European Sovereign Debt Crisis.

DEFINITION of 'European Sovereign Debt Crisis'

The European sovereign debt crisis occurred during a period of time in which several European countries faced the collapse of financial institutions, high government debt and rapidly rising bond yield spreads in government securities. The European sovereign debt crisis started in 2008, with the collapse of Iceland's banking system, and spread to primarily to Greece, Ireland and Portugal during 2009. The debt crisis led to a crisis of confidence for European businesses and economies.

BREAKING DOWN 'European Sovereign Debt Crisis'

The European sovereign debt crisis was brought to heel by the financial guarantees by European countries, who feared the collapse of the euro and financial contagion, and by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Ratings agencies downgraded the debt of several eurozone countries, with Greek debt at one point being moved to junk status. As part of the loan agreements, countries receiving bailout funds were required to meet austerity measures designed to slow down the growth of public sector debt.

History of the European Sovereign Debt Crisis

The European sovereign debt crisis began at the end of 2009, when the peripheral eurozone member states of Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus were unable to repay or refinance their government debt, or bail out their beleaguered banks without the assistance of third-party financial institutions such as the European Central Bank (ECB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). Seventeen eurozone countries voted to create the EFSF in 2010 specifically to address and assist the European sovereign debt crisis.

Some of the contributing causes of the sovereign debt crisis include the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the Great Recession of 2008-2012, as well as the real estate market crisis and property bubbles in several countries, and the aforementioned states’ fiscal policies regarding government expenses and revenues. This culminated in 2009 when Greece unveiled its previous government had grossly underreported its budget deficit, signifying a violation of EU policy and spurring fears of a euro collapse via political and financial contagion.

A 2012 report for the United States Congress summarizes: “The eurozone debt crisis began in late 2009, when a new Greek government revealed that previous governments had been misreporting government budget data. Higher than expected investor levels eroded investor confidence, causing bond spreads to rise to unsustainable levels. Fears quickly spread that the fiscal positions and debt levels of a number of eurozone countries were unsustainable."

In 2010, with increasing fear of excessive sovereign debt, lenders demanded higher interest rates from eurozone states with high debt and deficit levels, making it harder for these countries to finance their budget deficits when faced with overall low economic growth. Some affected countries raised taxes and slashed expenditures in order to combat the crisis, which contributed to social upset within their borders and a crisis of confidence among their leadership, particularly in Greece. During this crisis, several of these countries including Greece, Portugal and Ireland had their sovereign debt downgraded to junk status by international credit rating agencies, worsening investor fears.

Greece’s Case

In early 2010 these difficult developments reflected in rising spreads on sovereign bond yields between the affected peripheral member states of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, and most notably Germany. The Greek yield diverged in early 2010 with Greece needing eurozone assistance by May 2010. Greece received two bailouts from the EU over the following five years during which the country adopted EU-mandated austerity measures to cut costs while experiencing a further economic recession as well as social unrest. In June 2015 Greece, with divided political and fiscal leadership and a continued recession, was facing a sovereign default. However, on July 5, 2015 the Greek people voted against further EU austerity measures, with a possibility of Greece leaving the European Monetary Union entirely. The withdrawal of a nation from the EMU is unprecedented, and the speculated effects on Greece's economy if the currency is returned to the drachma range from total economic collapse to a surprise recovery.

Further Effects

Ireland followed Greece in requiring a bailout in November 2010, with Portugal next in May 2011. Italy and Spain were also vulnerable, with Spain requiring official assistance in June 2012 along with Cyprus. By 2014, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, due to various fiscal reforms, domestic austerity measures and other unique economic factors, all successfully exited their bailout programs requiring no further assistance. The road to full economic recovery is still underway. Cyprus, too, reported a slow but steady ongoing recovery, averting further financial crisis thus far.

                            CHAIRING A DEBATE

At some time in your debating life at school, you will probably be asked to chair a debate. It may sound like a fairly irrelevant role, but it is actually very important. Here are a few things to remember.

State the topic
This may sound obvious, but the audience may not have heard it before. It is also necessary just in case one team has a different wording to the other;

Introduce the teams
Again this may seem really obvious, but try and find out the names of the people speaking as it is awkward when you know the names of the debaters from your school but then have to call on "the first speaker from the negative team", for example.

Call on the speakers
Introduce each speaker only when the adjudicator indicates to you that she or he is ready. The adjudicator will often take a few moments after the speaker has stood down to go through the speech and make notes;

Timing
If you are Timer or you are the Chair and you are timing, then please do so carefully - find a digital watch or a stop watch. Write down the times carefully in case anything goes wrong. 

To signal the time to both teams, the adjudicator and the audience you should knock the table, clap your hands or ring a bell - just make sure it is loud enough to be heard. You signal the times with,

In A Grade one knock at six minutes two knocks at eight minutes 
In B Grade one knock at six minutes two knocks at eight minutes 
In C Grade one knock at five minutes two knocks at six minutes 
In D Grade one knock at four minutes two knocks at five minutes

Please time carefully as you don't want to be accused of cheating, that would only sour the debate for eveyone.

At the end of each speech
If the adjudicator requests, state the length of the speech if there is no Timer;

At the end of the third negative's speech
Inform the audience that the adjudicator is considering the decision and will deliver their adjudication in a few minutes.

At the end of the debate
Thank the teams, the audience and the adjudicator. It is always nice to end on a note like this.
Thanks for chairing, it's a very important role.

Why Maneka Gandhi Got It Right On Sex Determination Tests.!!

Why Maneka Gandhi Got It Right On Sex Determination Tests

One of the greatest temptations of Indian politics - for both citizens, civil servants and politicians - is to attempt to solve our most complex social problems with laws and regulations. It is easy for citizens to disown the problem by passing the onus of solving it to the state. It is easy for civil servants to believe they are solving social problems by implementing regulations (or extract personal benefits by not implementing them). And, of course, it is easy for our political leaders to show that they are responding to the peoples' demands by enacting such laws. Sometimes the courts step in, and their interpretations-which can go any way - are then cast into stone.

Mostly, this is like using jackhammers and powerdrills when we should really be using scalpels and needles. But everyone feels better. If we are lucky, the desirable consequences of the laws outweigh the undesirable ones. Very often, though, it's difficult to say.

This is the background before which we should see the recent surge in public debate over the ban on sex determination tests to prevent female foeticide. Contrary to early media reports that she had asked for compulsory gender tests on foetuses, Maneka Gandhi, Minister for Women and Child Development, had remarked that "There is an alternative point of view that if each pregnancy could be registered and the sex of the foetus could be made known to the parents and if the same happens to be a female, the delivery should be tracked and recorded. Such a system would help in ensuring that a foetus is not aborted only because it is a female."

The current policy is a blanket ban on pre-natal sex determination that criminalises doctors, ultrasonographers and other diagnostics providers who reveal the sex of the foetus to the parents. The intent behind the ban is that if the parents do not know whether the foetus is male or female, they are unlikely to go in for an abortion, and thus female babies will be allowed to be born.

Obviously, this is a massive state intervention into the right of parents to choose whether to keep the baby or not. Because we disapprove of social preferences for a boy child, and want to reduce the abortion of female foetuses, we have willy-nilly decided that the state and society have greater rights over the woman's reproductive system than the woman herself. Could we not have attempted to solve the social problem of female foeticide without such a massive subtraction of a woman's, and both parents', liberty?

Second, the law on sex-determination criminalises people who are not even accessories to a potential crime. Doctors and diagnostic clinics are primarily healthcare and information providers. The state has passed the grand burden of balancing the sex-ratio onto their shoulders. Could we not have attempted to solve our social problem without imposing unjust liabilities on healthcare professionals?

Third, does the policy really prevent foeticide among people most likely to commit it? The evidence is mixed. Even with the law, the decline in female to male ratio continued to fall. The number of girls per 1000 boys fell from 945 in 1991, to 927 in 2001, to 918 in 2011. The PC-PNDT Act of 1994, and its amendment in 2003, have not even been able to arrest the overall decline in the sex ratio.

In fact, as The Times of India has reported, studies show that "when the first child in a family is male, there is no fall in the sex ratio for the second child, but when the first child is female, there is a decline in the sex ratio of the second child." In other words, despite the ban on sex-determination, people who want to know the sex of the child find out anyway. You do not need to be a genius to figure out that the ban has created avenues for unscrupulous people to do an underground business in sex determination and abortions. We do not know how many women and foetuses die under these dubious conditions, precisely because it is an underground business.

Meanwhile, the ban on prenatal testing prevents women from benefiting from other advances in prenatal testing. Doctors and ultrasound clinicians face harassment by police and government officials in many places. If, despite all these unintended consequences, the sex ratio had shown an improvement, we could probably justify the ban. Yet, it is unclear if the assault on individual liberty, access to benefits of medical advancements, and undue harassment of medical professionals is worth it.

Should we then consider the "alternative" mentioned by Mrs Maneka Gandhi? Well, compulsory registration of pregnancy has its own set of problems, and might not fare much better than the status quo.

What then should we do? Narendra Modi was on the right track when he used moral suasion to change minds, social attitudes and economic incentives. This gets to the heart of the problem. The right role for government is to use its power to align social leaders towards a common goal. A lot of consistent persuasion and a few well-designed carrots can perhaps be more effective than bans, red tapes and prosecution of medical professionals.

In other words, the ban on prenatal sex determination can be lifted. It doesn't work. What about improvements in places like Haryana which have seen a turnaround, from 846 to 889 girls per 1000 boys? Even here, the role of the ban on ultrasound might be a correlation (i.e., coincidental) and not the cause.

Once the sex ratio begins to fall, girls become more scarce, and whatever is scarce becomes valuable. So it is quite possible that once grooms find it difficult to find brides because of the shortage, social attitudes will change in response. This might appear as outrageous to activists and public officials, but it is absurd to believe that society will not react to fewer brides by producing more girl children or "importing" them from elsewhere.Census figures show that states that had the lowest sex ratios in the 2001 census have actually improved in 2011. Perhaps the ban worked in these states more than elsewhere. But equally, once the sex ratio dipped below a threshold, perhaps people in these states reacted to the shortage of brides by giving birth to the girls.

There is, therefore, a good case for reviewing a law than violates liberty, criminalises innocents and denies people the benefits of modern medicine.

Great Career Success Debate: Why you should take a job that pays LESS..

Question: How should I evaluate a full-time job offer? 

Pat’s Take: This is a fantastic question – as the answer is not as simple as you might think. I think there are a number of factors you need to consider when you evaluate full-time job offers. While I am a capitalist at heart, there’s much more to this than offering your services to the highest bidder. Here are my top five considerations for you.

1. Employer brand. I am a huge believer in personal brand, and your first employer out of college is a critical part of your long term personal brand. You’ll build much more credibility being able to tell someone you work for Google, PricewaterhouseCoopers or Target, than Bill and Mary’s Warehousing Services. A great employer brand matters. A key piece of this, by the way, is working to understand who hires people out of that company – where do people typically go when they leave that organization and would you find that to be appealing?
2. Career pathing. Do you see an appealing career path stemming from the specific role you will be taking? Do you like where you’ll likely be in three years? Five years? 10 years? If you like a company but determine that you don’t love the specific role you’ve been hired into, does there appear to be potential to move within the organization – or will you have to leave the company if you want to pivot to a different role?
3. Compensation plan and potential. What is your total compensation opportunity? What type of progression can you expect in the future? This is an awkward question – and you should not ask it until AFTER you have a job offer, but it’s a fair question. If, for instance, you can choose public accounting or corporate accounting, it is reasonable to attempt to understand both your future potential roles, but also the compensation tied to those roles.
4. Learning environment. While your college has, in theory, prepared you for your career, you should learn even more in your first few years in your role. Will the skills you’ll learn transfer to other roles or are they highly specific? Are superiors incented to develop new hires under them or simply for their business results? Is it a “cut throat” environment, or do people seem genuinely interested in helping new hires become experts? Finally, if you want to continue your formal education, will your organization support you in any way to help you do so?
5. Every company has a different culture. Sometimes, even a division within a company has its own culture. Is it upbeat? High stress? Are people given authority early in their job tenure or micro-managed? Is it formal or casual? Asking multiple people why the company is a great fit for them and what they like best and least about the culture can help you gain perspective here.

Pat’s Bottom Line: You’re making a big decision in choosing your first employer. Once you have offers in hand, you have the ability to (respectfully) ask probing questions to get answers to questions that can impact your decision. You will likely not get answers to all of them from one person in one sitting, so you’ll want to talk to both HR people as well as others you have met during the recruitment process. Asking questions about the “softer” issues like learning environment and culture of a range of people in multiple roles within the organization will also add valuable perspective to your process.

Hard work or Smart work - Which is important?

Work is important to do as it takes us to the next level of success. The most important question you should ask at this place is what kind of work will take you to that level: is it hard work or smart work.

For

- Smart work is really the need of the hour.
- Smart work saves lots of time and allows you to be more organized.
- Through smart work your goals can be reached faster.
- Doing smart work allows you to save time for other things which you might not get by doing hard work like, exercise, spending time with family etc.
- Smart work brings lots of recognition from the society and allows you to grow more in the industry you are in.

Against

- Hard work takes lots of time just to make things correct.
- It is totally time consuming and exhausting experience, as after doing lots of work you left out with less energy to do anything else.
- Hard work doesn't allow you to fully use your brain and it pushes you for more physical work.
- In terms of determination and persistence hard work is really important but not lot can be achieved.
- Working hard is not enough as it might not bring the best result of a problem or a situation.

I would like to conclude in the end that smart work is really important as it saves time and allows you to reach your goals faster than that of a hard work. 

Job Satisfaction or Salary

When choosing your career path, it is often said that one must choose between job satisfaction and salary, as it is impossible to achieve both. In times of economic uncertainty, many people are choosing careers based on salary alone, however, Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, now warns that this decision can have adverse effects.

According to Pink, selecting a career based on a list of the highest salaries is a recipe for disaster. If you embark on a career that you do not enjoy, or are not suited to, solely for the perceived financial reward, it can prevent reach your earning potential, as dissatisfied employees rarely flourish and achieve promotion.

Therefore, it has never been more important to identify your core strengths, understand what you can offer, and how to promote your talents to ensure that you can reach your maximum earning potential.

Self-awareness is the foundation for achieving higher levels of performance and it is a skill that can be taught to all.

On October 31st 2013, Ian Cameron, Managing Director of the McQuaig Institute, and Louise Kursmark, Director of BlueSteps Executive Career Service, will be hosting a one hour executive seminar focusing on how you, too, can learn these key skills and ensure that you reach your long-term career management goals.

This executive seminar will cover:

• How to utilize your 'unique selling point' to advance your career
• How to identify and exploit your core strengths to ensure you make the right career move
• How to align your personal temperament with the demands of your current job to get noticed
• How to showcase your past accomplishments effectively

Bloodbath in the brook: JNU, the anti-national debate and the 'national project'

Much controversy has arisen over the past few days due to the hosting of a function related to Afzal Guru, tied to the broader theme of human rights and state oppression.

Before I start, let me make something clear to the typical argument spun by the media. Such an assertion would look like: “But there is a clear demarcation between criticising the government and blatantly disrespecting the nation. How is it acceptable to glorify a convicted terrorist and chant for the destruction of the nation?”

The answer is: There is something called a fair trial. Maybe one has to face trial once to be able to truly value that.

The same Afzal Guru event happened a year before. No one said anything. Now, because the main critiques of the Modi regime are coming out from JNU, the state wants to discredit JNU. 
The police didn't hesitate before lathicharging our fellow students whenever they protested against anything — at UGC, Jantar Mantar, or for that matter, anywhere. They even attacked journalists and broke cameras. When the event happened this time, the police just stood there vacantly for over two hours, and let the cameras soak in the crowds and slogans. Clearly the state is up to only 'good governance' and 'development', here. 
This was a trap for the students. They followed the bait and the government and media pounced, clearly. I only wish some of my fellow students had seen through it in time.

The idea of the government is to let JNU stay as an island of dissent, consistently portrayed as anti-national, to justify thousands of cases of suppression of dissent by the state nationwide. It is indeed the othering of liberalism as unpatriotic.

One now has to put this event in a broader perspective and time frame. This is not the first time that the Modi government has clashed with not only the people of JNU but also the idea of JNU itself, and its democratic space. Many conflicts overlap here. It was JNU, DU and Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) students in Delhi that occupied the University Grants Commission building and opposed the government’s fund cuts in education (that amounted to selling us out to the private sector). It was students at the forefront of the protests at the 16 December gangrape case.

It was JNU students who picked up the issue of saffron lynch mobs and Dadri. And finally, in the Rohith Vemula case, it was students all over the country that challenged the Modi government into admitting that the caste system does in fact exist! Being a central university in the national capital, with an enthusiastic and activist student society, JNU did, of course, get more exposure as the main student challenger body to the Central Government, whether it was on corruption, communalism, caste, or welfare. It is this critique they want to silence. It is also an island where the NSUI presence is negligible and the ABVP has to always function on its back foot. Perhaps with all the bad press, someone believes the political fortunes of the ABVP can be boosted, or all critiques of government policy anywhere be dismissed.

But let us not be mistaken, attacking our university (JNU) in particular is first and foremost an attack on liberalism and social scientists. The current administration has made no secret of the fact that in its eyes, social conservatives are ideal and obedient replacements for real social scientists. Rewriting history is a top priority for them, as they envision an altogether different national project than the one that had been put in place in 1947.

While communal historiography itself has older antecedents than communal school textbooks, in part due to first British rule and then a markedly secular Congress government under Nehru, RSS education and the proliferation of its institutes should be viewed as an investment into the creation of an ideologically communal commonsense that translates into a political base that can’t help but think in line with the RSS and the BJP.

It also functions as the reproductive mechanism that keeps churning out a potential cadre base and a constant minimum electoral support base – which keeps growing as the cumulative effect of more and more generations indoctrinated with the beliefs peddled by the RSS, the sanatanis and the Arya Samajis being around today than in the 1950-70s. The consequence of this educational investment is also “the communal penetration of the government, bureaucracy, police, media and even the judiciary”.

Perry Anderson, eminent historian, argues that in addition to the Hindutva ideology and its foot-soldiers, another ‘Indian ideology’ existed, which was sponsored by the Nehruvian state and endorsed by the liberal intelligentsia. He points out that when Nehru asserts the innate tolerance of Indians, he essentially means it is a Hindu trait. After all, if no one was considered an outsider, then who were we supposed to be tolerant towards? The two ideologies also seem to agree on the historic unity and territorial integrity of India. Both are, in short, to some extent tied to the nation-state project. Both mentioned traits are, it is safe to say, ‘quite modern’.