Portal:Business

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The time required to start a business is the number of calendar days needed to complete the procedures to legally operate a business. This chart is from 2017 statistics.

Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit."

A business entity is not necessarily separate from the owner and the creditors can hold the owner liable for debts the business has acquired. The taxation system for businesses is different from that of the corporates. A business structure does not allow for corporate tax rates. The proprietor is personally taxed on all income from the business.

A distinction is made in law and public offices between the term business and a company such as a corporation or cooperative. Colloquially, the terms are used interchangeably. (Full article...)

Economics (/ˌɛkəˈnɒmɪks, ˌkə-/) is a social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyses what's viewed as basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyses the economy as a system where production, distribution, consumption, savings, and investment expenditure interact, and factors affecting it: factors of production, such as labour, capital, land, and enterprise, inflation, economic growth, and public policies that have impact on these elements. (Full article...)

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John D. Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller, Sr. (July 8, 1839–May 23, 1937) was an American industrialist and philanthropist who played a pivotal role in the establishment of the oil industry, and defined the structure of modern philanthropy. In 1870, Rockefeller helped found the Standard Oil company. Over a forty-year period, Rockefeller built Standard Oil into the largest and most profitable company in the world, and became the world's richest man.

His business career was controversial. He was bitterly attacked by muckraking journalists; his company was convicted in the Federal Court of monopolistic practices and broken up in 1911. He gave up active management of Standard Oil in the late 1890s, while keeping a large fraction of the shares. He spent the last forty years of his life focused on philanthropic pursuits, primarily related to education and public health. He donated most of his wealth using multiple foundations run by experts. He was a devout Northern Baptist and supported many church-based institutions throughout his life.

Rockefeller may ultimately be remembered simply for the raw size of his wealth. In 1902, an audit showed Rockefeller was worth about $200 million, compared to the total national wealth that year of $101 billion. His wealth grew significantly after as the demand for gasoline soared, eventually reaching about $900 million, including significant interests in banking, shipping, mining, railroads, and other industries. By the time of his death in 1937, Rockefeller's remaining fortune, largely tied up in permanent family trusts, was estimated at $1.4 billion. Rockefeller's net worth over the last decades of his life would easily place him among the list of wealthiest persons in history. As a percentage of the United States economy, no other American fortune—including Bill Gates or Sam Walton—would even come close.

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Brazilian Central Bank building in Brasilia.
Photo credit: Genghiskhanviet

The Central Bank of Brazil (Portuguese: Banco Central do Brasil) is Brazil's central bank. It was established on December 31, 1964.

The Central Bank is linked with the Ministry of Finance. Like other central banks, the Brazilian central bank is the principal monetary authority of the country. It received this authority when it was founded by three different institutions: the Bureau of Currency and Credit (SUMOC), the Bank of Brazil (BB), and the National Treasury.

One of the main instruments of Brazil's monetary policy is the Banco Central do Brasil's overnight rate, called the SELIC rate.

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Tripoli, financial capital of Libya

The economy of Libya depends primarily on revenues from the petroleum sector, which represents over 95% of export earnings and 60% of GDP. These oil revenues and a small population have given Libya one of the highest nominal per capita GDP in Africa.

After 2000, Libya recorded favorable growth rates with an estimated 10.6% growth of GDP in 2010. This development was interrupted by the Libyan Civil War, which resulted in contraction of the economy by 62.1% in 2011. After the war, the economy rebounded by 104.5% in 2012. It crashed again following the Second Libyan Civil War. As of 2017, Libya's per capita PPP GDP stands at 60% of its pre-war level. (Full article...)

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"In civilized society he stands at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons. In almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. Even a beggar does not depend upon it entirely. The charity of well-disposed people, indeed, supplies him with the whole fund of his subsistence. But though this principle ultimately provides him with all the necessaries of life which he has occasion for, it neither does nor can provide him with them as he has occasion for them. The greater part of his occasional wants are supplied in the same manner as those of other people, by treaty, by barter, and by purchase. With the money which one man gives him he purchases food. The old cloaths which another bestows upon him he exchanges for other old cloaths which suit him better, or for lodging, or for food, or for money, with which he can buy either food, cloaths, or lodging, as he has occasion."

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

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  • ...that the melting and export of cents and nickels can be punished with a fine of up to $10,000 and/or imprisoned for a maximum of five years?
  • ... that the GDP deflator (implicit price deflator for GDP) is a price index measuring changes in prices of all new, domestically produced, final goods and services in an economy.

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