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Grey’s Anatomy

review — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:31:26 +0000

Auditing

review — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:38:29 +0000

The profession of the auditor is considered to be one of the most prestigious and well-paid ones. Auditors are accountants who analyze financial statements of the company and their responsibility is to express an opinion as to whether the accuracy of the company’s financial reporting meets the requirements imposed by the government. In general, auditors deal with operating efficiency and managerial effectiveness than with the accuracy of the accounting data.

Internal auditors are known to be hired by the company in order to help to identify accounting weakness and correct them before significant errors occur. They are often analytically minded people who make flowcharts of accounting systems and evaluate these flowcharts to suggest improvements in nodivision of labour, paper flow, cash control, or other accounting responsibilities.

Independent auditors are employed by a company’s board of directors to supply the stockholders with the results of checking the financial statements, in order to prove that annual reports are fair representatations of the financial position of the company. Performing his work the auditor should follow several principles and assumptions: the company’s accounts must represent a true financial position; generally accepted accounting principles have been used at all accounting steps and accounts can be compared with those of similar companies; the proper amount of information is disclosed in the financial statements. As a result, the auditor’s opinion should be based only on facts and it must be objective.

Auditors are expected to maintain a relationship of strict independence and professionalism with the companies for whom they work, so they mustn’t hold shared in these companies. On the one hand, he should respect the client’s confidence, so having access to some private information, the auditor must not spread it outside. On the other hand, he should think of public interests, that is why he must publish his opinion in a standard form and the information is to be clear to the stockholders. But he must always carry out his duties under the law and inform authorities about fraud.

Theory of Supply

review — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:36:36 +0000

The theory of supply is the theory of how much output firms choose to produce. The principal assumption of the supply theory is that the producer will maintain the level of output at which he maximizes his profit.

Profit can be defined in terms of revenue and costs. Revenue is what the firm earns by selling goods or services in a given such as a year. Costs are the expenses which are necessary for producing and selling goods or services during the period. Profit is the revenue from selling the output minus the costs of input used.

Costs should include opportunity costs of all resources used in production. Opportunity cost of a commodity is the amount obtain by an input in its best alternative use (best use elsewhere). In particular, costs include the owner’s time and effort in running a business. Costs also include the opportunity cost of the financial capital used in the firm.

Aiming to get higher profits, firms obtain each output level as cheaply as possible. Firms choose the optimal output level to receive the highest profits. This decision can be described in terms of marginal cost and marginal revenue.

Marginal cost is the increase in total cost when one additional unit of output is produced.

Marginal revenue is the corresponding change in total revenue from selling one more unit of output.

As the innodividual firm has to be a price-taker, each firm’s marginal revenue is the prevailing market price. Profits are the highest at the output level at which marginal cost is equal to marginal revenue, that is, to the market price of the output. If profits are negative at this output level, the firm should close down.

An increase in marginal cost reduces output. A rise in marginal revenue increases output. The optimal quantity also depends on the output prices as well as on the input costs. Of course, the optimal supply quantity is affected by such noneconomic factors as technology, environment, etc.

Making economic forecasts, it is necessary to know the effect of a price change on the whole output rather than the supply of innodividual firms.

Market supply is defined in terms of the alternative quantities of a commodity all firms in a particular market offer as price varies and as all other factors are assumed constant

Conglomerates and Multinationals

review — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:02:19 +0000

Many of today’s corporations have thousands of employees and control billions of dollars in assets and it is the large corporations that define the structure of the nation’s economy in the USA.
They often dominate major industries and regional economies, and make it possible to produce goods and services that require combining massive amounts of capital, technological know-how, labour resources, managerial skill, and the ability to obtain and process large and nodiverse amounts of information.

In 1990 the combined sales of the large 500 US industrial corporations were estimated as $2.3 trillion, profits reached $93.4 billion, and they collectively employed nearly 12.5 million workers.
The combined annual revenues of the world’s top five corporations alone were nearly $450 billion and it was more than the gross national product of several countries.

Business having become more competitive, new and more complex corporate combinations appeared.
They are known to be formed by the absorption of one or more companies by another, the merger process involving either acquiring a controlling share of a company’s stock or buying the company outright.
Many corporations have expanded by means of mergers with and acquisitions of businesses in unrelated industries, such collections of businesses being called conglomerates.

For instance, International Telephone and Telegraph achieved its growth by absorbing such companies as Sheraton Hotels, Avis Car Rentals, the Hartford Insurance Company, Continental Bakeries, and others.
Antitrust laws preventing the growth of the corporations within a single field have promoted the establishment of conglomerates.
Between 1955 and 1980 the top 500 corporations absorbed some 4,500 smaller companies.
One problem caused by mergers is that the economic growth does not necessarily result from them, and no new jobs may be created, sometimes acquisitions influencing negatively the country’s economy.
For example, a small company may be acquired by a larger one, have its assets drained off, and then be liquidated, causing the loss of jobs, goods or services, and competition.

Another path to the growth for many corporations has been expansion abroad and it gave rise to the formation of multinational corporations.
Moving production closer to markets by establishing foreign subsidiaries, such corporations maintain extensive business activities and large-scale production facilities throughout the world, and their revenues sometimes exceed the total revenues of the countries in which they operate.

The growth of multinationals has had both benefits and drawbacks.
It has linked the world more closely together economically and has helped speeding the development of poorer nations.
It has also increased free-market competition by providing consumes with greater choice in the goods they may buy.
Among the drawbacks, especially for American firms, has been a great outflow of money for overseas investment and a net loss of jobs to foreign workers.

Some firms locate plants abroad in regions where labour is cheaper and ship the products back to the Unites States to compete with more expensive domestically made goods.
Multinationals are so powerful throughout the world that they are likely to be a dominant force shaping the world e3conomy in future.

European Common Market

review — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:28:50 +0000

In 1952 a definite step towards economic integration was taken with the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community, whose purpose was to unite coal and steel resources of six nations (France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy, West Germany) and to eliminate trade barriers on these resources.
The success of this Community led to the formation in 1958 of the European Economic Community (EEC), usually called the Common Market.
This association including the same nations was formally established by one of the Treaties of Rome and the main goals were the following:
1) to remove barriers to trade among the member nations,
2) to establish a single commercial policy toward non-member countries,
3) to coordinate members’ transportation system, agricultural and general economic policies,
4) to remove private and public measure restricting free competition,
5) to ensure the mobility of labour and capital among the members.
Different countries joined this coalition later: the United Kingdom, Denmark and Ireland in 1973, Greece in 1981, Poland and Spain in 1986.
The former East Germany was admitted as part of reunified Germany in 1990. Austria, Finland and Sweden joined in 1995. The four primary structural organs of the EEC were the Commission, the Council of Ministers, the Court of Justice and the European Parliament.
From the beginning one of the EEC’s main goals was to eliminate the tariffs and quotas imposeв by its members on each other’s exports. The first tariff reduction, 10 percent on industrial goods, was made in 1959 and this proved to be so successful in stimulating trade between member states that by 1968 all internal tariffs had been removed. However, the movement toward the common external tariff advanced at a slower pace. Trade among the members of the EEC quadrupled in value in the period from 1958 to 1968.
A common agricultural policy was established in 1962 and consisted of a system of common guaranteed prices that would offer protection against agricultural imports from lower-cost markets outside the EEC. Progress has been made toward common internal policies regarding monopoly control, transportation and social security system.
Furthermore, labour-force training and mobility have received increased coordination. So, the Common Market has contributed greatly toward economic growth and prosperity in Western Europe. Later the European Economic Community was renamed the European Community (EC) and after some reorganizations in 1967 and 1980 the EC became the principal organization within the European Union (EU) formed in 1993.
The commission of the EC is headed by 20 members including a president and several vice presidents with at least one commissioner from each nation in the Union.
This Commission is responsible for the formal and practical implementation of the various treaties of the Union and rules issued by the Council of Ministers, prepares different acts, implements the EU’s agricultural policies and regional development programmes, etc.
The Council of Ministers, the European Council, the European Parliament, the Court of Auditors, the European Investment Bank, the Economic and Social Committee are the main branches of the European Union.

Half of Americans seeking to Google themselves

review — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 05:33:46 +0000

According to the survey, at least once searched for in Google or any other search engine his name 47 percent of Americans. Compared with 2002, and their number has doubled. In addition to themselves, people usually look for information on their friends, colleagues and beloved.

The Americans under 50 years of age, having a good education and higher income, more inclined to seek information about themselves. Sometimes this is due to the fact that their work requires a certain image on the Internet.

60 percent of users are not interested in that their data is on a network, rather, they are concerned about how they might be used.

53 percent of those surveyed reported that the internet looking for information about other people, not about celebrities. Often, they are looking for people with whom lost contact, but also to search for evidence of neighbors, friends and colleagues-widespread phenomenon.

In most cases, people are looking for contact information for those who need them, but a third of those surveyed admitted that they were looking for information on bankruptcy and divorce available in the public domain. Moreover, in that approximate equal number of men and women looking for themselves, women are more inclined to seek information on those with whom they met.

At the same time, despite a serious increase in the number of users seeking themselves, many people have never done this is not.

Goldman Sachs recommends dispose of the shares Citigroup

review — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 05:52:12 +0000

Investment Bank Goldman Sachs Financial Holding Citigroup added to the list of companies whose shares are encouraged to sell, transfer Associated Press. Goldman Sachs analyst William Tanona found that Citigroup in the next two quarters will have to write off up to 15 billion dollars and possibly reduce dividends.

Message to demote recommendation on shares of American Citigroup led the indices started, begin to drop. Also negatively affected the markets and high oil prices. Already after the first indicator of stock transactions Dow Jones dropped almost 90 points, Nasdaq at 21 item, and S & P 500 by 11 points.

Citigroup back in October 2007, announced a write-off of 3.3 billion dollars of bad debt. In early November, the newspaper The Wall Street Journal estimated that the financial losses may be between 8 and 11 billion dollars. The next day, Citigroup left its head, Prince Charles.

The reason for the losses Citigroup, like many other financial institutions, is a mortgage crisis. The company intends to eliminate its effects by the middle of 2008.

Australians to prohibit most of the plasma TVs

review — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:14:15 +0000

Australian authorities are going to accept the new rating system to evaluate the consumption of electric power by house electric equipment. The six-grade rating system may lead to the disappearance of the up-to-date plasma and liquid-crystalline TVs from the market within the country .

In the report accompanying the rating system written by the federal government it is pointed out that during the last ten years the demand for LCD and plasma monitors, that consummate much more energy than the ordinary TVs, has considerably increased. That’s why there is the necessity to introduce the rating system of energy consumption that will warn the buyer of the possible taxes increase. In case of the positive decision the rating system will be introduced by 2011.

Representatives of the companies producing “energy unfriendly” house equipment mentioned that this rating system is with no doubt a good idea. But to put the production in accordance with the new standards will take more time than is given by the Australian government.

Tim O’Keith, the coordinator of the Australian digital industry forum, has the same opinion. He highlights that Australia’s electric equipment market isn’t big enough for the producers to change anything considerably.

The representative of the Australian department for environmental protection Jean McGlinn supposes that in order to put the production in accordance with any standards it will take maximum two years for the producers of electric equipment to do it.

The Nobel Prize in physics conferred for nanotechnic

review — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 04:18:26 +0000

The names of 2007 Nobel Prize winners in physics are declared in Sweden. They are Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg who independently discovered the effect of the Giant Magnetoresistance in 1988.

The effect of the Giant Magnetoresistance allows to create the structures where the inconsiderable change of the magnetic field leads to a considerable change of the electric resistance of the whole system.

This discovery, which was classified by the Nobel Prize Committee as nanotechnic, found its practical realization in the computer hard disks and allowed in the last years to reduce the size and increase the capacity of the latter. The first information reading systems based upon the effect of the Giant Magnetoresistance were created in 1997 and soon became the industrial standard.

Albert Fert was born in 1938, he’s a citizen of France and works at the university Paris-11. Peter Grunberg was born in Germany in 1939. He works for the research centre in the German city Julich, North Rhine-Westphfalia state.

Since 2001 the Nobel Prize in each category amounts 10 million krona (in 2007 this amount was equal to 1,542 million dollars). As there are two winners in the same category, the prize will be divided equally between them.

The solemn ceremony of Nobel Prize awards will take place on December, 10th, on the day of Alfred Nobel’s death. The King of Sweden will, traditionally, present the awards in Stockholm Concert House and then the Nobel banquet will be carried out in the Blue room of the city hall .

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac

review — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 10:22:35 +0000

I’m happy: Microsoft will release three versions of Office 2008 for Mac suite in January, with the most expensive of the bunch aimed at creative professionals overwhelmed by the task of organizing their digital media files.

Office 2008 for Mac Student and Home Edition, which includes three licenses for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage, an e- mail, calendar, contacts program, will cost $150.

A $400 version aimed at professionals who use Apple Inc. computers, simply called Office 2008 for Mac, includes the same programs as Home and Student.

A third version, the $500 Special Media Edition, adds features to the $400 configuration, including Expression Media, a program that helps computer users organize and manipulate digital photos, video and other files.

All three versions work on Intel-based Macs and older PowerPC machines.Apple announced in August that it added a spreadsheet program to iWork, the company’s own productivity software suite. Apple sells individual licenses for $80 and family packs, which allow users to install the programs on five different computers, for $100.

Excellent news, wait! ;)