Manifesto

In my 14 years as a student of Colegio Panamericano I’ve learned many things from my teachers, classmates and directors. I consider school as the best period in a person´s life because it is where you grow up and learn many important things for the future. In this moment I’m writing this manifesto to express my gratitude towards my school and also to let people know what experiences I’ve had to face throughout these years as a student. I will set many goals and work hard to achieve them all. I will do many things in life.

Now that I am in 12^th grade, what I can only think of is about College. College has been one of my great concerns throughout my senior year. I am now anxious to see what many things I will learn from this new grownup experience. College is an opportunity of becoming a more independent person in the way that if you chose to study in another country, you will have to live alone and solve the problems by yourself. One of the experiences that will shape my life and the way I see things is the one-year exchange to Germany this summer. I will have to live in a foreign country with a strange family that will “adopt me” for a long year. Here is where I will show what my parents have teach me and the principles I’ve learned from them like respect, charity, cooperation, generosity, humility and others. In Germany I know I will have to face many difficulties that I have never faced before, but with the help of God I will be able to find a way out from them. I consider myself as a spoiled boy that depends mainly on his parents, but I believe that after this trip many things will change in my life. Many people say that school is the most relaxing period in life, but I say that it only depends in you. It depends in how you want to live your life; stressed or relaxed, you have two options.

According to Soren Kierkegaard, “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” What this author meant with this quote was that many people see life as a problem without a solution, but they need to know that life is not a problem; instead, it is a reality that needs to be experienced. From the experiences that I have gathered throughout these years, I’ve proposed many goals that I believe are easy to achieve if I work arduously. One of the goals I’ve proposed to change the world is to make campaigns or commercials that emphasize males to behave like gentlemen and changing the way men treat women in this generation. This goal is sort of weird but at the same time I believe is being needed in this generation. I decided to work hard and make an impact in the lives of my classmates and friends to start this change that I hope will work in a future.

Lightbulb Conspiracy

The Lightbulb Conspiracy documentary that we watch this week was mainly about how the Lightbulb companies used to create Lightbulbs that lasted 1000 hours, but throughout the years these companies developed something called planned obsolesence. This tecnique was used by the Lightbulb companies many years ago and now days is being used by nos of the companies around the world. It also showed an example of a Lightbulb that was in a fire station that had lasted 100 years. 

    Photo credit: WWW.therferralauthority.com

The Four Horsemen

Today I will talk about a short documentary watched in my social studies class called The Four Horsemen. This documentary mainly talks about how the United States is cataloged as an empire and how this empire will fall as time passes. It takes as title The Four Horsemen because it describes the four things found in an empire that are: War, Conquest, Famine, and Death. The documentary also criticizes and questions the system that we have created in the way that it shows and explains the huge division between the rich and the poor. To complement the title, the documentary expresses the idea that the American empire will fall and gives some reason to support this idea. Some of the reasons that will make the US empire fall according to the documentary are: The luxury, the spending in the military, the years of decay, and lastly, as I just said, the really huge gap or division between the rich and the poor which forms a visible economic inequality.

An interesting quote I heard in the documentary was: "To understand something is to be liberated from it." Seeing how the things are in the US and how this would affects us terrifies me. The United States now-days is like a world power, they have military, relationships and the US interests. Many of the things we have or the clothe we buy comes from the US, so it would impact our lives way more than we imagine. Food companies and clothe companies that were created in the US and that have been globalizing, will in some way decrease but not fall because of their expansion throughout the world. We have to accept the reality that without the US, many of the world´s countries would be left without an important ally like in the case of Colombia and other countries.

Photo credit: www.documentarystream.com

How the Fractional Reserve Banking System works

The Fractional Reserve Banking System is mainly known as the system were banks lend more money than they really have. According to the movie, this system is the one in charged of creating money by charging the people with interest in the loans they gave. Banks get the 10% of the money invested in it and they really have small quantities in it, so that is why all the people cannot take all their out of the bank at the same time; if they do it, it will created the famous bank runs of the 1930´s. Some of the advantages of the Fractional Reserve System are is that it allows banks to generate income on the funds deposited. Every time your bank borrows from you to make a loan to another bank customer, it gets to charge interest on the loan, pocketing the interest.

Although this Reserve Banking System has improved, it still has some disadvantages for the people. One disadvantage is that it puts banks in an awkward position when it comes to liquidity. "While banks aren't required to retain their deposits on hand, they have to be able to redeem deposits upon request." 





















Photo Credit: http://www.worldsocialism.org/


Citations: 

McMahon, Mary, and Bronwyn Harris. WiseGeek. Conjecture, 26 Feb. 2014. Web. 05 Apr. 2014. <http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-fractional-reserve-banking.htm>.

"Education Resources." Classroom Economist: Fractional Reserve Banking. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Apr. 2014. <http://www.frbatlanta.org/edresources/classroomeconomist/11fr_banking_transcript.cfm>.

Colombia´s Monetary System

The Colombian financial system is a key pillar of economic activity that analyzes important resources to the different sectors within it. According to the official web page of the Banco de la República "Este régimen utilitario se caracteriza básicamente por el hecho de que los bienes producidos no son consumidos por sus propios productores, son intercambiados en el mercado mediante convenciones reguladoras que constituyen un sistema monetario." This means that the system is the one in charged of controlling the money of the country. 

Monetary policy in Colombia is governed by an inflation targeting scheme whose purpose is to maintain a low and stable rate of inflation, and achieve output growth. The Banco de la Republica is not part of the branches of government (Executive, Legislative, Judicial) of the control bodies or control or the electoral power, but it is an entity of the State. 

Photo credit: http://www.casasriegner.com/


Citations:

"Banco De La República (Banco Central De Colombia)." Banco De La República (Banco Central De Colombia). N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Apr. 2014. <http://www.banrep.gov.co/>.

"Economía Y Empresas. El Blog Salmón." ¿Cómo Funciona El Sistema Monetario?N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2014. <http://www.elblogsalmon.com/conceptos-de-economia/como-funciona-el-sistema-monetario>.

Russian Troops in Ukraine

A day after Russia held talks with the U.S in Paris, it was ordered the withdraw of a military group from the Ukraine border. According to the German chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian president Vladimir Putin, told her that he had ordered a partial withdraw of Russian forces from the region. Earlier on monday the prime minister of Ukraine said there had been also a partial withdraw of Russian troops from their border.

"This could be linked to a regular rotation of soldiers," said Dmytrashkivskiy. "Or it may be linked to the Russian-US negotiations." But in Crimea, the Russian prime minister, Dimitry Medvedev, said that Moscow would declare the peninsula as a special economic zone with tax incentives to attract investors.Crimean officials said that their economy is facing a shortfall and it needs economic stimulus from Russia. Medvedev promised to raise the level of salaries for municipal employees and pensions to average Russian levels and to modernise the region's hospitals. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8NAN1kBeV8 

Video credit: Jewish News One

Citations: 

"Russia Pulls Some Troops from Ukraine Border." - Europe. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2014. <http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/03/russia-partly-withdraws-from-ukraine-border-2014331143547644198.html>.

FOOD INC

Food Inc is a movie that shows how the industry is creating cheaper, faster, and tasty food that is unhealthy for the people. It explains how companies are genetically modifying seeds and animals in order to sell more at a lower cost. One example of this issue is the creation of genetically modified beans from the company Monsanto. These beans have been altered genetically in order to never die from any plague or virus but at the same time they are not fertile; if you want to plant more of this bean, you need to buy them directly from the company. In relation with the book Confessions of an Economic Hitman, one related problem expressed by the company of monsanto is the economic or corporate control.

There are three different sources that we have seen in social studies class and they are: Race film, Food Inc movie, and the book Confessions of an Economic Hitman. These three sources have many things in common, for example improvement of people´s actions in our society. In the race film, scientist explained that even a person with different skin color than yours could be more genetically close to you than your own brother. The Food Inc documentary is so good and expresses a different point of view from the multinational corporations that run the economies of the world. According to the director of the documentary Robert Kenner: "It’s such a good case that you soon realize there are a dozen more documentaries tucked inside this one." 

Photo credit: (www.jessainscough.com)


More information: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/movies/12food.html?_r=0

Citations:

Dargis, Manohla. "Meet Your New Farmer: Hungry Corporate Giant." The New York Times. The New York Times, 11 June 2009. Web. 31 Mar. 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/movies/12food.html?_r=0>.