Dynamic microsimulation pension model

A dynamic microsimulation pension model is a type of a pension model projecting a pension system by means of a microsimulation and generating the complete history of each individual in a data set. The results of such model offer both the aggregate (e.g. total replacement ratio, implicit debt) and individual indicators (e.g. individual cash-flows) of the pension system. Thanks to complexity of results, there is a possibility to investigate the distribution of pensions, poverty of pensioners, impact of the changes of the pension formula, for more examples see e.g. (Deloitte, 2011). Detailed individual set of (administrative) data should serve as a model input.
Dynamic Microsimulation Pension Models.
A dynamic microsimulation pension models (or a dynamic model with dynamic ageing) is a type of a pension model – see its taxonomy and also (Gál, Horváth, Orbán, & Dekkers, 2009)
There are two basic types of this kind of model - (i) deterministic, which is based on best estimates of input parameters and simultaneous modelling of all statuses; and (ii) stochastic, based on random simulation of one status path for the individual concerned.
Deterministic Models.
Transfers between statuses (e.g. between employment, unemployment, exit from the labour market, etc.) are all modelled simultaneously. The life path of one modelled individual or group of individuals gradually branches out. The result (e.g. insurance period, newly awarded pension) is achieved by averaging across all life paths. In such case it is not possible to explore extreme life paths and it is also not possible to satisfactorily identify e.g. the number of pensioners threatened by poverty. With a large number of model points, the model is only able to identify a poverty threat caused by a low income. A poverty threat caused by interrupting the work career (insufficiently long period of insurance) cannot be modelled without additional information and adjustments made to the model.
Simplification or averaging is necessary in cases where non-linear life path dependencies occur in the pension formula (e.g. minimum pension, minimum numbers of years of work, etc.). Some extreme situations can be addressed by establishing a new status, but that makes the model more complex and again, the calculation is only approximate. With proper availability of data, it is possible to use the whole structure for selected parameters (primarily insurance period), but it is both calculation- and memory-consuming.
On the other hand, the advantage of the deterministic approach is the fact that it is easier to ensure consistency with external outputs, e.g. population projection and macroeconomic scenario of average-wage growth. Yet it may be necessary to calibrate the model even in this case. For example, to ensure consistency with an external macroeconomic projection, it is necessary to calibrate salary growth over the career.
Stochastic Models.
Transfers between statuses are modelled based on random parameters (generating a random number). At one moment in time, each model point corresponds with just one status. The transfer between defined statuses depends on a random number and its comparison with the transfer probability.
One model point has exactly one random career. As a result, the insurance period and other variables occurring in the pension formula are known exactly at the point of retirement, which makes it possible to perform exact modelling of pension formula non-linearities in extreme lines, see e.g. ("Pojistné rozpravy 28/2011")
The data requirements are the same as with the deterministic model (probability of transfers). If more detailed data are available, it is easy to use them and adapt the structure of the model.
To achieve stable overall results, it is necessary to use a sufficient number of model points or simulations (with multiple simulations, the result is the average across the respective simulations). The need for a larger number of model points or simulations makes the calculation time longer. That, on the other hand, is compensated by simpler calculation, because it is not necessary to calculate all life paths simultaneously and average them.
Due to randomness, the results do not exactly correspond with the external outputs (population projections, macroeconomic projections), but if the number of model points or simulations is sufficient, the degree of consistency is very good.
The main benefit of the stochastic approach is the possibility of exact modelling of all non-linear elements in the pension formula. The results thus include even extreme lines and it is possible to explore cases of individuals threatened by poverty. It is possible to integrate more statuses into this type of model, and so it can be used also to model other types of benefits (unemployment, child, sickness benefits). On the other hand, establishing an additional status in a deterministic model makes the model highly complicated.
Some properties of stochastic models may be unusual for the users. Some outputs, especially those associated with transfers between statuses such as number of deaths, number of newly employed individuals etc., are “noised”. That corresponds to the observation of reality, but the users may be used to “smooth” results.
To achieve stable results, it is necessary to have a large number of model points or simulations. The more parameters are generated stochastically, the higher is the number of simulations required to ensure convergence.
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Dynamic Microsimulation Models.
Strengths
Weaknesses
Examples of Dynamic Microsimulation Models.
There are a number of dynamic microsimulation models in various countries:
For more see e.g. (Asghar Zaidi and Katherine Rake, 2001).


James Cooley

James William Cooley (1926 – June 29, 2016) was an American mathematician. Cooley received a B.A. degree in 1949 from Manhattan College, Bronx, NY, an M.A. degree in 1951 from Columbia University, New York, NY, and a Ph.D. degree in 1961 in applied mathematics from Columbia University. He was a programmer on John von Neumann's computer at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, from 1953 to 1956. He worked on quantum mechanical computations at the Courant Institute, New York University, from 1956 to 1962, when he joined the Research Staff at the IBM Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY. Upon retirement from IBM in 1991, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, where he served on the faculty of the computer engineering program.
His most significant contribution to the world of mathematics and digital signal processing is the Fast Fourier transform, which he co-developed with John Tukey (see Cooley–Tukey FFT algorithm) while working for the research division of IBM in 1965.
The motivation for it was provided by Dr. Richard L. Garwin at IBM Watson Research who was concerned about verifying a nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union for the SALT talks. Garwin thought that if he had a very much faster Fourier Transform he could plant sensors in the ground in countries surrounding the Soviet Union. He suggested to both Cooley and Tukey how Fourier transforms could be programmed to be much faster. They did the work, the sensors were planted, and he was able to locate nuclear explosions to within 15 kilometers of where they were occurring.
J. W. Cooley was a member of the "Digital Signal Processing Committee" of the IEEE, was elected a Fellow of IEEE for his work on FFT, and received the IEEE Centennial Medal. In 2002 he received the IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal. He considerably contributed to the establishing of terminology in digital signal processing.


The Body (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

"The Body" is the sixteenth episode of the fifth season of the supernatural drama television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". The episode was written and directed by series creator Joss Whedon and originally aired on the WB network in the United States on February 27, 2001. In the series, Buffy Summers is a teenager chosen by mystical forces and endowed with superhuman powers to defeat vampires, demons, and other evils in the fictional town of Sunnydale. She is supported in her struggles by a close circle of friends and family, nicknamed the "Scooby Gang". In "The Body", Buffy is powerless as she comes upon her lifeless mother, who has died of a brain aneurysm.
Although Buffy and her friends deal with death every week, often in very gruesome and fantastic ways, in this episode they are bewildered by the natural death of Joyce Summers, the divorced mother of Buffy and her sister Dawn and occasionally a mother figure to their friends. They struggle to comprehend what the loss means to each of them and to the group. Buffy must begin to face her life and her duties as the Slayer without parental support and comfort. The episode was stripped of all music and disorienting effects were included to convey the sense of displacement and loss associated with the death of a close family member.
"The Body" aired to wide acclaim, and has since been ranked by several critics as one of the greatest television episodes ever broadcast.
Background.
Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is assisted from season one by her close friends, who collectively refer to themselves as the Scooby Gang: Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon), whose primary strength is his devotion to Buffy, and Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan), who begins dabbling in witchcraft and grows progressively more powerful. They are mentored by Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), Buffy's "Watcher", and joined by Xander's girlfriend Anya Jenkins (Emma Caulfield), who was a vengeance demon until her powers were taken away. Anya is often at a loss to know how to communicate with humans, and her speech is frequently abrupt. In the fourth season, Willow became romantically involved with Tara Maclay (Amber Benson), also a witch.
Each season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (often simplified as "Buffy") presents an overall theme episodes tie into. Roz Kaveney identifies family and belonging as the overall theme of the fifth season. Buffy's mother Joyce (Kristine Sutherland) begins experiencing headaches at the beginning of the season, once collapsing and requiring hospitalization. She subsequently has a brain tumor removed. She has been recovering well. In the previous episode, "I Was Made to Love You", she receives flowers from a male suitor, which Buffy finds at the end of that episode. The fifth season also introduces Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg), Buffy's 14-year-old sister. Each season has a primary antagonist called the Big Bad; in the fifth season this takes the form of a powerful goddess named Glory (Clare Kramer).
Plot.
Buffy arrives home and sees flowers sent by Joyce's suitor. She calls out to her mother, but hears no answer. Buffy sees Joyce lying lifeless on the sofa, staring at the ceiling.
There is a flashback to a Christmas dinner where Joyce and all the Scoobies are present, having a typical lighthearted conversation. The scene snaps back to Buffy in the living room, shaking Joyce and screaming at her. She calls for an ambulance and attempts CPR, but to no avail. The paramedics work on Joyce and she revives, the paramedics declare it a miracle in the ambulance, and Joyce, Buffy, and Dawn rejoice in the hospital. This is revealed to be a fantasy of Buffy's. Back in the living room, the paramedics stop working on Joyce and tell Buffy that Joyce is dead. Buffy goes into the hall and vomits. Giles arrives and Buffy tells him not to move the body, shocking herself by using that word.
At school, Buffy pulls Dawn out of class into the hall. Through the windows of the art room, the class watches Buffy tell her that Joyce had an accident. Dawn collapses, wailing.
In Willow's dormitory room, Tara tries to help Willow find a shirt to wear. Xander and Anya arrive. Willow panics, rejecting shirt after shirt, not knowing how to appear for Buffy and Dawn. Anya asks Xander what she is supposed to do; he cannot answer. Xander expresses his desire to find Glory and exact justice, then complains about Joyce's negligent doctors. Anya asks if they will see the body, then if the body will be cut open, and Willow responds angrily. Anya tearfully says she does not understand how to behave, or why Joyce cannot go back into her own body, unable to understand human death. Xander puts his fist through the wall, making him bleed but feel oddly better. The group leaves to visit Buffy at the hospital.
In the waiting room outside the morgue, the doctor tells Buffy that Joyce died of an aneurysm suddenly and painlessly. Dawn goes alone to see Joyce's body. While she is there, one of the bodies, now a vampire, gets up. After noticing Dawn has not come back, Buffy goes to look for her. As Buffy kills the vampire, the sheet falls from Joyce's face. Looking at her mother's body, Dawn asks where she went, as she reaches out to touch her cheek.
Production and writing.
From the start of writing the "Buffy" series, Joss Whedon asserted that it would never have a "very special episode" as in contemporary series "Beverly Hills, 90210", "The Wonder Years", or "Party of Five", where the core cast of characters addresses a single issue (AIDS, drug abuse, or alcoholism, for example) and resolve all the problems at the end. Whedon was not interested in finding a life-affirming lesson for "The Body". Rather, he wanted to capture the isolation and boredom involved in the minutes and hours after finding a loved one has died, what he termed "the black ashes in your mouth numbness of death". He did not intend to resolve any religious or existential questions about the end of life, but wanted to examine the process in which a person becomes a mere body. Whedon's mother, a teacher, also died of a cerebral aneurysm, and he drew on his own experiences, and those of friends and other writers, in constructing the episode. He tried to achieve an "unlovely physicality" in "The Body" to portray the upsetting minutiae involved in attempting to comprehend what is incomprehensible.
Small details became significant: to protect her dignity Buffy pulls the hem of Joyce's skirt down after it rode up when she attempted CPR; the camera focuses on a breeze through wind chimes while Buffy vomits; to emphasize Buffy's isolation, the scene has no exterior establishing shots of the house.
The opening sequence of "The Body" was also the closing scene of the previous episode, "I Was Made to Love You"; this is the only episode in the series that was first aired without a "Previously on "Buffy"" lead-in. The Christmas dinner scene was used both to contrast the stark reality of the rest of the episode, and to avoid having the credits appear over the beginning scenes where Buffy is trying to revive her mother.
The episode is presented in four acts, each beginning in total silence and with a close-up shot of Joyce's pale, staring face. Shooting the first act was difficult for Gellar (Buffy). Whedon shot the scene where she finds her mother as one long take, showing her move through the house and calling the paramedics, about seven times. The rest of the scenes in the act were shot in sequence. At the end, Giles arrives and also attempts to revive Joyce, but Buffy blurts, "We're not supposed to move the body!" Both Gellar and Trachtenberg (Dawn) were raised by single women, and Gellar later spoke about the experience of acting something that was very real and close to her, stating, "you try to separate it as best you can and at the same time it adds that extra layer". As soon as the scene was finished with Gellar "at a fever pitch", they restarted it where she comes in the door happily, which Whedon regretted for the emotional range Gellar was required to endure.
Kristine Sutherland (Joyce) was informed during the third season that her character would be killed off, which she accepted because she intended to spend time in Europe. She is absent from most of the fourth season because she was traveling. She reported that the atmosphere on the set of "The Body" was strange and tense because she had been a regular character through the series and she was suddenly playing a corpse. She found the part difficult to play, not only for the stillness, but getting into the make-up, and lying on the morgue table with other bodies.
The most difficult scene for Whedon to film was Willow panicking in her dormitory room. Her obsession about what to wear to visit Buffy was inspired by Whedon's own experiences when he was at a loss for what tie to wear for a friend's funeral. He praised Alyson Hannigan's acting, saying that she was able to be consistently emotional in every take and make him and the crew cry every time. Whedon acknowledged his difficulty speaking on the DVD commentary while watching Hannigan in the scene.
Whedon's rejection of the "very special episode" format impelled him to address the physicality of Willow and Tara's relationship within "The Body". Before this episode, they had held hands and danced on screen, but they had not kissed. A genre of television specials dealing with female homosexuality developed as the "lesbian kiss episode" in the 1990s, where a female character kissed another female but no relationship is further explored. Whedon set out to acknowledge Willow's and Tara's affection without making it the primary focus of the show. For attempting this, he received resistance from the airing network, the WB. Whedon informed them that the kiss between Willow and Tara was "not negotiable". According to Whedon, the conversation about the kiss was approached by the network executives, who were concerned with the number of gay relationships on the network. Whedon countered that the kiss was "true to character" and said he would quit the show if the network forbade it. It was the only time during the series he threatened to do so.
When Willow and Tara first met in the fourth season, the writers did not intend the relationship to be romantic but the actors had such chemistry that, two episodes later, Whedon and the writing team took Alyson Hannigan and Amber Benson aside to inform them where it would go. For the rest of the season, the sexual relationship between Willow and Tara was represented metaphorically by witchcraft, and none of the WB executives realized it. In the end, Whedon praised the way the WB handled the display of affection in "The Body", saying "They raised an eyebrow, but they've been great. I give the WB props when it came to the [characters' first] kiss. What I want to show is real affection, and 'The Body' turned out to be the perfect place to put it in. To the network's credit, they not only aired it, but they did not advertise it. I thought that was pretty classy." Stephen Tropiano in "Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV" writes that this approach was "truly groundbreaking"; no long speech, no huge discovery: "Like Willow, we're made to feel as if her love for Tara is the most natural thing in the world". Tropiano calls it "A simple kiss. A quiet, simple moment. Two lovers kissing. Just like lovers do."
Audiences reacted more emotionally than Whedon expected to Emma Caulfield's performance. Anya's blunt innocence was similar to a plot twist, as viewers did not expect the depth of sensitivity that she portrayed in her monologue, which Whedon considers "the heart of the experience" and critic Noel Murray reiterates as the "whole point of the episode in bolded, capital letters". Xander's punching the wall and hurting his hand served to give the four in this scene something to concentrate on, to redirect their helplessness, which was another facet of the physicality of dealing with the crisis. Whedon used another long tracking shot from Joyce's face in the morgue following the doctor down the hall to speak with Buffy and the Scoobies to cement the reality of their being so close in proximity, as opposed to cutting shots to give the possibility that it was part of another set located somewhere else. The vampire that attacks Dawn in the morgue was a touch many viewers took to be out of place for the episode. This scene contrasts the more fantasy-related deaths common in the series with Joyce's realistic death. Furthermore, similar to Xander's parking ticket and the sounds of life outside Buffy's house, in Sunnydale vampires are a normal experience, and it was intended to show that life for Buffy continues.
Themes.
Grief.
In Nikki Stafford's analysis, the reactions of Buffy, Dawn, Xander, Willow, Anya, and Tara represent stages of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' five stages of grief in different parts. Joss Whedon stated on the DVD commentary how surprised he was at the response from viewers who wrote to say that the episode allowed them to accept the death of a close family member, even if they had not acknowledged it for months or years. Joyce's death was the first by natural causes in the series.
In "The Psychology of Joss Whedon", two academic psychologists identify the source of Buffy's strength as her mother, paired with Giles' mentorship. Joyce did not know all along that Buffy was a Slayer and had difficulty accepting what her daughter was called to do. She was nonetheless always attentive and available when Buffy's confidence was shaken, and both Joyce's and Giles' devotion to her "gave her the self-assurance to wield her power to its full potential". Joyce served as a parent figure to all of Buffy's friends, whose home lives were often unstable or unloving, thus making her death more poignant to all of them. Willow mentions her parents several times throughout the series, but her father is never seen. Her mother is portrayed only once in "Gingerbread", at first as an academic so preoccupied with her career that she is unable to communicate with Willow, and then—with Joyce—under the spell of a demon and in the throes of moral panic, attempting to burn her own daughter at the stake for being involved in witchcraft. Xander's parents are described by him and those who have been to his house as alcoholic and verbally abusive. Even Anya, severely wanting in social graces, has lost someone she admires and trusts. Giles also grieves for the loss of a friend and—in one episode when the adults fall under a spell making them retreat into an adolescent state—a lover. Lorna Jowett in "Sex and the Slayer" writes that Joyce represents stability and normality. For the Scoobies, her death destroys the illusion that normal life is trouble-free; it is just as challenging as encountering supernatural forces.
Finding her mother's body, Buffy at first denies what she sees, to the point of imagining alternate realities. Whedon stated that these mini dream sequences were like documentaries; people who find their loved ones dead are desperate to imagine a different, better outcome, and they create fantasies that cause much more pain when they are forced to return to the harshness of reality. Later in the hospital, Buffy imagines what she might have been able to do to save Joyce, although the doctor tells her there was nothing to be done. Willow and Xander express anger and helplessness. Anya, new to mortality and human connections, is childlike in her innocence and questions. Xander's anger and Anya's confusion allow them to be mothered somewhat by Willow, who needs to take care of someone. Dawn is deeply in denial, unable to understand that the woman she thought she had known all her life was gone. Tara, who has gone through the ordeal before, represents the acceptance phase, soothing and helping the others to work through what they are experiencing. Buffy toward the end also begins to see acceptance when she tells Dawn that the body in the morgue is not their mother; Joyce is gone.
The episode also emphasizes another theme of the season: Buffy's response to forces that she cannot fight. Throughout the season she encounters the much more powerful goddess Glory, but Joyce's death leaves her feeling the most helpless. In Joyce's death there is no evil force to combat; she simply dies, and Buffy, with all her power, is ill-equipped to grasp the enormity of her situation. In her shock, Buffy retreats to a childlike state of confusion, calling to her mother when she does not answer: "Mom? ... Mom? ... Mommy?" Emma Caulfield was also given the direction for her voice to rise to a childlike pitch at the end of her speech to give the same effect. According to "Buffy" scholar Rhonda Wilcox, the themes of maturation and facing adult responsibilities begin with the departure of Buffy's boyfriend Riley Finn six episodes before, and crystallize in the preceding episode in which Buffy realizes she does not need a boyfriend to be fulfilled. At the end of that episode she is confronted with Joyce's death, which is fully explored in "The Body". Facing responsibilities became the major theme of the sixth season. One critic writes, "Drastic as it was, killing off Joyce was the logical way to bring Buffy and Dawn closer together, sever Buffy's last ties to girlhood and emphasize Buffy's inability to accept the limits of her power, a recurring theme this season."
Reality.
Whedon uses several disorienting effects to heighten the reality of the situations in the episode to the point that they seem surreal. The long opening shot of Buffy coming home and finding Joyce was filmed with one hand-held camera in constant movement as she walks through the house to the phone and back to her mother again. The buttons on Buffy's phone are abnormally large, an effect that Whedon added because he experienced it when his mother died. Buffy is so bewildered by the paramedic telling her that Joyce is dead that she can only focus on his mouth in an attempt to understand what he is saying. The camera uses her perspective and only the bottom part of the paramedic's face is in view. Instead of a normal "over-the-shoulder" view, Buffy is shot at the same height as the paramedic's shoulder, barely squeezed into the frame as if to portray her, according to Whedon, as trapped by reality. Kristine Sutherland stated that the script was "amazing", specifically at capturing the detachment: "It's not something you can process. I mean mortality is just not part of your vocabulary when you're that age."
In the hospital, as Buffy listens to the doctor confirm how Joyce died, the doctor says something, but the words "I have to lie to you to make you feel better" are spoken discordantly, as though, according to cinema scholar Katy Stevens, Buffy "constructs what she believes to be an unmentionable truth—her culpability in her mother's death". In the same scene, Dawn is shot with a hand-held camera that drifts, giving her a slightly unreal moment as she struggles to believe, unlike what Buffy already knows, that her mother's body is down the hall on a steel table. The scene with Buffy and Tara sitting in the waiting room was noted by Rhonda Wilcox for its reality in showing Gellar as ragged and distinctly unglamorous, particularly because she had been presented in a specific way to attract male viewers and was a spokeswoman for Maybelline while "Buffy" aired. Buffy sits with circles under her eyes, unflattering hair, and slumped posture next to Tara, who had been criticized for being too heavy, despite her body type being more typical of women her age.
Foremost of the disorienting effects, to critics and scholars, is Whedon's use of sound and silence. While Buffy performs CPR, she cracks one of Joyce's ribs with a startling snap. After Buffy vomits on the floor, she stands in the back doorway listening to life carrying on: children playing, someone practicing a trumpet, and birds singing. Long pauses between dialogue create gaps that turn awkward as the characters try to think of what to say, made especially notable in a series famous for its rapid banter. The transition between the Christmas dinner scene and the living room scene is abrupt, and the sound of Buffy and Joyce shouting because they dropped a pie on the floor carries over into the silence of Joyce's lifeless face and Buffy standing alone in the living room. This effect is also used when shifting between Buffy's alternate version of her mother being "good as new" in the hospital and the paramedics trying to revive her. In the car on the way to Willow's dormitory, Anya is shot by a camera mounted on the front bumper, separated from the audience by the windshield. Xander, driving, faces the other way; neither of them speak and only the sound of the car can be heard. Joyce Millman at Salon.com writes of the sound issues, "The effect was almost Bergmanesque in its starkness. The spooky stillness and the long, spacey pauses in conversation as characters struggled to articulate their feelings exaggerated the sense of time elongating and standing still."
Katy Stevens notes that the dialogue in "The Body" was recorded with microphones very close to the actors, making variations in their voices—cracks, rises, and whispers—more prominent to the audience, to close the distance between the actors and the viewer. Conversely, the scene in which Dawn is told of Joyce's death was shot through a large classroom window, muffling Dawn's emotional reaction, to isolate Buffy and Dawn from the class and the audience. Several moments of silence follow this scene. Whedon shot the conversation up close several times, filming over-the-shoulder and reaction shots, but eventually went with a more distanced point of view. Michelle Trachtenberg later said of this effect, "obviously you know in the end result there was no sound and I thought that was actually one of the most brilliant ideas [he's] ever had because it allows everyone to sort of attach their own emotional plug into whatever might have happened in your life. I think it allowed the audience to really connect with Dawn for the first time."
Presenting the episode without music was Whedon's way of denying the audience any comfort, forcing them to discern their own meanings from the characters' actions and words. As two musicologists write about this absence, "Without music's acoustic balm, all our empathetic attention is on the characters and their state of bewilderment ... Music would provide a conceptualization and a catharsis ... but a catharsis at this point would in some measure trivialize the loss." Television critic Gareth McLean writes that this decision is "a move that makes it more courageous than, for instance, "ER". There were no soaring strings or plaintive piano to trigger an emotional response. Instead the soundtrack took in the ambient noises of wind chimes, doors squeaking, footsteps on carpets. Conversations were stilted and awkward, but the spaces in between always mattered."
Reception.
Critics praised the episode, and have continued to count it as one of the finest episodes of television ever broadcast. David Bianculli in the "New York Daily News" commends the acting abilities of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Michelle Trachtenberg, Alyson Hannigan, and Amber Benson. "The Body", according to Bianculli is "Emmy-worthy ... It also will haunt you—but not in the normal way associated with this still-evolving, still-achieving series." Television critic Alesia Redding and editor Joe Vince of the "South Bend Tribune" write, "I was riveted by this show ... This isn't just one of the best "Buffy" episodes of all time. It's one of the best episodes of TV of all time." Redding adds, "If you watch this incredible episode and don't recognize it as great TV, you're hopeless ... A 'fantasy' show delivers the most stark and realistic take on death I've ever seen, deftly depicting how a loved one who dies suddenly becomes 'the body'."
Gareth McLean in "The Guardian" rejects the notion that "Buffy" is similar to other "schmaltzy American teen show(s)" like "Dawson's Creek": "This episode was a brave, honest and wrenching portrayal of death and loss. The way this was handled by Joss Whedon ... was ingenious. Time slowed down and the feeling of numbness was palpable as Buffy and her gang tried to come to terms with Joyce's death." McLean especially appreciated the small details of Buffy protecting Joyce's dignity and the confusion shown by the characters. He concludes, "Joyce may be dead but long live "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"." Joe Gross in the "Austin American-Statesman" calls the episode "devastatingly calm" and states that "the entire cast and crew should have received some sort of Emmy for 'The Body.
At Salon.com, Joyce Millman writes, "there hasn't been a finer hour of drama on TV this year than ... 'The Body' ... You have to hand it to the writers; Joyce's demise came as a complete surprise. In that instant, Buffy's childhood officially ends. Even if "Buffy" gets stiffed in every other Emmy category this year, 'The Body' should convince the nominating committee that Gellar is for real ... I can't remember the last time I saw a more wrenching portrayal of the shock of loss." Andrew Gilstrap at PopMatters declares it "possibly the finest hour of television I've seen, bar none ... It is an incredibly moving episode, one that finally admits that you don't walk away from death unscathed. It also shows that, for all the group's slaying experience, they really weren't prepared for death when it stole a loved one." Gilstrap went on to say the series did not again address death and grief of this magnitude until, in another shocking turn of events, Tara dies of a stray gunshot in the sixth season. Jerry McCormick in "The San Diego Union-Tribune" agrees, rating Joyce's death as having the same emotional impact as Tara's in "Seeing Red", both of which he listed as the saddest in the series.
Kira Schlechter in "The Patriot-News" declares "The Body" "one of the finest episodes of any series ever", stating that the silence and novel cinematography are "remarkable and the writing is brilliant". Buffy and Dawn's conversation at her school, Schlechter says, is "positively wrenching". When the series ended in 2003, Amy Antangelo in the "Boston Herald" and Siona LaFrance of the "New Orleans Times-Picayune" both rated the best "Buffy" episodes giving "The Body" equal billing at the top with "Hush" and "Once More, with Feeling", LaFrance designating the episode an "instant classic". Jonathan Last in "The Weekly Standard" lists "The Body" eighth out of the ten best "Buffy" episodes, writing that it is "the series' most difficult episode because it's real—and not real in the way "ER" or "The Practice" or "Law & Order", all hyper-versions of reality, are real. At some point, most of us will experience a day like Buffy has in 'The Body' and we sense that the writers have gotten nearly every detail of that day—right down to the absence of a musical score—right." In the A.V. Club, Noel Murray also finds small details compelling, such as the camera's focus on the paper towel Buffy uses to cover the vomit on the carpet. He does, however, write that some of the shots "come off a little gimmicky, but the ones that work are so effective that it seems petty to complain that Whedon overdoes it at times. (Besides, different moments are likely to move different people.)"
In addition to praising Gellar's often under-appreciated acting, "Buffy" scholar Ian Shuttleworth comments on the cast and the nuanced numbness and confusion of the characters, paired with the moments of silence in the episode: "It is simply one of the finest pieces of television drama, and the single finest depiction of bereavement in any medium, that I have ever seen." Nikki Stafford, author of "Bite Me! The Unofficial Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer", calls "The Body" "an absolute masterpiece", explaining that it is "hands down the single most terrifying, heart-breaking, painful, and amazing hour of television I have ever seen". She praises the entire cast equally, but highlights Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, and Emma Caulfield. Stafford also praised Kristine Sutherland—as did Whedon—for having to lie motionless with her eyes open for hours upon hours over eight days of filming.
In 2015, Gavin Hetherington of SpoilerTV looked back at the episode fourteen years later. Upon reviewing the episode, he called it "one of the best hours of television" he had ever seen and went on to say "I don't think any other supernatural show has ever had a more beautiful episode than "The Body"".
When the episode was originally broadcast in the United States on the WB network on February 27, 2001, it received a Nielsen rating of 3.5 and a share of 5, and was watched by 6 million viewers. The episode placed fifth in its timeslot, and 82nd among broadcast television for the week of February 26 – March 4, 2001. It was the most watched program on the WB that night, and the second most watched program that week, trailing "7th Heaven". This was a slight increase from a 3.4 rating and 87th position achieved by the previous episode. The episode was released on DVD on October 28, 2002 in Region 2, and December 9, 2003 in Region 1.
Although the episode received positive reviews, it was not nominated for any Emmy awards. Rhonda Wilcox attributes this to the Emmys being a "bastion of conservative popular taste", automatically rejecting television shows in the fantasy/science fiction genres. The script was nominated for a Nebula Award, given for excellence in science fiction/fantasy writing.


Bart le Blanc

Lambertus Johannes Carolus Maria "Bart" Le Blanc (born 4 November 1946, 's-Hertogenbosch) is a Dutch economist, with a career spanning the sectors of public finance, banking and asset management. He is one of the founding partners of Andreas Capital S.A a Luxembourg-based asset management company. Since 1 January 2015 he is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the APG Group (€400 billion pension funds service provider/asset manager). He is Chairman of the Investment Committee of the United Nations, office for project services UNOPS.
Education.
Bart Le Blanc graduated from the University of Tilburg with a Masters in Economic Sciences in 1971.
He obtained a PhD in Law from the University of Leyden in 1979.
Career.
Bart Le Blanc's first professional position was at the Office of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, first as a junior adviser for social and economic affairs followed by an appointment as deputy secretary of the Council of Ministers.
In 1979 he was appointed deputy Director-General for the Civil Service at the Ministry of Interior. In 1980 this was followed by his appointment as Director-General of the Budget at the Ministry of Finance.
In 1983 Bart Le Blanc moved to the financial sector taking up a Board position at F. van Lanschot Bankiers N.V., a private bank in the Netherlands, where he was appointed deputy chairman of the executive board in 1989.
When at the end of the 1990s the Soviet system collapsed and the international community came together to provide (financial) support for the transition of the former Soviet states to market economies, he was asked to participate in the preparatory team for the establishment of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London.
He took up the role of the EBRD's first Secretary-General and member of the Executive Committee in April 1991. In 1994 Bart Le Blanc was appointed the Bank's Vice-President Finance (CFO).
In September 1994 Bart Le Blanc left the E.B.R.D to join La Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations in Paris as Director of International Finance, and President of CDC's project financing vehicle.
In 2004 Bart Le Blanc moved from the financial sector into industry. He was appointed to the Executive Board and CFO of URENCO Ltd., the market leader in fuel for nuclear power stations through the enrichment of uranium. He retired from this position on 1 April 2011 handing over his responsibilities to Friso van Oranje who previously worked at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs.
Between 2003 and 2014 Bart Le Blanc was a member of the Board of the €330 billion civil service pension fund ABP in the Netherlands.
He currently is a non-executive director of Enrichment Technology Nederland in Almelo, the Netherlands.
In July 2014 he joined the Board of APG, the Dutch pension fund service provider managing more than €400 billion of pension assets. On 1 January 2015 he was appointed Chairman of the Supervisory Board.
He also sits on the recently established Investment Committee of the United Nations, Office for Project Services (UNOPS), headquartered in Copenhagen.
In April 2010 he co-founded Andreas Capital S.A. in Luxembourg and is one of its senior partners. Andreas Capital is an initiative of several senior finance professionals offering investment advisory services by adapting approaches and tools designed for institutional investors for private and family wealth. They currently service around 50 private individuals and families in northern Europe.
Personal life.
Bart Le Blanc lives in Henley-on-Thames, the UK.
He is married to Gerardine van Lanschot.


Chen Min-jen

Chen Min-jen () is a Taiwanese engineer, academic, and politician who served as a member of the Legislative Yuan from 2005 to 2008.
Education.
Chen studied nuclear engineering at National Tsing Hua University and completed a doctorate in the subject at Iowa State University in 1983. His dissertation was titled "Simulation of Plenum Thermo-Hydraulics in a Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor Under a Buoyancy-Affected Condition".
Career.
Chen worked for Argonne National Laboratory and General Electric before serving as president and chief executive officer of Macromicro Technology.
He served on the Legislative Yuan in Taiwan between 2005 and 2008, as a representative of overseas Chinese affiliated with the Democratic Progressive Party. As a legislator, he commented on infrastructure projects led by the National Science Council.


Lawrence Brakmo

Lawrence Brakmo is a software engineer in the Kernel group at Facebook. Previously Brakmo was a member of technical staff at Google. Before that he was a researcher and project manager at NTT DoCoMo USA Labs. Earlier he was affiliated with the Western Research Lab of Digital Equipment Corporation/Compaq/Hewlett-Packard. Brakmo received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from The University of Arizona, where he worked on computer systems and computer networks research that included x-Sim and TCP Vegas. His adviser was Larry L. Peterson.
He once biked to Alaska from Idaho.


Cassirer

Cassirer is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include:


Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire

This is a list of people who have served as lord lieutenant for Staffordshire. Since 1828, all lord lieutenants have also been custos rotulorum of Staffordshire.


Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme


Ravi Sethi

Ravi Sethi (born 1947) is an Indian computer scientist retired from executive roles at Bell Labs and Avaya Labs Research. He also serves as a member of the National Science Foundation's Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Advisory Committee. He is best known as one of three authors of the classic computer science textbook "", also known as the "Dragon Book".
Sethi was born in 1947 in Murdana, Punjab. He attended the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK) and went on to obtain a Ph.D. at Princeton University. He worked as an assistant professor at Penn State University, before joining Bell Labs in 1976.
While working for Bell Labs he was awarded the "Distinguished Technical Staff award", and in 1996 he was named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. Also in 1996 he was named research vice president in charge of computing and mathematical sciences and, additionally, in 1997, chief technical officer for Lucent’s Communications Software Group.
In 2014, Sethi joined the department of computer science at the University of Arizona.


Stephen Rippy

Stephen A. Rippy (born 1975) is an American composer.
Life and career.
Rippy grew up in the Spring area of Harris County, Texas and now resides in Plano, Texas, near Dallas. Making video game music was not Rippy's original career goal. He attended the University of Texas in the early 1990s to study visual art, and only took a few music courses.
Rippy worked for Ensemble Studios as the head of the Audio department with friend and collaborator Kevin McMullan. He is best known for his sound design and scores on the "Age of Empires" series, its spin-off "Age of Mythology", and the Xbox 360 strategy game "Halo Wars".
Ensemble was closed down shortly after the release of "Halo Wars". Rippy joined Zynga Dallas (then Bonfire Studios), a development studio formed from ex-Ensemble employees and led by Rippy's brother David.


Gary L. Tooker

Gary L. Tooker was the CEO of Motorola from 1993 to 1995. He became CEO after George M. C. Fisher left for Eastman Kodak. Prior to becoming CEO, Tooker was president and chief operating officer. After becoming CEO, Christopher Galvin became the chief operating officer in place of Tooker until 1995, when he replaced Tooker as CEO. Since 2000, he has been an independent consultant.
Tooker and his wife Diane, who are both alumni of Arizona State University, "donated $4 million to ASU to endow five faculty positions—one faculty chair and four professorships—in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering" which includes the Diane and Gary Tooker Chair for Effective Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.
Education.
Tooker graduated from Arizona State University in 1961 where earned a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, and did his postgraduate studies in Business Administration.
Career.
Tooker began "working for Motorola in 1962 within its Arizona Semiconductor Division. He rose through the company, becoming chief operating officer in 1988, president two years later, and finally vice chairman and CEO in 1993."
Awards.
In 2015, Tooker was inducted into Eta Kappa Nu Honor Society's Epsilon Beta Chapter (Arizona State University) as a professional member. In 2012, Tooker was awarded the OneNeck IT Services' Lifetime Achievement Award. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1996 and received an Engineering Excellence Award, an Alumni Achievement Award for Professional Excellence and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from ASU.


Basumatary

Basumatary or Basumatari is a surname found among the Boro people of north-eastern India. Basumatary comes from the word "Basumati-ároi", meaning Earth-folk. The members of the clan can bury their dead or erect a funeral pyre without purchasing the ground.
Notable people.
People with this surname include:


Defined benefit pension plan

A defined benefit (DB) pension plan is a type of pension plan in which an employer/sponsor promises a specified pension payment, lump-sum or combination thereof on retirement that is predetermined by a formula based on the employee's earnings history, tenure of service and age, rather than depending directly on individual investment returns. Traditionally, many governmental and public entities, as well as a large number of corporations, provide defined benefit plans, sometimes as a means of compensating workers in lieu of increased pay.
A defined benefit plan is 'defined' in the sense that the benefit formula is defined and known in advance. Conversely, for a "defined contribution retirement saving plan", the formula for computing the employer's and employee's contributions is defined and known in advance, but the benefit to be paid out is not known in advance.
In the United States, specifies a defined benefit plan to be any pension plan that is not a defined contribution plan, where a defined contribution plan is any plan with individual accounts. A traditional pension plan that "defines" a "benefit" for an employee upon that employee's retirement is a defined benefit plan.
The most common type of formula used is based on the employee's terminal earnings (final salary). Under this formula, benefits are based on a percentage of average earnings during a specified number of years at the end of a worker's career.
In the private sector, defined benefit plans are often funded exclusively by employer contributions. In the public sector, defined benefit plans usually require employee contributions.
Over time, these plans may face deficits or surpluses between the money currently in the plans and the total amount of their pension obligations. Contributions may be made by the employee, the employer, or both. In many defined benefit plans, the employer bears the investment risk and can benefit from surpluses.
Overview.
When participating in a defined benefit pension plan, an employer/sponsor promises to pay the employees/members a specific benefit for life beginning at retirement. The benefit is calculated in advance using a formula based on age, earnings, and years of service. In the United States, the maximum retirement benefit permitted in 2014 under a defined benefit plan is $210,000 (up from $205,000 in 2013). Defined benefit pension plans in the U.S. currently do not have contribution limits.
The liability of the pension lies with the employer/sponsor who is responsible for making the decisions. Employer and/or employer/employee contributions to a defined benefit pension plan are based on a formula that calculates the contributions needed to meet the defined benefit. These contributions are actuarially determined taking into consideration the employee's life expectancy and normal retirement age, possible changes to interest rates, annual retirement benefit amount, and the potential for employee turnover.
Each jurisdiction would have legislation which has requirements and limitations for administering pension plans. Entitlements and limitations may also be based or established in common law. Employees are always entitled to the vested accrued benefit earned to date. If an employee leaves the company before retirement, the benefits earned so far are frozen and held in a trust for the employee until retirement age or in some instances the employee is able to take away a lump sum value or transfer the value to another pension plan.
In the U.S., a defined benefit pension plan must allow its vested employees to receive their benefits no later than the 60th day after the end of the plan year in which they have been employed for ten years or leave their employer. Employees who reach age 65 or the specified retirement age in their plan can also collect the benefits. Starting in 2002, the maximum benefit is now reduced for retirement prior to age 62, and increased for retirement after age 65.
In the U.S., a defined benefit plan cannot force you to receive your benefits before normal retirement age. However, if the lump sum value of your benefit is less than $5,000, and you are vested, then the plan may simply pay your benefit as a lump sum soon after termination. The plan document has to allow for the automatic lump sum payment. However, you must begin to receive your benefits no later than April 1 of the calendar year next following the last year of employment or calendar year you reach age 70, whichever is later.
Defined benefit plans distribute their benefits through life annuities. In a life annuity, employees receive equal periodic benefit payments (monthly, quarterly, etc.) for the rest of their lives. A defined benefit pension plan allows joint distributions so a surviving spouse can still receive 50 percent of your payment.
In the United States, 88 percent of public employees are covered by a defined benefit pension plan.
In the United States, Federal public sector plans are governed by the Internal Revenue Code and Federal law, while state and local public sector plans are governed by the Internal Revenue Code and state law. Thus the funding requirements, benefits, plan solvency, and participant rights and obligations vary significantly. Private sector plans are governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). This law contains provisions rooted in the Internal Revenue Code and enforced by the Internal Revenue Service, but, in Title I of ERISA, also provides a body of Federal law governing employee benefit plans that preempts state law. Rooted in the principles of trust law, Title I of ERISA governs the fiduciary conduct and reporting requirements of private sector employee benefits plans through a system of exclusively Federal rights and remedies. Title I is administered by the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) at the United States Department of Labor. EBSA is led by the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employee Benefits, a Sub-Cabinet-level position requiring nomination by the President of the United States and confirmation by the United States Senate.
Benefit plan.
Traditionally, retirement plans have been administered by institutions which exist specifically for that purpose, by large businesses, or, for government workers, by the government itself. A traditional form of a defined benefit plan is the "final salary" plan, under which the pension paid is equal to the number of years worked, multiplied by the member's salary at retirement, multiplied by a factor known as the "accrual rate". The final accrued amount is available as a monthly pension or a lump sum.
The benefit in a defined benefit pension plan is determined by a formula that can incorporate the employee's pay, years of employment, age at retirement, and other factors. A simple example is a dollars times service plan design that provides a certain amount per month based on the time an employee works for a company. For example, a plan offering $100 a month per year of service would provide $3,000 per month to a retiree with 30 years of service. While this type of plan is popular among unionized workers, final average pay (FAP) remains the most common type of defined-benefit plan offered in the United States. In FAP plans, the average salary over the final years of an employee's career determines the benefit amount.
Frequently, as in Canadian government employees' pensions, the average salary uses current dollars. This results in inflation in the averaging years decreasing the cost and purchasing power of the pension. This can be avoided by converting salaries to dollars of the first year of retirement and then averaging. If that is done, then inflation has no direct effect on the purchasing power and cost of the pension at the outset.
In the United Kingdom, benefits are typically indexed for inflation (specifically the Consumer Price Index and previously the Retail Prices Index) as required by law for registered pension plans. Inflation during an employee's retirement affects the purchasing power of the pension; the higher the inflation rate, the lower the purchasing power of a fixed annual pension. This effect can be mitigated by providing annual increases to the pension at the rate of inflation (usually capped, for instance at 5% in any given year). This method is advantageous for the employee, because it stabilizes the purchasing power of pensions to some extent.
If the pension plan allows for early retirement, payments are often reduced to recognize that the retirees will receive the payouts for longer periods of time. In the US, (under the ERISA rules), any reduction factor less than or equal to the actuarial early retirement reduction factor is acceptable.
Many DB plans include early retirement provisions to encourage employees to retire early, before the attainment of normal retirement age (usually age 65). Some of those provisions come in the form of additional "temporary" or "supplemental benefits", which are payable to a certain age, usually before attaining normal retirement age.
US laws and regulations.
In the US, there are many laws and regulations concerning pension plans. For a defined benefit plan, the laws/regulations that most commonly affect defined benefit (DB) pension plans include:
The basic premise behind most rules are that an employer cannot use a qualified pension plan to give highly paid employees (or owners) a lot of money through a qualified plan (through this tax advantaged financial instrument).
The reason behind compensating employees through a bonus system is relevant to boundaries originally created by “capping” hourly wages for experienced employees. This allows employees to remain in a ‘lower tax bracket.’ <IRS Form Ref.>.
Funding.
Defined benefit plans may be either "funded" or "unfunded".
Unfunded pension plans.
In an "unfunded" defined benefit pension, no assets are set aside and the benefits are paid for by the employer or other pension sponsor as and when they are paid. This method of financing is known as "Pay-as-you-go" (PAYGO or PAYG). In the US, ERISA explicitly forbids pay as you go for private sector, qualified, defined benefit plans.
However, this system is often used in public pension systems. For example, all OECD countries including the U.S. rely on some form of a PAYG system.
Unfunded pension systems in practice.
PAYG is based on constant balance between two sides: contributions and benefits. People of working age pay part of their salary to the system and from this benefits are paid to people already in retirement. As time passes the contributors age until eventually they retire and claim benefits for themselves becoming pensioners supported by current working age generation. The size of their benefits is often determined based on their contributions which were percentage amounts of their salary, though this is not a rule. For example, in Denmark the size of old age pension is uniform for all retirees.
The PAYG nature of state pension systems is often cited as the main cause of the current pension crisis. This is because the dependency ratio or the number of people in retirement age over the size of the current working population is constantly growing and therefore the balance of contributions and benefits is broken resulting in deficits that need to financed from government budget or addressed by increasing the contribution size.
As result of this constant pressure many countries have stopped trying to cover the pension of their citizens only by PAYG schemes and instead switched to multi-pillar pension systems, which are generally considered to better diversify against many risks of pension provision. In those systems PAYG plays only supplementary role with occupational pension plans and state-supported private pension plans as the other “pillars” of pension. While not perfect those systems are less susceptible to ageing risk.
Life cycle of PAYG systems.
The ageing related problems are actually not just a matter of specific demography, it has been suggested that each PAYG system passes through three stages – the young, the expanding and the mature. This must inevitably lead to situation in which it is problematic to provide the funds for it and even harder to reform the system.
Stage 1 sees the introduction of PAYG pensions, this is most often in time when the country’s population is rather young with more than fifteen working age and contributing individuals for each pensioner. The coverage of working population is still quite small. The system is in surplus, which allows government to increase the size of old age pensions, providing much bigger return to their contributions then they would receive on the market. This stage could have been observed in Germany in 1920 or in Brazil, Argentina and other Latin American countries in 1950.
Stage 2 starts to present first challenges. Members of the founding generation start to retire and the number of contributors to pensioners drops to about eight to fourteen. The schemes are much more wide spread covering about third of the working population. This stage sees greater expansion of the system introducing it also to lower income groups, while still keeping the benefits high. While such expansion is often welcomed by the population, which expects great pension benefits in the future, it starts to produce deficits and accumulate debt (mainly in form of implicit debt, based on pension promises), often up to 25% or 50% of GDP. Brazil and Turkey in year 1995 can be seen as great examples of this stage.
Lastly countries reach stage 3. In this stage number of contributors to pensioners is only about six to one. Most of the population is covered however the debt starts to grow threatening the sustainability of the system. There is pressure from younger population to reduce the pension benefits and in turn contributions, but this is met with protest from middle and old-aged population who have contributed for most of their lives and want to receive their pensions. Those obstacles postpone any reform attempts, with many countries reaching into their budgets to help finance the pension expenditure, which now reaches double digits of GDP percentage. This stage can be observed in many European countries, especially those in the former Soviet block. While some countries like Poland passed their pension reform already, others like Czech Republic have yet to do anything about it
Funded pension plans.
In a "funded" plan, contributions from the employer, and sometimes also from plan members, are invested in a fund towards meeting the benefits. The future returns on the investments, and the future benefits to be paid, are not known in advance, so there is no guarantee that a given level of contributions will be enough to meet the benefits. Typically, the contributions to be paid are regularly reviewed in a valuation of the plan's assets and liabilities, carried out by an actuary to ensure that the pension fund will meet future payment obligations. This means that in a defined benefit pension, investment risk and investment rewards are typically assumed by the sponsor/employer and not by the individual. If a plan is not well-funded, the plan sponsor may not have the financial resources to continue funding the plan.
For example, the United States Social Security system is a funded program. It is funded through a payroll tax (FICA) that is paid by employees and employers. The proceeds of this tax are paid into the Social Security Trust Funds which had a balance of $2.804 trillion as of July 2014. The funding status of US Social Security is reviewed annually by the Social Security Office of the Chief Actuary. A report on the status of US Social Security is issued annually by the Social Security Trustees, projecting funding needs out 75 years.
In many countries, such as the USA, the UK and Australia, most private defined benefit plans are funded, because governments there provide tax incentives to funded plans (in Australia they are mandatory). In the United States, private employers must pay an insurance-type premium to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), a government agency whose role is to encourage the continuation and maintenance of voluntary private pension plans and provide timely and uninterrupted payment of pension benefits. When the PBGC steps in and takes over a pension plan, it provides payment of pension benefits up to certain maximum amounts, which are indexed for inflation. The PBGC receives its funding from several sources, including insurance premiums from sponsors of participating plans, assets of the plans it has taken over, recoveries from bankrupt companies' estates, and investment earnings. The PBGC's liabilities are not explicitly backed by the U.S. government.
One of the growing concerns with defined benefit plans is that the level of future obligations will outpace the value of assets held by the plan. This "underfunding" dilemma can be faced by any type of defined benefit plan, private or public, but it is most acute in governmental and other public plans where political pressures and less rigorous accounting standards can result in inadequate contributions to fund commitments to employees and retirees. Many states and municipalities across the country now face chronic pension crises.
Advantages and drawbacks.
Traditional defined benefit plan designs (because of their typically flat accrual rate and the decreasing time for interest discounting as people get closer to retirement age) tend to exhibit a J-shaped accrual pattern of benefits, where the present value of benefits grows quite slowly early in an employee's career and accelerates significantly in mid-career: in other words it costs more to fund the pension for older employees than for younger ones (an "age bias"). Defined benefit pensions tend to be less portable than defined contribution plans, even if the plan allows a lump sum cash benefit at termination. Most plans, however, pay their benefits as an annuity, so retirees do not bear the risk of low investment returns on contributions or of outliving their retirement income. The open-ended nature of these risks to the employer is the reason given by many employers for switching from defined benefit to defined contribution plans over recent years. However the investment returns can exceed the actuarial estimate. Employees do not benefit from the resulting surplus. The risks to the employer can sometimes be mitigated by discretionary elements in the benefit structure, for instance in the rate of increase granted on accrued pensions, both before and after retirement.
The age bias, reduced portability and open ended risk make defined benefit plans better suited to large employers with less mobile workforces, such as the public sector (which has open-ended support from taxpayers).
The "cost" of a defined benefit plan is not easily calculated, and requires an actuary or actuarial software. However, even with the best of tools, the cost of a defined benefit plan will always be an estimate based on economic and financial assumptions. These assumptions include the average retirement age and lifespan of the employees, the returns to be earned by the pension plan's investments and any additional taxes or levies, such as those required by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation in the U.S. So, for this arrangement, the benefit is relatively secure but the contribution is uncertain even when estimated by a professional.
Examples.
Many countries offer state-sponsored retirement benefits, beyond those provided by employers, which are funded by payroll or other taxes.
The United States Social Security system is similar to a defined benefit pension arrangement, albeit one that is constructed differently than a pension offered by a private employer.
Individuals that have worked in the UK and have paid certain levels of national insurance deductions can expect an income from the state pension scheme after their normal retirement. The state pension is currently divided into two parts: the basic state pension, State Second [tier] Pension scheme called S2P. Individuals will qualify for the basic state pension if they have completed sufficient years contribution to their national insurance record. The S2P pension scheme is earnings related and depends on earnings in each year as to how much an individual can expect to receive. It is possible for an individual to forgo the S2P payment from the state, in lieu of a payment made to an appropriate pension scheme of their choice, during their working life. For more details see UK pension provision.
In recent years, some new approaches to 'defined benefit plans' have emerged, such as a cash balance plan which has become more prevalent for larger companies. Under a cash balance type of plan, benefits are computed as a percentage of each employee's account balance. Employers specify a contribution—usually based on a percentage of the employee's earnings—and a rate of interest on that contribution that will provide a predetermined amount at retirement, usually in the form of a lump sum. "A cash balance plan is a defined benefit plan that defines the benefit in terms that are more characteristic of a defined contribution plan. In other words, a cash balance plan defines the promised benefit in terms of a stated account balance."


Charlie Munger

Charles Thomas Munger (born January 1, 1924) is an American billionaire investor, businessman, former real estate attorney, architectural designer, and philanthropist. He is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett; Buffett has described Munger as his closest partner and right-hand man. Munger served as chairman of Wesco Financial Corporation from 1984 through 2011. He is also chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation, based in Los Angeles, California, and a director of Costco Wholesale Corporation.
Early life and education.
Munger was born in Omaha, Nebraska. As a teenager, he worked at Buffett & Son, a grocery store owned by Warren Buffett's grandfather. His father, Alfred Case Munger, was a lawyer. His grandfather was Thomas Charles Munger, a district court judge and state representative.
He enrolled in the University of Michigan, where he studied mathematics. During his time in college, he joined the fraternity Sigma Phi Society. In early 1943, a few days after his 19th birthday, he dropped out of college to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corps, where he became Second Lieutenant. After receiving a high score on the Army General Classification Test, he was ordered to study meteorology at Caltech in Pasadena, California, the town he was to make his home.
Through the GI Bill Munger took a number of advanced courses through several universities. When he applied to his father's alma mater, Harvard Law School, the dean of admissions rejected him because Munger had not completed an undergraduate degree. However, the dean relented after a call from Roscoe Pound, the former dean of Harvard Law and a Munger family friend. Munger excelled in law school, graduating "magna cum laude" with a J.D. in 1948. At Harvard, he was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.
In college and the Army, he developed "an important skill": card playing. “What you have to learn is to fold early when the odds are against you, or if you have a big edge, back it heavily because you don't get a big edge often. Opportunity comes, but it doesn't come often, so seize it when it does come.”
Investment career.
He moved with his family to California, where he joined the law firm Wright & Garrett (later Musick, Peeler & Garrett). In 1962 he founded and worked as a real estate attorney at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP. He then gave up the practice of law to concentrate on managing investments and later partnered with Otis Booth in real estate development. He then partnered with Jack Wheeler to form Wheeler, Munger, and Company, an investment firm with a seat on the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. He wound up Wheeler, Munger, and Co. in 1976, after losses of 32% in 1973 and 31% in 1974.
Although Munger is better known for his association with Buffett, he ran an investment partnership of his own from 1962 to 1975. According to Buffett's essay "The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville", published in 1984, Munger's investment partnership generated compound annual returns of 19.8% during the 1962–75 period compared to a 5.0% annual appreciation rate for the Dow.
Munger was previously the chairman of Wesco Financial Corporation, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway. It began as a savings and loan association, but eventually grew to control Precision Steel Corp., CORT Furniture Leasing, Kansas Bankers Surety Company, and other ventures. Wesco Financial also held a concentrated equity portfolio of over US$1.5 billion in companies such as Coca-Cola,Wells Fargo, Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, US Bancorp, and Goldman Sachs. Munger believes that holding a concentrated number of stocks that he knows extremely well will in the long term produce superior returns.
Wesco is based in Pasadena, California, Munger's adopted hometown. Pasadena was also the site of the company's annual shareholders' meeting, which were typically held on the Wednesday or Thursday after the more famous Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. Munger's meetings were nearly as legendary in the investment community as those he co-hosts with Buffett in Omaha. Such meetings were often perfunctory, but Munger interacted with the other Wesco shareholders at considerable length, sometimes speculating about what Benjamin Franklin would do in a given situation. Meeting notes have been posted on the "Futile Finance?" website, but no updates exist beyond 2011.
Munger is also the chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation. Since Wesco meetings ended, the Daily Journal annual meeting has grown in importance, as investors flock to the meeting to listen to him speak at length.
Investment philosophy.
"Elementary, worldly wisdom".
In multiple speeches, and in the book "Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger", “worldly wisdom” consists of a set of mental models framed as a latticework to help solve critical business problems.
Munger, along with Buffett, is one of the main inspirations behind the book "Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger". Author Peter Bevelin explained his key learnings from both Munger and Buffett in a 2007 interview: "How to think about businesses and investing, how to behave in life, the importance of ethics and honesty, how to approach problems but foremost how to reduce the chance of meeting problems." Bevelin stated that previously, he "was lacking the Munger ability to un-learn my own best-loved ideas".
Munger states that high ethical standards are integral to his philosophy; at the 2009 Wesco Financial Corporation annual meeting he said, "Good businesses are ethical businesses. A business model that relies on trickery is doomed to fail." During an interview and Q&A session at Harvard-Westlake School on January 19, 2010, Munger referred to American philosopher Charles Frankel in his discussion on the financial crisis of 2007–08 and the philosophy of responsibility. Munger explained that Frankel believed:
Lollapalooza effect.
Munger uses the term "Lollapalooza effect" for multiple biases, tendencies or mental models acting in compound with each other at the same time in the same direction. With the Lollapalooza effect, itself a mental model, the result is often extreme, due to the confluence of the mental models, biases or tendencies acting together, greatly increasing the likelihood of acting irrationally.
During a talk at Harvard in 1995 titled "The Psychology of Human Misjudgment", Munger mentions Tupperware parties and open outcry auctions, where he explained "three, four, five of these things work together and it turns human brains into mush," meaning that normal people will be highly likely to succumb to the multiple irrational tendencies acting in the same direction. In the Tupperware party, you have reciprocation, consistency and commitment tendency, and social proof. (The hostess gave the party and the tendency is to reciprocate; you say you like certain products during the party so purchasing would be consistent with views you've committed to; other people are buying, which is the social proof.)
In the open outcry auction, there is social proof of others bidding, reciprocation tendency, commitment to buying the item, and deprivation super-reaction syndrome, i.e. sense of loss. The latter is an individual's sense of loss of what he or she believes should be (or is) his or hers. These biases often occur at either conscious or subconscious level, and in both microeconomic and macroeconomic scale.
Principle of inversion.
Munger is famous for his quote "All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there." This thinking was inspired by the German mathematician Carl Jacobi who often solved difficult problems by following a simple strategy: "man muss immer umkehren" (or loosely translated, "invert, always invert.")
"[Jacobi] knew that it is in the nature of things that many hard problems are best solved when they are addressed backward," Munger counsels. "Indeed, many problems can’t be solved forward."
Criticism of cryptocurrencies and Robinhood.
Munger is critical of cryptocurrencies, referring to Bitcoin in particular as "noxious poison." Munger also compared Robinhood to gambling, saying that its success is due to "people who know how to take advantage essentially of the gambling instincts of, not only American public, worldwide public” and further explained why he thinks individual investments without commission is tantamount to gambling. “If you cater to those gambling chips, when people have money in their pocket for the first time, and you tell them they can make 30 or 40 or 50 trades a day, and you’re not charging them any commission, but you’re selling their order flow or whatever, I hope we don’t have more of it.”
Wealth and philanthropy.
As of January 2021, Munger has an estimated net worth of $1.9 billion according to "Forbes".
Munger is a major benefactor of the University of Michigan. In 2007, Munger made a $3 million gift to the University of Michigan Law School for lighting improvements in Hutchins Hall and the William W. Cook Legal Research Building, including the noted Reading Room. In 2011, Munger made another gift to the Law School, contributing $20 million for renovations to the Lawyers Club housing complex, which will cover the majority of the $39 million cost. The renovated portion of the Lawyers Club will be renamed the Charles T. Munger Residences in the Lawyers Club in his honor.
In 1997, the Mungers donated $1.8 million to the Marlborough School in Los Angeles, of which Nancy Munger was an alumna. The couple also donated to the Polytechnic School in Pasadena and the Los Angeles YMCA.
On December 28, 2011, Munger donated 10 shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock (currently valued at $422,214 per share, or $4.22 million total) to the University of Michigan.
Munger and his late wife Nancy B. Munger have been major benefactors of Stanford University. Nancy Munger was an alumna of Stanford, and Wendy Munger, Charlie Munger's daughter from a previous marriage, was also an alumna (A.B. 1972). Both Nancy and Wendy Munger served as members of the Stanford board of trustees. In 2004, the Mungers donated 500 shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock, then valued at $43.5 million, to Stanford to build a graduate student housing complex.
Munger has not signed The Giving Pledge that was started by his partner Warren Buffett and Co-Director, Bill Gates, and has stated that he "can't do it" because "[he has] already transferred so much to [his] children that [he has] already violated it."
Architectural work.
On April 18, 2013, the University of Michigan announced the single largest gift in its history: a $110 million gift from Munger to fund a new "state of the art" residence designed to foster a community of scholars, where graduate students from multiple disciplines can live and exchange ideas. The gift includes $10 million for graduate student fellowships. Munger designed the residence, which houses 600 single bedrooms, most of which are designed to be windowless.
The Munger Graduate Residence, funded and designed by Munger himself, opened in late 2009 and now houses 600 law and graduate students. The Munger family gave a major gift to Stanford's Green Library to fund the restoration of the Bing Wing as well as the construction of a rotunda on the library's second floor, and endowed the Munger Chair in Nancy and Charles Munger Professorship of Business at Stanford Law School.
Munger has been a trustee of the Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles for more than 40 years, and previously served as chair of the board of trustees. His five sons and stepsons as well as at least one grandson graduated from the prep school. In 2009, Munger donated eight shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock, worth nearly $800,000, to Harvard-Westlake. In 2006, Munger donated 100 shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock, then valued at $9.2 million, to the school toward a building campaign at Harvard-Westlake's middle school campus. The Mungers had previously made a gift to build the $13 million Munger Science Center at the high school campus, a two-story classroom and laboratory building which opened in 1995 and has been described as "a science teacher's dream". The design of the Science Center was substantially influenced by Munger.
In October 2014, Munger announced that he would donate $65 million to the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This is the largest gift in the history of the school. The donation went towards the construction of a residence building designed by Munger for visitors of the Kavli Institute in an effort to bring together physicists to exchange ideas as Munger stated,"to talk to one another, create new stuff, cross-fertilize ideas".
In March 2016, Munger announced a further $200 million gift to UC Santa Barbara for state of the art student housing, tripling the record gift he gave for the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics.
Personal life.
In 1945, while studying at Caltech, Munger married Nancy Huggins, daughter of Frederick R. Huggins and Edith M. Huggins. She was a Pasadena native who had been Munger's sister's roommate at Scripps College.
They had three children, Wendy Munger (a former corporate lawyer, trustee of Stanford University, and trustee of The Huntington Library), Molly Munger (a civil rights attorney and funder of a ballot initiative to raise California taxes for public education) and Teddy Munger (deceased, leukemia, age 9).
After Munger's divorce, he remarried within a couple of years. From his second marriage with Nancy Barry, daughter of David Noble Barry Jr. and Emilie Hevener Barry, he has four children—physicist and Republican activist Charles T. Munger Jr., Emilie Munger Ogden, Barry A. Munger and Philip R. Munger—and two stepchildren: William Harold Borthwick and David Borthwick.
On July 22, 2002, Munger's first wife Nancy Huggins Freeman died from cancer. She was 76 years old.
On February 6, 2010, Munger's wife Nancy Barry Munger died at home. She was 86 years old.
Munger enjoys architecture and has designed multiple buildings, including dormitories at Stanford University and the University of Michigan as well as the house he currently inhabits.
Munger is a Republican and has provided his opinions on a number of political topics including the policies of the Trump administration. Munger states he is "not a normal Republican", for example advocating "medicare for all" as a fix to the U.S. healthcare system, "I think we should have
single-payer medicine eventually". Munger repeated his sentiments in another interview, praising Singapore's single payer system in contrast to the U.S. "insane" system which is a "national disgrace".
In his 50s, after a failed eye cataract surgery that rendered his left eye blind, Munger had his left eye removed due to severe pain. When doctors told him that he had developed a condition that may cause his remaining eye to fill up with blood and become blind too, Munger started taking braille lessons. The eye condition has since receded and he still has sight in his right eye.


Victoria Robey

Victoria Susan Robey, Lady Robey, (née Hull, born 1960) is an American-British arts administrator and former banker.
Early life.
She is the daughter of Lloyd Nelson Hull (1922-2018), lawyer and civic leader, and Mary Gutfreund (sister of John Gutfreund), who married in 1957. She grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, US. She was educated at Phillips Academy and Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
Career.
She started her career in mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance at Goldman Sachs in New York and London), and subsequently joined executive search company Russell Reynolds Associates.
Robey is chairman of the board of directors of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
She is a co-founder of Music Masters, a UK-based music education charity which works with schools, teachers and arts organisations with the aim of making music accessible to all.
Honours.
She was appointed an OBE for services to music in the 2014 Birthday Honours.
Personal life.
In 1987, she married Richard Sharp, a fellow Goldman Sachs banker, in Connecticut. In October 2008, they were living in Kensington, and had an estimated net worth of £500 million. They had three children together.
Some time after 2014, she married British investment banker Sir Simon Robey.


John J. Studzinski

John Joseph Paul Studzinski, CBE (born March 19, 1956) is an American-British investment banker and philanthropist. Since September 2018 he has been Managing Director and Vice Chairman of the global investment-management firm PIMCO.
Prior to joining PIMCO, he was Vice Chairman of Investor Relations and Business Development and a Senior Managing Director at The Blackstone Group. He had joined Blackstone in 2006 as global head of Blackstone Advisory Partners, the company's mergers and acquisitions advisory arm, and he ran that division for nearly a decade. Prior to joining Blackstone, he was at Morgan Stanley from 1980–2003, and at HSBC from 2003–2006, building mergers-and-acquisitions divisions in both institutions.
Studzinski is involved in philanthropy, patronage, and charity work, mainly around the arts, the homeless, and human rights. His charity, the Genesis Foundation, supports creatives early in their careers. He co-founded and chairs the Arise Foundation, which combats human trafficking and slavery.
Born and raised in the U.S., Studzinski moved to the UK in 1984, and holds American and British citizenship. Since 2006, he has divided his time between London and New York.
Early life and education.
John Studzinski was born in 1956 in Peabody, Massachusetts, a town 15 miles northeast of Boston. His parents were working-class Polish immigrants, and his father was a financial manager at General Electric's aircraft-engine division. Education and industriousness were emphasized in the family, and music as well. His was a traditional Polish Catholic family and community, and Catholicism and Christianity were a bedrock in his life. He worked in soup kitchens as a teenager, and helped start a toll-free number to inform adolescents about sexually transmitted diseases.
Studzinski attended prep school at St. John's Preparatory School in Massachusetts, graduating in 1974. He graduated magna cum laude from Bowdoin College in 1978, with a double BA degree in biology and sociology. He received an MBA in finance and marketing from the University of Chicago in 1980.
Career.
Morgan Stanley.
After receiving his MBA, Studzinski began his investment banking career in New York in 1980 on Wall Street, at Morgan Stanley. He spent 23 years at the company, in positions of increasing responsibility. In 1984 he moved to London, to create and build Morgan Stanley’s European mergers and acquisitions (M&A) advisory business. He served as head of the European investment banking division and deputy chairman of Morgan Stanley International. By the time he left Morgan Stanley in 2003, the division he built was the number three European M&A advisory.
HSBC.
In June 2003, Sir John Bond at London-based multinational bank giant HSBC hired Studzinski to create and build an investment banking division, along with Stuart Gulliver. As co-head of investment banking at HSBC Group, and a member of the Group Management Board, Studzinski was in charge of mergers and acquisitions, while Gulliver built the markets side of the investment banking franchise. Studzinski made a number of hirings, and grew the new M&A division. After three years at HSBC, following Bond's retirement, Studzinski left for Blackstone in May 2006.
Blackstone.
In 2006 Studzinski joined The Blackstone Group, an American multinational corporation based in New York City. He joined as the senior managing director in its investment and advisory group and as a member of the firm's executive committee. He was recruited to oversee and develop Blackstone’s mergers-and-acquisitions advisory business, Blackstone Advisory Partners, in the United States and Europe, and to open an office in London. CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman said in 2006 that Studzinski's "outstanding track record in transatlantic investment banking will be invaluable in accelerating the growth of our advisory business".
Studzinski is based in both New York and London. His primary role as global head of Blackstone Advisory Partners was to oversee Blackstone's corporate M&A advisory services business in the U.S., and further develop the corporate M&A advisory business in Europe and Asia. He was personally involved in many of the firm's largest advisory assignments. He advised multinational corporations, conglomerates, governments, banks, and institutions, on acquisitions, equity investments, restructurings, spin-offs, mergers, and overseas operations.
In early 2015, Blackstone began spinning off three of its divisions, including its M&A advisory group, to avoid any potential conflicts of interest with its primary private-equity business. After assisting with the transition, Studzinski became Vice Chairman of Investor Relations and Business Development at Blackstone. In this capacity, he holds responsibility for a number of sovereign and international institutional relationships, as well as ultra high-net-worth families outside the U.S.
PIMCO.
In September 2018, Studzinski was appointed to the newly created roles of Managing Director and Vice Chairman of the global investment-management firm PIMCO. He acts as an advisor to PIMCO clients including governments, pension funds, corporations, sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and foundations. He will also help PIMCO's expand globally.
He is based in PIMCO's executive office in New York City, shuttling also to London and to PIMCO's headquarters in Newport Beach, California, and he reports directly to CEO Emmanuel Roman.
Philanthropy.
Studzinski is a philanthropist mainly in three categories: the arts, the homeless, and human rights. The motivation behind his philanthropic work is "human dignity, and the nurturing of it".
Arts.
In addition to the more than $10million he has given to the Tate Modern museum as of 2016, Studzinski states he wants to support early stages of careers in the arts. He feels that "money is so much better spent on the process of creating, on nurturing emerging talent and staying with it, a commitment over the years. And networks: bringing young creative people into a network they can learn from and that will support them."
In 2001 he established the Genesis Foundation, which helps and supports developing artists in the fields of music, theatre, and the visual arts. It is his personal foundation, which he fully funds. As of 2017, the Genesis Foundation has supported more than 1,000 artists and has donated over £10million.
Some of the Genesis Foundation's projects have included awarding scholarships to support students in the three-year acting course at LAMDA. As of 2017, it sponsors the Genesis LAMDA Network, which pairs a final-year LAMDA student with a graduate mentor. The foundation has supported theatre directors at the Young Vic since 2003, via the Genesis Directors Program (2003–2009), the two-year Genesis Fellowship, the Genesis Directors Network, and the Genesis Future Directors Award for young directors. Since its founding, Genesis has funded the Royal Court Theatre's International Playwrights Programme, which supports young playwrights. The Genesis Laboratory provided space and funding for emerging writers at the Suffolk-based HighTide Theatre. In New York City, in 2015 the foundation funded the Residency Five programme at the Signature Theatre for the 2015–16 and 2016-17 seasons; the program supports nine playwrights over a five-year residency and guarantees each playwright three world-premiere productions of their new plays. In 2017 the Genesis Foundation partnered with the National Theatre's musical theatre department to fund the Genesis Music Theatre Group, providing ongoing funding to help inspire and develop the next great British musical.
The Genesis Opera Project, launched in 2001, funded emerging opera composers, librettists, directors, and designers. The Genesis Foundation's music ventures also include having funded posts for new opera directors, répétiteurs, and other posts at the Welsh National Opera. It funds the Genesis Sixteen, a free program which nurtures young of ensemble singers implemented by the group The Sixteen. The foundation also commissions various new works, including operas and choral compositions. In 2010 the foundation commissioned a visual laser-installation work, "LIGHT", by Chris Levine, performed at the Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone and accompanied by The Sixteen singing choral music by Will Todd.
In 2012 the foundation launched the Genesis Prize, a biennial £25,000 prize awarded to a mentor of young artistic talent. From 2002–2007, the foundation also provided start-up loans and support for young people wishing to set up creative enterprises, via a five-year partnership with the Prince's Trust.
In 2016, via the foundation Studzinski partnered with the Hampton Court Palace's Choral Foundation to organize the first Catholic service in the palace's Chapel Royal in over 450 years. The service, conducted mainly in Latin, was in celebration of the King Henry VIII palace's 500th anniversary, and featured choral music from the 15th and 16th centuries. Studzinski stated that "Dialogue between faiths is much needed and welcomed in these turbulent times. We need to recognise that we have more in common than not." Via the Genesis Foundation, Studzinski also commissioned composer James MacMillan's "Stabat Mater", which premiered at the Barbican Centre in October 2016; the recording of the work, sung by The Sixteen, was named Recording of the Month in April 2017 by "Gramophone". The Genesis Foundation was also the sole sponsor of the 2017–2018 Living with Gods exhibition at the British Museum.
The homeless.
"The Financial Times" has called Studzinski a "champion of homeless charity work in London". He is a founder member of the Passage Day Centre, one of the largest day care centers for the homeless in London, and he funds the homeless charity Emmaus UK. He also works as a regular volunteer at the Passage soup kitchen.
In 1998 Studzinski co-launched, and was the first chairman of, Business Action on Homelessness, which is a partnership between Business in the Community, major companies, homeless agencies, and the British government. The organization raises companies' awareness of homelessness throughout the UK, and works with businesses to equip homeless people with the skills needed to gain and sustain employment. It encourages companies to provide work placements and training courses assisting the homeless back into work. Studzinski promotes and encourages corporate social responsibility, and organized regular visits for businesspeople to see homeless projects in action. The organization changes the perceptions companies have of homelessness and helps homeless people back into employment.
Studzinski has also long decried the rising rates of youth unemployment, especially in the wake of the recession, and has called upon businesses and governments to focus on youth employment. He points to the model of Germany and its continued post-war economic success and weathering of the global economic crisis, noting that its emphasis on medium-sized companies – and concomitant values of the right to work, job creation, client satisfaction, and product excellence – have kept unemployment, including youth unemployment, low.
Human rights.
Studzinski is Vice Chair of Human Rights Watch (HRW), and he developed the European arm of the organization. He has also been director of HRW, a member of its executive committee, and chairman of its investment committee. He has stated that his involvement in Human Rights Watch is an extension of his strong belief in "respect for humanity, justice and dignity. Human dignity, the respect for human life and dignity". As a board member of HRW, Studzinski has used his international contacts to help the organization expand so that it can draw attention to atrocities across the world, including in Syria and the Middle East.
He is also active in the worldwide effort to combat human trafficking and modern slavery. Along with Luke de Pulford he is co-founder and chair of the Arise Foundation, which partners with worldwide local networks to stop human trafficking and slavery. Arise Foundation supports Talitha Kum, a global organization of over 1,000 nuns and monks in over 70 countries which prevents and stops human trafficking and child slavery, and rescues and shelters victims.
Additional adviserships.
Since April 2016, Studzinski has been a non-executive director of the Home Office of the UK. He was formerly on the Policy Advisory Council of the Institute for Public Policy Research. In international affairs, he is Vice Chair of the Atlantic Council, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Studzinski is a member of the council of the Royal College of Art, and he is chairman of Create London, a non-profit organization that takes the arts into East London and other areas, connecting artists with communities through an ambitious program of projects. He is on the board of trustees of the J. Paul Getty Trust, and is also on the board of directors of the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies, which promotes American art abroad. He is a trustee of the Tate Americas Foundation, and a former trustee of the Tate Foundation.
He is a former trustee of Bowdoin College, and a former board member of the International Youth Foundation. Until 2014 he was also president of the American Friends of the Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, which focuses on challenges facing young people, members of the armed forces, and conservation.
Studzinski is chairman of Benjamin Franklin House in London, and was formerly on the board of trustees of the Royal Parks Foundation.
Personal life.
Studzinski has residences in London and New York, and divides his time between the two cities. Strongly motivated by his spiritual and religious faith, he has a chapel in his historic London home, and prays and reads books on religion and meditation daily. Holding an extensive art collection, he has been an active buyer and seller of art.