HW Etc

Hi All,
Your HW grades for Chapter 4 have been graded and put into TeacherEase.  Thanks for all of your hard work. Let me remind you that Chapter 5 HW won't be due until a week from Wednesday.  You have been assigned 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, and 18.  That's about 1 per day.  Having a good understanding of the US economy, which remains the largest economy in the world, is important no matter where you end working later in life.

The Wall Street Journal Marketplace section has some really cool articles today.  One is about how Heinz Ketchup has re-engineered the small Ketchup packages that you can get from any fast-food restaurant.  You know, the ones that are impossible to open and then create a huge mess once you do get them open?  Heinz has spent 3 years working on a new package called "Dip and Squeeze" that will make it easier for all of us clumsy-fingered consumers out there.  This is an excellent example of 'creative destruction.'

There's another story about alleged Chinese wind turbine (WTG) espionage, a story close to my heart as a former Chinese wind industry consultant.  The largest maker of wind turbines in China is a company called Sinovel, a firm my company, Azure International, refused to do business with because of intellectual property worries.  But the firm American Superconductor (AMSC) did do business with Sinovel, starting in 2006.  AMSC is now accusing Sinovel of paying an AMSC worker, a Serbian citizen, of paying him $1m dollars in exchange for complete access to important AMSC computer code.  That same worker is now being held in Austria on related charges.

Finally, back to consumer goods, CocaCola is starting to experiment with different sized containers, downsizing from its classic 20-oz bottles or 12-oz cans to 7.5-oz mini-cans and 12.5-oz bottles.  This is good for people that want a Coke but don't want a 20-oz bottle or a 12-oz can.  Coke controls 34.3% of the US soda market, with PepsiCo controlling 32.8%.  Other firms control 32.9%.

See you tomorrow!  Good luck studying for the midterm (better get used to this word!).