Accounting and financial problems

Significant rates of inflation can cause accounting and financial problems for businesses. They may experience difficulty in valuing assets and stocks, for example. Such problems can waste valuable management time and make forecasting, comparisons and financial control more onerous.

Falling sales.

Many businesses may experience falling sales during inflationary periods for two broad reasons. Firstly, it may be that saving rises in a time of inflation. We would expect people to spend more of their money when prices are rising to avoid holding an asset (cash), which is falling in value. However, during the mid-1970s, when industrialized nations were experiencing high inflation rates, savings as a proportion of income rose! It is not easy to identify the reason for this, but some economists suggest that people like to hold a relatively high proportion of their assets in a form which can be quickly converted into cash when the future is uncertain. Whatever the reason, if people save more they spend less and businesses suffer falling sales. The economic model predicts that if savings rose the level of activity in the economy would fall. Clearly, if this happened we would expect businesses to experience difficulty in maintaining their levels of sales.

High interest rates.

Inflation is often accompanied by high interest rates. High interest rates tend to discourage investment by businesses as they increase the cost of borrowing funds. Thus, investment may fall. Businesses may also be dissuaded from undertaking investment programmes because of a lack of confidence in the future stability and prosperity of the economy. This fall in investment may be worsened by foreign investment being reduced as they also lose some confidence in the economy's future.

Such a decline in the level of investment can lead to businesses having to retain obsolete, inefficient and expensive means of production and cause a loss of international competitiveness. Finally, a fall in investment can lower the level of economic activity, causing lower sales, output and so on. Thus, to some extent, businesses can influence the economic environment in which they operate.

Higher costs.

During a bout of inflation firms will face higher costs for the resources they need to carry on their business. They will have to pay higher wages to their employees to compensate them for rising prices. Supplies of raw materials and fuel will become more expensive as will rents and rates. The inevitable reaction to this is that the firm has to raise its own prices. This will lead to further demands for higher wages as is called the wage-price spiral. Such cost-push inflation may make the goods and services produced by that enterprise internationally less competitive in terms of price. An economy whose relative or comparative rate of inflation is high may find that it is unable to compete in home or foreign markets because its products are expensive. The economic model tells us that a situation of declining exports and increasing imports will lower the level of activity in the economy with all the consequent side-effects.

Вариант 7

We would be simplifying the impact of inflation on business if we suggested that all effects were unfavourable. There is a school of thought, which argues that a low and stable rate of increase in the price level can be beneficial. It believes that a steady rise in money profits produces favourable expectations and induces investment as firms seek to expand. This action expands the economy as a whole. Paradoxically, inflation can also reduce the costs of businesses in the short run. Many enterprises incur costs, which are fixed for some period of time - for example, the rent of a factory may be fixed at a particular figure for a few years. At a time when the selling price of the firm's product, and hence its sales income, is rising this cost will be falling in real terms and thus stimulating the business.

There is a further argument that firms may be persuaded to borrow heavily in a period of inflation since the burden of repaying loans is reduced by inflation. If inflation is running annually at 10 per cent, for example, then the real value of the repayments of the loan will fall by approximately that amount each year. This may serve to encourage investment which, since it is an injection into the circular flow, will promote the level of activity. However, in these circumstances interest rates are likely to be high.

Government will accept that low rates of inflation are likely to exist in many economies. Inflation rates of 5 per cent or below are not considered to be too great a problem, especially if competitor nations are suffering similar rates.

In spite of the above, the conclusion must be drawn that inflation is, in general, harmful to business and its environment. Indeed, many economists would contend that inflation is the fundamental evil as its presence leads to lack of competitiveness and therefore relatively high unemployment and low rates of growth. This viewpoint has gained in credence in government circles over the last few years. It is for this reason that its control has been a major objective of government economic policy throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

Вариант 8

The following story is going to explain the role of banks. In the past most societies used different objects as money. Some of these were valuable because they were rare and beautiful, others – because they could be eaten or used. Early forms of money like these were used to buy goods. They were also used to pay for marriages, fines and debts. But although everyday objects were extremely practical kinds of cash in many ways, they had some disadvantages, too. For example, it was difficult to measure their value accurately, divide some of them into a wide range of amounts, keep some of them for a long time, use them to make financial plans for the future. For reasons such as these, some societies began to use another kind of money, that is, precious metals.

People used gold, gold bullion, as money. Those were dangerous times, and people wanted a safe place to keep their gold. So they deposited it with goldsmiths, people who worked with gold for jewellery and so on and also had a guarded vault to keep it safe in. And when people wanted some of their gold to pay for things with, they went and fetched it from the goldsmith.

Two developments turned these goldsmiths into bankers. The first was that people found it a lot easier to give the seller a letter than it was to fetch some gold and then physically hand it over to him. This letter transferred some of the gold they had at the goldsmith's to the seller. This letter we would nowadays call a cheque. And, of course, once these letters or cheques, became acceptable as a way of paying for goods, people felt that the gold they had deposited with the goldsmith, was just as good as gold in their own pockets. And as letters or cheques, were easier to carry around than gold, and a lot less dangerous, people started to say that their money holdings were what they had with them plus their deposits. So a system of deposits was started. The second development was that goldsmiths realized they had a great deal of unused gold lying in their vaults doing nothing. This development was actually of greater importance than the first.

Now let's turn to the first bank loan ever and see what happened. A firm asked a goldsmith for a loan. The goldsmith realized that some of the gold in his vault could be lent to the firm, and of course he asked the firm to pay it back later with a little interest. Of course, at that moment the goldsmith was short of gold, it wasn't actually his gold, but he reckoned it was unlikely that everyone who had deposited gold with him would want it back at the same time, at any rate - not before the firm had repaid him his gold with a little interest. He thought it safe enough.

Вариант 9

Fundamental to all financial markets is the idea of earning a return on money. Money has to work for its owner. Here are some of the ways it can do so:

1. You deposit $1,000 with a bank, which pays you, say, 10 per cent a year interest. In other words, your $1,000 of capital earns you $100 a year, which is the return on your money. When you want your $1,000 back you get $1,000, plus any accumulated interest, not more or less. Provided your bank does not go bust, your $1,000 of capital is not at risk, except from inflation, which may reduce its purchasing power each year.

2. You buy gold bullion to a value of $1,000 because you think the price of gold will rise. If the price of gold has risen by 20% after a year, you can sell your gold for $1,200. You have made a profit or a capital gain, of $200 on your capital outlay of $1,000. In other words you have a return of 20% on your money. If the price of gold fails to move, you've earned nothing because commodities like gold do not pay interest.

3. You use your $1,000 to buy securities that are traded on a stockmarket. Usually these will be government bonds (known as gilt-edged securities or gilts in the UK) or ordinary shares in a company. The former always provide an income; the latter normally do. Traditional gilt-edged securities pay a fixed rate of interest. Ordinary shares in companies normally pay a dividend from the profits the company earns. If the company's profits rise, the dividend is likely to be increased; but there is no guarantee that there will be a dividend at all. If the company makes losses, it may have to cease paying a dividend.

But when you buy securities that are traded on a stockmarket, the return on your $1,000 is not limited to the interest or dividends you receive. The prices of these securities will also rise and fall, and your original $1,000 investment accordingly becomes worth more or less. So you are taking the risk of capital gains or capital losses.

Suppose you buy $1,000 worth of ordinary shares, which pay you a dividend of $40 a year. You are getting a return or dividend yield of 4% a year on your investment ($40 as a percentage of $1,000). If after a year the market value of your $1,000 of shares has risen to $1,100, you can sell them for a capital gain of $100 (or a 10% profit on your original outlay). Thus your overall return over a year consists of the $40 income and the $ 100 capital gain: a total of $140 or a 14% overall return on your original $1,000 investment.

Вариант 10