Accounting Assignment

     I learned a lot about the company McDonald's. They have over 36,000 restaurants all around the world. They are constantly adding new ones, and taking away the McDonald's that are not functioning well. McDonald's is constantly adding reports and press release's about the restaurant, and how it is improving or doing poorly. Each month they work to improve what went wrong in the last month. Burger King is also another company that posts press releases about their quarterly sales. They were doing very positive last month, a little better than McDonald's. They also have restaurants around the world.

3-2-1 Ted Talk

        Tony Fadell used many examples in the video of noticing drive, and change. Humans go through habituation, and remember things that is a daily routine, or that happens everyday. Tony says that is not a bad thing. Habituation can also be bad though, because it keeps you from noticing the problems right in front of you. One example Tony mentions about noticing drive and change, is, to look broader. There are things that can lead up to the problem, and come after it, you need to keep an open mind. The second tip about noticing drive or change was to look closer. If something isn't working, you need to look closer, and think of other ways to fix the product. You can't just look at the obvious ways. The third tip Tony gave about drive, and change was to think younger. Young minds haven't been around as long, so they can find an easier way to fix it.
      There have been a few times when a product wasn't well planned. I bought a pair of headphones and from the start, they didn't work. We had to bring them back to the store. Another example of when a product wasn't planned well was when I bought a bag, and a few times after a few uses, the zipper broke. Neither of these products were designed and planned well.
               An example of how I see designs planned well is an IPhone. When you buy it, it comes with warranty and insurance, if something wasn't working. You wouldn't lose all that money that you just spent for the brand new phone. Also, the IPhone comes charged, and ready to use when you buy it. It's not fully charged, but you don't have to "charge it before use." I think the IPhone is a well planned design.

Enron Post

       Enron was one of the most innovative companies in the 1990's. Enron was worth about $70 billion dollars, and the stocks being sold for $90 each. The company came crashing down last October. The company made a "dozen" partnerships with companies it made. They used the partnerships to hide big debts and heavy losses on their trading. The owner of the company had made one of the biggest frauds in corporate history. Enron became bankrupt, and millions of people lot jobs, and many investors lost billions of dollars. 10 congressional committees are investigating Enron and the collapse. Some people think the end result will be jail. Others think new rules will happen to the accounting industry.

Frontline Post

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/business-economy-financial-crisis/money-power-wall-street/s-p-to-pay-1-38-billion-for-once-rave-ratings-of-toxic-mortgages/


         There are 3 areas I didn't know about before the reading. S&P has to pay about $687 million to the US government and 1.38 billion to the department of justice. Another area I didn't know about was Toxic Mortgages. Rating agencies had issued high grades to toxic mortgages, which were investments made by banks. One more area I didn't know about was the risk of firms putting their business interest ahead of their sound ratings. It will never completely go away. I would like to know more about mortgages and the right and wrong doing within them.

Scavenger Hunt

          Having a partner helped finding the items during the Scavenger Hunt. We both worked together to think of what could fit with each category. A partner helped think of ideas that I couldn't think of myself. A connection I can make that occurred in my own life while trying to find the items, was that I recycle, and the school does also. The school has an outdoor friendly place for plastics, which is a recycle bin. We also recycle at my house.