. 2000 census shows that 54. 8 percent African Americans lived in the South. In that year, 17. 6 percent of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18. 7 percent in the Midwest, while only 8. 9 percent lived in the Western states. Almost 88 percent of African Americans lived in metropolitan areas in 2000. With over 2 million African American residents, New York City had the largest black urban population in the United States in 2000. Washington, D. C. , had the highest proportion of black residents of any U. S. city in 2000, with African Americans making up almost 60 percent of the population. Microsoft  ® Encarta  ® 2009.  © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Atlantic Slave Trade, Atlantic Slave Trade, the forced transportation of at least 10 million enslaved Africans from their homelands in Africa to destinations in Europe and the Americas during the 15th through 19th centuries. European and North American slave traders transported most of these slaves to areas in tropical and subtropical America, where the vast majority worked as laborers on large agricultural plantations. See Slavery. Between 1440 and 1880 Europeans and North Americans exchanged merchandise for slaves along 5600 km (3500 miles) of Africa’s western and west central Atlantic coasts. These slaves were then transported to other locations around the Atlantic Ocean. The vast majority went to Brazil, the Caribbean, and Spanish-speaking regions of South America and Central America. Smaller numbers were taken to Atlantic islands, continental Europe, and English-speaking areas of the North American mainland. Approximately 12 million slaves left Africa via the Atlantic trade, and more than 10 million arrived. The Atlantic slave trade involved the largest intercontinental migration of people in world history prior to the 20th century. This transfer of so many people, over such a long time, had enormous consequences for every continent bordering the Atlantic. It profoundly changed the racial, social, economic, and cultural makeup in many of the American nations that imported slaves. It also left a legacy of racism that many of those nations are still struggling to overcome. Microsoft  ® Encarta  ® 2009.  © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Civil Rights Movement in the United States, political, legal, and social struggle by black Americans to gain full citizenship rights and to achieve racial equality. The civil rights movement was first and foremost a challenge to segregation, the system of laws and customs separating blacks and whites that whites used to control blacks after slavery was abolished in the 1860s. During the civil rights movement, individuals and civil rights organizations challenged segregation and discrimination with a variety of activities, including protest marches, boycotts, and refusal to abide by segregation laws. Many believe that the movement began with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and ended with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, though there is debate about when it began and whether it has ended yet. The civil rights movement has also been called the Black Freedom Movement, the Negro Revolution, and the Second Reconstruction. Microsoft  ® Encarta  ® 2009.  © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. AAVE Distinctive patterns of language use among African Americans arose as creative responses to the hardships imposed on the African American community. Slave-owners often intentionally mixed people who spoke many different African languages to discourage communication in any language other than English on their plantations. Moreover, many whites were unwilling to allow blacks to learn proper English. One response to these conditions was the development of pidgins, simplified mixtures of two or more languages that speakers of different languages could use to communicate with each other. Some of these pidgins eventually became fully developed Creole languages spoken by certain groups as a native language. Significant numbers of people still speak some of these Creole languages, notably Gullah on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also called black English or Ebonics, is a dialect of English spoken by many African Americans that shares some features with Creole languages. Microsoft  ® Encarta  ® 2009.  © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Dark They Were And Golden-Eyed Essay -- essays research papers fc

Dark They Were And Golden-Eyed   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Science fiction is a very interesting subject because you never really know for sure if it’s fiction or not. The scientific information contained in these stories makes you think; could this be real? The possibility is always there, in the back of your mind, just lingering around that these concepts could be reality. One day when you hear on the news about something you read in a science fiction novel, or saw in a science fiction movie, you’ll really start thinking about it. Ray Bradbury’s Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed is a great science fiction story to get you thinking about science fiction. I’m going to try and use Bradbury’s story as an example of science fiction as genre. In Dark they Were and Golden-Eyed Bradbury shows you how life might be like if people lived on Mars. He gives the people a reason for going to Mars and then a reason why they must stay there. The people on Mars slowly start to change, their skin turns dark and their eyes begin to be covered with a gold film. None of the human really cared except for one, Harry Bittering. Harry was reluctant to stay since the second he stepped on to Mars. When him and his family got off the rocket and looked around Harry got a cold look on his face, â€Å"What’s wrong?† asked his wife. â€Å"Let’s get back on the rocket.† Said Harry. â€Å"Go back to Earth?† said his wife. â€Å"Yes! Listen!† said Harry (131). Bradbury repeats a lot of words like wind and gold. He said â€Å" The win...

The Creatures Quest for Love-Frankenstein

In the fourteenth chapter of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein the creature is telling Victor what he has learned from watching the people who live in the cottages. He tells him that they were once very influential citizens of Paris. The father was a Turk who was falsely accused of a crime and Felix risks everything to save him from spending his life in prison for a crime he did not commit. Felix meets the Turks daughter Safie and falls in love with her. Safie was very happy to marry Felix because it would take her out of a place where women could not be independent.Felix’s plan was discovered and they were all banished from France and all of their wealth was taken from them. They found themselves settling in a cottage in Germany. After watching the cottagers for so long the creature has learned acceptance and love even when there is a price to pay for it and wishes only for Victor to give him that same type of acceptance. After Victor’s mother died he was obsessed with finding the spark of life. He dug up graves and took pieces of human body parts and put them together to form his own creation. After bringing it to life he is disgusted by what he sees.The creature turns out to be a hideous creation. Victor runs out of his apartment leaving the creature alone and the creature retreats to the forest at which time he discovers the family living there. The creature tells Victor of his struggles since he was created. He tells him about the rejection he as experienced while he wondered the lands. He tells Victor that people do not welcome him as he thought they might. He comes across a family living in the forest. After watching the family the creature learns that he is not like everyone else. He is different and wonders where he fits in.He wonders if he should be with the humans or the animals, he says in Chapter 13, â€Å"I was not even of the same nature as man, where do I belong in the scheme of life, with men or among the animals? † He also knew that he had a creator and that creator was Victor. He wanted answers from Victor. The creature finds Victors jacket in the woods and gets his notes from the jacket pockets. In the notes the creature finds out exactly how he was created. This new information is sickening to the creature. The creature continues watching the family in the cottages.He is intrigued with the way the family reacts to Safie returning with servants and money. He understands that Safie takes care of all of them in a loving way. He starts to notice the roll of women. He then starts to wonder why he has no woman. He then kills Victor’s brother to show him that he is serious in his request for a mate. He tells Victor that he will kill him too if he does not make him a woman. The creature felt that if he had a mate then he would have the love and acceptance that he longed for and that maybe he would be more like the humans; normal. Victor does not create the creature a mate.He realizes that there cou ld be two of the monsters on the lose murdering and doing hideous things. He also envisions what could happen if they were to have children. With this in mind he destroys her in front of the creature. The creature vows to get revenge on Victor for depriving him of the love he longs for. He tells Victor that he will be with him on his wedding night and Victor assumes that the creature is promising that he will kill Victor. Victor marries Elizabeth and all the while wondering when the creature will make good onh is promise. The creature does and kills Elizabeth instead of Victor.The creature wants to make Victor feel the loneliness that he feels so he takes his mate. Victor tries to shoot the creature but misses and the creature escapes. After this Victor finally tells his story, but by this time all of the damage is done. Victor now wants revenge. He has lost everyone he loved and the one thing that is to blame for it is still on the lose. Victor never would accept the creature or ex tend any hint of love or care for him. The creature thought the reason was that he was so disgustingly ugly and he hated Victor for creating him that way.He hated it so much that he wreaked havoc on Victor by killing everyone he loved. All of this could have been avoided had Victor just accepted the creature. The creature finally realizes that his looks are so bad that no one will ever have anything to do with him, much less love him. But he keeps looking for acceptance and tries to reason with Victor to make him understand how the creature longs for a relationship. The two actually have something in common. They both search for happiness and love and both end up with neither.

Management and Harbin Engineering University

Question1 – Please give a brief summary of your current recreational and leisure activities, including sports and hobbies. * †¢I am a grade eight pianist and play a number of other musical instruments including guitar and drums. I used to be a member of a band for two years and participated in a number of performances. I successfully organized two Christmas parties for the department when I was in Harbin Engineering University. †¢I enjoy playing basketball, swimming, playing pool as the methods of relaxation. Question2 – What clubs and societies are you a member of and in what capacity? * I worked as a team member of the event management section belonging to the student union of University of Strathclyde. â€Å"Battle of Bands† is one of the event I worked for with five team members to deal with the Finance and Marketing parts. Set up the budget and successfully generated funding from companies. Question3 – What factors have influenced your career choice? I am an enthusiastic team player and appreciate the value of working well with others. I have a natural affinity towards problem solving and enjoy reading and researching developments in the financial industry. During my spare time, I found myself reading and researching stock market data and investing in a portfolio of my own. I was frequently asked to completing tasks at short notice, which required me to have great organizing skill and work well under pressure. My general interest and passion for the industry is one of my principal reasons for pursuing a degree in Finance. Question4 – Outline your career ambitions and objectives. * My short-term objective is to work in a fast growing company which can provide me with great opportunities to add value to the company by using my education and variety of experiences and eventually increase its bottom line. My long-term objective is to become a qualified professional and a considerable manager or leader of the company. On the other hand, I will attain the professional qualifications such as CFA, ACCA, etc. Question5 – At KPMG our global values guide the way that we interact with each other and help to create our open, friendly and supportive culture. Please tell us about a situation where you have used two of KPMG's values to achieve a positive outcome. *