Lowe's Company Inc.

Lowes was founded in 1921 in the city of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Lowes now serves more than fourteen million customers every single week it has stores in the United States and Canada, the expansion to Canada began in the year of 2007, when Lowes opened a store in Hamilton, Ontario in early 2008. Lowes has many stores in the United States 1,710 stores to be exact there are 20 stores in Canada. Lowes Company Inc. will be opening up a store in Australia sometime in the year of 2011. There are even some Lowes in Mexico. Lowes Company Inc. is ranked 43 on the Fortune 500 list. Out of Hardware chains Lowes Company Inc. is in second behind Home Depot and ahead of Menards. Lowes Company Inc. is also the second largest United States appliance retailer next to Sears. The founder of Lowes Company Inc. was Lucius S. Lowe who opened Lowe’s North Wilkesboro Hardware. The business was later inherited by Lucius’s daughter Ruth when he died in the year 1940. She then sold the company to her brother Jim in the same year. Ruth and her mother ran the store well Jim Lowe and Ruth’s husband Carl Buchan both served in World War II. Jim Lowe later took on Carl Buchan as a partner in the company. With Carl Buchan’s management the store focused on hardware and building materials. The company bought another store in Sparta, North Carolina. That is what started it all slowly expanding and forming into the company that Lowe’s Company Inc. is today. If you need to get a job done in your home weather it’s remodeling your bathroom, painting the garage, or building a shed and tools to put inside of it then Lowes is the place to go.  There Slogan being “let’s build something together” since the mid to late 2000’s in the early 2000’s there slogan was “Improving Home Improvement” but before that their tagline was “Lowe’s Knows.”  Lowe’s Company Inc. had an Annual Revenue of $47,220 billion dollars last year in 2009 it was$48,230 billion 2008 it was $48,283 billion and in 2007 it was $46,927 billion. The Annual Profit of Lowes Company Inc. last year was $16,463 billion in 2009 it was $16,501 billion in 2008 it was $16,727 billion in 2007 it was $16,198 billion. Lowe’s Company Inc. had an operating cost of $44,395 billion in 2009 $44,724 billion in 2008 $43,772 billion in and in 2007 $41,929 billion. The wages that Lowe’s payed out last year was $11,737 billion in 2009 $11,176 billion in 2008 $10,656 and in 2007 $9,884 billion. Lowe’s Company Inc. is expanding and striving it may not be number one in Hardware Chains or in appliance retailer but they are in second in both so that’s pretty good if I would say so.

Resources:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowe's

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:LOW&fstype=ii

Supply and Demand on Oil

The oil facilities in Iraq were attacked in 2004 but the United States and China raised the demand for oil. There was so much demand for oil by these two countries that it brought up the quantity demanded which changed the equilibrium and that caused the price for gasoline to become higher than before it got to $40 dollars per barrel of crude oil by June 2004. The price raise could not be helped because of counties like the United States and China with stronger than most economies. The people who lived in these countries still drove and needed to get around to and from work every day.  That is why the demand went up which then lead to the price being raised on barrels of crude oil. The same thing happened with the Motorola Droid. When the smart phone first came out everybody wanted one it was the big new thing so the equilibrium was very high. The equilibrium being high made the price also is very high. Then over the months less and less people wanted them causing the equilibrium to go down making the price drop back down. They wanted whatever the new hip big thing was at the time weather it was the I phone 3gs or some other smart phone. Over the next few months the price went down and continued to go down until they released the droid 2 but, that’s not shown in the graph. You can see the change in price over time on the Motorola Droid on the graph shown. Those two examples correlate because Countries like the United States and China had a high demand for gasoline raising the price up. Then there was an extremely high demand for the Motorola Droid when it first came out so the price was high. The demand was high in both cases causing price to be high.

Then OPEC agreed to bring up the daily quota to 2 million barrels of crude oil per day. That makes the supply shift upwards on the graph which brings down the equilibrium and that made gasoline price go back down. A great example for this other than the price for gasoline would have to be televisions right around this time. Companies that make televisions such as Samsung, Sony and, many others try to put out a lot of T.V.’s for Super bowl Sunday. They have a huge stock of T.V.’s on marked down prices to get rid of them. There are so many televisions that it brings the equilibrium down which brings the price down. Right around this time the next year models of televisions will be coming out which is another reason why they want to get rid of the old models. The two examples correlated because price was high in both then supply raised bringing the price back down.

Gas Prices

The extremely high price of gasoline per gallon can be from a lot of different reasons here are just a few. Well you would think that just because less people are driving. That the cheaper gasoline would be with 7.6 million people losing jobs forcing them to be off the roadways but, on the contrary gas prices are still rising and rising. The national average of prices per gallon of gasoline is $3.073 which is more than a 40 cent increase from just 1 year ago. One of the big reasons of the gas prices is because of OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries). They have regular meetings to determine what they will sell crude oil for. They are able to do a thing like that because they hold 79% of the worlds crude oil reserve and 44% of the worlds crude oil production. Right now the price of 1 barrel of oil is $89.32.  Every 1$ increase in a barrel of gas is 2.5 more cents per gallon that we pay at the pump. 71% of what we pay at the pump comes from crude oil. The remaining 29% is found in taxes, distribution, marketing, and refining costs. So an increase of any of those means an increase in what we pay.   The inventory of barrels of crude oil decreased by 1.3 million barrels,  gasoline dropped by 2.3 million barrels, and all over petroleum inventory went down by a large total of 9.1 billion barrels in the week of December 24 2010. That could be a major reason for the raise in the price of gasoline per gallon in the us or worldwide.  Former  Shell oil president John Hofmeister told Platt Energy Week Television that the Gasoline prices could possibly hit around $5 dollars per gallon of gasoline by sometime in 2012. That would be devastating causing many more hard working people off of the roadways just because they simply cant afford it anymore. I mean $5 dollars per gallon of gasoline is outrageous if you have an 18 gallon gas tank like I do it would cost you 90 dollars every time you filled up. Now how long do you really think that you would be driving with gas prices like that the average American would most likely choose not to unless they didn’t have the option. With the raising gas prices there’s no way of knowing what will be going on in the next year or even five years. There is obviously going to be continued research on gasoline alternatives such as wind, solar, and others. For example there is a electric delivery vehicle completely powered by a battery it tops out at 55 mph and goes 100 miles on a single charge it is called the Smith Newton.  In conclusion there are many different factors that can increase the price of gasoline per gallon but, you can defiantly count on it continuing to rise weather the economy or the amount of drivers are on the roadways.









Resources:
http://fuelgaugereport.aaa.com/?redirectto=http://fuelgaugereport.opisnet.com/index.asp ,
http://www.oil-price.net/ , http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/no-relief-for-motorists-gas-prices-high-and-likely-going-higher/19313431/ ,http://www.rhinelanderdailynews.com/articles/2011/01/04/news/doc4d2333ab8e918587118738.txt ,http://www.thegreencarwebsite.co.uk/blog/index.php/2011/01/05/electric-truck-firm-buys-smith-electric-vehicles/