The U.S. Economy

The reason for this recent drop in consumer confidence is due to several key factors. One factor is the poor performance of the stock market. The Dow Jones is down from its peak that was hit last year, but has now rebounded slightly. The Nasdaq took a dive with the decrease in the prices of tech stocks. The Nasdaq has fallen nearly 56% from its peak in March of 2000.

Amazon had a lower ROE in year 2013 compared to year 2010, which illustrated that every dollar shareholders invested generated lower net income. Morever, in 2012, both ROA and ROE were negative. The reason why Amazon’s profit decreased over recent four years is because that its cost of goods as a percentage of revenue increased. Amazon expanded its digital market to Asia and Europe, which led to a increasing in shipping and packaging cost. Comparing Amazon wi... ... middle of paper ... ...old these elements constant, the estimate Amazon’s stock price should be $286.41 to $387.2.

Futures rose last week after the largest one-day drop in the last six months. However, traders seemed to remain cautious as there are concerns about global growth. The Dow had fallen 2.1 percent or a total of 326 points on February 3rd. This was the biggest one day sell-off in over seven months. This was due to growing concerns with weakness occurring in the U.S. economy.

Domestic wage rates during 1991-95 rose about 11%, on average or about 5% increase in real wages per year, cited as the key factor in the slowdown in growth of labor intensive exports. The real effective exchange rate of the baht is estimated to have appreciated by about 15% during 1995-97, primarily because of the linkage to the US$, which appreciated against the yen. While the above factors suggest that Thailand was losing its edge in low cost, labor intensive exports, these are at best partial explanations for the overall decline in export performance.

UNCTAD has confirmed that FDI inflows into the UK have risen by 22% 2 over the past year. Inward FDI into the UK In the last 30 years the UK has put in a lot of effort to dramatically increase the inflows of FDI into the country. The strategy succeeded due to the rich and diverse ecosystem of the UK and ease of doing business. The inflow FDI has shown constant growth until 2000, which peaked to $118.8 billion. The IT bubble burst in 2000 caused a dramatic fall in IFDI which can be illustrated in Figure 1.

With credit harder to get, consumers have cut back on their spending, which is very bad for the economy since around 72% of economic activity comes from consumers (Gross 2). Retail sales dropped .4% in December, which is disturbing because usually December is the biggest month for retailers. Other factors that show the economy is slipping are that inflation was at 4.1% in December and has steadily been rising (Fox 3). In 2007, food prices rose almost 5% and gas prices rose almost 30% from the year before. Unemployment rates also went up above 5% this month, which is the highest they have been in over 2 years (Fox 3-4).

The average monthly increase in employment was approximately 155,000 in 2000 and 220,000 in 1999. For almost ten years, unemployment has fallen and the number of employed persons has increased by more than 15 million. In March 2001, the number of jobs decreased by 86,000, the largest monthly decrease since 1991. Job losses were most prominent in the manufacturing sector (81,000 jobs), but there were also losses in the retail trade sector (46,000 jobs). These losses were partially offset by employment increases experienced in the construction and finance sectors.

Average growth fell to 1.6% during the GFC as AD components significantly reduced. Since then, economic activity gradually rose, peaking at 3.5% in 2011 through pickups in the resources boom & consumer confidence. Macroeconomic policies where the RBA lowered interest rates to 45 year lows at 3.25% & the government’s large-scale fiscal $400 stimulus package helped evade recession by increasing consumption & government spending of AD. Since September 2013, Australia’s economic growth slowed to 2.4% amid drops in global demand for resources, business investment by 5.9% in 2013 & domestic consumption averaging a low 2.2% since 2008. A slight pickup to 2.8 in the fourth quarter of 2013 is attributed to export volume rises by 2.4%, imports declining by 0.6% & household consumption rising by 0.8%.

In 2008 the growth abruptly slowed down to 2.1%, in 2009 the economy contracted by 6.9% and economic growth was stagnant each year ever since. In 2010 decreasing manner was sustained and the economy contracted by 1.3%, in 2011 economy contracted by 0.2%, which may have appeared as a slight revival, but in 2012 the economy contracted by 1.9% due to the passive and stagnant recovery in the global economy. In 2013 the economy contracted by 1.0% and for the 5th consecutive year remained in recession. The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) stated that the growth of Croatia’s economy would not happen before 2014. During 6 years of recession Croatia has already lost 12.3% of its output.

Their % change in A/R/Overall % change is sales ratio shows a sharp decrease starting in 2005 till 2009 where it reached a low of -19.25%. This could be attributable to the recession in which the company could have been experiencing a lower amount of accounts receivable to sales during that time frame. Dick’s currently has an AR turnover ratio of 102.7x. This has increased over the period by 66.18%, which indicates that they have become better collecting their accounts receivable over the period. In negative correlation, their DSO (Day Sales Outstanding) ratio has decreased over the period by 40.68% down to 3.5 days.