Questions
Businesses both large and small are flocking to social media platforms to engage consumers in conversations...

Businesses both large and small are flocking to social media platforms to engage consumers in conversations and also to drive sales through deals and coupons. Small businesses have found that social media and the Internet help them to level the playing field. They can foster closer relationships with clients and identify potential customers. Flirty Cupcakes owner Tiffany Kurtz says that Facebook and Twitter greatly helped her with product innovation, market expansion, and customer service. Many other entrepreneurs are using social media to launch and expand their businesses.

Read the article, "9 Businesses that Social Media Built (Links to an external site.)."

Using the Internet, search for small businesses that have used social media to start a business or expand their market share. Select four businesses to study. Analyze their use of social media. What do they have in common? When these companies were first launched, most of them probably needed to borrow money to get started. How might these companies have described the social media potential in writing a proposal seeking funding? In which of the proposal components would this information be best placed? In an e-mail or memo to your instructor, describe briefly the four companies you selected. Then, for one company write a portion of the proposal in which the entrepreneur explains how he or she plans to use social media to promote the business. How much time do you think the entrepreneur would need to devote to social media weekly? What platforms would be most useful?

Submission Guidelines: Submissions should be turned in on a Word document, be at least 250-words, and properly cite any outside sources used.

In: Operations Management

Problem Statement Josephus attended a party where they had a rather strange raffle. Everyone was to...

Problem Statement

Josephus attended a party where they had a rather strange raffle. Everyone was to stand in a circle, and every Mth person was to be eliminated until only one person was remaining, who won the lawnmower.

Write the function Josephus, which takes as parameters a vector<string> representing the N guests at the party in the order they line up for the raffle, and the integer M, giving which person will be eliminated at each turn. Your function should return a string giving the name of the winner of the raffle (the last person standing).

Hint: While there is a mathematical solution, a queue will be much more straightforward.

Constraints

  • N, the length of the vector<string> guests, will be greater than 0 and less than 2,000.
  • M will be greater than zero and less than 2,000.

Examples

  1. guests = {"Josephus", "Titus", "Simon", "Eleazar"}
M = 3 
Returns: "Josephus"

    Counting every third person from Josephus (remember, they are in a circle), Simon is eliminated first. Skipping Eleazar and Josephus, Titus goes next. Skipping Eleazar and Josephus, we come back to Eleazar. Josephus, who cleverly suggested M = 3, comes out the winner!

  2. guests = {"Bradford", "Rosette", "Ji", "Ashleigh", "Avery", "Lavonna", "Fredericka"} 
M = 2 
Returns: "Fredericka"
  3. guests = {"Tiffany", "Randy", "Kit", "Sharlene", "Marquerite", "Debra", "Pok", "Tanisha", "Claudio"} 
M = 17 
Result: "Debra"

Given Function

string Josephus(vector<string> guests, int M) {
// your code here
}

Use the given function to solve the problem statement. Please follow the given notes and constraints. Please code this problem in C++.

In: Computer Science

Applied Economics - The Institutional Framework Who the Looting Ruins ‘Seventeen years of work is gone,’...

Applied Economics - The Institutional Framework

Who the Looting Ruins

‘Seventeen years of work is gone,’ said the owner of an Ecuadorean eatery.

By

The Editorial Board

June 4, 2020 7:37 pm ET

Luis Tamay is an immigrant with an Ecuadorean restaurant in Minneapolis. Zola Dias is the black owner of a clothing store in Atlanta. Sam Mabrouk has a denim shop in Columbus, Ohio. They’re only a few of the people whom intellectuals overlook whenever they rationalize rioting or say that property destruction isn’t violence.

“Seventeen years of work is gone,” Mr. Tamay told the Minneapolis Star Tribune after his restaurant, El Sabor Chuchi, burned to the ground. When the rioting began, he stood watch. But last Friday he obeyed curfew, believing that the National Guard would control the streets. Then on Facebook he saw video of his restaurant on fire. He told the newspaper he didn’t have insurance because it was too expensive.

Safia Munye, a Somali immigrant in Minneapolis, opened Mama Safia’s Kitchen in 2018 with money saved for retirement. When the pandemic arrived, NPRreported, she couldn’t afford both insurance and to pay her workers. She did the latter. Now the restaurant is wrecked, but she’s hardly the intended target of George Floyd protesters. “My heart is broken. My mind is broken,” she said. “I know I can’t come back from this. But this can be replaced. George’s life cannot. George’s life was more important.”

In Atlanta, Zola Dias lost more than $100,000 in goods from his clothing store, Attom. “I’m very emotional when I talk about it because I put my soul and life in this business,” he told the Atlanta Business Chronicle. “I just want to tell people to go and vote. That’s the only way to stop it and make a change.”

In San Francisco, Grace Jewelers was ransacked. “I can’t put a dollar estimate on it now,” Paul Zhou, the owner’s husband, told the Chronicle. “My wife is devastated.” In Dallas, Rodolfo Bianchi’s empanada shop was trashed. “It was emotionally heartbreaking to see all of your sweat, blood and tears just shattered,” he said. “It wasn’t anger, I was just broken.”

King’s Fashion in Philadelphia is a burned-out mess. “I don’t know what to do right now,” Helen Woo, a co-owner, told the Journal. “I built it up,” said her husband, Sung. “And it’s gone. My life is gone.” Masum Siddiquee lost about $200,000 of merchandise from his Philly store, MN Fashion and Jewelry. “I have no money right now,” he said.

“I lost everything in one night,” said Sam Mabrouk, counting an estimated $70,000 in product stolen from his clothing shop in Columbus, Ohio. “That was my savings from 11 years of working. That’s what hurts more than anything.” In Milwaukee, Katherine Mahmoud’s cellphone store was looted empty, which she said had nothing to do with what the Floyd protesters are fighting for. “I look just like them,” she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Why?”

Some of these businesses are raising funds to help put the pieces back together. Some might have insurance to cover at least a portion of the losses. But others might not survive, and many companies will go bust quietly, without making the newspapers. Contrast this heartache with the cavalier attitude shown by at least some intellectuals, who seem to think that firebombing a local South American restaurant is merely the persuasive language of the unheard.


OPINION
COMMENTARY
Don’t Call Rioters ‘Protesters’

As in the 1960s, rioters aren’t looking to make a political point. They’re in it for the ‘fun and profit.’

By Barry Latzer

June 4, 2020 1:55 pm ET


Though thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets of cities across the nation to express their outrage over the death of George Floyd, many hundreds have engaged in mob violence and looting. Mr. Floyd’s tragic death is, for them, a pretext for hooliganism.

We’ve seen this before, back in the bad old days of the late 1960s, when rioting became a near-everyday occurrence. Economists William J. Collins and Robert A. Margotallied an extraordinary 752 riots between 1964 and 1971. These disturbances involved 15,835 incidents of arson and caused 228 deaths, 12,741 injuries and 69,099 arrests. By an objective measure of severity, 130 of the 752 riots were considered “major,” 37 were labeled “massive” in their destructiveness.

At the time, black radicals and some white leftists saw the riots purely as political protest. Tom Hayden, the well-known New Left leader, described the violence as “a new stage in the development of Negro protest against racism, and as a logical outgrowth of the failure of the whole society to support racial equality.”

This analysis ignored the observations of witnesses on the scene. Thousands of rioters in the 1960s and early 1970s engaged in a joyful hooliganism—looting and destroying of property with wild abandon—that had no apparent political meaning. In the Detroit riot of July 1967, one of the era’s most lethal (43 people died in four nightmarish days of turmoil), the early stage of the riot was described by historian Sidney Fine as “a carnival atmosphere,” in which, as reported by a black minister eyewitness, participants exhibited “a gleefulness in throwing stuff and getting stuff out of the buildings.” A young black rioter told a newspaper reporter that he “really enjoyed” himself.

Analysts of urban rioting have identified a “Roman holiday” stage in which youths, in “a state of angry intoxication, taunt the police, burn stores with Molotov cocktails, and set the stage for looting.” This behavior is less political protest than, in Edward Banfield’s epigram of the day, “rioting mainly for fun and profit.” We are seeing some of the same looting and burning today, often treated by the media as mere exuberant protest.

Analyses of the riots that pinned blame on white bias and black victimization buttressed the protest theory. Such explanations received official sanction in the report of the influential National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders established by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967, and headed by Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner. The Kerner Report famously declared that “white racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II.” While not explicitly calling the riots a justified revolt by the victims of white racism, the Kerner Report certainly gave that impression.

Today we have the Black Lives Matter movement, which claims that police racism is the heart of the problem and calls for “defunding” police departments. Its apologists ignore the pressing need to protect black lives in communities where armed violent criminals daily threaten law-abiding residents.

A seeming oddity of the disturbances of the late ’60s and early ’70s is that they failed to materialize in many cities. An analysis of 673 municipalities with populations over 25,000 found that 75% of them experienced no riots. Even within riot-torn cities it is estimated that 85% or more of the black population took no part in them. Although they’ve gotten little or no media coverage I expect we will see comparable enclaves of tranquility today.

One possible explanation for why some cities explode with violence and others don’t is contagion theory: the tendency of people to do what their friends are doing. Once the rocks and bottles start flying in a neighborhood, it becomes tempting to join in. Youths, who played a major role in the turbulence, are particularly susceptible to peer influence. Consequently, when teenagers and young men begin rampaging, the situation often quickly escalates. No one wants to miss the party. As more young people join in, what begins as a manageable event can rapidly spiral out of control.

Closely related to the contagion theory is the threshold—or, more popularly, the “tipping point”—hypothesis. Once a certain number of rioters have become engaged, this view holds, those who had preferred to stay on the sidelines will be motivated to jump in. While imitation plays its part here too, the size of the event in itself becomes the crucial determinant of the ultimate magnitude of the riot.

Of course, a peaceful situation can quickly descend into mayhem in the presence of provocateurs. Back in the ’60s, a new generation of young black militants, such as Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, traveled around the country making incendiary speeches, unabashedly endorsing black revolution. Today we have antifa and various anarchist groups using social media and encrypted messages to organize the violence effectively but anonymously.

Certainly, there are those who honestly believe that America’s police are racist and in need of fundamental reforms. They are mistaken, but they should have ample opportunity to express their views peacefully. There should be no confusing such protesters, however, with looters, arsonists and those who would kill police officers. They deserve a different name: criminals.

Mr. Latzer is a professor emeritus at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of “The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America.”

Discuss the opportunity costs

In: Economics

Please state which function of money is being used by each of the following activities: Unit...

Please state which function of money is being used by each of the following activities: Unit of Account (Standard of Value, Medium of Exchange or Store of Value.  Please explain the reasoning behind each answer.

(a) Brenda puts $600 into her cookie jar for a rainy day.

(b) Brenda records the money she has spent on gasoline this year.   

(c) Brenda buys a $100 Savings Bond.

(d) Brenda uses $2,400 to pay her rent.

  1. (4 points)

(a) Please state what assets are part of the money measurement called M1.

(b) Please state what assets are part of the money measurement called M2

  1. (8 points) Explain what impact each of the following actions has on M1 and M2 both.

Please give the reasoning for each answer.

(a) Mary puts $400 in cash into her Savings Account.

(b) Sam transfers $40 from his Checking Account into his Savings Account.

(c) Chen takes $60 out of his Savings Account at the ATM machine.

(d) Brenda puts $50 in cash into her cookie jar at home for a rainy day.

  1. (3 points)

(a) Assume that a one year bond that has no interest coupon payment with a maturity value (face value) of $2,000 sold for $1,700. Show the interest rate that this bond will pay when it matures.

(b) If the prices of similar bonds are selling next month for $1,900, show the interest rate that these bonds pay when they mature.

(c) Based on your answers in (a) and (b) above, describe the relationship between the price of bonds and the interest rate.

  1. (10 points)

Your friend owns a cabin in the mountains in Big Bear California that he inherited from his mother. Your friend likes to visit that cabin during the year whenever he wants to. Thus, he leaves it vacant when he is not there. Your friend says that it is an inexpensive way to have short vacations: visit a place he owns.

Please explain why your friend is wrong in stating that this is an inexpensive way to have short vacations.

  1. (3 points)

(a) Please provide a description of Bank Runs.

(b) Explain the main cause of Bank Runs.

(c) Why do you think we no longer see many Bank Runs today.

  1. (10 points)

Please explain what backing U.S. Federal Reserve Notes have today and why people accept them for payment for goods and services.

  1. (Question 8 has two parts)

Part 1 of Question 8 (12 points)

Below is the Balance Sheet for the Bank of Upland as of October 1, 2017. The required reserve ratio is 5%. Using this information and the Balance Sheet below answer the following questions.

Bank of Upland

Assets

Liabilities

$50 million Home Loans

$900 million Demand Deposits

$200 million Treasury Bonds

$70 million Car Loans

$80 million Business Loans

$100 million Credit Card Loans

$360 million On Deposit at the Fed

$40 million in Vault Cash

$900 million Total Assets

$900 million Total Liabilities



(a) Calculate the Bank of Upland’s Total Reserves as of October 1, 2017 (please show/explain how you got your answer)

b) Calculate the Bank of Upland’s Required Reserves as of October 1, 2017 (please show/explain how you got your answer).

c) Calculate the Bank of Upland’s Excess Reserves as of October 1, 2017 (please show/explain how you got your answer).

d) Determine the amount of Bank of Upland’s Total Reserves which can legally be loaned out as of October 1, 2017 (please show/explain how you got your answer).

e) Calculate the Bank of Upland’s Money Creating Potential throughout the entire Banking System as of October 1, 2017 (please show/explain how you got your answer).




Part 2 of Question 8 (17 points)

Start with the same Balance Sheet and required reserve ratio found in Part 1 above, and using the fact that the Federal Reserve had just sold $120 million worth of Treasury Bonds (T-bonds) to the Bank of Upland at the end of business on October 1, 2017 (no other transaction occurred at the Bank of Upland on October 1, 2017), answer the following questions.

a) Fill in the Bank of Upland’s Balance Sheet numbers as of the start of business on October 2, 2017 for the categories found below. Start with the numbers in Part 1 above and incorporate the fact that the Federal Reserve (using Open Market Operations) had just sold $120 million worth of Treasury Bonds (T-bonds) to the Bank of Upland. Using a Word Table might help.

Bank of Upland

Home Loans

Demand Deposits

Treasury Bonds

Car Loans

Business Loans

Credit Card Loans

On Deposit at the Fed

Vault Cash

Total Assets

Total Liabilities

b) Calculate the Bank of Upland’s Total Reserves as of October 2, 2017 (please show/explain how you got your answer).

c) Calculate the Bank of Upland’s Required Reserves as of October 2, 2017 (please show/explain how you got your answer).

d) Calculate the Bank of Upland’s Excess Reserves as of October 2, 2017 (please show/explain how you got your answer).

e) Calculate the Bank of Upland’s Money Creating Potential throughout the entire Banking System as of October 2, 2017 (please show/explain how you got your answer).

f) Explain the reason the Federal Reserve would Sell these T-bonds to the Bank of Upland and explain what the Federal Reserve is worried about. (In other words, what economic condition is the Fed trying to avoid and how would the bond purchase help the Fed to avoid this economic condition.)You must use numbers that you calculated above to support your answer to receive credit.

g) Explain how the Fed would use two other monetary tools to help support its Open Market Operation above. Explain how these tools would be used and how they would have an impact on the Marcoeconomy.

In: Economics

Camden Company is a retail company that specializes in selling outdoor camping equipment. The company is...

Camden Company is a retail company that specializes in selling outdoor camping equipment. The company is considering opening a new store on October 1, 2019. The company president formed a planning committee to prepare a master budget for the first three months of operation. As budget coordinator, you have been assigned the following tasks:

Required

A. October sales are estimated to be $125,000, of which 40 percent will be cash and 60 percent will be credit. The company expects sales to increase at the rate of 8 percent per month. Prepare a sales budget.

October November December
Sales Budget
Cash sales
Sales on account
Total budgeted sales

B. The company expects to collect 100 percent of the accounts receivable generated by credit sales in the month following the sale. Prepare a schedule of cash receipts.

October November December
Schedule of Cash Receipts
Current cash sales
Plus collections from A/R
Total collections

C. The cost of goods sold is 60 percent of sales. The company desires to maintain a minimum ending inventory equal to 10 percent of the next month’s cost of goods sold. However, ending inventory of December is expected to be $6,000. Assume that all purchases are made on account. Prepare an inventory purchases budget.

The cost of goods sold is 60 percent of sales. The company desires to maintain a minimum ending inventory equal to 10 percent of the next month’s cost of goods sold. However, ending inventory of December is expected to be $6,000. Assume that all purchases are made on account. Prepare an inventory purchases budget.
October November December
Inventory Purchases Budget
Inventory needed
Required purchases (on account)

D. The company pays 70 percent of accounts payable in the month of purchase and the remaining 30 percent in the following month. Prepare a cash payments budget for inventory purchases.

October November December
Schedule of Cash Payments Budget for Inventory Purchases
Payment of current month's accounts payable
Payment for prior month's accounts payable
Total budgeted payments for inventory

E. Budgeted selling and administrative expenses per month follow:

October November December
Selling and Administrative Expense Budget
Salary expense
Sales commissions
Supplies expense
Utilities
Depreciation on store fixtures
Rent
Miscellaneous
Total S&A expenses
Salary expense (fixed) $ 9,000
Sales commissions 5 % of Sales
Supplies expense 2 % of Sales
Utilities (fixed) $ 700
Depreciation on store fixtures (fixed)* $ 2,000
Rent (fixed) $ 2,400
Miscellaneous (fixed) $ 600

*The capital expenditures budget indicates that Camden will spend $82,000 on October 1 for store fixtures, which are expected to have a $10,000 salvage value and a three-year (36-month) useful life. Use this information to prepare a selling and administrative expenses budget.

F. Utilities and sales commissions are paid the month after they are incurred; all other expenses are paid in the month in which they are incurred. Prepare a cash payments budget for selling and administrative expenses.

October November December
Schedule of Cash Payments for S&A Expenses
Salary expense
Sales commissions
Supplies expense
Utilities
Depreciation on store fixtures
Rent
Miscellaneous
Total payments for S&A expenses

G. Camden borrows funds, in increments of $1,000, and repays them on the last day of the month. Repayments may be made in any amount available. The company also pays its vendors on the last day of the month. It pays interest of 1 percent per month in cash on the last day of the month. To be prudent, the company desires to maintain a $6,000 cash cushion. Prepare a cash budget.

Cash Budget
October Novomber December
Cash available
Less: Payments
Total budgeted payments
Payments minus receipts
Financing activity

H. Prepare a pro forma income statement for the quarter.

CAMDEN COMPANY
Pro Forma Income Statement
For the Quarter Ended December 31, 2019

I. Prepare a pro forma balance sheet at the end of the quarter.

CAMDEN COMPANY
Pro Forma Balance Sheet
December 31, 2019
Assets
Total assets
Liabilities
Equity
Total liabilities and equity

J. Prepare a pro forma statement of cash flows for the quarter.

CAMDEN COMPANY
Pro Forma Statement of Cash Flows
For the Quarter Ended December 31, 2019
Cash flows from operating activities
Net cash flows from operating activities
Cash flows from investing activities
Cash flow from financing activities

In: Accounting

Fujaira Co. has small IT equipment assembled in Australia and transports the final assembled products to...

Fujaira Co. has small IT equipment assembled in Australia and transports the final assembled products to the parent, where they are sold by the parent in the UAE. The assembled products are invoiced in AED. It uses Australian currency (the Australian dollar) to produce equipment and assembles them in Australia. The Australian subsidiary pays the employees in the local currency (the Australian dollar). Fujaira Co. finances its subsidiary operations with loans from an Australian bank (in Australian dollar). The parent of Fujaira will send sufficient monthly payments (in AED) to the subsidiary in order to repay the loan and other expenses incurred by the subsidiary. If the Australian dollar depreciates against the AED over time, will that have a favorable, unfavorable, or neutral effect on the value of Fujaira Co.? Please elaborate the impact of cash inflows and outflows.

In: Finance

Winger Airlines Co. has been sued by Schock Electronics, Inc. for $50,000. Attorneys for Schock Electronics,...

Winger Airlines Co. has been sued by Schock Electronics, Inc. for $50,000. Attorneys for Schock Electronics, Inc. are confident that Schock will win the case and will be awarded the full amount. Attorneys for Winger Airlines Co. agree that Winger will probably lose the case and be required to pay the full amount.

a. What is the correct treatment of this loss contingency for Winger Airlines Co.’s financial statements? Show any related journal entry.

b. How should Schock Electronics, Inc. treat this gain contingency for financial statement purposes? Show any related journal entry.

  1. (1 point) How should Schock Electronics, Inc. treat this gain contingency for financial statement purposes? Show any related journal entry.

In: Accounting

8. Hudson Co. reports the contribution margin income statement for 2019. HUDSON CO. Contribution Margin Income...

8.

Hudson Co. reports the contribution margin income statement for 2019.

HUDSON CO.
Contribution Margin Income Statement
For Year Ended December 31, 2019
Sales (10,300 units at $375 each) $ 3,862,500
Variable costs (10,300 units at $300 each) 3,090,000
Contribution margin 772,500
Fixed costs 600,000
Pretax income $ 172,500

1. Assume Hudson Co. has a target pretax income of $169,000 for 2020. What amount of sales (in dollars) is needed to produce this target income?
2. If Hudson achieves its target pretax income for 2020, what is its margin of safety (in percent)? (Round your answer to 1 decimal place.)

1. Amount of sales
2. Margin of safety %

In: Accounting

ABC Co. and XYZ Co. are identical firms in all respects except for their capital structure....

ABC Co. and XYZ Co. are identical firms in all respects except for their capital structure. ABC is all equity financed with $875,000 in stock. XYZ uses both stock and perpetual debt; its stock is worth $437,500 and the interest rate on its debt is 8 percent. Both firms expect EBIT to be $91,000. Ignore taxes. NOT EXCEL

  

a.

Richard owns $87,500 worth of XYZ’s stock. What rate of return is he expecting?

b.

Suppose Richard invests in ABC Co. and uses homemade leverage to match his cash flow in part a. Calculate his total cash flow and rate of return.

c.

What is the cost of equity for ABC and XYZ?

  

   

d.

What is the WACC for ABC and XYZ?

In: Finance

BAY Co., a U.S. corporation, purchased inventory on credit from a German company on March 18,...

BAY Co., a U.S. corporation, purchased inventory on credit from a German company on March 18, 2017 for 50,000 Euros. BAY Co. made payment of 50,000 Euros on May 17, 2017. The exchange rate was €1 = $1.27 on April 18, €1 = $1.30 on April 30; and €1 = 1.28 on May 17.

Prepare the journal entry to record the sale as of April 18?

What amount of foreign exchange gain or loss, if any, should be recorded on April 30th monthly statements from this transaction? If there is a foreign exchange gain or loss prepare the journal entry.

Prepare the Journal entry to record BAY’S payment of the payable on May 18th

What is the total CUMULATIVE gain or loss BAY Co. recognizes on this transaction?

In: Accounting