Hathaway and Scottish Power Essay Example for Free

Hathaway and Scottish Power Essay 1.What is the possible meaning of the changes in stock price for Berkshire Hathaway and Scottish Power plc on the day of the acquisition announcement? Specifically, what does the $2.55 billion gain in Berkshire’s market value of equity imply about the intrinsic value of PacifiCorp? 2.Based on the multiples for comparable regulated utilities, what is the range of possible values for PacifiCorp? What questions might you have about this range? 3.Assess the bid for PacifiCorp. How does it compare with the firm’s intrinsic value? As an alternative, the instructor could suggest that students perform a simple discounted cash-flow (DCF) analysis. 4.How well has Berkshire Hathaway performed? How well has it performed in the aggregate? What about its investment in MidAmerican Energy Holdings? 5.What is your assessment of Berkshire’s investments in Buffett’s Big Four: American Express, Coca-Cola, Gillette, and Wells Fargo? 6.From Warren Buffett’s perspective, what is the intrinsic value? Why is it accorded such importance? How is it estimated? What are the alternatives to intrinsic value? Why does Buffett reject them? 7.Critically assess Buffett’s investment philosophy. Be prepared to identify points where you agree and disagree with him. 8.Should Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders endorse the acquisition of PacifiCorp? 1.What does the stock market seem to be saying about the acquisition of PacifiCorp by Berkshire Hathaway? 2.Based on your own analysis, what do you think PacifiCorp was worth on its own before its acquisition by Berkshire? 3.Do you think Buffett is overpaying? 4.Here are the major elements of Buffett’s philosophy. What do those elements mean? Do you agree with them? 5.Let’s return to the basic issue. Is the PacifiCorp acquisition a good or bad deal? Why?

If Slavery were Considered Moral :: Slavery

Describe the differences of this time period if slavery was considered "right". ISSUES TO UNDERSTAND CH. 14 1) The Compromise of 1850 was a dispute on whether or not Mexico (gained by US) would become a slave or free state. The northerners didn't want the 36'30' line to be moved to the Pacific and the southerners didn't want "free soilism" which would make Mexico a free state. Northerners gained from the Compromise California as a free state, New Mexico and Utah as likely future slave states, a favorable settlement of the New Mexico-Texas boundary, and the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Colombia. Southerners gained the burial of the Wilmot Proviso's persistence of new territories being free states, but the position of the free-soilers remained viable, for the compromise left open the question of whether Congress could prohibit slavery in territories outside the Mexican cession. Ââ€"How did the Compromise of 180 affect Southerners? 2) The Fugitive Slave Act affected the relationship between the two sides because often when a slave would leave and escape to the North, northerners wouldn't do anything to help get the slave back, in fact, in most incidents northerners tried to help keep slaves away from southerners if they escaped. South began to realize that opposition to slavery in the North was a threat to what they believed.-What was the Fugitive Slave Act and how did it hurt Southerners? 3) Uncle Tom's Cabin made many people convert to the belief that slavery was wrong and evil. It caused many people to view southerners as evil people. It also made northerners have sympathy for black slaves.-How did this book affect people's view of slavery? 4) The second party system collapsed because Whigs began to split into two groups: the American (know-nothing) Party and the Republican Party. Whigs also began to fall apart because of immigration. They thought immigration would not be important because they wouldn't be a big enough force for voting. So when the Whigs tried to get immigrant votes it just backfired and caused them to lose some ground with Protestant Whigs because the party had a hard anti-immigrant stand. Ââ€"What was the second party system? 5) The Nebraska-Kansas Act made many people angry because they thought that it was another territory that would be a slave state and not free. The idea of making it a state was to benefit Northerners because they were going to put a railroad system going through the Midwest to the pacific.

Distinction of Sex and Gender

1. The sex/gender distinction. The terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ mean different things to different feminist theorists and neither are easy or straightforward to characterize. Sketching out some feminist history of the terms provides a helpful starting point. 1. 1 Biological determinism Most people ordinarily seem to think that sex and gender are coextensive: women are human females, men are human males. Many feminists have historically disagreed and have endorsed the sex/ gender distinction.Provisionally: ‘sex’ denotes human females and males depending on biological features (chromosomes, sex organs, hormones and other physical features);‘gender’ denotes women and men depending on social factors (social role, position, behaviour or identity). The main feminist motivation for making this distinction was to counter biological determinism or the view that biology is destiny. A typical example of a biological determinist view is that of Ged des and Thompson who, in 1889, argued that social, psychological and behavioural traits were caused by metabolic state.Women supposedly conserve energy (being ‘anabolic’) and this makes them passive, conservative, sluggish, stable and uninterested in politics. Men expend their surplus energy (being ‘katabolic’) and this makes them eager, energetic, passionate, variable and, thereby, interested in political and social matters. These biological ‘facts’ about metabolic states were used not only to explain behavioural differences between women and men but also to justify what our social and political arrangements have to be.It would be inappropriate to grant women political rights, as they are simply not suited to have those rights; it would also be futile since women (due to their biology) would simply not be interested in exercising their political rights. To counter this kind of biological determinism, feminists have argued that behavioural and psychological differences have social, rather than biological, causes. For instance, Simone de Beauvoir famously claimed that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman, and that â€Å"social discrimination produces in women moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to be caused by nature†.Commonly observed behavioural traits associated with women and men, then, are not caused by anatomy or chromosomes. Rather, they are culturally learned or acquired. Although biological determinism of the kind endorsed by Geddes and Thompson is nowadays uncommon, the idea that behavioural and psychological differences between women and men have biological causes has not disappeared. In the 1970s, sex differences were used to argue that women should not become airline pilots since they will be hormonally unstable once a month and, therefore, unable to perform their duties as well as men (Rogers 1999, 11).More recently, differences in male and female brains have been said to explain behavioural differences; in particular, the anatomy of corpus callosum, a bundle of nerves that connects the right and left cerebral hemispheres, is thought to be responsible for various psychological and behavioural differences. 1. 2 Gender terminology In order to distinguish biological differences from social/psychological ones and to talk about the latter, feminists appropriated the term ‘gender’.Psychologists writing on trans sexuality were the first to employ gender terminology in this sense. However, in order to explain why some people felt that they were ‘trapped in the wrong bodies’, the psychologist Robert Stoller (1968) began using the terms ‘sex’ to pick out biological traits and ‘gender’ to pick out the amount of femininity and masculinity a person showed. Along with psychologists like Stoller, feminists found it useful to distinguish sex and gender.This enabled them to argue that many differences between women and men were socially produced and, therefore, changeable. For instance Gayle Rubin's thought was that although biological differences are fixed, gender differences are the oppressive results of social interventions that dictate how women and men should behave. Women are oppressed as women and â€Å"by having to be women† (Rubin 1975, 204). However, since gender is social, it is thought to be changeable and adjustable by political and social reform that would ultimately bring an end to women's subordination.Feminism should aim to create a â€Å"genderless (though not sexless) society, in which one's sexual anatomy is irrelevant to who one is, what one does, and with whom one makes love† (Rubin 1975, 204). In some earlier interpretations, like Rubin's, sex and gender were thought to complement one another. The slogan ‘Gender is the social interpretation of sex’ captures this view. Nicholson calls this ‘the coat-rack view’ of gender: our sexed bodies are like coat racks and â€Å"provide the site upon which gender [is] constructed† (1994, 81).Gender conceived of as masculinity and femininity is superimposed upon the ‘coat-rack’ of sex as each society imposes on sexed bodies their cultural conceptions of how males and females should behave. This socially constructs gender differences – or the amount of femininity/masculinity of a person– upon our sexed bodies. That is, according to this interpretation, all humans are either male or female; their sex is fixed. But cultures interpret sexed bodies differently and project different norms on those bodies thereby creating feminine and masculine persons.So, this group of feminist arguments against biological determinism suggested that gender differences result from cultural practices and social expectations. Nowadays it is more common to denote this by saying that gender is socially constructed. This means that genders (women and men) and gendere d traits (like being nurturing or ambitious) are the â€Å"intended or unintended product[s] of a social practice† (Haslanger 1995, 97). But which social practices construct gender, what social construction is and what being of a certain gender amounts to are major feminist controversies.There is no consensus on these issues. (See the entry on Intersections between Analytic and Continental Feminism for more on different ways to understand gender. ) 5. Conclusion This entry first looked at feminist arguments against biological determinism and the claim that gender is socially constructed. Next, it examined feminist critiques of prevalent understandings of gender and sex, and the distinction itself. In response to these concerns, the final section looked at how a unified women's category could be articulated for feminist political purposes and illustrated (at least) two things.First, that gender — or what it is to be a woman or a man — is still very much a live is sue. Second, that feminists have not entirely given up the view that gender is about social factors and that it is (in some sense) distinct from biological sex. The jury is still out on what the best, the most useful or (even) the correct definition of gender is. And some contemporary feminists still find there to be value in the original 1960s sex/gender distinction.

The Global Issue Of Population Growth - 960 Words

Beyond a doubt we urgently need to address the devastating global issue of population growth in the United States America before we destroy our planet. We are facing many devastating economic problems, such as pollution, global warming, education, but the most critical is overconsumption. Overpopulation is a huge problem in the United States of America, which is causing us to run out of natural resources. The human race is already too large and is destroying the natural systems that support us. There are many solutions to this problem, but the common factor is controlling the human race. What can we do as a society to help contribute to controlling the population growth? â€Å"The United States is the most overpopulated country in the world†. (Ehrlich) Let’s first discuss what is considered to be overpopulated? Overpopulation is â€Å"The condition of having a population so dense as to cause environmental deterioration, an impaired quality of life, or a population crash†. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary.com, 2011). The growing rate of population in America is becoming exceeding extreme and dangerous. â€Å"The rate of population increase, now approximately 1.7 percent a year will decline to a little less than 1 percent sometime between the years 2020-2025†. (Ehrlich) The more people added on to this earth the more resources we will have to use to maintain. Arije 2 The more people increase on this earth, the more we consume resources, causing more damage to the earth that generates moreShow MoreRelatedThe Global Issue Of Population Growth979 Words   |  4 PagesBeyond a doubt we urgently need to address the devastating global issue of population growth in the United States America before we destroy our planet. We are facing many devastating economic problems, such as pollution, global warming, education, but the most critical is overconsumption. 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Then, by analyzing the current situation, this essay will attempt to answer the question how and how much can humans reduce environmental degradation?† The concept of economic growth development Economists evaluate development as â€Å"economic growth† and measuring it by calculating the gross domestic product (GDP) to find and compare the levelRead MoreOverpopulation Is A Catastrophe?841 Words   |  4 Pagesconverted to overpopulation. Currently, the global population is 7 billion, and the increase rate is 1.3% annually that means by the end of the twenty-first century the population will reach twelve billion (Keenan, 2013). Therefore, there is a huge debate going on right now regarding overpopulation. For some people, explosion in population has no detrimental impacts in the future, and it will be bearable. 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