Financial Vulnerability in Canada


Book Description

This book examines financial vulnerability: a state in which a person or household cannot absorb any substantial spending or negative income shock without substantial financial and ultimately broader harm such as job loss, emotional harm, or mental illness. The focus of the book is on the experiences of low- income and modest income Canadian families – families which, by virtue of being in the lower income brackets, are particularly at risk of experiencing financial hardship. Looking at vulnerability from a conceptual and empirical lens, this book offers a framework to better understand the complex and interdependent ways in which financial vulnerability emerge and can be addressed. By locating its analysis of individual and household financial management in wider community, cultural, and economic contexts, this book seeks to offer holistic policy recommendations to reduce financial vulnerability, with implications that go beyond Canada and to other developed countries.




The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report


Book Description

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.




The Experience and Meaning of Work in Women's Lives


Book Description

In the past, social scientists have relied predominantly on traditional models of work to understand women's experiences. These models, however, have been based on men's occupational experiences, which have been assumed to be the same for women. More recently, researchers and theorists from a variety of disciplines have begun to challenge earlier assumptions as inaccurate reflections of the realities for female workers. Newer studies have concentrated on the historical and social reasons for women's employment and career choices, including changes in economy, family, and social conditions. To provide a deeper understanding of women worker's realities by including the meaning they make of their work experiences, the editors have assembled the research of social scientists from various disciplines whose investigations focused exclusively on this subject. Their qualitative methodology provides a forum for women to voice issues, raise questions, and share self-reflections about their work experiences and the meaning they make of their work in the context of the rest of their lives. The common themes that are interwoven within the fabric of women's work experience are: the need to expand traditional definitions of what constitutes "work;" the fluid nature of boundaries between personal life and work life; the importance of the relational aspects of their work; the issues related to the uses of power at work; the role of work in the development of women's sense of self and personal identity; and the degree to which women's work experience is colored by discrimination and sexism.




Families Caring for an Aging America


Book Description

Family caregiving affects millions of Americans every day, in all walks of life. At least 17.7 million individuals in the United States are caregivers of an older adult with a health or functional limitation. The nation's family caregivers provide the lion's share of long-term care for our older adult population. They are also central to older adults' access to and receipt of health care and community-based social services. Yet the need to recognize and support caregivers is among the least appreciated challenges facing the aging U.S. population. Families Caring for an Aging America examines the prevalence and nature of family caregiving of older adults and the available evidence on the effectiveness of programs, supports, and other interventions designed to support family caregivers. This report also assesses and recommends policies to address the needs of family caregivers and to minimize the barriers that they encounter in trying to meet the needs of older adults.




Central Banking, Monetary Policy and Gender


Book Description

Central Banking, Monetary Policy and Gender uniquely explores the ways in which monetary policies, changes in interest rates and unconventional monetary strategies such as quantitative easing affect women. This groundbreaking book analyses the inner organisation of central banks, considering for the first time how banking transmission mechanisms operate in relation to gender, investigating issues of power, income, wealth inequality and labour market dynamics.




Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout


Book Description

Patient-centered, high-quality health care relies on the well-being, health, and safety of health care clinicians. However, alarmingly high rates of clinician burnout in the United States are detrimental to the quality of care being provided, harmful to individuals in the workforce, and costly. It is important to take a systemic approach to address burnout that focuses on the structure, organization, and culture of health care. Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout: A Systems Approach to Professional Well-Being builds upon two groundbreaking reports from the past twenty years, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System and Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, which both called attention to the issues around patient safety and quality of care. This report explores the extent, consequences, and contributing factors of clinician burnout and provides a framework for a systems approach to clinician burnout and professional well-being, a research agenda to advance clinician well-being, and recommendations for the field.







Regulating Refugee Protection Through Social Welfare


Book Description

This book analyses the use and abuse of social welfare as a means of border control for asylum seekers and refugees in Australia. Offering an unparalleled critique of the regulation and deterrence of protection seekers via the denial or depletion of social welfare supports, the book includes contributions from legal scholars, social scientists, behavioural scientists, and philosophers, in tandem with the critical insights and knowledge supplied by refugees. It is organised in three parts, each framed by a commentary that serves as an introduction, as well as offering pertinent comparative perspectives from Europe. Part One comprises three chapters: a rights-based analysis of Australia’s ‘hostile environment’ for protection seekers; a searing critique of welfare policing of asylum seekers as ‘necropolitics’; and a unique philosophical perspective that grounds scrutiny of Australia’s policing of asylum seekers. Part Two contains five chapters that uncover and explore the lived experiences and adverse impacts of different social welfare restrictions for refugee protection seekers. Finally, the chapters in Part Three offer distinct views on human rights advocacy movements and methods, and the scope for resistance and change to the status quo. This book will appeal to an international, as well as an Australian, readership with interests in the areas of human rights, immigration and refugee law, social welfare law/policy, social work, and public health.




Science Interrupted


Book Description

Science Interrupted examines how scientists in China pursue environmental sustainability within the constraints of domestic and international bureaucracies. Timothy G. McLellan offers a theoretical framework for analyzing the formal procedural work of Chinese bureaucracy—work that is overlooked when China scholars restrict their gaze to the informal and interpersonal channels through which bureaucracy is often navigated. Homing in on an agroforestry research organization in southwest China, the author takes the experiences of the organization's staff in navigating diverse international funding regimes and authoritarian state institutions as entry points for understanding the pervasiveness of bureaucracy in contemporary science. He asks: What if we take the tools, sensibilities, and practices of bureaucracies seriously not only as objects of critique but as resources for re-thinking scientific practice? Extending a mode of anthropological research in which ethnography serves as source of theory as well as source of data, Science Interrupted thinks with, and not only against, bureaucracy. McLellan shows that ethnographic engagement with bureaucracy enables us to imagine more democratic and more collaborative modes of scientific practice.




Fostering Sustainable Business Models through Financial Markets


Book Description

The aim of this volume is to foster more sustainable business models through financial markets. To that end, it is necessary to know the main global challenges facing financial markets and their impact on creating sustainable value in business models of enterprises in the context of sustainable adaptation. The book focuses on assessing the decision criteria adopted by financial markets in the process of transaction risk valuation, in terms of the presence of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria, and by assessing the impact of including these criteria in the risk assessment process by financial markets in business decisions, leading as a consequence to building new value in the form of a sustainable business model. The book presents global ESG risks facing the financial markets, and discusses how ESG risks are managed and monitored, and how financial markets can measure and operationalize extra-financial risks in its assessment process. The book also analyses ESG risk implications and influences on company behavior, and the actions that companies should take considering the ESG assessment requirements of financial markets. Finally, it provides a comprehensive, structured, and systematic view of how financial markets and companies should adapt and improve their business models. The book provides unique challenges for investors, companies, financial markets, and for our society as a whole, advancing traditional risk management approaches to address global risks.