“ If the United Nations was fully funded why would we need the Arc or social enterprise”? When we talk about this question, firstly, I think we should figure out why we need Arc and social enterprise.

The purpose of Arc is increase economic wellbeing by developing business management and leadership capacity through education. We need it because I think education is the beat way to change people’s mind, and benefit our future. We always said that: Delegate to fish in the fishery as delegate. Because we can’t help poor people all the time, the thing we should do is teach they how to get rid of poverty.

As for Social enterprise, this organization is not only just provide fund for poor people, but also help their family to find a sustainable way to survival. The organization teaches underprivileged children, and keeps them away from violations; for their parents, social enterprises use technology to help them get the fair working environment.

The main purpose of the United Nations is maintaining international peace and security; though it has six principal organs control different aspects, but contract with social enterprise and Arc, United Nations is not so focus. The wide control range cause UN week in some specific issues. So even though UN has enough funds, the most of funds will be spent on keeping world peace, like solving North Korean nuclear issue or suppressing terrorists, instead of teaching poor, and help their build up a virtuous circle.

This article points out that the prices in Chinese have been declining for nearly years, but Chinese central bank remained unmoved. The benchmark one-year lending rate remains lofty at 6%, and the writer think Chinese central bank is making a big mistake. However I can’t totally agree with that.

Firstly, I want to say the writer may not know china very well, because reducing the interest rate is nearly impossible in china. The most significant reason why China has a lofty high interest rate is the high demand in the real estate market. Chinese is zealous in buying houses, if the interest rate decrease, the demand of house will increase dramatically; therefore, cause the bubble in the real estate market. As I know, the global financial crisis in 2007 is the result of asset-price bubble in the U.S. housing market, so reduce the interest rate in china is a very dangerous thing.

Secondly, I believe that deflation is not entirely a bad thing in china. As the writer said, lower costs is the reason why the price on commodity decrease, it allowed companies to remain profitable even as their selling prices have fallen. So it will not hurt the companies. And for customers, lower price means their purchase power increase they can bur more goods. We might think people will defer payment or buy the good later, but the fate is the demand still increase in an accelerating rate. Yesterday is the “double 11 ” shopping carnival in China, the largest online shop renewed the world record of the time of breaking 100-million turnover.

The carnival started at 0:00 AM, but at 0:01 AM the turnover was exceeded 100 million yuan; at 0:03 AM, turnover exceeded one billion yuan. It took 38 minutes 28 seconds for turnover to reach 10 billion yuan ($1.6326 billion). Comparing with last year’s figure, it spent 5 hours and 49 minutes for turnover to reach 10 billion yuan.

This fully proves the demand was not decrease because of the deflation, instead the demand increase dramatically.

Overall, I don’t think a slightly deflation and high interest rate have a serious impact on China’s economy.

Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/11/chinas-economy

Advertising is playing an important role in a business. It used to encourage, persuade people to buy their product instead of competitor’s; therefore, increase turnover, profit and market share of the company. Nearly every company use ads to promote their product, the competition in the ads industry is also fierce. So how to make a good advertising becomes a serious problem.

Referring to Lauren’s post, I totally agree with what she said, “Advertising and social media can be used not only to increase knowledge of products.”

I think ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is a really successful public service advertising for promoting awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and encourage people for donations to the research. I regard this advertising as the innovation of the advertising industry. Because the cost of this advertising is nearly 0, but thousands of famous people and superstars took part in this promotion. They make videos by themselves and named their friend to join this activity. In this advertising no one introduces what is ALS, but nearly everyone seen this ads will search what is ALS on Internet. I can’t say everyone who sees the video will donate money, but I am sure that most people know ALS because of this promotion.

The most notable is that nobody tired of this kind of advertising. On the contrary people are willing to participate. I know this advertising is different from the normal one, we’ve seen on tv or on the other channels, but I think it is a good example for company to learn.

source:

https://connect.ubc.ca/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_45361_1%26url%3D

Referring to Yi’s post, I couldn’t agree more with Yi ‘s comments on Hong Kong’s economy has a bad influenced by this political issue, and the action what protesters did was a paradox. I didn’t know well about the politics in Hong Kong, and how far the political side plays the role in this event, but I want to say what I have seen is the bad influences on the economic and business in Hong Kong.

Firstly, this civil disobedience movement happened during the national day holiday, at this time Mainland-based, free-spending visitors usually provide a boost to Hong Kong’s retailers; however, the condition for this year was roads blocked, shops closed, sales fell 20 per cent compared with a normal holiday. If businesses keep losing profit, lay-offs may happen, which will increase the unemployment rate in Hong Kong. No one wants this happen.

In the second place, I totally agree with what Yi said “Beijing would be willing to sacrifice Hong Kong’s economy to ensure the power control and the stability of society, especially when Hong Kong is no longer the only open broader in China.” The establishment of Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) will be a strong competitor of Hong Kong in the future. It definitely will threat Hong Kong’s status as one of the top global market financial centers. What’s more, Comparing with Hong Kong, mainland has a so much bigger demographic; therefore tourism can gain a lot of customer in mainland alone, so mainland’s tourism will not suffer much influence by losing Hong Kong tourist, but Hong Kong can ‘t afford the price of losing mainland, free-spending visitors.

So as for as I concern, in the short term, this democracy activists, Occupy Central hurts the business and economics, shops loss profit. In the long term, there are too much uncertain factors. No one can guarantee that economics will recover if democracy activists success, and Leung Chun-ying steps down. I don’t think Beijing government will continue support Hong Kong’s economics development of that happen. Hong Kong may lose its unique advantage to China markets, and its economic will be more competitiveness. Of course this will not happen, because Beijing government will not give up control in Hong Kong, Protest is doomed to fail. I hope Beijing government and Hong Kong government can find a peacefully way to ease the contradiction.

source:

https://connect.ubc.ca/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_45361_1%26url%3D

This article point out St. John’s Is Richer Than Toronto because the GDP in St. John’s is higher than Toronto. The reason is the rich resource wealth and a low unemployment rate in St. John’s.  However, I can totally agree with higher GDP means the city is richer.

GDP is the aggregate production, which measure the economic performance of a whole region. High GDP in St. John’s can prove that the production in St. John’s is high; people can buy more goods and receive high income in St. John’s. But is that means people in St. John’s is richer than others? I search “List of Canadians by net worth” in Google, but to my surprise, no one on the list is from St. John’s. What’s more, GDP is measured by the aggregate income or production, it can’t represent everyone.

St. John’s is rich in oil and gas industry, it means more people work in primary industry as labour, but Toronto is more urbanized, most of people work in tertiary industry, which provide service to customer, like entertainment, tourism and financial services, I think those service increase the living standard of people, so I Toronto is richer.

source:

https://connect.ubc.ca/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_45361_1%26url%3D