Steel making Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Steel making - Essay Example ed in the air blown through molten pig iron burned off its impurities such as carbon and silicon, in exothermic reactions fueling the process, enabling the production of commercial grade steel at affordable costs(Cottrell,131). Siemens and Martin invented the Open Hearth Process around 1865 which is still surviving to this day. To cut a long story short, these early steel making processes have now been made almost obsolescent over the years, by the rapid advancements made in thermodynamics, electrical engineering, metallurgy, extractive metallurgy and computer and information technology which have transformed the art of steelmaking into quite modern day steel making processes such as the Basic Oxygen Steelmaking (BOS) Process and the Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) Process. While the steel industry has thus undergone gradual but sweeping changes over time, most of the current processes of steel making still involve producing steel from either pig iron or from a mixture of pig iron and ste el scrap. All steel making processes deal with the removal of excessive impurities from the melt by means of slag formation in the furnace. The impurities are removed by formation of either an acid slag or a basic slag. The acid or siliceous slag removes the impurities silicon, manganese and carbon by oxidation and also enables the addition of alloying elements such as nickel, chromium, manganese vanadium, molybdenum, tungsten, niobium and titanium as ferroalloys for purposes of alloy steel making. The basic or limey slag removes the impurities phosphorous and sulfur in addition to silicon, manganese and carbon in the bath of metal which is oxidized to a greater extent than in acid process. The carbon present as the alloying element in iron matrix imparts to it a reduction in ductility but causes considerable increase in strength. Besides, the alloyed carbon in steel is responsible for various other properties of the steel: its property of getting hardened when subjected to

Federal Government Housing Policies Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Federal Government Housing Policies - Term Paper Example The contemporary housing assistance plans involve the comparatively flexible grants for the state as well as the local governments. This is done so as to assist the homeless people, build up reasonably priced housing and offer support to the first-time buyers. This was also done to encourage community development as well as more planned, direct support programs that would assist in providing low-priced apartments and even rental vouchers to the deprived families, managed through quasi-public, local public and the private intermediaries (McCarty & Et. Al., â€Å"Overview of Federal Housing Assistance Programs and Policy†). The main objective of the paper is to analyze the housing policies adopted by the federal government related to the mortgage and funding system. With this concern, the discussion of the paper will intend to identify the strategies implemented by the federal government persuade lenders and low-income borrowers in dealing with highly risky loans and mortgages. Furthermore, the paper will analyze the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the recent sub-prime crisis of 2008. Government Policy Intervention The condition of extreme and mispriced mortgage liability is the main reason behind the current boom in the housing markets. It is not possible to understand the unusual character of this particular cycle without recognizing the parts that links the policies on the demand-side as well as the supply restrictions. The boost in the housing prices was positively aggravated by the policies that facilitated cheap credit, especially for borrowers belonging to the low-income group. With the increasing prices, the enterprises those were government-sponsored, started becoming quite insistent in assisting lending activities. This significantly contributed to the rising prices of households (Glaeser & Gyourko, â€Å"Rethinking Federal Housing Policy†). During the early period of 1980s, the subprime lenders such as Household Finance Corp along w ith thrifts like Long Beach Savings and Loan provided funding services for home equity. They also provided services frequently for second advances to borrowers whose credit record was still to be recognized or even had financial records that were disturbed. At times it mirrored setbacks like divorce, unemployment, medical emergencies etc. Rates of interest charged on the subprime mortgages with considerable collateral which was the house were not as soaring compared to the car loans and also quite lesser than the credit cards. The benefits of the mortgage were coagulated and intensified in the year 1986 over the various other varieties of debt with the assistance of the Tax Reform Act. This act excluded taking away of the interest payments on the customer loans, whereas, the subtraction was retained in relation to the payments for mortgage interests (Stanford University â€Å"Subprime Lending†). Throughout the period of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s, prior to computerized â€Å"credit scoring†, a statistical method that was utilized to gauge the credit value of a borrower, initiated the evaluation of risk and mortgage lenders along with the subprime lenders depended on other attributes at the time of underwriting mortgages. During the period of 1990s the mortgage companies as well as the banks along with the securities organizations of the Wall Street