scholarly journals GMAC: Is Half A Loaf Better Than The Whole?

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Richard Anderson ◽  
Cristina Muise ◽  
David Gancarz

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">In November 2006 General Motors sold 51% ownership of its subsidiary, the General Motors Acceptance Corporation to Cerebus Capital Management in a complicated transaction. This paper demonstrates that GMAC produced over 90% of consolidated General Motors profit over the past two decades and tries to determine why the GM team sought to sell its best player and answer the natural follow-up question: why sell 51% of GMAC, instead of all of it? A number of possible explanations are considered, including cleaning up GM&rsquo;s balance sheet, unlocking the submerged market value of GMAC, and improving GMAC&rsquo;s credit rating/ access to capital. The paper concludes that the partial divestiture was a sound move that could easily have resulted in better financial performance for GM than the status quo, but that the entire strategy was upset by the subprime loan crisis of 2007-08.</span></span></p>

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (13) ◽  
pp. 3716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingling Shi ◽  
Xinping Liu

Since the 21st century, the concept of green building has been gradually popularized and implemented in more countries, which has become a popular direction in the area of sustainability in the building industry. Over the past few decades, many scholars and experts have done extensive research on green building. The purpose of this paper is to systematically analyze and visualize the status quo of green building. Therefore, based on Web of Science (WoS), this paper analyzed the existing knowledge system of green building using CiteSpace, identified keywords related to green building and their frequency of occurrence using the function of keyword co-occurrence analysis, recognized five clusters using the function of cluster analysis, and explored the knowledge evolution pattern of green building using citation bursts analysis in order to reveal how research related to green building has evolved over time. On the basis of aforementioned keywords, clusters, and citation bursts analysis, this paper has built a knowledge graph for green building. This paper can help readers to better understand the status quo and development trend of green building and to easier recognize the shortcomings in the development of green building, so as to provide a promising direction for future research.


2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Adam Kelly

Powers, Burstein, Chodorow, Fowles, and Kukich (2002) suggested that automated essay scoring (AES) may benefit from the use of “general” scoring models designed to score essays irrespective of the prompt for which an essay was written. They reasoned that such models may enhance score credibility by signifying that an AES system measures the same writing characteristics across all essays. They reported empirical evidence that general scoring models performed nearly as well in agreeing with human readers as did prompt-specific models, the “status quo” for most AES systems. In this study, general and prompt-specific models were again compared, but this time, general models performed as well as or better than prompt-specific models. Moreover, general models measured the same writing characteristics across all essays, while prompt-specific models measured writing characteristics idiosyncratic to the prompt. Further comparison of model performance across two different writing tasks and writing assessment programs bolstered the case for general models.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-148
Author(s):  
Alice Donald ◽  
Debra Long ◽  
Anne-Katrin Speck

Abstract Assessing the extent to which states have implemented the decisions of supranational human rights bodies is a challenging task. It requires supranational bodies—be they judicial, quasi-judicial or political—to create an evidence-based public record of the status quo of implementation at any point in time and determine whether the measures taken do, in fact, satisfy the requirements of the decision. This, in turn, relies upon states engaging in good faith, victims having a voice, and civil society organizations seizing the opportunity to influence the follow-up process. Using empirical data from interviews in selected states in the African, Inter-American and European regions, and within regional and United Nations bodies, this article argues that in no human rights ‘system’ are all these expectations met, in part because follow-up work is inadequately resourced. It argues that supranational bodies should proactively seek out diverse sources of information and adopt more transparent and responsive working methods so as to enable ‘real time’ participation by all interested parties. The article concludes with recommendations for supranational bodies, and state and non-state actors.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-159
Author(s):  
Jan Adriaan Schlebusch

Abstract In his strategic political positioning and engagement in the nineteenth century, Groen van Prinsterer looked towards both the past and the future. Rhetorically, he appealed to the past as a vindication of the truth and practicality of his anti-revolutionary position. He also expressed optimism for the success of his convictions and political goals in the future. This optimism was reflected in the confidence with which he engaged politically, despite experiencing numerous setbacks in his career. Relying on the phenomenological-narrative approach of David Carr, I highlight the motives and strategies behind Groen’s political activity, and reveal that the past and the future in Groen’s narrative provide the strategic framework for his rhetoric, and the basis for his activism. I accentuate how the emphasis of his narrative shifts away from the status quo and thus enables a type of political engagement that proved historically significant for the early consolidation of the Dutch constitutional democracy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 355-372
Author(s):  
Anne Holper ◽  
Lars Kirchhoff

This chapter comments on the changes experienced in the field of peace mediation as a result of the increased professionalisation and regulation of the field in the past decade. These processes deeply affect the practice of peace mediation, and yet it is as yet unclear whether and how professionalisation and regulation affect the outcomes of mediated negotiations. The chapter examines the ways in which the major paradigm shift from a traditional reliance on individualised, non-transferable skills to nuanced mediation expertise has changed, or not, the field of peace mediation. It argues that professionalisation has tested the field and its ability to co-operatively improve its own practices, and suggests a model for ‘sorting out’ the status quo and readjusting mediation as a form of conflict resolution.


Author(s):  
M. Grimaldi-Puyana ◽  
P. Gálvez-Ruiz ◽  
A. J. Sánchez-Oliver ◽  
V. Alcaraz-Rodríguez

La gestión de la deuda en las organizaciones deportivas es una variable determinante para la supervivencia de éstas, la falta de control puede afectar al buen funcionamiento de una entidad. Según los datos existentes, las organizaciones que gestionan campos de golf gozan de una buena situación económica. Por ello, el propósito del presente estudio fue conocer el estado y evolución de la deuda de las empresas deportivas que participan en el deporte del golf no competitivo. Para ello, se seleccionó una muestra de 93 organizaciones de todo el territorio Español, con una antigüedad media de 20,08 años. Para la obtención de los datos se utilizó la información económica del Sistema de Análisis de Balances Ibéricos de la pasada década. Los hallazgos obtenidos en el presente estudio nos llevan a conocer que la deuda media de las organizaciones ha aumentado en el 70,5% de los casos después de una década. A pesar de la buena salud económica y al aumento de sus ingresos por explotación y total de activos en el período de estudio, podemos afirmar que la deuda de estas organizaciones ha aumentado exponencialmente entre el 2005-2015. The management of the debt in sports organizations are determinant variables for the survival of these, the lack of control can affect the proper functioning of an entity. According to the existing data, the organizations that manage golf courses enjoy a good economic situation. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to know the status and evolution of the debt of sports companies that participate in the sport of non-competitive golf. For this, a sample of 93 organizations throughout the Spanish territory was selected with an average age of 20,08 years. In order to obtain the data, the economic information of the Iberian Balance Sheet Analysis System of the past decade was used. From the findings obtained in the present study, an increase in the average debt of the organizations of 70,5% follows after a decade. In spite of the good economic health and the increase of its income by exploitation and total of assets in the period of study, we can affirm that the debt of these organizations has increased exponentially between 2005-2015.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 560
Author(s):  
Qian Liu

In the past decade, language functions have attracted increasing attention of Chinese secondary school English teachers. However, students seem not to have explicit knowledge in this aspect. This study investigated Chinese students’ awareness of functions and explored the causes of the status quo. Based on the results achieved through a questionnaire survey, textbooks analyses and teaching analyses, suggestions are put forward for the building of students’ awareness of functions in the teaching of speaking.


2014 ◽  
pp. 64-66
Author(s):  
Maurice Alford

I’ve been teaching since 1973, some in area schools, some in intermediates, but mostly in secondary schools. Throughout my career I have enjoyed studying part-time, and in 2004 I was privileged to spend the year as an e-Fellow. I’m still studying, still reflecting on education in general and teaching in particular, and still very interested in what it means to be working in this space, what it means to be a teacher. In this piece I am therefore writing primarily with my colleagues in mind—I am writing for the classroom practitioners of today who are the teachers of the future. The ideas of connectedness and collaboration that I discuss here are based on what I have learned from my own practice. Built on a firm theoretical foundation, they represent my synthesis of education wisdom and philosophy. They are intended to challenge the status quo and to provoke change, just as the future challenges us to learn from the past but move from the present.


Slavic Review ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 905-913
Author(s):  
Marko Pavlyshyn

Liberalized cultural discussion in the Soviet Union after the Twenty-seventh Party Congress in 1985 was concerned in part with the nature of a literature that would be appropriate to the new ideals of openness and restructuring. In Ukraine, as elsewhere, the debate brought forth a list of imperatives that, without challenging the socialist realist principle that literature must serve overarching social and political goals, amounted to a formula for a new kind of literary engagement. Literature must “boldly intrude into contemporary reality,” it must defend the historical, cultural, linguistic, and ecological heritage and must unmask the crimes and abuses of the past and present. It must no longer be bland and inoffensive and must not avoid controversial issues or praise the status quo as a matter of course.


1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 368-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. McGlothlin

Both the court criteria for commitment and program policies have undergone significant changes in the past several years. The large majority of current commitments follow a felony conviction and typically occur only when the alternative sentencing disposition is more severe. Civil commitments without a criminal conviction are very rare. Program policy changes have resulted in a parole-incarceration time ratio of nearly 3:1 in comparison to 1:1 prior to 1970. A follow-up study of early commitments found that those continuing in the program generally performed better than a comparable sample discharged shortly after admission. Comparisons under the strict (pre-1970) and more lenient regimens showed roughly comparable behavior, but the availability of methadone maintenance was also a significant factor in reducing heroin use during the latter period.


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