1. Express your perspectives on why Americans (The only First World nation to do
ID: 422747 • Letter: 1
Question
1. Express your perspectives on why Americans (The only First World nation to do so) refuse to universally embrace the Metric System.
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2. Savvy International business majors know that the “greenback” (which by the way is not so green these days) is no longer the strongest currency in the world. In fact, the Euro and the British Pound Sterling are both worth much more than the American Dollar. To add insult to injury, even the “loonie” (Canadian dollar) has almost reached parity with the American dollar. Discuss what went wrong. Offer your perspectives on what how a weak dollar impacts international American business and the American domestic markets.
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3. If sipping the soup with a teaspoon helps to determine if the soup is ready; then a stock index helps to determine if a specific stock exchange is moving in a positive or negative direction. The Dow Jones Industrial Average or “Dow” is a stock index which reflects the movement of stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). With interests rates rising (sorry all you home owners who acquired “variable” home equity loans) and Prof. Cooks predicting the Dow will reach a whooping 12,000 points (it’s currently 11.168 points) by years end, offer your perspectives on how this will impact international business and management plans. Elaborate on how rising interest will impact corporate supply chains.
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4. Offer your keen insights as to why Americans are determined to make Sydney the capital of the capitalistic and democratic nation of Australia. Offers remedies (from an International business perspective) which will restore hope to your Australian business counterparts, and permanently alleviate this situation.
Explanation / Answer
Answer 1: First of all changing all the conversion units to metric system would be extremely costly and time consuming. All organizations and businesses need to painfully migrate all the systems to metric. During the transition phase there would be lot of hiccups.All the measuring instruments need to be recalibrated and adjusted. The cost of switchover from English system to metric system would far outweigh the benefits. Also the english system of measurement is also representative of American individualism and switchover to metric system would tantamount to following the rest of the world as per populistic views
Answer 2: Weakening dollar value reduces the purchasing power of US internationally.This means for the same amount of import they have to pay more in dollars.
On the other hand for US business entitites operating in other geographies like Europe or UK, the earnings and profits are measured in Euro or pound sterling and when coverted against a weakening dollar they gain further on the currency rate arbitrage.The exporters benefit from dollar weakening as they can jack up the domestic prices to keep them equivalent to the international prices. In the domestic market weakening dollar would reduce the purchasing power of the domestic consumers and customers would lookout for low end products rather than high end products which charge high premium.The increased exports would reduce the trade deficit . The domestic torism would get a boost as spending in US would be cheaper. Weakening dollar will result in inflation trigered from the high cost of imports.
Answer 3:Stock markets are mostly impacted by the variations in the federal interest rates.The federal interest rates is the interest rates at whcih the depository institutes borrow money. With rise in federal interest rates it becomes costly/increasingly difficult for the banks and depository institutes to borrow money. This means they will charge higher interest rates to the customers and businesses/organizations. This will have 2 pronged effect. Firstly people will borrow less and they will have lesser disposable income. Which means the investment in stock market will reduce. Secondly the companies will hvae higher debt expenses due to rise in interest rated on borrowed capital This will reduce the earnings and hence reduce the value of the stock.
Answer 4: First of all sydney has been the symbol and representative of australia . It is internationally well known may be because of its opera house ,harbour bridge. historically there are great debate in deciding the capital of australia as Melbourne or Sydney but finally canberra was set up as capital of australia by Act of Australia.
Also Sydney is the commerial hub of australia and most of the business organizations operate from Sydney. it has always been the financial capital of Australia as Melbourne has been the administrative capital right from the very inception. Most of the multinationals have their headquarters in sydney . Most of the major banks ,business houses,stock market, regulatory authorities are stationed in Sydney whcih makes it the business capital and Sydney accounts for almost a quarter of the Australian gross national product.
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