McDonald’s Corp (MCD-N 97.76 0.84 0.87%) on Thursday said it plans to spend $2.9 billion US to $3 billion next year to open 1,500 to 1,600 new restaurants and remodel about 1,000 others.

As we all known, McDonald is the biggest hamburger chain in the world. Although they have had a large market share,  they want to be more profitable. So they want to increase their overall commodity cost to make their food better.And they also want to invest more on employees and employers to make sure their services.

I think it is worth to invest money to improve themselves,so that they can be competitive and keep themselves being ahead of the hamburger industry.

Although they spend a lot of money, they can earn large amount of money from their sponsorship. So 3 billions doesn’t seem like a huge amount for McDonald’s corp.

source:http://www.bnn.ca/News/2013/11/14/McDonalds-to-spend-up-to-3B-on-new-restaurants-remodelling.aspx

Twitter is a typical BUSINESS combined INTERNET example we analyzed on class.

Twitter provide a convenient place for people to  contact with each other. This is a new lifestyle for us. The company owns a large market share in U.S.

The earn money by cooperating with the firms and doing advertisement for them on the twitter website. As  a socializing website, it has a large number of visitors everyday. So this is a good place for the companies to do advertising on their web.

The twitter team develop their web by knowing SWOT well. They get informations of their weakness by customers’ feedback on the twitter. This is a good and convenient way to know what they are doing well and what should they improvement in the next step. The information provided by users can be trustful and reliable.

Facebook can be the biggest competitor with Twitter. Personally, I think twitter should find their common sector and differences with Facebook. And then try to make a difference and meet what users really want. Such as offering worldwide service but not only in NorthAmerica and European countries. They can try to access to Asian countries to win more market share.

The company meet what customers want can have a good development in long-term period. I think twitter does very well by doing business with internet. And this may be the biggest reason why twitter can competite with Facebook and dominates action in busy U.S marketing.

Canada’s existing home sales fell 3.2% in October compared to September, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. No big deal right? After all housing sales were brisk through the summer and bigger picture-wise Canada’s housing market has been on a near-constant upward trajectory since 1997, hitting all-time highs on a regular basis.

The prices of the house in Canada increased steadily, especially in recent years. The most obviously example is the housing price in Vancouver. Increasingly immigration cause the huge needs of housing, and this is one of the most important reason to explain the high housing price.

With the economy increasing, people can earn more money. And high living standard lead people trendy houses.

The other reason is that  most business man want to buy houses and sell to others, so they can earn some from buyers. And it is also called “black market” in econ101.

House price is hard to be controlled because the houses are not direct belong to the government but some individuals. And the high price is caused in a long term but not short term, so it is hard to be controlled.

source:  http://www.bnn.ca/News/2013/11/15/Housing-Story-RAW.aspx

According to the RBC 2013 Retirement Myths & Realities Poll, a large majority (80 percent) of Canadians believe they will get to choose the day they retire, but in reality 41 percent of retirees report they didn’t leave on a date of their choice.

Mostly people retired because their employer asked to, the main reason is health problem. They are always given retirement notice about one year before they really retired. Not surprisingly, most of them enjoy the retirement. They have worked for the company for almost 1/3 of their lifetime, they do need to retire to enjoy their life.

It is reported some parents just delayed to retirement in order to support their children’s education fees. So in the modern society , the high pressure may lead people hard to enjoy their life even though they are able to do so.

In my opinion, people retire earlier isn’t a good idea for the company in some aspect. For example, the company will lose the most experienced worker if they retired earlier. It somewhat cause the brain drain.

But for the employees, I strongly agreed they should retire early and come to enjoy their life.

You can never control the date you retire, but you can make a perfect plan. So you can better prepared financially.

source:http://www.bnn.ca/News/2013/11/15/Retirement-may-come-sooner-than-you-think.aspx

Canada likes to be known as a country where hockey is king and the beer is good. It is obviously that Canada has a great impaction of beer market these years.

The beer industry contributes a lot to the whole society. The beer economy accounts for one in 100 Canadian jobs, or almost 1 percent of gross domestic product, says a new report from the Conference Board of Canada that tracks the economic spinoffs of the brewing industry from the barley field to beer fridge.

Also, the beer industry has a wide marketing. The analyse shows that the lowest consumption of the beer in BC is 205 bottles per person, which means that the beer industry has a stable development.

The development of the beer industry can also benefit to lots of chain industries in the worldwide. For example,Governments get 44 cents of every dollar Canadians spend on beer.

Although the cold beer makes Canada’s economy hop, it still loses market share because of the wine industry, but not that much. The beer market share decreased from 50 percent in 2002 to 44 percent in 2012. The beer industry still plays the main role in Canada.

 source:http://www.bnn.ca/News/2013/11/5/How-cold-beer-makes-Canadas-economy-hop.aspx

China released a raft of detailed reform plans on Friday, promising sweeping changes to the economy and the country’s social fabric as it seeks to unleash new sources of growth after three decades of breakneck expansion show signs of faltering.

With the aging problem and economy problem in society, China relax one-child policy .

This decision was approved by the leaders’ meeting. And this policy seems to be a sizeable step in the right direction.

The aims of the reform:

-aid Chinese economy and help re-balance the global economy

-help fuel the stock market’s strongest rally in only two months

-help to shift the main growth drivers away from investment

In order to achieve these, Beijing wants to encourage millions of rural Chinese to move to live in urban areas.

source:http://www.bnn.ca/News/2013/11/15/China-announces-major-economic-and-social-reforms.aspx