As we emerge from COVID-19’s lockdowns, there will be many new features to the landscapes of our lives. The most significant will be the shifting economic path from the capitalism of interdependent free trade to the mercantilism of independent economic nationalism.

To those who study the future, the COVID-19 pandemic is a singularity — an event, usually unanticipated, that fundamentally upends the way we live. In other words, it is a major paradigm shift.

One classic example is the mass production of the automobile early in the last century, shifting transportation from organic sources (horses) to mechanical alternatives (cars). A more recent case is the development of the Information Superhighway in the 1980s that ushered in the world of the personal computer in which we now live.

The COVID-19 pandemic originated late last fall in Wuhan, China. Wuhan is a city in Central China with 10 million people and a major transportation hub for domestic rail travel and international air flights. It was also the host of an international athletic meet and a Chinese New Year celebration that attracted tens of thousands of tourists who then unwittingly spread the deadly new virus rapidly across the globe.

For whatever reasons, both the Chinese communist government and the United Nations’ World Health Organization failed to alert the world in sufficient time to stop this spread. As a result, it has now reached literally every country in the world.

At this writing, there are more than 3 million COVID-19 cases and more than 200,000 deaths worldwide. The United States is the world’s leader with in excess of 1 million cases and about 60,000 deaths.

To break the spread of this pandemic, stay-at-home orders have been imposed for individuals and shutdowns for most nonessential businesses (variously defined) for the past six to eight weeks. As we emerge from the wreckage, what we behold are eerily invisible societies and ruined economies.

In the United States, there are nearly 30 million unemployed and a contraction of the economy not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

From these horrendous statistics, there is an automatic compulsion to assign blame. Since President Trump is at the national helm, it is easy to blame him, and his sub-par performance at the daily White House press conferences has not helped. If he was a little slow to recognize the threat of COVID-19, Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, Charles Schumer and Andrew Cuomo were no faster.

If blame is to be pinned on anyone, it must be on the communist government of China, which withheld information on the pandemic for far too long. And, bluntly, the World Health Organization was complicit in this silence.

In truth, we have much to be proud of in the American response. Under the capable leadership of Vice President Mike Pence, the COVID-19 Task Force has brought before the American public the reassuring medical expertise of Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx. For all the bitter partisanship to our politics, a welcome bipartisanship between Republicans and Democrats in both houses of Congress, together with the White House, has enacted several pieces of legislation that has brought some $3 trillion of financial relief to individuals and businesses.

Further, government and private industry are cooperating to achieve massive production shifts — like General Motors’ switch from making cars to manufacturing ventilators in just weeks — at a level of coordination not seen since World War II.

In confronting the COVID-19 singularity, three new features immediately come to mind. One is a migration from crowded, vulnerable cities to the safety of small-town America. Another is a dramatic increase in the reliance on the internet for employment, retail spending, education and even health care, and away from the brick-and-mortar settings of person-to-person interactions.

The most far-reaching of this paradigm shift, however, will be the rise of mercantilism at the expense of free trade liberalism. Since much of our pre-COVID-19 prosperity came from this interdependence of resources, labor and capital to the least costly place of production, this may seem strange.

The beneficiary of this “free” trade was the global consumer who enjoyed the reasonable prices that came from cheap imports. The flaw to this “prosperous” system was that most of the global supply chains, and especially that of medical supplies and equipment, led to China. Indeed, by 2020, fully half of all global manufacturing is “made in China.” The flaw lies in the loss of independence, both economic and political, to the winner of such interdependence.

The father of mercantilism, Friedrich List (1789-1846), contended that an industrial economy was the bedrock of national power, and that the goal of any economy was to achieve trade surpluses to preserve the nation’s economic independence and political sovereignty. Indeed, such mercantilism has been the guiding light to China’s massive growth and trade surpluses all over the world. Hopefully, rising from the invisible devastation of COVID-19 will be a visible counteracting forest of signs saying “made in the USA.”

• Summarize the article
• How do this relate to the 16^th century theory of mercantilism?

Ameristar, Inc. can obtain funds for future investments through retained earnings, new issues of common stock, issuance of debt, and issuance of preferred stock. The Board of Directors believe an appropriate capital structure is one where funds are acquired in the following mix: 30% debt, 10% preferred stock, and 60% common stock. New issuance or flotation costs for the issuance of new securities amount to 3% for debt, 5% for preferred stock, and 10% for common stock. Ameristar has $180 million available in retained earnings and has a marginal tax rate of 33%.

If Ameristar sells a new issue of bonds that pay a 8.5% semi-annual coupon and mature in 20 years, these bonds can be sold for $1,212.68. If Ameristar sells a new issue of preferred stock that pay dividends at the rate of 8% with a par value of $50.00, these shares of preferred stock can be priced at $27.52. If Ameristar sells a new issue of common stock the dividends paid are expected to be the same as those dividends of the current common stock outstanding. Ameristar just paid a dividend on shares of their common stock of $1.54 (D0=$1.54) and in the recent past dividends have grown at a rate of 7%. This growth rate is expected to continue into the foreseeable future for common stock. Common stock currently sells for $15.12 a share.

What is Ameristar's after-tax cost of a new issue of debt?

What is Ameristar's cost of new preferred stock?

What is Ameristar's cost of retained earnings?

What is Ameristar's cost of new common stock?

Ameristar, Inc. can obtain funds for future investments through retained earnings, new issues of common stock, issuance of debt, and issuance of preferred stock. The Board of Directors believe an appropriate capital structure is one where funds are acquired in the following mix: 30% debt, 10% preferred stock, and 60% common stock. New issuance or flotation costs for the issuance of new securities amount to 3% for debt, 5% for preferred stock, and 10% for common stock. Ameristar has $180 million available in retained earnings and has a marginal tax rate of 33%.

If Ameristar sells a new issue of bonds that pay a 8.5% semi-annual coupon and mature in 20 years, these bonds can be sold for $1,242.68. If Ameristar sells a new issue of preferred stock that pay dividends at the rate of 8% with a par value of $50.00, these shares of preferred stock can be priced at $25.72. If Ameristar sells a new issue of common stock the dividends paid are expected to be the same as those dividends of the current common stock outstanding. Ameristar just paid a dividend on shares of their common stock of $1.65 (D₀=$1.65) and in the recent past dividends have grown at a rate of 7%. This growth rate is expected to continue into the foreseeable future for common stock. Common stock currently sells for $15.12 a share.

What is Ameristar's after-tax cost of a new issue of debt?

What is Ameristar's cost of new preferred stock?

What is Ameristar's cost of retained earnings?

What is Ameristar's cost of new common stock?

Ameristar, Inc. can obtain funds for future investments through retained earnings, new issues of common stock, issuance of debt, and issuance of preferred stock. The Board of Directors believe an appropriate capital structure is one where funds are acquired in the following mix: 30% debt, 10% preferred stock, and 60% common stock. New issuance or flotation costs for the issuance of new securities amount to 3% for debt, 5% for preferred stock, and 10% for common stock. Ameristar has $180 million available in retained earnings and has a marginal tax rate of 33%. If Ameristar sells a new issue of bonds that pay a 8.5% semi-annual coupon and mature in 20 years, these bonds can be sold for $1,242.68. If Ameristar sells a new issue of preferred stock that pay dividends at the rate of 8% with a par value of $50.00, these shares of preferred stock can be priced at $25.72. If Ameristar sells a new issue of common stock the dividends paid are expected to be the same as those dividends of the current common stock outstanding. Ameristar just paid a dividend on shares of their common stock of $1.65 (D0=$1.65) and in the recent past dividends have grown at a rate of 7%. This growth rate is expected to continue into the foreseeable future for common stock. Common stock currently sells for $15.12 a share.

What is Ameristar's after-tax cost of a new issue of debt?

What is Ameristar's cost of new preferred stock?

What is Ameristar's cost of retained earnings?

What is Ameristar's cost of new common stock?

During 2017, the management of Brogan plc identified a project that that will enable a new product to be sold and you have been asked to evaluate the new investment.

New plant and equipment will be purchased by the end of 2017 and this will cost £450 000. The new plant and equipment will be depreciated for tax purposes, using the straight-line method over a period of three years, which is the expected life of the machine. After three years, it is expected that the machine will have no scrap value.

As a result of this new product being manufactured and sold, the company’s working capital will increase by £20 000 at the end of 2017 and will increase to £35 000 in 2018 and remain at this level until the production ceases.

The new product will sell for £40 per unit and the variable cost is expected to be 25 per cent of the selling price. The fixed costs, excluding the depreciation charge will be £60 000 and this will increase by 10 per cent each year.

The sales of the new product are expected to be

2018                12 000 units

2019                20 000 units

2020                20 000 units

Tax is payable at 30 per cent and will be paid in the year after the profit is generated,

The required rate of return is 10 per cent

Required:

1. What will be the effect on the company’s profit if the new machinery and equipment is purchased?

2. Using the Discounted Cash Flow approach, determine if the company should invest in the new plant?

(c)        What the other methods are available to evaluate investment projects and discuss the issues that must be considered if these methods are used to make an investment decision.

***Note: Answer is NOT $5,567,662 nor $8,243,446

Please get it right as I am submitting this question for the third time and am running out of questions. Thanks!

Part I– Check your file system

Step 1: Execute the ls /dev/sd* command to see the current hard disk devices.

Step 2. Execute the fdisk -l command to list the current hard disk partitions

Step 3. Execute the parted -l command to list the current hard disk partition table.

Part II– Create a new virtual disk

Step 1. In the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager program, create a new virtual hard disk with the size of 200 MB, and name it as “your_name.vdi” (for example, jbondsvdi).

Step 2. Load this virtual hard disk to your virtual machine.

Step 3. Repeat the steps in Part I, and highlight the differences

Part III– Creating Partitions and Filesystems

Step 1. Use the fdisk command to create a new primary partition on the new hard disk.

Step 2. Use the correct command to create an ext4 filesystem on the new partition.

Step 3. Repeat the steps in Part I, and highlight the differences

Step 4. Make a new directory named /cyse. And mount the new partition under this directory.

Step 5. Use the df command to check the mounting point of the new partition.

Step 6. Create a new file named file1.txt in the directory /cyse and put your name in that file

Step 7. Unmount /cyse directory.

Step 8. Check the contents in /cyse directory. What do you find?

Your company needs $ 15 million to build a new assembly line. Your target debt-to-equity ratio is 0.6. The cost of issuing new equity is 8%, while the cost of issuing debt is 5%. What is the real cost of the new assembly line if you factor in issuance costs?

The board of executives decides on creating a new position as chief security officer, however, they are not sure if the new position should be part of it department and report to the chief It officer or the new CSO should be the same level to CIO and directly report to the board. What would be your recommendation as a security consultant and why?