Historical Background of the 1987 Constitution Essay

The historical backdrop of the 1987 Constitution started on 11 April 1899, the date when the Treaty of Paris between the United and Spain of 10 December 1898 got compelling upon the trading of instruments of approval of the two nations. In any case, the wellsprings of the 1987 Constitution are (I) McKinley’s Instructions to the Second Philippine Commission; (ii) Spooner Amendment; (iii) Philippine Bill of 1902; (iv) Jones Law of 1916, also called the Philippine Autonomy Act; (v) 1935 Constitution; (vi) 1973 Constitution and (vi) Freedom Constitution of 1986 and its executing orders. Arrangement of Paris Under the Treaty of Paris, the Philippines was surrendered by Spain to the United States. Spain surrendered its sway over the Philippine Islands, and with this, all laws of a political sort were naturally repealed. The Treaty gave that the common and political status of all occupants of the islands was to be controlled by the US Congress. The Philippines thus, was not given the status of a â€Å"incorporated territory† (as to make it a contender for statehood) thus ex proprio vigore, the US Constitution didn't make a difference to the Philippines except if the US Congress explicitly authorized its arrangements. McKinley’s Instructions President McKinley, enacting as Commander-in-Chief, gave on 7 April 1900 his â€Å"Letter of Instruction to the Second Philippine Commission † under Taft. It set up a â€Å"divided common and military government† with the current Military representative as the Executive, and a Philippine Commission, made on 1 September 1900, as the Legislative, both speaking to the US President as Commander-in-Chief. It likewise reached out to the Philippines all the rights in the Bill of Rights of the US Federal Constitution, aside from the option to remain battle ready (on the grounds that the nation was in disobedience) and the privilege to a preliminary by jury (in light of the fact that the Americans doubted the Filipinos ability to be a simply judge of his companions). The privilege to jury preliminary of an American accused of a wrongdoing in the Philippines was denied by the courts in US v Dorr, 2 Phil 332 (1903) by temperance of the Letter of Instruction. This was the principal Organic Act (a law which builds up the structure and constraints of the legislature) of the Philippines. What it needed, as a constitution, were the endorsement by the individuals, and the privilege of alteration (which was saved exclusively to the US President). The legal executive was accordingly settled on 11 June 1901, with a Supreme Court, Courts of First Instance, and Justice of Peace Courts. Spooner Amendment On 4 July 1901, the Spooner Amendment, which was really a rider to the â€Å"Army and Navy Appropriations Act,† changed the then â€Å"divided, military and common government† into a completely considerate government, under the US Congress. All demonstrations of the Philippine Commission would now start: â€Å"Be it instituted by the authority of the US government,† and no longer by power of the US President. Philippine Bill of 1902 The US Congress currently in charge of the Philippines, approved all the natural demonstrations of the President, so as to forestall disturbance of government, and on 1 July 1900, passed the Philippine Bill of 1902, which was to be natural demonstration of the Philippines from 1902 to 1906. The natural demonstration acquainted huge arrangements with established history. The Philippine Commission was the upper house. It was under the Governor-General who held all the official force, including the ability to suspend the writ of habeas endless supply of the Philippine Commission. It built up an elective lower house called the Philippine Assembly, made completely out of Filipinos. It required the principal political race in the Philippines to top off, the participation in the lower house, when the Philippine rebellion halted and there was a state of general harmony, with the exception of in the Moro and Non-Christian areas. A statistics was taken and finished on 28 March 1903 and with an affirmation of harmony and of Filipino acknowledgment of the US government made by the Philippine Commission on 29 March 1907, the political decision for the Philippine Assembly was led on 10 July 1907, with Osmena as speaker. The Bill additionally characterized just because who the residents of the Philippines were. They were all the occupants of the Philippine islands who were subjects of Spain starting at 11 April 1899, who kept on dwelling in that, and all the youngsters brought into the world ensuing thereto. This definition is still acceptable law today. Jones Law On 29 August 1916, the US Congress passed the Jones Law, also called the Philippine Autonomy Act. It set up a tripartite government with genuine partition of forces; this was the model of our current set-up. The official force was in the possession of an American Governor-General, who was autonomous of the Legislature, and who was enabled to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and force military law without the proposal of the Legislature. The Legislature was made out of the Senate and the House of Representatives, all made out of Filipinos. The legal executive kept on being comprised of the Supreme Court, the CFIs and Justice of Peace Courts. Under this set-up, while the Filipinos has all the administrative force, the Americans had all the official force and therefore, likewise the control of the legislature. Along these lines, in the Board of Control (National Coal Corporation) cases, the US Supreme Court governed, in spite of the contradiction of Holmes and Brandeis, that the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House couldn't cast a ballot the supplies of the NCC and choose its chiefs since this was a political capacity. Just the Governor-General could cast a ballot the administration shares, said the court. The meaning of who were residents of the Philippines initially articulated in the Philippine Bill of 1902, was continued by the Jones Law. Tydings-McDuffie Law In spite of the fact that this was not a natural demonstration, it is significant in the protected history of the Philippines since it was to be the empowering rule, giving the component whereby the constitution of an autonomous Philippines could be embraced. The law, upon its acknowledgment by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Philippines, accommodated (I) the calling of a Constitutional Convention to draft a Constitution for the Philippines, (ii) the reception of a Constitution that built up a republican government, with a Bill of Rights, and a detachment of chapel and state, (iii) the accommodation of the draft to the US President for affirmation that the Constitution was in congruity with the conditions set by the Tydings-McDuffie Law, and (iv) its sanction by the individuals in a plebiscite. Complete autonomy was to happen ten (10) years after its effectivity. 1935 Constitution As needs be, on 30 July 1934, a political race was held to pick the representatives to the Constitutional Convention. Claro M. Recto was chosen President of the Convention. On 8 February 1935, the Concon affirmed the draft. On 23 March 1935, the draft was affirmed by the President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt as complying with the Tydings-McDuffie Law. On 14 May 1935, it was endorsed by the individuals in a plebiscite, with the arrangements on the capabilities of the President, Vice-President and individuals from Congress producing results upon confirmation. In September 1935, the principal political race under the 1935 Constitution was directed with Manuel Luis Quezon as President and Sergio Osmena as Vice-President. On 15 November 1935, upon the initiation of the Commonwealth, the 1935 Constitution produced results. This Constitution was to fill in as the contract of the Commonwealth, endless supply of US sway, of the Republic. The Constitution accommodates a tripartite government, with the official stopped in the President who had a six-year term, the authoritative in a unicameral National Assembly, and the legal executive in a Supreme Court, CFIs and Justice of Peace Courts as in the past. In 1940, it was changed to accommodate (an) a bicameral Congress with a Senate and a House of Representatives; (b) a term of four years for the President, however with re-appointment and (c) the foundation of an autonomous established body known as the Commission on Elections. War followed, and the Philippines was crushed to the point that the assertion of its autonomy, due 15 November 1945 must be deferred. At any rate, on 23 April 1946, the appointment of the main authorities of the Philippine Republic was held, and on 4 July 1946, the Republic was introduced and the Philippines became â€Å"politically† autonomous of the US. Hypothetically, to a degree that sway is never conceded to a people however is earned by them as they affirm their political will, at that point it is a misnomer to state that 4 July 1946 was the day US allowed autonomy to the Philippines. All the more properly, it was the day when the US pulled back its sway over the Philippines, in this manner giving the Filipino individuals an event to affirm their own autonomy. In any case, not â€Å"economically†. On 30 April 1946, multi week after the political race, the US Congress passed the Bell Trade Act which would allow Philippine prime fares passage to the US liberated from customs obligations from 1946 to 1954, and a slow increment in obligations from 1954 to 1974 (Laurel-Langley understanding), given that the Philippines would give US residents and enterprises similar benefits, and likewise, the option to investigate common assets of the Philippines in equality with the Filipinos, and to work open utilities. This must be acknowledged by Congress, typified in an Executive Agreement, and reflected as an alteration in the Constitution. The Senate endorsement of this bill offered ascend to the instance of Vera v Avelino, 77 Phil 192 (1946). The Senate at that point had 11 Nacionalistas and 13 Liberals. Three Nacionalista Senators-choose (Vera, Diokno and Romero), known to be against the Bell Trade Act, were forestalled by the remainder of the Senate, in what is

Comparing Death in Araby and The Metamorphosis Essay -- comparison com

Passing in Araby and The Metamorphosis   Numerous perusers have remarked on the difference of light and obscurity in the story Araby by James Joyce. Maybe the passing of the minister in Araby adds to the murkiness that the kid encounters when he is considering Mangan's sister, as appeared differently in relation to the light he encounters when he is entirely her quality. It is intriguing that the passing of the cleric doesn't turn out to be so dim until Mangan's sister is presented. In the primary scene where the kid visits the minister's old room, he scrounges around and discovers a few fortunes, including paper-secured books, and the late occupant's corroded bike siphon. There is no feeling of agony here, indeed, the kid is by all accounts having some good times investigating and finding things, and thinks back about how the cleric had been an entirely altruistic cleric in a fairly separated way. In any case, later, after the kid's pulverize on Mangan's sister has been presented, this dead cleric's room assumes an altogether different personality. This is where the kid withdraws on a turbulent night while his feelings are stirring inside him. It is not, at this point a spot to investigate, however has taken on just about a holy character. Here the kid encounters his most enthusiastic snapshot of peculiar petitions and acclaims, squeezing the palms of his hands together until they trembled, mumbling: 'Gracious Love! Gracious Love!' commonly. You can nearly feel the nearness of the dead cleric in the room on this dim blustery night as the kid is supplicating, such that you would not feel his quality on the off chance that he were simply on an extended get-away. The way that he has kicked the bucket here in this very room adds to the dramatization and it increases the kid's feelings. Possibly the kid was feeling that the minister was watching him from he... ...ere truly what the family expected to begin living their own lives. In this story the passings of Gregor serve to make clear where he truly remains in the family, and what the genuine circumstance is. In the event that he had not transformed into a bug and at last passed on, neither he nor the family would have ever realized that what he was accomplishing for them wasn't generally helping them. Gregor's demises additionally indicated that the family didn't generally think that much about him, and weren't that thankful for his penances. It draws out the difference between what Gregor was eager to accomplish for his family (kick the bucket) and what his family was happy to accomplish for him (not without a doubt). They needed to dispose of him once his condition began requesting a lot from them. Gregor's passing transforms him into a kind of heartbreaking legend. In the event that the story finished in an unexpected way, I figure perusers would feel less thoughtful towards him.  

Not Much Has Changed

Not Much Has Changed Do you know what day it is? Well, one year ago, on September 17th, 2013, an excited young blogger published a heartfelt post gleefully talking about what his first year at MIT is going to be like. That post was called Two Truths and a Lie, that blogger was me, and today Im a slightly older still-excited blogger who published a heartfelt blog post gleefully talking about what my first year at MIT actually was like. First things first, I started typing this post a few minutes before midnight and now its Thursday the 18th, so Im going to take the time to submerge myself into nostalgia with a #ThrowbackThursday: PCTI Class of 2013 Graduation with my loving Mom and Dad. My 18th Birthday/Going Away Partyoh shoot Im already 19here comes the nostalgia A lot has changed during my first year of MIT. Im smarter now, or at least I hope I am. I learned valuable lessons about discipline and hard work. I did my own laundry and cooked my own food. Oh, and I also joined a frat. Yeah, that was definitely an unexpected decision for me that changed the course of my entire MIT life. For one, I had a guaranteed social life. For two, I had a gorgeous five-story house to live in. For three, I gained 43 new best friends for life. In this photo: Phi Kappa Sigma alumni, upperclassmen, fellow 17ers, and new members. I wanted to make sure everyone was included in this photo, whatever photoshop necessary. But there was a problem. Sure I learned a lot, but I didnt feel different. I expected to come out of my first year feeling completely changed. And yet I felt the same. Even worse, I could still remember high school like it was yesterday. I felt like I time warped to one year later as an MIT Sophomore. Had I wasted my Freshman year? I started thinking back. I started looking through pictures of the past year, from fancy formal pictures to pictures of derping around with friends. I re-listened to the songs we PSetted and danced to. I thought of the bajillion people I met at MIT and how every experience Ive had with them was all within the past year. I thought of the classes Ive taken, the professors Ive talked to, the amount of times I stayed up really late studying, the amount of times I said screw it, and went to bed instead. I remembered the early morning walks to Stata and the late night walks back to Simmons. I remembered all the times I ate at Maseeh Dining and Simmons Dining, all the late night LaVerdes runs, all the different restaurants and places Ive been to in Boston. I remembered all the Skullhouse formals, the mixers, the serenades, and the alumni dinners. I thought about how many times Ive climbed up the steps of Building 7 and walked down the Infinite Corridor to get to class. I cringed because for a moment I had almost began to take it all for granted. Wow. An unbelievably kalosal amount of things have happened between my first blog post and todays blog post. True, high school still feels like it was yesterday, but so does MIT freshman fall, and IAP, and spring. Anyday feels like yesterday to me if I think about it long enough. MIT Freshman Year was another chapter in my book that I can re-read whenever I want, along with every other chapter of my life. Now its sophomore year and theres new Phi Kappa Sigma pledges, new MIT bloggers, new people Simmons folk, new kids on the block. Time to write the next chapter, to be full of exciting new adventures and changes. But some things never change. For one, MIT is still a party My DEECS robot is still the best robot ever and PSets still leave me feeling like this:

The Term Structure Of Bond Market Liquidity Finance Essay - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 18 Words: 5351 Downloads: 5 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Fashion Essay Type Analytical essay Did you like this example? Previous studies of Treasury market illiquidity span short time-periods and focus on particular maturities. In contrast, we study the joint time-series of illiquidity for different maturities over an extended time sample. We also compare time series determinants of on-the-run and off-the-run illiquidity. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "The Term Structure Of Bond Market Liquidity Finance Essay" essay for you Create order Illiquidity increases and the difference between spreads of long- and short-term bonds significantly widens during recessions, suggesting a flight to liquidity phenomenon wherein investors shift into the more liquid short-term bonds during economic contractions. We also document that macroeconomic variables such as inflation and federal fund rates forecast off-the-run illiquidity significantly but have only modest forecasting ability for on-the-run illiquidity. Bond returns across all maturities are forecastable by off-the-run short-term illiquidity but not by illiquidity of other maturities or by on-the-run bond illiquidity. Thus, short-term off-the-run liquidity, by reflecting macro shocks first, is the primary source of the liquidity premium in the Treasury bond market. Ruslan Y. Goyenko, McGill University, 1001 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1G5. E-mail: [email  protected]/* */ Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, Goldyne and Irwin Hearsh Chair in Money and Banking, UCLA Ande rson School of Management, [email  protected]/* */ Andrey D. Ukhov, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, 1309 E. Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN 47405. E-mail: [email  protected]/* */ We thank Yakov Amihud, Michael Fleming, Tyler Henry, Paul Irvine, Tao Shu, Chris Stivers, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, Ginger Wu, and participants in a seminar at the University of Georgia, and at the 2007 Conference on Financial Economics and Accounting at New York University for valuable comments. Abstract Previous studies of Treasury market illiquidity span short time-periods and focus on particular maturities. In contrast, we study the joint time-series of illiquidity for different maturities over an extended time sample. We also compare time series determinants of on-the-run and off-the-run illiquidity. Illiquidity increases and the difference between spreads of long- and short-term bonds significantly widens during recessions, suggesting a flight to liquidity phenomenon wherein investors shift into the more liquid short-term bonds during economic contractions. We also document that macroeconomic variables such as inflation and federal fund rates forecast off-the-run illiquidity significantly but have only modest forecasting ability for on-the-run illiquidity. Bond returns across all maturities are forecastable by off-the-run short-term illiquidity but not by illiquidity of other maturities or by on-the-run bond illiquidity. Thus, short-term off-the-run illiquidity, by reflecting macro shocks first, is the primary source of the liquidity premium in the Treasury bond market. Introduction U.S. Treasury Bond Markets are crucial for asset allocation purposes as well as in the setting of benchmark riskless rates used by corporations in capital budgeting. Indeed, average daily trading volume in Treasury markets is about $500 billion, compared to only about $100 billion on the NYSE. This trading activity allows for price discovery, and Brandt and Kavajecz (2004) argue that the extent of price discovery in the Treasury bond is intimately linked to the markets liquidity. Further, events such as the 1998 bond market turmoil have heightened concerns about bond liquidity crises. Hence, understanding the dynamics of bond market liquidity is of clear academic and practical importance. The attribute of liquidity is also important because it influences expected returns by way of a liquidity premium embedded in bond prices (Amihud, Mendelson, and Pedersen, 2005). Notwithstanding the importance of understanding liquidity dynamics there remain critical gaps in the literature on b ond market liquidity. These lacunae arise because the bond market is not homogeneous but its constituent securities vary by maturity and seasonedness (i.e., on-the-run status). For example, while the presence of a liquidity premium in bond prices was first established for off-the-run bonds (Amihud and Mendelson, 1991), the previous literature mostly focuses on the dynamics of on-the-run liquidity. Thus, off-the-run liquidity dynamics, which are empirically the most relevant for bond pricing, have not yet been studied. Moreover, while the pricing implications of illiquidity in the stock market have been explored in the time-series and on different cross-sections of stock portfolios, the pricing implications of bond liquidity across different maturities are still unexplored in the literature. We contribute on both the preceding dimensions by making use of a long time-series of bond liquidity data. The time span of the analysis is important because it allows us to subsume a variety of economic events. As Shiller and Perron (1985) and Shiller (1989) show, increasing the number of observations by sampling more frequently while leaving the total time span of the data unchanged may not increase the power of tests very much. We thus consider an extensive time period that spans November 1967 to December 2005. For this period, we consider the joint dynamics of liquidity and returns across seasonedness and three different maturity classes: short, medium and long. To our knowledge, there is no previous study that uses such a long time-series and describes the dynamics of liquidity and returns across maturities and on-the-run status within a unified framework. Our analysis allows us to address the following issues, which are as yet un-examined in the literature: Previous research (Brunnermeier and Pedersen, 2006, and Chordia, Roll, and Subrahmanyam, 2005) suggests that macroeconomic variables and price volatility may impact bond market liquidity by affecting marke t-making costs. Do such variables differentially impact on- and off-the-run market making costs, and in turn, liquidities? Are bond returns forecastable from liquidity levels, i.e., is there evidence of liquidity premia in the bond market? How are liquidity shocks transmitted in the bond market? Are they reflected first in the relatively less active off-the-run issues or the more active on-the-run ones? If the liquidity of certain bonds forecasts those of other bonds by reflecting liquidity shocks first, then it may forecast returns not just in the own-market but in other markets as well. This is because liquidity levels in the own-market provide information about future liquidity, and liquidity premia in other markets. This leads us to the question: How does the predictive power of liquidity for bond returns vary across maturity and off-the-run status? We find that liquidity conditions in the bond market are affected by the economic environment. For example, bond spread s increase during recessions. Moreover, the difference between spreads of long- and short-term bonds significantly widens during recessions, suggesting that investors shift funds into short-term bonds during this time, thus creating liquidity. This is consistent with flight-to-quality and flight-to-liquidity phenomena. Our Granger-causality results indicate that short-term liquidity causes long-term liquidity and that there is no evidence of reverse causality. This indicates that liquidity shocks are transmitted from the short end to the long end. We also find that off-the-run liquidity can be predicted by a larger set of macroeconomic and market variables than on-the-run liquidity. Thus, shocks to inflation and monetary policy tightening, associated with positive shocks to the federal fund rate, increase off-the-run liquidity across all maturities, consistent with the notion that these macroeconomic variables affect order processing and inventory holding costs. However, for on-t he-run liquidity, the predictive power of the macro variables is considerably reduced. This is consistent with the notion that active trading in on-the-run bonds mitigates the impact of macro variables on inventory holding costs. We also find that positive shocks to bond returns across different maturities decrease off-the-run bond liquidity and shocks to volatility increase liquidity. These results are consistent with those for the stock market described by Chordia, Roll, and Subrahmanyam (2001), who show that up-market moves have a positive effect on liquidity, and with models of microstructure which argue that increased volatility, by increasing inventory risk, tends to increase market liquidity (Ho and Stoll, 1983, and OHara and Oldfield, 1986). The liquidity premium has been previously attributed to the yield difference between equivalent instruments but different levels of liquidity. For example, Amihud and Mendelson (1991) compare the yields on Treasury notes and bills with the same time to maturity and find a significant yield differential. Krishnamurthy (2002) studies the price difference between the on-the- run and the most recent off-the-run 30-year bond and concludes that the yield difference results from a demand for liquid assets. Longstaff (2004) compares the yield differential between zero-coupon Treasury and Refcorp bonds and also finds evidence of a large liquidity premium. Most of these studies are limited by short time-spans where high frequency market microstructure data are available. In contrast to previous literature we look directly at the effect of liquidity on bond returns over the long run in a variety of economic conditions. We use vector autoregression analysis, which allows us to account for joint dynamics between liquidity and returns across different maturities. We find that short-term off-the-run liquidity is priced across returns of short, medium, and long-term bonds while medium and long-term liquidity has no signif icant impact on prices in a joint dynamic framework. On-the-run liquidity is not priced, either. This finding is consistent with our previous results: short-term bond liquidity is driven by a larger set of economic variables and it transfers the shocks to the liquidity of other maturities. This result is new and it suggests that liquidity of the off-the-run short-term issues is a source of liquidity premium in the Treasury bond market. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section provides the economic arguments that motivate our study. We describe the data and the liquidity measure in Section II. Section III describes the results of time series analysis of the illiquidity series, economic variables, and bond returns. Section IV concludes. I. Economic Motivation This section delineates the questions our data have the opportunity to address. These issues span the behavior of bond liquidity across different states of the macroeconomy, the effect of macroeconomic variables on liquidity, and how the liquidity premium varies across maturities and seasonedness. First, the behavior of illiquidity during recessions and expansions is of interest. In particular, lower liquidity during recessions due to increased risk premia (Dumas, 1994) can exacerbate market declines as agents demand higher required rates of return (Amihud and Mendelson, 1986). Our data allow an explicit comparison of illiquidity across different macroeconomic regimes. It also is often suggested (see, e.g., Brunnermeier and Pedersen, 2005) that tighter collateral constraints during recessions may result in a flight to liquidity wherein agents flee to more bonds with lower trading costs. Our comparison of illiquidity in off-the-run and on-the-run bonds of different maturities dur ing recessions allows an analysis of this issue. Next, the impact of macroeconomic variables on the bond market across the term structure spectrum is an unexplored issue. While Chordia, Sarkar, and Subrahmanyam (2005) show that monetary policy impacts financial market liquidity, the issue of whether it is primarily through the demand side (by the actions of traders) or the supply side (because of alterations in dealer financing costs) remains unexplored. We argue that if the impact occurs on the supply side it should be more evident in the less-liquid off-the-run issues because that is where dealers have to hold positions for longer periods, on average. There may also be a tradeoff involving bond maturities. For example, if dealer inventory costs are indeed higher in the off-the-run market, they may be more relevant in those maturities with greater order imbalances because that is where inventory would take on more extreme values. It is possible that short-term off-the-run bonds with more volume may also have more extreme order imbalances. On the other hand, an offsetting effect is that long-term bonds have less volume and thus involve a greater time for which dealer positions must be held. This may increase the influence of macro variables on inventory carrying costs and thus, illiquidity in long-term bonds relative to short-term bonds. Thus, the issue of how the influence of macro information varies across on-the-run status and maturity is an empirical one that we are able to explore. The preceding arguments also have implications for the nature of the liquidity premium in bond prices. For example, if it is indeed the case that short-term illiquidity reflects macro information first, then, by signaling changes in bond market liquidity and liquidity premia across the term structure spectrum, it may also forecast illiquidity as well as returns for other maturities. By examining the return forecasting ability of various bonds according to their on-the-run status and maturity, we are able to shed light on this issue as well. II. Basic Statistics II. A The Data We measure liquidity in the Treasury market with relative quoted spreads. This is a standard measure for the Treasury market. The simple bid-ask spread measure, based on widely available data, is highly correlated with price impact, which otherwise is difficult to estimate over a long time horizon basis due to data limitations (Fleming, 2003). The quoted bid and ask prices are from the CRSP daily Treasury Quotes file from November 1967 to December 2005. The file includes Treasury fixed income securities of 3 and 6 months, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 20 and 30 years to maturity. Once issued, the security is considered as on-the-run and the older issues are off-the-run. The quoted spread for the Treasury bond market is computed as , where Ask and Bid are quoted ask and bid prices for a particular day (using only two-sided quotes for the calculation). The monthly average spread is computed for each security and then equally weighted across different assets for each month. We use six bond liquidity series across three maturity classes and seasonedness status. The first maturity class is short-term liquidity computed for T-bills with maturity less than or equal to 1 year. The second is the liquidity of the medium-maturity assets obtained from the quotes on 2-to-5 year bonds. The third is the liquidity of the 10-year note, a traditional benchmark. We study the three series separately for on-the-run and off-the-run issues. II.B The Impact of Recessions Table 1 provides descriptive statistics for the illiquidity series. For the whole sample (Panel A) the spreads for medium- and long-term bonds tend to be wider for off-the-run issues than the on-the-run bonds. For short-term bonds, spreads of on-the-run issu es are on average wider for the whole sample (Panel A). During non-recessions (Panel C), the average spreads of short-term bonds tend to be very close in magnitude for on-the-run and off-the-run issues. However, both short-term on- and off-the-run spreads increase by more than a factor of two during NBER recessions (Panel B). Medium- and long-term spreads also increase during recessions compared to non-recessions, but the percentage increase is less dramatic than that for short-term bonds. Thus, spreads are higher during recessions and their increase is especially pronounced for short-term maturities. Table 2 reports the difference between long- and short-term spreads for the whole sample and for sub-samples. The difference is positive, as the spreads are higher for the long-term bonds. For both on-the-run and off-the-run issues the difference is significantly higher during recessions. This suggests that investors may shift into short-term bonds in recessionary periods. Figure s 1 and 2 present graphs for the illiquidity of on-the-run and off-the-run issues, respectively, by maturity. Higher values correspond to higher transactions costs. Gray bars denote NBER recessions. For the on-the-run bonds, as Figure 1 Panel A shows, the illiquidity of short-term bonds almost always increases during recessions. This pattern is less pronounced for long-term bonds, Panel C, and is nearly absent for medium-term bonds, Panel B. In contrast, for off-the-run bonds, Figure 2, an increase in illiquidity during recessions is observed across all maturities. This pattern points toward a heterogeneity in liquidity dynamics across on-the-run and off-the-run bonds, which we explore in detail below. III. Vector Autoregression Analysis Our goal is to explore the intertemporal associations between bond illiquidity of different maturities, returns, volatility and macroeconomic variables which affect bond prices and can also have an impact on illiquidity. In particular, we are interested in determining what forces drive the dynamics of illiquidity of on-the-run and off-the-run issues and what relations hold between illiquidity of different maturities and bond returns. We run our analysis separately for on-the-run and off-the-run issues. III.A The Explanatory Variables We use adjusted time series of illiquidity after removing a time trend and the square of the time trend. Earlier work (e.g., Chordia, Roll, and Subrahmanyam, 2001), argues that returns may influence future trading behavior, which may, in turn, affect liquidity. For instance, the portfolio-rebalancing arguments of Merton (1971) imply return-dependent investing behavior, and such order imbalances in response to a price change may strain liquidity. Thus, as our first set of explanatory variables, we use returns of three maturity ranges: short, medium, and long. To capture price variation in the short-maturity range, we use the return on 3 month T-bill (RET1). Returns on 5-year and 10-year notes represent medium (RET5) and long (RET10) maturity, respectively. All returns are from the CRSP Treasury monthly file. In addition, Benston and Hagerman (1974) suggest a role for volatility in causing illiquidity by indicating that increased volatility implies increased inventory risk and hence, a higher bid-ask spread (see Duffie, Gà ¢rleanu, and Pedersen, 2007, for a similar argument). We thus include return volatility as an explanatory variable. To measure the volatility in the Treasury market we use the volatility of a 10 year note. The volatility is obtained as monthly standard deviation of daily returns available from CRSP daily Treasury files. Among other variables, we use inflation, because inflation surprises have a large effect on the level of the entire yield curve (Ang and Piazzesi, 2003). Campbell and Ammer (1993) argue that bond returns are driven largely by news about future inflation. Positive inflation shocks may drain trading activity out of the bond market, reducing liquidity. Such shocks may also signal a shift in future monetary policy (i.e., the expectation that the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates to dampen inflation) and thus can affect liquidity by portending a shift in inventory financing costs. Inflation is obtained as the growth rate in the consumer price index. The data are from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Further, Fama and French (1993) argue that term and default spreads capture a lot of variation in Treasury bond returns. Moreover, term and default spreads as proxies for business cycles can be important drivers of illiquidity since, as Figures 1 and 2 show, spreads tend to widen during economic downturns. We therefore add term and default premiums to the vector of state variables. The term premium (TERM) is defined as the difference between yields on a 10-year T-note and three-month T-bill. The default premium (DEF) is the difference between yields on long-term BAA-rated and AAA-rated bonds. There are also reasons to expect a strong relationship between monetary policy and illiquidity in our sample. Empirically, there is overwhelming evidence highlighting the effect of macroeconomic news on illiquidity of Treasury bonds for intraday data of on-the-run issues (Fleming and Remolona, 1997, 1999, Balduzzi, Elton, and Green, 2001, and Green, 2004). Also, a loose monetary policy may decrease illiquidity and encourage more trading by making margin loan requirements less costly, and by enhancing the ability of dealers to finance their positions (Chordia, Sarkar and Subrahmanyam, 2005). Monetary conditions may also affect bond prices through their effect on volatility (Harvey and Huang, 2002) and interest rates. Therefore, as indicators o f the monetary policy stance, we include the federal funds rate (FED). Since the unit root test indicates nonstationarity in FED, the subsequent analysis uses first differences. The data are from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. We use vector autoregression (VAR) analysis to study joint dynamics of the variables. In accordance with the AIC and Schwarz Bayesian Information Criterion, we estimate the VAR with one lag. Table 3 reports pairwise Granger-causality tests between the endogenous variables in the VAR. For the null hypothesis that variable i does not Granger-cause variable j, we test whether the lag coefficients of i are jointly zero when j is the dependent variable in the VAR. The cell associated with the row variable and the column variable shows the Chi-square statistics and corresponding p-values in parentheses. III.B Granger Causality Tests The results for illiquidity are presented in Table 3, Panel A. For both on-the-run and off-the-run issues, illiquidity of short-term bonds Granger-causes illiquidity of other maturities. For off-the-run bonds the causality goes in one direction only, while for on-the-run ones, the causality occurs in the reverse direction only for medium-term bonds to short-term bonds. The evidence indicates that illiquidity shocks are largely transmitted from the short end to the long end. Beber, Brandt and Kavajecz (2007) find that liquid Euro-area bonds attract more order flow, presumably both informed and uninformed. This suggests that the illiquidity of short-term bonds, as the most liquid asset class, may reflect information before other maturities. Our results are consistent with this notion. Panels B and C present the results for causality tests between illiquidity and other endogenous variables for on-the-run and off-the-run issues, respectively. For brevity, we focus on causation involving the liquidity variables. We also find that all four macro variables (DEF, TERM, FED, and INFL) cause short-term of f-the-run illiquidity. The last three also cause on-the-run short-term spreads. The impact of these variables on longer-term spreads is a bit mixed. Overall, though, macroeconomic variables do forecast bond market illiquidity, especially at the short-end of the term structure spectrum. We find that volatility has a causality effect only on illiquidity of on-the-run issues. We will re-examine these findings in the next subsection when we present impulse response functions. For off-the-run bonds, we find that illiquidity of all maturities Granger-causes the return on short-term bonds and volatility. Also, the illiquidity of short-term bonds causes the return of medium-term bonds. The effect of on-the-run illiquidity on bond returns is far less pronounced. Overall, the evidence for off-the-run illiquidity supports the literature on liquidity premium in the Treasury bond markets (Amihud and Mendelson, 1991). Note that the Granger causality results are based on the analysis of the coefficients from a single equation, and do not account for the joint dynamics implied by the VAR system. A clearer picture can potentially emerge if we use impulse response functions (IRFs). The IRF traces the impact of a one-time, unit standard deviation, positive shock to one variable on the current and future values of the endogenous variables. Since innovations are correlated, they need to be orthogonalized. They are computed using standard Cholesky decompositions of the VAR residuals and assuming that innovations in the variables placed earlier in the VAR have greater effects on the following variables. Thus, one approach is to order the variables according to the order in which they influence the other variables. We place macroeconomic variables in the beginning of the VAR ordering since while financial markets respond to monetary policy, the latter is relatively exogenous to the financial system. There are precedents for putting monetary policy instruments before financia l variables in the VAR ordering (Thorbecke, 1997, and Chordia, Sarkar and Subrahmanyam, 2005). The ordering of macroeconomic variables (INFL, FED) is based on conventional practice in the macroeconomic literature. They are followed by the business cycle variables, TERM and DEF. Relying on prior evidence (Chordia, Sarkar and Subrahmanyam, 2005), we order the rest of variables as follows: Volat, RET1, RET5, RET10, Bond-Short, Bond-Medium and Bond-Long. The conclusions about IRFs are insensitive to the ordering of market variables. III.C VAR Innovations: Correlation Matrix Before proceeding to impulse response analyses, it is of interest to examine contemporaneous relations between innovations in the variables. Accordingly, Table 4, Panels A and B, reports the contemporaneous correlation matrix of the VAR innovations for on-the-run and off-the-run illiquidity, respectively. Again, we focus only on the correlations involving the liquidity variables. Correlations in innovations of illiquidity across maturities are positive, but significant only for off-the-run illiquidity. Shocks to TERM are negatively correlated with innovations in illiquidity. Thus, an increase in the term spread, which is commonly attributed to a monetary policy expansion (e.g., Patelis, 1997), is accompanied by an improvement in bond market liquidity. Shocks to volatility are generally positively correlated with innovations in illiquidity, with the exception of the on-the-run bond-medium illiquidity which has an anomalous negative correlation. Innovations in FED are positively correlated with illiquidity of on-the-run and off-the-run issues. Monetary policy tightening is associated contemporaneously with an increase in bond spreads. We find that shocks to off-the-run short-term illiquidity are negatively correlated with the returns across all maturities. This is consistent with the results of Amihud (2002) for the stock market: positive shocks to spreads are accompanied by a contempora neous decrease in prices. This also suggests a special role of the off-the-run short-term bond illiquidity in affecting bond prices across all maturities. We now shed more light on these economic relations by examining impulse response functions. III.D Impulse Response Functions: Illiquidity Figure 3, Panel A illustrates the response of short-bond off-the-run illiquidity to a unit standard deviation change in a particular variable, traced forward over a period of 24 months. In the figures, month 0 gives the contemporaneous impact and months 1-24 plot the effect from +1 to +24 months. Bootstrap 95% confidence bands are provided to gauge the statistical significance of the responses. The figure indicates that short-bond illiquidity increases in response to inflation shocks as well as well as monetary tightening associated with a positive shock to FED. This suggests that an increase in inventory-holding and order processing costs due to inflation is reflected in higher transactio n costs. TERM and DEF do not have an immediate impact on short-term bond illiquidity. An innovation in short- and medium-term bond returns results in a reduction in bond illiquidity, while a shock to volatility predicts an increase in short-term illiquidity. These results are consistent with those for the stock market of Chordia, Roll, and Subrahmanyam (2001) who show that up-market moves have a positive effect on liquidity, and with models of microstructure which argue that increased volatility, by increasing inventory risk, tends to increase market illiquidity. Short-bond illiquidity increases contemporaneously in response to its own shock, with the response decaying rapidly from month to month. The effect of illiquidity of other maturities on short-bond illiquidity is insignificant. Panels B and C present the impulse response functions for medium- and long-bond illiquidity, respectively. Similarly to short-bond illiquidity, a shock to inflation increases long-bond illiquidi ty (Panel C). However, inflation shocks have no significant impact on medium-bond illiquidity (Panel B). As for short-bond illiquidity, a shock to FED increases medium- and long-bond illiquidity. Thus, monetary policy tightening appears to have an effect across illiquidity of all maturities. TERM and DEF have no significant impact on illiquidity. While innovations in returns have no significant effect on medium-bond illiquidity, innovations to short- and medium-term bond returns decrease long-bond illiquidity. Volatility increases bond illiquidity across all maturities with a very short-lived effect for long-bond illiquidity. Across illiquidity series, while medium-bond illiquidity is only exposed to its own shock, long-bond illiquidity increases in response to its own positive shock as well as to the shocks in short- and medium-bond illiquidity. Shocks to illiquidity to short- and medium- end are transferred into the illiquidity of long end and but the reverse is not true. The r esults for on-the-run illiquidity can be summarized as follows. Inflation, TERM and DEF have no significant impact on on-the-run illiquidity. In contrast to off-the-run illiquidity, a shock to FED increases illiquidity of short-term bonds only. Bond returns have no immediate significant impact on illiquidity, while shock to volatility increases illiquidity across all maturities. Thus even though in the Granger-causality results, volatility Granger-causes only the on-the-run illiquidity, in the more complete impulse response analyses, we obtain the result that volatility forecasts illiquidity across all maturities for both on- and off-the-run bonds. Overall, we conclude that the dynamics of on-the-run illiquidity seem to be driven by a relatively narrow set of economic variables compared to off-the-run illiquidity. While inflation, FED, bond returns and volatility are significant determinants of off-the-run illiquidity, on-the-run illiquidity seems to be affected mainly by volatil ity. The results are consistent with the notion put forth in Section I that macroeconomic variables affect inventory costs and hence, illiquidity. Apparently, however, active trading in the on-the-run bonds shields market makers from increases in inventory costs due to inflation and tighter monetary policy. III.E Impulse Response Functions: Returns Figure 4 presents impulse response functions of bond returns in the VAR system with off-the-run bond illiquidity. Focusing on return forecastability from liquidity, we find that the illiquidity of off-the-run short-term bonds is useful in forecasting medium and long-term bond returns. This effect is positive and significant for the first lag for medium-bond return and for two lags for long-bond return. Thus, the contemporaneous effect of short-bond off-the-run illiquidity on medium and long-term bond returns is negative and significant (Table 4, Panel B) and the lag effect is positive and especially persistent for long-bond returns. As Amihud (2002) indicates, while higher expected market illiquidity makes investors demand higher expected return and causes ex ante returns to rise, prices should fall contemporaneously with an unexpected rise in illiquidity. However, the lag effect of liquidity on returns should be positive. Our analysis indicates that the effect of illiquidity on bond returns is more pronounced in the more illiquid longer-term bonds. From the standpoint of economic significance, we find that a one standard deviation shock to the illiquidity of the off-the run short-term bonds has an annualized impact of 80 basis points on returns of the medium term bonds, and 124 basis points on returns of the long-term bonds. These are economically significant magnitudes. The other impulse responses indicate that returns are more strongly affected by macro variables at the short-end of the term structure spectrum. Thus, active trading in short-term bonds may cause this market to be more responsive to mac ro innovations. In addition, returns are affected by volatility innovations for all maturities which is consistent with the traditional risk-return argument. In unreported results we find that on-the-run illiquidity has no effect on bond returns. Our findings therefore draw attention to the illiquidity of off-the-run short-term bonds: bond returns contain an liquidity premium emanating from off-the-run short-term issues. This can be explained as follows. Our findings demonstrate that illiquidity shocks are transferred from the short end to the long end of the term structure. Specifically, short-term off-the-run illiquidity absorbs market and macroeconomic shocks first and then transmits them into the illiquidity of long-term bonds. Thus, as proposed in Section I, an increase in short-term illiquidity, by portending an increase in illiquidity at other maturities, raises the required return on longer-term bonds. Overall, our results indicate that the liquidity premium in the Treasu ry bond market found by Amihud and Mendelson (1991) is largely driven by short-term off-the-run illiquidity. IV. Conclusion U.S. Treasury markets are critical for asset allocational purposes, and also provide indicators for benchmark riskless rates in the economy. Since bond liquidity influences the efficacy of asset allocation, and aids interest rate discovery, it is important to understand the dynamics of bond market trading costs. Using extensive time-series that span over thirty-five years, we analyze Treasury market illiquidity across maturities and seasonedness. Our aims are to explore whether illiquidities across these attributes are differentially affected by macroeconomic conditions, and to understand variations in the illiquidity premium across bonds. We find that illiquidity increases in recessions across all maturities. However, the increase is especially pronounced for short-term bonds. The difference between spreads of long- and short-term bonds also increases during recessions for both on-the-run and off-the-run issues. The evidence suggests that investors may shift into short-term bon ds during recessions and invest in both on-the-run and off-the-run bonds. Our results are consistent with the notion that the effect of macro variables on dealer costs are most relevant in the less liquid off-the-run sector. On-the-run illiquidity across all maturities is materially affected only by volatility. However, off-the-run illiquidity is driven by inflation, monetary policy surprises, bond returns and volatility. Overall, off-the-run illiquidity is affected by a larger set of economic variables. Our Granger causality results indicate that shocks are transferred from the illiquidity of the short end to the illiquidity of the long end of term structure. Specifically, short-term illiquidity Granger-causes illiquidity of other maturities while the reverse is not true. We also explore pricing implications of on-the-run and off-the-run illiquidity of different maturities. We find that off-the-run short-term illiquidity forecasts returns across all maturities, but that the r eturn forecasting ability of either on-the-run illiquidity, or illiquidity at other maturities, is limited. Similar to the effect of stock illiquidity on stock returns (Amihud, 2002), short-term off-the-run illiquidity has a negative contemporaneous impact on bond returns and a positive lag effect. The lag effect persists longer for more illiquid bonds. Our results suggest that short-term off-the-run illiquidity is the primary source of return forecastability (and thus, the liquidity premium) in the Treasury market.

Organ Cloning Essay - 2326 Words

The idea of the possibility of cloning has long interested scientists from all over the world. The ability to create another life without the need to reproduce, simply a petri dish and some cells, is something that has been attempted to be done for decades. There are endless possibilities of the uses that cloning could bring, and it excites many and equally terrifies others. In was in 1997 when there was a big breakthrough of cloning occurred: the â€Å"birth† of Dolly the ewe. Dolly was cloned from an adult sheep in Scotland. Dolly was the beginning of the experimentation of cloning full mammals. We now clone many mice and claves all cloned from adult cells that still now fascinate many scientists. However, the idea of cloning and cloning†¦show more content†¦From tadpoles and amphibians, then came fish and insects and finally in the 1980s experimentation began on mammals. Before the cloning breakthrough of Dolly the ewe, many scientists did not believe it was poss ible to clone using DNA from adult animals. The scientists thought that cell differentiation was unalterable. However, the scientist Dr. Wilmut and his partners resolved this problem using a starvation technique. They starved adult cells of their nutrients and then the cells became inactive. Then once the cells were inactivated, the scientists introduced the DNA from a different cell and reconfigured the DNA to show all of its genes. The result of the cell was capable of making an animal practically genetically identical to the DNA of the original donor. Uncovering the replication stage and finding out how to manipulate and control the cells in mammals was a much more difficult task than what many thought, which is why the successful experimentation on mammals was not until much later on, 30 years after the first successful copy of a tadpole. 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The Presidential Election Of 2016 - 1541 Words

The Election The Presidential Election of 2016 is not until November, but both parties are beginning to narrow their fields down and begin their preparation for an election that is expected to be highly contested. With previous election seasons, the current primary season has already seen some notable in-fighting within the two major political parties, with potential candidates attacking each other in an attempt to get their party nominated. What is very interesting is how fluctuating the support for a candidate can be during the primary season. For example, Republican Donald Trump once had a formable lead over the next contender Hillary Clinton. In the democratic field, the top three candidates were Hillary Clinton , Bernie Sanders, and Martin O Malley. [1] From Washington to Washington D.C the idea that Donald Trump could become president has alternately set off fits of laughter and terror. Out of all of the republican candidates Donald Trump is easily most polarizing. 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Remains of the day as a postmodern novel Essay Example For Students

Remains of the day as a postmodern novel Essay Postmodern literature has its many spokesmen. Many would agree that Kazuo Ishiguro is not the most typical representative of this somewhat anarchistic literary and social movement, but he is certainly one of its most subtle and valuable artists. He uses the principles of post modernistic writing in a very meaningful way, and only after a thorough analysis can one fully appreciate all carefully constructed and presented elements trough which he successfully delivers his story. Remains of the day, as a novel, is a unique example of how a story of a personal fate of one man can reflect on such large, historical and social scale. Above all other motifs, the one of history, especially personal, individual history is the idea that dominates all novels Ishiguro wrote, Remains of the day in particular. In Linda Hutcheons words the departure, rather than reworking of mimetic novelist tradition is a definition that helps understanding the mechanism, the strategy Ishiguro uses to communicate this story to the reader. Focus on biography, personal history represents a break with the traditional approach to history and historicity. Dealing with past (private or public) and confronting it, is an important subject that reoccurs within the discourse of British postmodern prose. Concerning Ishiguros work itself, and Remains of the day as an example of his manner of narrating, this subject of history is precisely the thing that dominates the discourse and captures readers attention (the plot in classical sense is quite static). Stevens, alike all of Ishiguros narrators, is not at all objective and trustworthy. His memory plays tricks on him (motif especially present in his earlier two novels with Japanese protagonists), his language distorts to reveal the actual truth that is buried under layers of self-deception. The language is seen as an important weapon, and as much as it is used by Ishiguros narrators, as the means of suppression of the actual state of affairs, it is also the very thing that unmasks them. The Suez Canal crisis and Nazi propaganda in pre-WWII Britain, as a historical background, are present in the novel, but they are tackled with in a rather indirect way, barely even mentioned. It is a scene set for the real history Ishiguro deals with, the individual one a retrospective of Stevens life. The socio- historical issues are present, but rather out of focus. Postmodern prose is by definition self conscious, full of inter-textual references. The intention is revealing its artificiality. An abundance of blank spaces, puns and irony serves as a constant reminder of the fact that postmodern writers do not attempt to create an illusion of reality, but quite the opposite. By emphasizing the actual body of a novel as a construct, they, more or less successfully, attempt to provoke an inner dialogue, a discussion between the reader and the writer, or the narrating character. The reality, claims the postmodern fiction, is already irreversibly compromised and altered by the cognitive mechanisms and even more so, the language itself. In this novel, the use of the language is to reveal the character behind it, although at the beginning it is a weapon Stevens uses to disguise the truth. The style Stevens uses, particularly his formal tone and the choice of certain words (bantering) excellently present his character. Often he even repeats some phrases, or sentences, word by word. However, Ishiguro himself is rather reluctant of making the techniques he applies too visible and obviously revealed in his writing. He states: or me, while the nature of fiction or fictionality are things that writers might need to be concerned with to get on with their work, I dont believe that the nature of fiction is one of the burning issues of the late twentieth century. Its not one of the things I want to turn to novels and art to find out about. The artificiality of fiction is something he doesnt directly insists on, but certainly makes a good use of it in his work. This fine balance between realism and experiment is probably best achieved in this particular novel. The eclecticism of post modern culture reflects in the postmodern art. The identity of a subject also subdues to these tendencies. The previous, modernist attempts of making a literary subject a stable and realistic construct is replaced by characteristic lack of fixation, lack of concern about durability and persuasiveness. Literary subject becomes not only visibly artificial, but even fragmented. Stevens artificial behavior and unreliability of the story he is telling is obvious from the perspective of his lacking of personal moral perspective over the actions of his employer. The most obvious example is the incident of firing of the two Jewish maids, which is the clear hint to the reader that Stevens perspective of life in Darlington hall is distorted. When he needs to question his absolute attitudes of duty and professionalism- the tern he himself uses is dignity- he goes into extremes (death of his father) and refuses to face the reality. Mrs. Kenton, threatening to resign on account of that incident, makes no such mistake. The delaying to inform the reader about the important events (such as his conversation with Cardinal which is of a great importance to clarify the role of lord Darlington in the Nazi propaganda) This, again, shows his delusions and misplaced trust, and we must rely on the behavior of other characters rather than Stevens words. As Salman Rushdie comments, the story of Remains of the day, told by Stevens, is primarily about regret (although the ending rings a bit more optimistic than expected) The Duty, mask of formality, and dignity of a butler deprives his life from essential human values, private life and emotions. His chances of having a fulfilling relationship with Mrs. Kenton falls pray to his understanding of professional commitment. His rhetoric is completely formal, and he always seems to be debating, he seemingly tries to persuade the reader, and himself, in truthfulness of his attitudes, and, the more story progresses (until the culmination in his final breakdown), the more he realizes that he failed in the attempt to make sense out of the obsolete system of values that deprived his life of true meaning. He never becomes an individual in the true sense of the word- he only reflects his employers views, desperately trying to justify him. The ethical message of the writer is left for the reader to put together, and the narrator is an obstacle in this process. But, by the careful observance of deconstruction of Stevens facade, a careful reader may discover the real message Ishiguro is trying to deliver. The text is full of subtle hints, without vast number of characters, or shifting of readers attention. The historical circumstances conditioned the differences between the two generation of butlers- the generation of Stevens father and Stevens himself. Stevens realized that the real great decisions that influence the fate of the small man are really made in privacy of noble houses, like the one of lord Darlingtons. The history, through Stevens eyes, is understood as a wheal set of concentric circles, rather than a line with its beginning and the end (which is a typical view of history of a Christian civilization), and at the centre of it are the places of true power, the aristocratic hoses where the power is concentrated. The secrecy and deception of this shows the deceiving nature of modern world; the hierarchy, the order of modernist era shutters, its hierarchy becomes anarchy. The social, class element of the story is hereby strongly present, but again, the focus is on the tragic impersonality of lower class representatives, a servant, here a butler, and Remains of the day are actually the remains of Stevens wasted existence. The character of Stevens, whether or not redeemed by his final tears of regret, is very robot-like. He doesnt even have its own mistakes, opinions, whereas lord Darlington at least has the privilege to make certain (although wrong) decisions. The new, changed view postmodernism introduces contrasts the system of values typical of modernism. What is moral or amoral in literature becomes relative; the certainty in the supreme nature of art disappears. The system of values of older butlers and their code of behavior of Stevens father is no longer unquestionable. New epistemological questions arise, creating confusion and doubt, but also a certain relief and new-found freedom of choice. This is what Stevens fails to perceive, rationalizing his life-style and actions in a self-deceiving way. The ultimate breakdown of the old philosophy, and with it, the old life style and metaphysical system of values, was inevitable. There is an opportunity for a change through the acceptance of the new, represented his new employer places upon him. At first Stevens finds this bantering (a symptomatic expression to show the stiffness of Stevens character) repulsive, and reacts completely inadequate. His attempt to apply his obsolete ways of rezoning to something that should be completely spontaneous and relaxed is one of the humorous moments of the otherwise rather gloomy novel atmosphere. This ironic approach can be seen as another marker of postmodern fiction. The author no longer attempts to be a prophet of a dying world, who indulges in metaphysics, and is in a deep search for the meaning of life through art as its medium. Now, there is no deeper meaning, no stability, nor attempts of coherent structure. If words themselves are deceiving, the structures they create are no more meaningful. What remains unspoken sometimes carries equal or greater importance than the word play. Narrative is now anti-narrative. The hero of the novel, Stevens, is not exceptional; he is weak, indecisive and utterly self-deceiving. His principles failed him, and what he sacrifices only goes to waste. But, he is not strong enough to face the truth. The elements of modernism which are sometimes considered to be the remnant of previous era of Romanticism, indirectly made possible the passive, or in the case of lord Darlington, affirmative attitude towards totalitarian ideologies of Nazism and Fascism. The romantic ego-genius only carries the mask of impersonality. The disillusionment of postmodernism sheds a new light over this, and in the Remains of the day, there is a sharp view of the dangers it brings. But this awareness also led to a drastic scaling down of expectations and aspirations, and as shown in the Stevens example, the process of facing reality is extremely painful. It is often stated that postmodernism reveals a gap between signifier and signified, language and supposed reality. Merging of reality and fiction, unreliability of narrators, subjectivism, brings language down to a level of self-referential code. When it comes to an attempt of objectivity, this code is found lacking. Let me put this heavy load down and take some of t EssayThe motif of falseness of Stevens conduct reflected trough language, shows the relative nature of ones identity, and how much it depends on various influences. Stevens basically has no idiolect- and which is understandable because of his striving to become completely unemotional. The more his attitude changes, the more his words become meaningful and sincere. An interesting example found in the novel: Stevens is having a rather uncomfortable conversation with a guest, Mrs. Wakefield, and she inquires about the authenticity of house ornamentation. She claims that the arches in one of the premises look 17th century, but she believes that they are actually a mock period piece. She praises their beauty, but still dismisses them as fake (very skilful, but a mock. ) Immediately after, she inquires Stevens whether he had worked for lord Darlington, which he denies. This passage emphasizes the motif of imitation- things are not what they seem at Darlington Hall, and a parallel of falseness is made between Stevens and the place he works in. Another example: In one of his conversations with Mrs. Kenton, she exclaims: Why, why do you always have to pretend? showing that his unnatural behavior is in fact quite obvious. The other characters, rather than Stevens, will reveal the objective state of affairs (if, regarding postmodernism, there even is one). As much as Ishiguros Remains of the day is a post- colonial, social novel about English cultural identity at a certain turbulent time of history, it is also a psychological novel about an emotionally inhibited individual, again as a product of an era that is in its decline. This is the matter of a true interest to the writer: not so much the questions of style of writing and the problematic of language use, but a personal (petite) history, in an adequate social framework. A particularly interesting comment Ishiguro made about the novel is the account of his attempts to expose a false idea of English cultural identity, based on a myth about the cultural-national values of the good old times: What Im trying to do there is to actually rework a particular myth about a certain kind of England. I think there is this very strong idea that exists in England at the moment, about an England where people lived in the not-so-distant past, that conformed to various stereotypical images. That is to say, an England with sleepy, beautiful villages with very polite people and butlers and people taking tea on the lawn The mythical landscape of this sort of England, to a large degree, is harmless nostalgia for a time that didnt exist. The other side of this, however, is that it is used as a political tool Its used as a way of bashing anybody who tries to spoil this Garden of Eden. This can be brought out by the left or the right, but usually it is the political right. This is the major flaw of the film that was made based on the novel shortly after the publishing. The plot-line, and even the choice of the actors (Anthony Hopkins as Stevens and Emma Thompson as Mrs. Kenton), who are somewhat of a symbol of Englishness to a foreign public, reinforces, instead of deconstructing, the very myth of the old English country house Ishiguro is truing to subvert. In the process of emptying himself of a personal history, and replacing it with a kind of secondary signification of who he is, Stevens becomes a myth of a Butler. His identity is possessed by the codes of behavior whose meaning he tries to embody, and, in postmodern terms (of Ronald Barthes in particular), Stevens degrades from an individual to a mere semiotic system. The better explanation of this process is perhaps the following: Myth deprives the object of which it speaks of all historythis miraculous evaporation of history is also the form of a concept common to most bourgeois myths: the Irresponsibility of Man. Similarly to Stevens being a mythological image of a butler, and therefore, a typical Barthesian myth, we are presented an image of Darlington Hall. Although Ishiguro primarily deals with a feud between illusions and reality, which takes place in a mind of one man- typical representative of lower class, the same process is visible and applicable to the entire society of respectable English gentlemen, embodied in the many visitors of Darlington Hall at the times of its prime. The unifying feature is, in fact, precisely the location where it all takes place. Myth of an English country house clearly represents a chosen emblem of what is considered to be humane, orderly and of enduring value. At the light of this it is obviously a subverting move to place a Nazi sympathizer and a number of manipulating politicians in such environment. The deceiving nature of the symbols Darlington Hall represents is made obvious when we realize that it is actually the setting for the secret political meetings, a place where the real political power is concentrated. It operates in the shadow of the protected, idyllic environment, behind the back of the people it represents. What is more, wrong and harmful decisions are made in a completely undemocratic way. The illusions Stevens cultivates about the competence of lord Darlington to deal with global politics last only while he makes no contact with the outer world; as soon as he moves away from the sheltered environment, the absurdity of his beliefs is clear. Without a context he can see himself in, he is useless, like a discarded object. Under the pressure of reality he is forced to face his empty personal life and the opportunities he wasted- no wonder he eventually bursts into tears. History as Stevens sees it, presented in an image of a wheel, is rather symptomatic and worth mentioning: entire world revolves around houses such as Darlington Hall, which are the centers of true power. The best a common man can do is to attend to its needs, give his small, anonymous contribution that will not be printed on the pages of history, but is nevertheless still needed. This disturbing image is a sharp contrast with the Taylor house, described as cozy, poor but clean place- there, anybody can engage in a political discussion, without being ridiculed or oppressed. The historical and political dimension in Remains of the day has been interpreted as the critique of imperialism and the British Empire. There are even some critics who refer to the novel as post-imperial. As such, it requires certain knowledge of certain historical events and people (the Prime Minister is obviously Neville Chamberlain, and the Black Shirts are the members of the British Fascist Party, etc. . However, Remains of the day is not a real novel of what is called historiographic metafiction, because of the somewhat different context of presenting history. The Suez Crisis that is to follow shortly after the time novel takes place (which is mostly during the July of 1956. ) provides an excellent background that clarifies the wider meaning of Stevens reflections. The historical fact is that the failure of England and France to enforce their dominance during the Suez Crisis situation marks the beginning of the end of Britain as the imperial and colonial force. The influence over the Middle East was lost, and the psychological impact of this was immense. A few months before all of this we see Stevens, who, as a former servant of prominent British aristocrat, reflects upon his life in a similar atmosphere of a loss and decline. The two histories: personal and global (petite and grand), intertwine and reflect each other. The product of these very historical circumstances is the era of postmodernism- some illusions were to be broken, some false ideals discarded. Postmodernism in general offers a rather relativistic view over every feature of life and art. Decentring of the arts follows the change in the balance of power in the world. There is no more a voice that represents art; there are voices; many of them were oppressed during the previous era. Every totalisation is being avoided. The Western civilization seems to become more heterogeneous and open to the idea of multiplicity, although still not tolerant enough to equally treat all the possible differences. The end of colonial era has also marked the end of a certain positivistic way of thinking; instead, there is a proliferation of voices, opinions, questions. The much needed critical distance from the often glorified past can finally be established, and all of the previously absolute concepts of literature undergo serious questioning, starting from style of writing, issues about the production of images and information, notions of identity, sexuality, politics virtually every possible problem the previous period ignored. The most important novelty is that, instead of attempting to discover universal truths and present the objective reality, most postmodernists believe that there is no way of managing to reveal what that reality is; the reason being the impossibility to achieve the unity between the signifier and the signified. The reality has become a greatest fiction of all. This curious moment in history where modern shifts into postmodern, when colonial, imperialistic Europe enters the cold war era, with its delicate balance of power, is presented through an individual destiny of a Butler (an occupation as obsolete as Stevens principles). Remains of the day is a story about a death of one system of belief, of one way of thinking. Awareness of all these factors gives the novel a number of new implications and possible points of view, and yet it never deprives it of its essential, humane perspective. That is probably why Remains of the day stays, to this date, Ishiguros most read and studied novel. In Ishiguros own words: I think its always dangerous to have a writer in a novel. That leads you into all kinds of areas, unless youre specifically interested in talking about the nature of fiction. But I try to avoid that very postmodern element in my books. I always try to disguise those elements of my writing that I feel perhaps are experimental. Im only interested in literary experiment insofar as it serves a purpose of exploring certain themes with an emotional dimension.