The blog “Do you like competition?” is written by a financial planner, a young man, and a father who loves competition and strives in it. The blog, using personal stories, demonstrates the importance of competition and explains the writer’s personal take on the advantages of being involved in constant competition. I certainly agree with many of the writers’ views. Firstly, I agree that competition is detrimental in business; in the world of business we live in, whether one is a entrepreneur or just a regular white-collar worker, everything is about competition. However, it is not competitions with others that are important, but rather the competition with oneself. One must always out compete his or herself in order to succeed in a highly competitive environment of business. In addition, I also agree that in the competitive world we live, there is only business profit when there is competition. However, all aside, I disagree with the writer on one point; I do not think that competition with others is unimportant. Especially when someone is in a business competition, there are always winners and losers and if one doesn’t do as well as others, even though he or she might have improved and won against him/herselves, he/she is still a loser in the business world. One can always learn from competitions, but the ultimate goal is always to win.

After reading the blog “Crippled by High Fixed Costs and a rapidly-changing market, HMV to close its Robson Store”, I, just like the Nicole, was surprised by the fact that HMV is only deciding to close the gigantic but pointless store just now. The music and movie industry, unlike markets for other consumer goods, has probably experienced the most significant change under the influence of the advancement of the virtual world: the internet. Nowadays, people can watch movies and listen to music anytime and anywhere with accesses to software such as iTunes; people no longer wish to carry around burdensome and outdated technologies such as DVD or CD players. Even though people may still watch movies using DVD because it remains a convenient way to keep a movie, most people, with the common ownership of MP3 or iPod, do not listen to CD anymore. Companies such as HMV are in a declining industry with the competing market becoming more convenient and cheaper. In addition to the rising cost for rent for a needed retailer location, such as in the case of Vancouver, stores of HMV will continuously be sized down if not completely shut down. HMV, to save its business, should change its marketing and selling strategies in order to face the change today.

The blog “Nintendo: the ultimate entrepreneur” by Evangeline briefly introduces how the blogger believes the Nintendo gaming company represents the essential characteristics of an entrepreneur venture: substantial wealth generation in a short period of time, innovation and risk. I agree with the blogger that Nintendo is probably one of the most well-known gaming companies since the beginning of the gaming industry. As one of the pioneers of the gaming industry, Nintendo certainly took many risks; aside from the risk due to the competition of computer mentioned in the blog, there are other risks that Nintendo took to become the entrepreneur venture success it is right now. Nintendo took on the risk of investing large sum of money into gaming franchises that may be unsuccessful; noticeable successes were gaming franchises such as Mario brothers or Zelda, but Nintendo were unsuccessful in many of the franchises they invested in. This shows the chance factor in an entrepreneur venture. Because of the up and downs of a certain gaming product, Nintendo had to maintain a high innovation rate to keep the corporation alive, showing another characteristic of an entrepreneur venture. However, all aside, I do not completely agree with the blogger about substantial profit in a short period of time being a deciding characteristic of a successful entrepreneur venture. Even though short term profit is definitely important, a maintained competitiveness and profitability is also detrimental to success of a business. Nintendo showed both competitiveness and profitability in the long term as well in the past few decades.

Online shopping has been around for a reasonable long time but still has not been able to take over the retailing market because of reasons such as insecurity for online product. With the upcoming Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States, large online retailers such as Amazon.com Inc and EBay Inc. will attempt to fight for larger markets. EBay is planning a marketing technique called holiday “pop-ups” locations in New York, San Francisco and London that will let consumers scan a barcode and buy products on the spot, using mobile phones.  As for Amazon, it opened an online Black Friday deals store on Nov.1. Its site will change offers daily to keep shoppers checking in daily instead of heading to the mall. EBay’s plan will certainly be effective because it will not only raise the awareness and attract interests among customers that usually go to malls to purchase things, it will also establish trust on online products. Amazon’s plan will also work because it emphasis on the convenience of online shopping: not having to leave your chair to purchase things at the same deal and price level. Hopefully for these online retailers, their market would improve from the 5 percent of U.S. consumers who buys goods online now.

Due to the fear for national recession that would cause major banks to default, consequently leading to severe economic damage, the Federal Reserve of the American Government has recently decided to toughen its capital tests for the biggest national banks in U.S. As part of the change, the Fed released a new criteria measuring the 31 largest banks’ ability to withstand a recession with 13 percent unemployment and an 8 percent decline in gross domestic product before they can increase dividends or purchase shares. Due to this government policy change, Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. along with other largest lenders in the States, may have to temper plans to raise dividends and buy back stock next year. The banks will have to have a strong capital that will allow them to survive the extremely pessimistic scenario posed by the Federal Reserve. This policy will lead to certain issues as the banks will become less likely to return more capital to their shareholders, whose holdings have been decimated. The Federal Reserve also expanded its testing circle to 12 new banks for 2012 in the new policy change. This policy shows how the American government is trying to stricken its banking policies as the past recessions have shown weaknesses in the American banking system; however, the number of banks and the fact that they only test bigger banks show how there are still many problems existing in American Banking policies comparing to the safer Canadian ones.

U.S automakers such as Ford Motor Co., and General Motors Co. have continuously revived since the 2008 national depression. Now they face the decision on the fate of their small pickups industry, which buyers have left for dead and regulators may try to revive. The two companies have carried out executive decisions that showed their split decisions. Ford Motor Co. is ending their small pickups manufactures by terminating U.S. sales of Ranger, the former mid-size pickup leader, while on the other end, General Motors Co. has showed commitment on expending its Chevrolet Colorado compact truck manufactures. GM has decided to expand its Colorado franchise past the 2012 model year and old models are continuously being replaced. Both decisions are justified with different reasoning. Ford believes that it will not only be able to maintain but expand its share of full-size trucks by concentrating its resources on the F-series while GM is betting on buyers coming back to the mid-size pickup trucks if gasoline prices stops rising. If gasoline prices keep rising, customers would prefer full size trucks because their midsize counterparts cost almost as much without much boost in fuel economy. With the recent depression and continuous rise of gas prices, customers are certainly less attracted to small pickups; however, it may be very possible that gas price would drop as gas industries continue to expand and that would bring profit to GM. In this case, Ford has taken a safer pass than GM.

A Vancouver-based mining corporation, Silvercorp Metals has recently announced its plan to expand its operation in China by buying SX Gold Mining Co. for $23 million. With the exception on one property in B.C., all of Silvercorp’s operations are in China; this purchase would further expand Silvercorp’s ownership over several mining operations ongoing in China today. SX Gold, which operates a gold-silver-lead-zinc mine is a government-owned company and was auctioned by the city government. This purchase is labelled part of the intent to consolidate the mines and prospective projects in the high grade silver, gold, and base metal belt located in that region of China. With the increase control of mining operations, Silvercorp has been able to establish itself in the region as an effective explorer and developer, with a good reputation and has become the largest non-state-controlled company and one of the top tax payers in that city. Silvercorp’s chief executive stated that the company is now focusing on building shareholder value in order to increase general appeal. With a good name and increasing control over old and new mining operations, Silvercorp has the potential to develop into a big over sea mining company based in Vancouver and operating in China.

The recently huge deal between AT&T and T-Mobile that would result in AT&T purchasing T-Mobile for $39 billion has just faced another obstacle. Federal Communications Commission Chairman in the United States Julius Genachowski has asked commissioners to forward this deal to an agency judge for a hearing. This hearing could potentially lead to the failure of the deal and was called upon because some commissioners believe that this deal of merger, if done, will diminish competition among American Wireless carriers. If AT&T, one of America’s four largest wireless carriers, successfully purchases T-Mobile, also one of the four, AT&T would be able to gain dominant control over the wireless market in the United States. To prevent this monopoly, the FCC officials filed this antitrust case that might stall the deal from happening. The senior vice president of AT&T expressed the company’s disappointment with FCC’s action because they believe that this government interference will prevent billions in new investment and the creation of many thousands of new jobs at a time of depression. AT&T also expressed that this transaction, if successfully realized, would help bring wireless high-speed internet service to more people in America. The deal would certainly bring a huge sum of profit to AT&T; however, whether or not it will generate jobs and be beneficial to the American economy is questionable because the larger AT&T becomes, it is more able to decrease its spending and provide services at a higher efficiency; jobs may be lost instead of created. The trial for this antitrust case will not be accessed until February. The decision of the trial may affect the American Wireless market greatly.