Global political issues relevant to the business community.
The United States is enjoying a nearly unprecedented run of economic growth. Since the end of the Great Recession, in 2009, the American economy has posted expansion (as measured by gross domestic product) in nearly every quarter, and has yet to post the two consecutive quarters of contraction required to define a recession.
Continue reading “International Outlook: 4 Looming Threats to the Global Economy in 2020”It’s been a few years since Starbucks was publicly corrected for their false claim that coffee was the second most traded commodity after oil. Oil at the time was at a stellar $788 billion and coffee came in around $19 billion, which left plenty of space for other commodities in between. While Starbucks defended this claim based on futures trading figures, it left coffee in the dark. But for commodity investors, it highlighted the importance of doing proper research before lumping all their money together behind a single commodity based on what just anyone says, even major corporations.
Continue reading “A Beginner’s Guide To Commodity Investment”The beginning of a Trump administration in the US has weakened the strength of the US dollar against other major currencies. The global financial markets have reacted badly to the divisive news of Trump’s travel ban, which in turn has pushed up the price of gold. Continue reading “US Political Instability Affecting Gold Prices”
USA, the largest economy in the world is facing a fiscal crisis, even now. Ever since 2003, its major economy bearer states like California, there was a major projected budget deficit. The Government took adequate care to approach the problem and to tackle the imminent crisis, but even though the black ages are gone, the repercussions from the shock still exists. The goverment launched many programs, one of which is the majorly popular California Strategic Sourcing Initiative, to control spending and stimulate the revamp of the economy. These focused primarily on the way the state purchased goods and services.
These programs aimed to identify saving opportunities. The focus to do so was through strategic sourcing. This was achieved by establishing new contracts or renegotiating existing ones. A team consisting of key professional procurement staff was created to achieve this goal, and not only at a short term goal, but to look towards achieving this as a sustainable long term process. Rather than a one time program, these initiatives were designed as an ongoing program to save money in the long term and position the United States to com out of the economic slump.
e-Governance played a crucial role in the revamp of the economies. Information Technology was widely used to issue electronic RFPs and conduct reverse auctions. The usage of these technologies also helped to streamline processes and speeded up the savings potential. Consulting firms like A.T. Kearney helped in the processes by developing cross-agency and departmental training programs, in which the procurement staff members were taught new skills in the area of spend analysis, e-sourcing, reverse auctions and e-negotiations. This training, which took place in classrooms and on hands, ensured that the team was well positioned for the change. Change management was the crucial success factor in this initiative.
In the coming few years, these strategic sourcing initiatives are expected to create savings in the tune of billions of dollars. The first wave of the program is already completed, and thus the spend categories have been identified, addressed and initial savings have been achieved which helped to forecast future savings. This e-governance strategic sourcing initiative has demonstrated how economies can be revamped using e-governance and information technology.
This is a sequel to the article with the same name and is meant to provide some of the possible counter-arguments to the arguments provided in the previous article. Thus this article is meant to prove why the practices like black-marketing of movie tickets and forced donations demanded by some schools are corrupt practices. Continue reading “Corruption is Business:Part 2”