Since there are many ongoing issues affecting public administration
and governance lately, I felt that it would be appropriate to set up a
blog so that everyone can share their opinion on current events relating
to this course. There are 3 blogging oppurtunities in total for this
course. You will be required to blog on ANY ONE of the three "headline"
news item based on a theme for that week. THIS WEEK' s THEME is : MONEY
MONEY MONEY! So you can share your opinion on any news even relating to
finances, taxes, monetary service, pension budget, government
overspending etc that you heard or read about recently. Keep in mind
that these are blogs and not discussions, so one individual post by you
is more than sufficent. You do not need to include the link of the news
article, or even mention it, as long as you discuss the subject matter
that you heard or read about.
Your blogging is not limited to just newspaper items, as you can
comment on ANY news article, or event you heard or read about within the
last few weeks/month. Your comments can be opinionated, however you
must relate it to the course content. To access the blog site, simple
click on the link found on the navigational bar on the course homepage.
This link will take you directly to the course blog site.
DISCLAIMER: Please keep in mind that these blogs are public blogs, which
means that your blogging posts are available to the public. If you are
NOT comfortable with this , you have two options:
1) You can submit your blog via the course homepage under dropbox or
2) you can use a pseudonym and email me your pseudonym at ( nmohan@uoguelph.ca)
Some student prefer to blog in private, which is why we have set up
the dropbox option for those who would like to submit their blogs
privately using a word document. Some have opted to use pseudonyms for
the public blog site and some their real names. We have made
accomodations for all of these options. Blogging is NOT the same as
discussion, so it is not necessary to respond or critique anyone's blog
post if they are on the public forum. The main aim of this assignment is
to get students to keep up with current news and share their thoughts
on the subject matter.
To create a new blog or to post a comment, please sign in using your
google, twitter or yahoo accounts. If this does not work, you can create
a new account or use the other methods of submitting your blog.
IF YOU WISH TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS WEEK's THEME, then YOU MUST SUBMIT
YOUR BLOG BY SUNDAY June 1st by 11:59 PM in order to obtain 5 marks.
You may choose to participate in all three and we will pick your best
grade.
If you have any questions about this, please email me or post it in the main discussion forum.
Regards
Prof Mohan
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I have just read an article by Sean Casey a Liberal MP for Charlottetown online from Huffingtonpost.ca and found it very disturbing. According to Sean our Prime Minister Stephan Harper has the worst record of economic growth of any Prime Minister since RB Bennett and the great depression. This is very alarming to me because reading on in the article I found out that the average household debt-to-income ratio (i.e., the amount of debt the average Canadian household owes for every dollar of their annual disposable income) has raised from $1.31 to $1.64. Stephan Harper has fashioned a negative organization development in creating more debt with a higher cost of living.
ReplyDeleteStephan Harpers span of control in the housing market is another upsetting factor to our higher cost of living. A significant contributor to household debt can be traced to rising housing prices. Jim Flaherty, Stephan Harper’s finance minister helped fuel the housing bubble with his introduction of 40-year mortgages with zero down-payment. This policy of zero-down payments for mortgagees is what got the U.S. into the economic recession it has been trying to climb out now. If we apply Gulick and Urwick’s organization of duties the purpose of zero down-payment in mortgages is to increase housing prices by increase home owners. Unfortunately as seen in the U.S. the process of having 40-year mortgages with zero down-payment results in people bailing out of the mortgages because they are unable to make the minimum payments towards their house especially in the first few years. Which is why down payments are a good indicators for financially reliable homeowners. Most people who cannot make a down payment on a house should not be able to have a mortgage on a house. The majority U.S. citizens who had a zero down-payment in mortgages foreclosed their mortgages and the housing market crashed.
The bureaucracy in Harpers administration to allow Jim Flaherty the power to create these 40-year mortgages with zero down-payments is very alarming. This method of increasing homeowners and generating jobs in the production of the housing market only results in bankrupting finically unstable citizens because they are realistically unable to keep up with their mortgages. The people are left with nothing; the banks have procured a huge debt, and will ask the government to bail them out with our tax money, lowering our dollar and increase our debt. I personally feel 40-year mortgages with zero down-payment is a bad idea for an economy coming out of a recession and should not be allowed.
By: Michael Tyrala