Essays on Slump

My article appeared in The Nation magazine in December of 2015 and is entitled “The Oil Price Plunge.” I selected this article in order to better understand the macroeconomic effects that oil shocks may have (“The Oil Price Plunge” 5). This article defines the two major ways oil price movements can affect the macro economy. One common explanation holds that oil price increases can inhibit GDP growth by raising production costs. Alternatively, big oil price changes (either in the form of increases or decreases) may adversely affect output by causing a delay in business investment because of raising uncertainty. ...

Report 2

The global oil industry is currently reeling under the pressures of low prices brought about by an oversupply of the commodity. There have been worries among green energy supporters that the historical lows could bring about a decrease in the development of alternative energy sources. This short report seeks to argue that the low prices may indeed result in more emphasis towards the development of alternative energy sources. As Suzanne Goldenberg provides, the world’s net oil exporters are at the fore front of investing in alternative energy sources, more so, renewable energy sources like solar as well as ...

Overview of economic performance of GCC countries

The Gulf Cooperation Council comprising of Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman are oil rich nations representing an aggregate of 35.7 percent of global oil reserves. These nations are the largest exporter and producer of petroleum and have experienced excellent economic growth since the year 2008. The economic growth rate of the GCC nations has increased threefold to $1.4 trillion in the year 2011. The estimated growth of Gross Domestic Product for the GCC nations in the year 2013 is forecasted to reach around $1.5 trillion. The aggregate growth of Gross Domestic Product in the ...

- The Circular Flow Diagram

The circular flow diagram captures the relationship of money and resources between households and firms in the economy. The inner loop represents the flows of inputs for production and goods and services: households sell their labor to firms, and the firms sell the goods and services they produce to households. The outer loop in the diagram represents the corresponding flows of money: households pay the firms for the goods and services, and the firms pay wages and profit to the households.

Households increase savings. The presence of increase in household saving implies that there ...

Abstract

The research tests the Independent variables in the hypothesis of rich oil versus less oil countries. The occurrence of conflicts served as the dependent variable, and the countries that have proven access to oil deposits have served as the unit of analysis. To prove this research hypothesis, the research methods that have been done by collecting information regarding the presence of oil deposits in the subject countries and other economic indicators such as the national GDP (Gross Domestic Product), among others. The collection of data focused on: Oil income, GDP, and Fail States. The analysis was done using the ...

Toyota Motor Company (TMC) Vs General Motors (GM) Business Strategies: An Introduction

With the advent of the worldwide economic slump, the automobile sales dropped sharply, causing automobile manufacturers a lot of financial strain. All automobile companies have been much impacted, with the major companies reporting major losses in the last few years. This impacts all the automobile manufacturers comprising of the automobile giants like the General Motors (GM) as well as Toyota Motor Company (TMC). Comparing both the companies i.e. GM and Toyota, it is noted that they lost considerable sales working independently and had to modify themselves in line with these unanticipated conditions. Particularly, the General Motor’s liquidity dropped ...

MBADate

Introduction Netflix is an American technology company that provides on-demand internet streaming media in North America, South America and parts of Europe where mailed DVDs are sent through permit Reply Mail (Netflix, 2013). The company has more than 44 million members in more than 40 countries (Netflix, 2013). Netflix has the goal to generate original content for sale to its customers. The development of original content will help the company to overcome financial losses incurred due to reduced subscriber growth that is usually witnessed during major sporting tournaments such as the upcoming FIFA world cup in Brazil. In ...

Introduction:

A wealth of historians have written on baseball and football during the World War II era. However, there is precious little devoted to the political complexities between the Roosevelt Administration, Major League Baseball, and to a lesser extent the National Football League. Patriotism was good for business, however loosing players to the war effort was not, nor were direct financial contributions to the war effort. Major league sports teams are businesses and have to attend to maintaining a financial bottom line in order to remain viable. Little has been done to examine if Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Football League ( ...

Introduction:

Toyota Motor Corporation is a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer with headquarters in Aichi, Japan. Toyota was the largest automobile manufacturer in the world in the year 2012, with 333,498 employees. Toyota produces more than 10 million vehicles every year and is the only manufacturer in the world to do so. In July 2012, Toyota manufactured its 200th million vehicle. Toyota produces a diverse range of automobiles catering to different sectors of the automobile industry. Toyota manufacturers vehicles under five different sub-brands including Toyota, Lexus (luxury oriented brand catering primarily to the US luxury car market), Scion (youth brand targeting youngsters), ...

Introduction

Headquartered in the City of Westminster, London, Marks and Spencer Plc. is one of the leading British multi-channel retailers of garments and high quality food products. Founded in 1884 by Thomas Spencer and Michael Marks, the company has 766 stores in the UK alone with 361 more stores spread across globally in over 50 nations (M&S #3 2014). With about 82,000 employees worldwide, the company aims to provide an excellent shopping experience to its customers, whether in stores, by phone or online. The company seeks to follow a green way of doing its business and hence it has engaged ...

Strategic Development and Challenges for McDonald’s

Strategy addresses the why and what of marketing activities. Marketing involves satisfying needs and wants of the customer. The task of any business is to deliver customer value while being socially responsible. In a highly competitive economy with increasingly intelligent buyers, a company can win only by fine tuning its value delivery process and providing superior value. In January 2011, McDonald’s announced that its earnings of fourth quarter in the previous year rose 2.1 percent despite of a slump in December due to extreme weather in U.S. and Europe. The analysts attributed the success of McDonald’s to the “Plan to ...

International Project Finance

Executive Summary The project for mining in the hinterland of Peru Mountains is studied as a case in the paper. The Antamina projects as it is called is studied for numerous management aspects of Industry, Finance, Human resources and other international finance aspects. The financial aspect of project completion is an important part of overall banking regulations is determined. Also the design of workforce, stakeholder dialogue in irrefutable and complex circumstances indicates the strength of community and social impact of such projects. The investment commitment is a particular emphasis as also the promulgation of management think on how to cater ...

Introduction

There are certain laws which actually supports with the prevailing laws and regulations of economics, and among them there is a name of Economic Life Cycle as well. Likewise Product Life Cycle (PLC), there is a name of Economic Life Cycle (ELC) as well, which is one of the most important aspects that can deliver effectiveness to the market (Brinkman, Holroyd & Gardner, 2013). In the ELC, a country or an economy move towards a specific place and then went down drastically in the market. Most of the times, the ELC have been regarded as the economic crisis (Brinkman, Holroyd & Gardner, 2013). There are ...

Strategic Management Analysis

STRENGTHS: - Large Brand Name: McDonald’s is present in the market for the 50 years now, and is serving more than 50 million customers. This shows the bigness of the brand, and how long it has been serving the consumers. It is as a result of this customers trust McDonald’s and new products introduced under the umbrella of this brand are going to win the consumer’s trust.. - Largest fast food Company: McDonald’s has around thirty thousand retail outlets around the world. This has given McDonald’s a unique advantage in terms of economies of ...

Abstract

Concrete acts as one of the most essential and cost-effective construction material made from a mixture of sand, cement, aggregates, and water. Cement acts as a binder for holding all the components together. Engineers working in the construction site must understand the purpose of the construction because different structures require different concrete strengths. The strength of cement paste used controls the overall strength of concrete that depends on the water-cement ratio. The following experiment was conducted to investigate different mechanical and physical properties of concrete.

Objective: To determine mechanical properties of concrete.

Materials used: Aggregate (coarse and fine), sand, cement, water, compressive machine, cylindrical and rectangular molds, timer, ...

Austerity

a). The current deficit panic and the debt, which are associated with recession has created an alarming situation in most of the countries, and threatened the economies of countries. They are however, a staple of the politics of several countries. In order to cope with the problem of fiscal deficit, and debt, the governments of many countries are adopting austerity measures. The republicans are demanding cuts and the Democrats are demanding cuts, and an increase in the tax. But, as a matter of fact, the budget cuts are not the right thing to do at such moments. In this regard, if the ...

Introduction

The American economy has been facing serious challenges most notably the recession and the property crash witnessed in 2008. As Salaam (2012) asserts, the American economy was already on the decline way before the 2008 crash. He suggests that the recession began way back in 2000 and most notably in 2007, but the country was spared the pains by the unsustainable boom in property sector. When the slump hit in 2008, the country was least prepared for it. This slump has persisted to this day. VCU (2014) concedes to this fact saying that the recession has resulted to a ...

Exam II, Question 1

Foster and Magdoff’s historical perspective of the recent financial crisis is interesting and many points succeed to point out the flaws in our economic system. They believe that the current financial crisis had been building up because of historical events rather than occurring due to a natural cycle. According to the well-known business cycle, a crisis begins to take effect when the economy starts to slump, and is usually evident after a boom period. As evident after the recent boom period, the economy began to stagnate; however, there are many that led to this, in addition to the cycles. In the ...

In the wake of the 1920s, emerging industries and other new methods of production led to prosperity and economic boom in America. An increased number people invested in the stock market than before leading to the hiking of average prices of stocks by 40%. Buying on credit was rather disastrous at this was a season of great economic boom. On average, people’s salaries and wages stayed the same level even as prices for other commodities. Many U.S citizens invested on the stock market, anticipating to make huge and quick profit. This great prosperity came to a sudden halt in ...

The Global Financial Crisis (‘GFC’) had a very dramatic impact on the domestic economies of a number of global nations, in a plethora of ways, typically replicating the fiscal and financial health of such nations. United Arab Emirates (UAE) was one such nation that had a serious impact of the GFC and since then the myriad challenges posed by the capital markets has been an interesting area of focus for the Middle East. UAE is one of the oil rich economies of the Middle East. During the initial and developing years of the last century UAE discovered new abundance and wealth from its ...

Greece-Euro Crisis: A Background

In 2001, Greece became the 12th European nation to get the membership of the EU, and endorsed the Euro as its single currency of the continent. The country got the EU membership that would put Greece strongly placed in Europe. Nevertheless, even then a number of economists were afraid that the Euro's stability could be affected by the inclusion of weaker countries from the European region. With the aim of qualifying for Euro membership, Greece was required to adopt stringent austerity steps, mostly through massive cuts in public expenditures. When the euro was launched in global financial markets in ...

- Mission Statement Harman is the global leader producing audio and infotainment systems. Approximately 80% of the luxury cars of the world are equipped by its audio systems of premium quality. The Company operates in three segments of the industry including Consumer, Professional, and Automotive. There were several main principles indicated in the mission statement of the company, namely: dedication to global excellence in the market of audio and infotainment markets, fostering a culture of creativity and empowerment, and implementing innovations. The Company stated the commitment to customer satisfaction, superior value, and delivering solution of excellent quality to ...

- Argument for Diversification The key to the longevity of Verizon Communications is an effective diversification strategy. The need to diversify emanates from the increasing number of companies in the communications industry that are bringing stiff competition into this industry. These companies that include Century Link, AT & T, Spring Nextel, and Leap Wireless International have started offering new and diversified products that are aesthetically pleasing to the consumers and it is quite clear that if Verizon does not embark on its own diversification strategy, it is going to lag behind and possibly become irrelevant. The ultimate plan of ...

Management

Management

Introduction

This report seeks to evaluate lean systems, inventory management, aggregate production planning and master scheduling and recommend the best philosophy to be adopted by Unico Plant.

Lean system, which is also known as Just in Time (JIT) system refers to a system that seeks to purchase or produce components or products when they are required for use or by customers and not for stock. Lean system is a pull system that responds to consumer or internal demand. Therefore, lean systems can be applied in both production and purchasing. Lean systems seeks to eliminate non-value adding activities, keep zero inventory, have ...

The state of Maryland has been posting exceedingly impressive economic data recently. The economy of the state seems to be robust. The state recorded 1400 more jobs created in August alone than in July. The sectors driving this demand and supply are government spending, accommodation, food services, and scientific services. The state currently has one of the highest recovery rates after the recession. The post-recession job recovery rate is 8% and represents a particularly serious spike in jobs. Further, the state’s takings from taxation topped 4% above the 2011 figure (OWIP, 2012). The increase in sales tax receipts this ...

Introduction

The debate for and against the legalization of Marijuana has been one of the most controversial issue in politics in the recent past. Nonetheless, it can be noted that the use of marijuana for medical purposes has existed for thousands of years in many countries (Randall 34). However, in many of these countries, the use of marijuana has been illegal and it can be noted that the substance has been decriminalized in most of them. Nevertheless, in the recent past, some of the countries have started to come up with various legislation that are permitting the usage of marijuana ...