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The 10 Minute MBA - Almost Everything You Need to Know to Manage Organizations, People, and Make Good Financial Decisions

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Positive Externality You need to know three things about management and finance: 80/20 Rule Opportunity Cost Compound Growth 80/20 Rule (Also called Pareto’s Law) This idea says that a relatively small percent of actions account for a relatively large percent of outcomes. Find and concentrate your efforts on the important influences on your business. The percentages aren’t always 80/20. Some examples: 20% of your customers account for 80% of your sales. McDonald’s accidentally learned that 10% of its customers accounted for 60% of its daytime sales. And it was an identifiable group that they had never aimed its advertised at. 20% of your product line accounts for 80% of your sales and profits. Often, companies with a large product line with many variations find that 50% of their products account for over 90% of sales. An even smaller percent usually account for most of the profits. 20% of your SKUs account for 80% of your stockouts (and l

The Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Beginning of the Great Depression

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Famous Headline Introduction The usual reasons given for the Great Depression – the stock market crash of 1929 and the later collapse of the banking system – do not tell the whole story. Available economic data indicate (there were no national income accounts in 1929) that a recession had already begun before the stock market crash. The crash of October and November of 1929 was a catalyst that made the recession worse but the partial stock market recovery in early 1930 did not end the recession. Industrial production continued to fall quickly and unemployment rose rapidly in 1930. Continuing farm and businesses failures over the next two years wiped out thousands of small rural banks and threatened total financial collapse in early1933.  For a fuller explanation, we have to go back to the 1920s to see additional reasons for the origins and the rapid decline in output at the beginning of the Great Depression. We have to look at the internationa