Archive for category: Personal

Analyze a financial and economic issue in the health care industry.

Write a 700 – 800 word paper in which you:

• Analyze a financial and economic issue in the health care industry.
• Choose a current financial or economic issue in the health care industry. Consider the following:
• What are the economic trends of the health care payment system?
• What are the supply and demand challenges for health care services?
• Why are costs increasing in the health care system?
• What regulatory issues are affecting, or will affect, the health care industry?
• Analyze the issue and its financial impact on the health care industry.
• Provide recommendations for improving the issue. Consider current strategies being used or presented for improving the issue.
• Include what you believe would be the outcome of these recommendations if implemented.

Cite 3 peer-reviewed, scholarly, or similar references to support your paper

 

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International Business Decision Making

Assignment 1: Discussion Questions—International Business Decision Making

The various factors impacting international business may be brought together into a process for evaluating international business opportunities. Choosing the right mode of entry is the next step.

Research evaluation of business opportunities and modes of entry using your textbook,  University online library resources, and the Internet. Respond to the following:

• Explain how a business can assess international business opportunities giving examples. Do you think the size of the company matters in assessing an international business opportunity? Give reasons for your answer.
• In your opinion, what would be the single most effective way for a potential international business to gain entry into an international market? What are the apparent risks of the mode of entry you recommend? For at least one other mode of entry, explain why it would be less effective compared to the one you chose.

Write your response in 400 words or less. Apply current APA standards for writing style to your work. All written assignments and responses should follow APA rules for attributing sources.

By Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Assignment 2: Presentation—Starting an International Business

Business decisions are not made on a hunch or some vague idea of a good place to do business. Professionals assess business opportunities and modes of entry to choose the best alternative.

Research the topic using your textbook,  University online library resources, and the Internet. Based on your research, develop a presentation. Your role is of an educational specialist in international business and your audience is a group of middle managers.

Discuss the following in your presentation:

• Steps to analyzing international business opportunities with specifics of what is involved in each step
• Alternative methods for gaining entry into an international business opportunity or market

Submit your work in a 10-slide PowerPoint presentation. Use the speaker notes area to write the information supporting the slides. Apply current APA standards for writing style to your work. All written assignments and responses should follow APA rules for attributing sources.

 

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wHEN IT COMES TO THE SAFETY OF YOuNG children, fire is a parent’s nightmare. Just the thought of their young ones trapped in their cribs or bedsby a raging nocturnal blaze is enough to make most mothers and fathers take every precaution to ensure their children’s safety. Little wonder that when fire-retardant children’s pajamas first hit the market, they proved an overnight success. Within a few short years more than 200 million pairs were sold, and the sales of millions more were all but guaranteed. For their manufacturers, the future could not have been brighter. Then, like a bolt from the blue, came word that the pajamas were killers. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) moved quickly to ban their sale and recall millions of pairs. Reason: The pajamas con- tained the flame-retardant chemical Tris (2,3-dibromoprophyl), which had been found to cause kidney cancer in children.

Because of its toxicity, the sleepwear couldn’t even be thrown away, let alone sold. Indeed, the CPSC left no doubt about how the pajamas were to be disposed of—buried or burned or used as industrial wiping cloths. Whereas just months earlier the man- ufacturers of the Tris-impregnated pajamas couldn’t fill orders fast enough, suddenly they were worrying about how to get rid of the millions of pairs now sitting in warehouses.

Soon, however, ads began appearing in the classified pages of Women’s Wear Daily. “Tris-Tris-Tris . . . We will buy any fabric containing Tris,” read one. Another said, “Tris—we will purchase any large quantities of garments containing Tris.” The ads had been placed by exporters, who began buying up the pajamas, usually at 10 to 30 percent of the normal wholesale price. Their intent was clear: to dump* the carcinogenic pajamas on overseas markets.24

Tris is not the only example of dumping. There were the 450,000 baby pacifiers, of the type known to have caused choking deaths, that were exported for sale overseas, and the 400 Iraqis who died and the 5,000 who were hospitalized after eating wheat and barley treated with a U.S.-banned organic mercury fungicide. Winstrol, a synthetic male hormone that had been found to stunt the growth of American children, was made available in Brazil as an appetite stimulant for children. DowElanco sold its weed killer Galant in Costa Rica, although the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forbade its sale to U.S. farmers because Galant may cause cancer. After the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the painkiller dipyrone because it can cause a fatal blood disorder, Winthrop Products continued to sell dipyrone in Mexico City.

Manufacturers that dump products abroad clearly are motivated by profit, or at least by the hope of avoiding financial losses resulting from having to withdraw a product from the U.S. market. For government and health agencies that cooperate in the exporting of dangerous products, some- times the motives are more complex.

For example, when researchers documented the dangers of the Dalkon Shield intrauterine device—among the adverse reactions were pelvic inflammation, blood poisoning, tubal pregnancies, and uterine perforations—its manufacturer, A. H. Robins Co., began losing its domestic market. As a result, the company worked out a deal with the Office of Population within the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), whereby AID bought thousands of the devices at a reduced price for use in population-control programs in forty-two countries.

The agencies involved say their motives are humanitarian. Because the death rate in childbirth is relatively high in third-world countries, almost any birth-control device is safer than preg- nancy. Analogous arguments are used to defend the export of pesticides and other products judged too dangerous for use in the United States: Foreign countries should be free to decide for themselves whether the benefits of those products are worth their risks. In line with this, some third-world government officials insist that denying their countries access to these products is tantamount to violating their countries’ national sovereignty.

This reasoning has found a sympathetic ear in Washington, for it turns up in the “notification” system that regulates the export of banned or dangerous products overseas. Based on the principles of national sovereignty, self-determination, and free trade, the notification system requires that foreign governments be notified whenever a product is banned, deregulated, sus- pended, or canceled by a U.S. regulatory agency. The State Department, which implements the system, has a policy statement on the subject that reads in part: “No country should establish itself as the arbiter of others’ health and safety stan- dards. Individual governments are generally in the best position to establish standards of public health and safety.”

Critics of the system claim that notifying foreign health officials is virtually useless. For one thing, governments in poor countries can rarely establish health standards or even control imports into their countries. Indeed, most of the third- world countries where banned or dangerous products are dumped lack regulatory agencies, adequate testing facilities, and well-staffed customs departments.

Then there’s the problem of getting the word out about hazardous products. In theory, when a government agency such as the EPA or the FDA finds a product hazardous, it is supposed to inform the State Department, which is to notify health officials in other nations. But agencies often fail to inform the State Department of the product they have banned or found harmful, and when it is notified, its communiqués typically go no further than U.S. embassies abroad. When foreign officials are notified by U.S. embassies, they sometimes find the communiqués vague or ambiguous or too technical to understand.

But even if communication procedures were improved or the export of dangerous products forbidden, there are ways that companies can circumvent these threats to their profits— for example, by simply changing the name of the product or by exporting the individual ingredients of a product to a plant in a foreign country. Once there, the ingredients can be reassem- bled and the product dumped. The United States does prohibit its pharmaceutical companies from exporting drugs banned in this country, but sidestepping the law is not difficult. “Unless the package bursts open on the dock,” one drug company executive observes, “you have no chance of being caught.”

Unfortunately for us, in the case of pesticides, the effects of overseas dumping are now coming home. In the United States, the EPA bans all crop uses of DDT and dieldrin, which kill fish, cause tumors in animals, and build up in the fatty tissue of humans. It also bans heptachlor, chlordane, leptophos, endrin, and many other pesticides, including 2,4,5-T (which contains the deadly poison dioxin, the active ingredient in Agent Orange, the notorious defoliant used in Vietnam) because they are dangerous to human beings. No law, however, prohibits the sale of DDT and these other U.S.-banned pesticides overseas, where thanks to corporate dumping they are routinely used in agriculture. In one three-month period, for example, U.S. chemical companies exported 3.9 million pounds of banned and withdrawn pesticides. The FDA now estimates, through spot checks, that 10 percent of our imported food is contami- nated with residues of banned pesticides. And the FDA’s most commonly used testing procedure does not even check for 70 percent of the pesticides known to cause cancer.25

update

In 2013 researchers purchased 42 different types of foam furni- ture for children, including the popular Mickey Mouse couch, and found that all but four of them contained the toxic flame retar- dants that were banned years ago from children’s pajamas— flame retardants that contain chemicals linked, not just to cancer, but also to diminished IQs and other problems. Although the chemical industry defends flame retardants as necessary to safeguard children, it turns out that they do not actually prevent fires. If you set a cushion on fire, it will burn right up.26

DISCuSSION QuESTIONS

1. Complete the following statements by filling in the blanks with either “moral” or “nonmoral” (e.g., factual, scientific, legal):

a. Whether or not dumping should be permitted is a_____ question.

b. “Are dangerous products of any use in the third world?” is a _____ question.

c. “Is it proper for the U.S. government to sponsor the export of dangerous products overseas?” is a ______ question.

d. Whether or not the notification system works as its supporters claim it works is a _____ question.

e. “Is it legal to dump this product overseas?” is a _____question.4. If no law is broken, is there anything wrong with dumping? If so, when is it wrong and why? Do any moral considerations support dumping products overseas when this violates U.S. law?

Putting aside the question of legality, what moral arguments can be given for and against dumping? What is your position on dumping, and what principles and values do you base it on? Should we have laws prohibiting more types of dumping?

 

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Read the boxed article, “Reinflating Real Property Values,” by A. J. Cataldo and Anthony P. Curatola, from Strategic Finance, October 2008. Then respond to the questions that follow. Feel free to use Google, Wikipedia, or any other reliable Internet sources for your research. Be sure to verify your answers by checking multiple sources.

REINFLATING REAL PROPERTY VALUES

By A. J. Cataldo, CMA, CPA, and Anthony P. Curatola

Reprinted with permission from Strategic Finance, October 2008.

On September 8, 2008, Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) and Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM), the holders of approximately 50% of mortgages in the United States, were seized by the U.S. government in a “bailout” that may cost American taxpayers between $100 billion and $300 billion. Effectively, owners of common equity saw the value of their holdings in these two firms decline by 80% to 90% as the common stock price per share for Freddie dropped from $5.10 to $0.88 per share and the common stock price per share for Fannie dropped from $7.04 to $0.73 per share. Because short positions effectively increase the number of shares issued and outstanding, more than 110% of the shares of both Freddie and Fannie were held by institutions. Approximately 50% of the shares of Freddie and Fannie were traded on Monday, September 8, 2008, following the news of the seizure over the preceding weekend. While many possible solutions may be under consideration, one possible fiscal policy-based answer may be to simply reduce the depreciable lives for residential real property, effectively increasing the net present value (and, therefore, the value) of these properties, if held for trade or business purposes. Some comparison between a less-recent historical crisis and the present situation warrants review.

Change in Fiscal Policy: 1987 Crash

The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (ERTA81) greatly accelerated the depreciation deductions available for all asset classes, including real property, under the accelerated cost recovery system (ACRS).The Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86), passed by Congress on October 22, 1986, provided for an increase in the depreciable lives of real property from their ACRS-based lives of 15 years to a MACRS-based (modified ACRS) life of 27.5 years (or longer) while severely restricting passive activity losses (PALs). Approximately one year later, on Monday, October 19, 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) dropped more than 22% in a single trading day. While there’s no denying that program trading led the list of contributing variables to the 1987 stock market “crash,” another possible causal link is the extension of depreciable lives—the move from ACRS to MACRS—and the imposition of passive activity loss limitations (PALs), which together placed downward pressure on real property values as an asset class. These provisions of TRA86 may have made economic sense on one dimension, but they were also likely to have contributed to the end of the real estate boom in the early to mid-1980s as well as to the savings and loan (S&L) “crisis” and the formation of the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) that followed.

Change in Monetary Policy: 2008 Crash

The stage was set for the current housing crisis during the 2002 through 2004 period. Many Americans refinanced their existing home mortgages at lower interest rates, effectively “cashing in” and consuming much of their equity, but the real problem arose when no-qualifying and no-documentation (no-doc) mortgages were approved by lenders. In many cases, these were negative amortization loans for the first few years of the life of the mortgage and/or adjustable rate mortgages, and, as interest rates recovered (June 2004), payments on these mortgages were reset at higher interest rates and higher monthly payments. Many new homeowners, as well as speculators anticipating a continuing rise in real property values, were unable (or unwilling) to make these higher payments as their equity positions evaporated. Lenders’ declining collateral positions in these real properties, loan defaults, and home foreclosures grew, increasing the nonperforming components of lender portfolios of home mortgage loans. The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief (MFDR) Act of 2007 provided some relief to taxpayers. As real property values declined and mortgages exceeded the fair market value of these properties, financial institutions holding these nonperforming, or “at risk,” loans experienced increased shorting and even naked shorting of their equity securities. (“Naked shorting” is the sale of a stock that you don’t own in anticipation of buying or “covering” this position at a future date and a lower price for a profit.) The Securities & Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve, and the Secretary of the Treasury joined forces to suspend “naked shorting” of Freddie, Fannie, and 17 other financial institutions, but the suspension was only temporary. During the early portion of the suspension period (July 11, 2008, through July 23, 2008), nearly one-third of a trillion dollars of market capitalization recovery occurred for these financial institutions.

Stabilizing Residential Housing Values and Stimulating Demand

One of many possible solutions might include a reduction in the depreciable lives for residential housing. Increases in depreciation expense increase the depreciation tax shield, after-tax cash flow, and net present values for long-lived assets. While this may not solve the problem for homeowners, the consensus in the business and general press is that home foreclosures and mortgage defaults combined with the increase of these nonperforming loans in lenders’ portfolios suggests that many of those approved for these troubled loans simply weren’t economically able to purchase these homes at the time these mortgages were approved. Therefore, it appears that an insufficient number of creditworthy homeowners may be available to absorb the increased inventory of residential housing, and the only alternative may be to provide fiscal policy-based economic incentives to investors to absorb the surplus supply for the near term. Perhaps it’s merely a question of the “form” of the bailout: (1) a tax-incentive-based fiscal policy measure or (2) direct governmental ownership of Fannie and Freddie.

A. J. Cataldo, II, CMA, CPA, Ph.D., is a professor of accounting in the School of Business and Public Affairs at West Chester University, West Chester, Pa. He can be contacted at acataldo@wcupa.edu. Anthony P. Curatola is the Joseph F. Ford Professor of Accounting at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pa. You can reach Tony at (215) 895-1453 or curatola@drexel.edu. © 2008 A. P. Curatola.

Project Questions

1. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are GSEs. Define GSE with a brief explanation. (10%)

2. To slow the decline of market values of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and 17 other financial firms, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suspended naked shorting for a short period.

a. What is a long position in a stock? (5%)

b. What is a short position in a stock? (5%)

c. What is a naked short position in a stock? (Distinguish between a short and a naked short.) (10%)

d. Are retail investors or traders permitted to naked short a stock? (10%)

e. Who is permitted to naked short a stock (assuming there has been no suspension of this practice)? (5%)

3. Following the first SEC suspension of naked shorting (post–June 2008), did other nations follow this practice? (5%)

3. If not, explain why. If so, list a few. (5%)

4. When the temporary suspension of naked shorting was imposed by the SEC, stock prices increased, due to a “short squeeze.” Explain the term “short squeeze.” (10%)

5. The problems with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other financial institutions were said to have been caused by the securitization of risky mortgages issued to uncreditworthy borrowers along with credit default swaps to insure these risky mortgages. The credit default swaps weren’t capitalized—there was nothing available to pay off on these credit default swaps, so when the borrower defaulted on the mortgage and the credit default swap was to be “cashed in,” there was nothing available, and these securitized mortgages became worthless.

5. Worldwide, what’s the approximate value of credit default swaps in circulation during this period? (5%)

5. How did this amount compare to U.S. and worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) during this period? (5%)

6. In what currency is oil traded? (5%)

7. In what currency are credit default swaps traded? (5%)

8. Will the U.S. dollar remain the currency of choice? (5%)

9. Have any nations called for a switch from the U.S. dollar? (10%)

Writing Guidelines

1. Type your submission, double-spaced, in a standard print font, size 12. Use a standard document format with 1-inch margins. (Do not use any fancy or cursive fonts.)

2. Include the following information at the top of your paper:

2. Name and complete mailing address

2. Student number

2. Course title and number (International Business, BUS 430)

2. Project number (50067000)

3. Read the assignment carefully and answer each question. Use proper citation in either APA or MLA style.

4. Be specific. Limit your submission to the questions asked and issues mentioned.

5. Include a reference page in either APA or MLA style. On this page, list websites, journals, and all other references used in preparing the submission.

6. Proofread your work carefully. Check for correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization.

Grading Criteria

Your project will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

· Content                                       80 percent

· Written communication              10 percent

· Format                                        10 percent

Here’s a brief explanation of each of these points.

Content

The student

· Provides clear answers to the assigned questions

· Addresses the questions in complete sentences, not just simple yes-or-no statements

· Supports his or her opinion by citing specific information from websites and any other references using correct APA or MLA guidelines for citations and references

· Stays focused on the assigned issues

· Writes in his or her own words and uses quotation marks to indicate direct quotations

Written Communication

The student

· Answers each question in one or more complete sentences

· Uses correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure

· Provides clear organization when necessary (for example, uses words like first, however, on the other hand, and so on, consequently, since, next, and when)

· Makes sure the project contains no typographical errors

 

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