The Federal Reserve has recently started to adjust interest rates higher after maintaining lower rates in response to the 2008 recession. What is the economic significance of this change? What will the impact be on the business environment?

You are a manager at asda. you have been given the demand data for the past 10 weeks for swim rings for children. you decide to run multiple types of forecasting methods on the data to see which gives you the best forecast. if you were to use exponential smoothing with alpha =.8, what would be your forecast for week 22? (the forecast for week 21 was 1277.) week demand 12 1317 13 1307 14 1261 15 1258 16 1267 17 1256 18 1268 19 1277 20 1277 21 1297

Profits from using currency options and futures.on july 2, the two-month futures rate of the mexican peso contained a 2 percent discount (unannualized). there was a call option on pesos with an exercise price that was equal to the spot rate. there was also a put option on pesos with an exercise price equal to the spot rate. the premium on each of these options was 3 percent of the spot rate at that time. on september 2, the option expired. go to the oanda.com website (or any site that has foreign exchange rate quotations) and determine the direct quote of the mexican peso. you exercised the option on this date if it was feasible to do so. a. what was your net profit per unit if you had purchased the call option? b. what was your net profit per unit if you had purchased the put option? c. what was your net profit per unit if you had purchased a futures contract on july 2 that had a settlement date of september 2? d. what was your net profit per unit if you sold a futures contract on july 2 that had a settlement date of september 2

Imagine us is a startup that offers high definition 3d prenatal ultrasounds for high-end customers. the service process includes four activities that are conducted in the sequence described below. (the time required for each activity is shown in parentheses): activity 1: welcome a patient and explain the procedure. (20 minutes)activity 2: prep the patient (e.g., show them to the room, apply ultrasound gel). (17 minutes) (*your id number represents the amount of time needed to complete this task)activity 3: take images. (5 minutes)activity 4: discuss diagnostic with patient. (20 minutes)at each location there are employees (servers) s1, s2, and s3. the assignment of tasks to servers is the following: s1 does activities 1 and 2.s2 does activity 3.s3 does activity 4.a. what is the capacity of this process (in customers per hour)? b. suppose 3 patients arrive every hour on average. ignoring any “start of day” or “end of day” effects, what are the utilizations of all three servers (%)? c. suppose each activity can be done by any server and any server can do any set of activities. however, each activity is done by only one server. for example, a possible assignment includes: s1 does activity 1, s2 does activity 2, and s3 does activities 3 and 4. of course, the original assignment of servers to activities is also feasible. what is the maximum capacity of the process (in customers per hour)? d. now consider the capacity measures in (c) and (a), what is the percentage change? why can you improve capacity without using additional resources? (there is no free lunch, right? )note: for all hw assignments, show your process of getting the results. only providing the final answers is not acceptable and will get 0%. if necessary, use a separate sheet of paper to show your work.