technology

I was reading matt's blog on cell phones and it reminded me of this video we watched in government. Someone in the video mentioned (probably a little exaggerrated) about how you buy the "new" ipod, but a day later another one comes out. I'm pretty sure this is a result of different firms competing against each other for the better product, but I have to say it's extremely frusterating at the fact that I got the "new" ipod for my birthday and my brother got the "new" ipod for his birthday (2 months later) and somehow I end up with a 4GB song/photo ipod and he gets a 30GB music/movie/photo ipod. It's just insane how technology has developed over a few months and then think about years ago when none of this was around at all.

Gas Prices

I think probably everyone has written a post about gas prices, but we were talking about this in Government the other day, so I thought I could relate it to Econ. Mr. Swantz told us that he has a business in lawn mowing that he does on the side. He said that because gas prices are so high, he has to raise the prices of how much it costs to mow lawns. He said that some people understood that higher gas prices meant they were going to have to pay more to get their lawns mowed, but he also said some people were so mad at the increase in price that they didn't want him to mow their lawn anymore. I think that stuff like this might start to happen everywhere. People aren't going to want to spend money on things, because gas. It's kind of scary that basically everything our society sells is dependent on the price of gas.

Value of Dollar

We were talking about this in Government the other day and I thought it related to Econ. The value of the dollar is extremely weak right now compared to what it has been, and compared to other countries. It used to be that you could go over to Europe and get like 2 Euros for every 1 dollar bill. Now it's the other way around. Mr. Swantz was talking about how now because of this, people from other countries want to travel here more, because they can get more for their money than we would if we would go over seas. I was also wondering if this affected our imported and exported goods. Do businesses outside of the United States get a better deal on goods we give them, than we do from goods imported into the United States?

Employers Slash Jobs by Most in 5 Years

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080307/economy.html

In February employers cut 63,000 jobs in February, the most in five years. This appears to be a vivid sign that our country is extremely close to heading into a recession.

According to this article, the Federal Reserve plans to increase the amount of loans made available to banks to $100 billion in order to provide some relief. However, with the large increase in oil and gas prices along with this employment drop, it seems that a recession is inevitable, or is happening already.

Smaller Cars Enjoy New Chic

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092701812.html

I thought this was an interesting article, because it showed how gas prices are affecting the united states. The demand for SUV's is dropping significantly, because people are looking for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. The gas prices have become so high, that many people would rather buy smaller cars, and spend less on gas. This could potentially cause a lot of damage to some states, especially those who suffer severe winter climates (wisconsin for example), because people will be buying smaller cars to save money, but will be forced to drive these cars during the crappy winter weather, which could potentially raise the amount of accidents in these states.

Choclate Firms Raided over Price-fixing Claims

Link: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/consumer_goods/article3349415.ece

This article is about the German Federal Cartel Office raiding seven companies, including Nestle, Mars, Kraft, and Ritter because of a suspected collusion on price rises. It appeared that all of the companies had between a 10 to 12 percent all within a few weeks of each other.

The cause of this price rise was claimed to be becasue of an increase in the price of cocoa and nuts. It seems to me that this price rise is very likely, because as prices of ingredients go up, companies are going to be forced to raise the prices of their products. Therefore, as one company was forced to raise their price, it probably forced the other companies to raise their prices as well.