Is NAFTA That Great? :: Essays Papers

Before I get into the details of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that took effect on January 1, 1994 I want to call attention to what it is that makes this an interesting topic to me. On that date I was only eleven and was completely oblivious to what the agreement incorporated. My entire family comes from a Mexican heritage so NAFTA was definitely a topic of conversation at the dinner table. All I really understood was that its implementation would hopefully stimulate the Mexican economy and improve its trade relationship with the United States and the rest of the World. Well now I am twenty-one and in the ten years since NAFTA has been implement I have heard relatively nothing about the benefits of the agreement. Therefore, I began to wonder why is it that I have heard nothing? In this research paper, I plan to not only help people better understand what NAFTA was trying to accomplish but also evaluate its overall effects. Did NAFTA accomplish what it said it would or has it accomplished nothing in the last ten years? Overview of NAFTA Three of the main issues that I would like to talk about later in this paper have to do with the peso crisis, the political turmoil that happened in 1994, and the many problems that exist on the US-Mexico borders. However, before I dive into those three areas I would first like to give an overview of NAFTA itself and its â€Å"effects.† I put effects in quotations because as I researched the agreement I quickly found out that many of the things that NAFTA claimed to accomplish either would have happened regardless or did not really happen at all. The North American Free Trade Agreement, as mentioned earlier, was implemented on January 1, 1994. Its main goal was to basically phase out almost all of the restrictions on trade and investment flows between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. What is important to mention is that NAFTA mainly concentrated on the US-Mexico problem seeing that the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement had been implement a couple years before NAFTA was introduced.

Financial Accounting Theory Essay

The article â€Å"GM to Take Charge of $20. 8-Billion† here reproduced from The Globe and Mail (February 2, 1993) describes the potential impact of SFAS 106, â€Å"Accounting for Postretirement Benefits Other Than Pensions,† on General Motors and Ford. For example, it appears that General Motors will be required to record a liability of $20. 8 billion, reducing its shareholders’ equity from $27. 8 billion to $7 billion, about a 75% reduction. Describe and explain how you would expect the efficient securities market to react to this information. SFAS 106, Accounting for Postretirement Benefits Other Than Pensions: â€Å"This Statement establishes accounting standards for employers’ accounting for postretirement benefits other than pensions. It will significantly change the prevalent current practice of accounting for postretirement benefits on a pay-as-you-go (cash) basis by requiring accrual, during the years that the employee renders the necessary service, of the expected cost of providing those benefits to an employee and the employee’s beneficiaries and covered dependents. In exchange for the current services provided by the employee, the employer promises to provide, in addition to current wages and other benefits, health and other welfare benefits after the employee retires. It follows from that view that postretirement benefits are not gratuities but are part of an employee’s compensation for services rendered. This Statement relies on a basic premise of generally accepted accounting principles that accrual accounting provides more relevant and useful information than does cash basis accounting. Accrual accounting goes beyond cash transactions and attempts to recognize the financial effects of noncash transactions and events as they occur. Recognition and measurement of the accrued obligation to provide postretirement benefits will provide users of financial statements with the opportunity to assess the financial consequences of employers’ compensation decisions. In applying accrual accounting to postretirement benefits, this Statement adopts three fundamental aspects of pension accounting: delayed recognition of certain events, reporting net cost, and offsetting liabilities and related assets. (FASB, 2012) I would expect the efficient securities market to find this practice acceptable. â€Å"Accrual-based accounting is more effective than cash-based accounting. A few arguments to support this theory are: certain cash receipts and disbursements are â€Å"lumpy,† within operating cash flows receipts and payments can be lumpy, accrual-based accounting is a better predictor of a company’s long-term financial performance. Also all formal statements need to be set up using accrual-based accounting, and publicly traded companies need to use accrual-based accounting to conform to GAAP standards (Keener, 2012). 2. Chapter 4: Problem 12 (Imax) a. To what extent can revenue growth substitute for net income as a predictor of future earning power? Explain. Use efficient securities market concepts in your answer, and consider the requirement under GAAP for immediate writeoff of research and startup costs. â€Å"Both revenue growth and net income are useful in determining the financial strength of a company, but they are not interchangeable. Net income describes how efficient a company is with its spending and operating costs and how effect ively it has been controlling total costs. Revenue, on the other hand, only indicates how effective a company is at generating sales and does not take into consideration operating efficiencies which could have a dramatic impact on net income (Investopedia, 2012). † â€Å"Start-up costs are defined as â€Å"those unusual one-time costs incurred in putting a new plant into operation, opening a new sales outlet, initiating a new process in an existing plant, or otherwise commencing some new operation (FASB, 2012). † †Costs of start-up activities, including organization costs, should be expensed as incurred (FASB, 2012). â€Å"Definition of ‘Revenue Recognition’ An accounting principle under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) that determines the specific conditions under which income becomes realized as revenue. Generally, revenue is recognized only when a specific critical event has occurred and the amount of revenue is measurable. ‘Revenue Recognition’ explained For mo st businesses, income is recognized as revenue whenever the company delivers or performs its product or service and receives payment for it. However, there are several situations in which exceptions may apply. For example, if a company’s business has a very high rate of product returns, revenue should only be recognized after the return period expires. Companies can sometimes play around with revenue recognition to make their financial figures look better. For example, if XYZ Corp. wants to hide the fact that it is having a bad year in sales, it may choose to recognize income that has not yet been collected as revenue in order to boost its sales revenue for the year (Investopedia, 2012). † b. Use the concept of relevance to defend the revenue recognition policies outlined above. Relevant financial statements give information to investors about the firm’s future economic prospects (Scott, 2009). † c. Use the concept of reliability to criticize the revenue recognition policies outlined above. â€Å"To be reliable, information must have representational faithfulness and it must be verifiable and neutral (Scott, 2009). † d. To the extent that investors are awar e of the possible use of revenue recognition policies that overstate revenues (even though, for a specific firm, they may not know the extent to which that firm is using such policies), what is the effect on the operation of the capital market? Explain. â€Å"Investors have prior beliefs about a firm’s future performance. These prior beliefs will be based on all available information. If net income is high, or higher than expected, this may be good news. If so, investors would revise upward their beliefs about future performance. Other investors, who perhaps had overly high expectations for what current net income should be, might interpret the same net income number as bad news. Investors who have revised their beliefs about future performance upward will be inclined to buy the firm’s shares at their current market price, and vice versa for those who have revised their beliefs downward. We would expect to observe the volume of shares traded to increase when the firm reports its net income. Furthermore, this volume should be greater the greater are the differences in investors’ prior beliefs and in their interpretations of the current financial information (Scott, 2009). †

Global Health 101 Universal Declaration Of Human Rights...

In a medically savaged developing country when there is a sudden influx of scarce resources, whom of the inflicted and in need shall be the beneficiary? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that â€Å"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care....† (Skolnik, 2016). Poverty stricken countries caught up in a labyrinth of illness are unable to deliver the correct care their inhabitants necessitate. Richard Skolnik in â€Å"Global Health 101† identifies four basic ethical principles underlying most scarce resource allocation schemes as: 1) health maximization; 2) equality; 3) priority to the worst off and 4) personal responsibility. It is when an organ becomes available that ethical principles and human health rights begin to clash. There are extensive guidelines as to who shall be the recipient of widely needed organ transplants. The Organ Pro curement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) helps create and enforce organ sharing policies; deciding to whom for example a donated kidney shall go to. As part of its mandate, â€Å"†¦UNOS helps create and define organ sharing policies that make the best use of donated organs† (â€Å"Kidney Allocation†, n.d.). With regard to determining how to allocate kidneys for transplantation, UNOS has created something called a â€Å"Kidney Donor Profile Index (KDPI)†. KDPI is a measurement of how long the kidney is expected to function whenShow MoreRelatedNgos Are Non Profit And Voluntary Citizens1622 Words   |  7 Pagesnational communities and in global communities. NGOs are task-oriented and are driven by people with a mutual interest for helping others. 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