Most beginning economics textooks will say something like "markets work well for many things, but not for the environment, because there is no way to internalize the costs of pullution."  But is that really true?  Is there not a way to internalize the costs of pollution into doing business, or have we just chosen not to?

First of all, we need to discuss what it means to "internalize costs."  Let's say I want to build a car to sell and make a profit.  I believe I can sell the car for $20,000, so to make a profit, I have to be able to build it for less than that.  So I add up all my costs, rent, wages, materials, etc, and if they come to less than $20,000, I know that it's worth it to build the car.  Let's take just one of those costs, say, steel.  I know that if the cost of steel is below a certain price, I will build the car, and if it is above, I won't.  But what can we know about the cost of steel?  Well, if the cost is high, it's because other businesses are buying steel for other products that they expect to be able to sell at a profit, even with the high cost of steel.  If it's low, it's because other businesses don't think that consumers want to buy the things they would make out of steel for the price they would have to sell it to make a profit, even with the low cost of steel.  So in general, we can say that if I can build a steel car and sell it for a profit, it is because society generally values using the steel more for the car than for other things it could be used for.  Because my profit relies on the cost of steel, that is, that I have "internalized" the cost of steel, markets have done a pretty decent job of applying steel to it's best use.

The problem, though, is that when I fire up my coal factory to make that car, I don't have to pay anybody to send the smoke out.  Regardless of whether or not I send out dirty smoke, killing my neghbor's farm crops and causing asthma in children, my profits stay the same, because I never see a price for that.  On the contrary, if I am a good soul and choose to develop smoke filters and other means to reduce my pollution, my profits will most likely go down due to the added expense of developing that technology.  I will be able to compete less well with those carmakers that take the easy way and do pollute, and eventually, if I can't cut costs somewhere else, I will go bankrupt.  New regulatory ideas such as carbon credits or cap and trade systems are attempting to deal with this issue, but they still run into problems determining the true costs of pollution.

So how did we get to this point?  Is it true that it is impossible for free markets to deal with pollution?  To understand this, we need to go back more than 150 years, to the beginning of American industrialization.  In the early 1800s, people were not concerned with pollution on the grand scale, as we are today, simply because they could not imagine that a few coal-fired factories here and there could ever possibly have global consequences.  When people did worry about pollution, they did not cosider themselves to be environmentalists, per se, but were concerned with simple property rights violations.  For example, a farmer would see his haystacks go up in flames from sparks from a passing train, or see his fruit trees blighted by smoke from a nearby factory.  He was not concerned the harm to nature so much as the harm to his livlihood and his ability to feed his family.

And early on, the solution was simple.  Go to court, show a violation of property rights, and get compensation and an injuction against further violation.  The factory owner the had a number of options.  He could develop some new technology to limit his pollution, he could buy up a whole lot of land where he had no neighbors to offend, or he could simply work out a contract with the farmer to pay him a sum of money that would convince the farmer to let him pollute.  In any case, his expenses would go up and be passed on to the consumer, and any competitor that found a way to produce the produc without pollution would see lower costs and higher profits.

Unfortunately, not everyone saw this as a good thing.  Nearing the middle of the century, it was feared that America would fall behind the rest of the world, and that the way to stay competitive was rapid industrialization.  Anything that stood in the way of this was seen as risking American prosperity and dominance, and the rights of the polluted were abandoned for the "common good."  Accordingly, any incentive to reduce pollution was removed, and while we did see an enourmous increase in the standard of living in many respects, it came at the cost of the environment.

So, today, as we try to balance our comfortable lifestyles with our environmental concern, we need to ask some important questions.  Is it true, as the economists recommending carbon credits and other plans say, that there is no way for markets to internalize the costs of pollution, or have we simply chosen not to let them?

What is negotiation?

Negotiation is the way of businesses, living and life. Negotiation is where one person wants to trade an item(s) for a certain number of different item(s) to another person. But the other person thinks his item(s) are worth more. So what the to people do is they keep on naming numbers in between what they both want until they both agree.

Why should I negotiate?

The reason you should negotiate is actually quite clear. You might not get a very good deal. For example, you are a kid and you want a candy bar from your friend. But your friend thinks that he deserves at least $20 for it. Do you still want it? If you want it that bad, you should negotiate. That way, you don't pay $20 for something that is really worth around $1. So you negotiate. You say it is worth 1 dollar and will pay two. Your friend insists that you pay 10. You think that it is still unfair and insist on 5. He say's, “7 dollars and no less” you have that much so you pay him. You still don't get a very good deal but at least you shaved off 13 dollars from the price.

When should I use negotiation?

There are all kinds of times you should use the process of negotiation. If you want to sell your business is a good example. You are a old man who has never married or had kids.

Because of this, there will nobody to look after your company once you die. Another matter is you are also to old to handle the stress. You are sad to part with the company that has made you so many million dollars. This matter makes you stubborn about how much money you sell for. A buyer has made an offer but is the only one to offer you at all.

He has offered you only three million dollars. You where hoping to go for 5 million dollars. You tell him that. He say's, “I'm not buying for more than 4 million.”

You say, “4 and a half”. “deal” he would probably say. You didn't sell for 5 million,

But at least you still got the better deal.

How can I make successful negotiations?

You can make successful negotiations by making you offer sound good. Nobody knows how much something would be really worth. You could only make an educated guess.

Don't offer too much more or too much less than the other person is. If that is to much more or less than the educated guess, well tell them you are not stupid. If they don't give in, then only if you want to you close the deal.

Transacting through the tenets of e-commerce revolves around using the World Wide Web and other associated techniques like the electronic-mail.

Electronic commerce used between two business firms is known as B2B e-commerce. It can be an open for all variant like Commodities Exchange or a very personal variant like the Private Electronic Market. E-commerce specifically caters to the sale facet of e-business.

E-commerce can find large scale utility in online-shopping. Right from selecting a product on the online site to adding it to the cart and then seeking payment for it to channeling it through the shipping and handling department is all effectively handled by e-commerce wing. Content management systems and Enterprise and client information reporting are both ideally done by e-commerce. It also sees to proper functioning of domestic and international payment systems. For instance, Paypal and Neteller are two online money transfer units. Their functioning lies within the active domain of e-commerce.

E-commerce also lays in front of us a matrix of database, spreadsheets and documents. This again is a crucial segment of e-business. Imagine it this way. Over various computer networks spread across the world, billions and billions of paper files are kept intact constricted over databases minimized to computer chips. This is letting us tarry along with oversaturated world business.

Presently e-commerce primarily involves an enquiry and ordering of digital content for consumption through internet.

Insider trading is harmful because it reduces investors' confidence in the stock market. Noninsiders may feel that they are unfairly at a disadvantage in the market and that they are therefore less likely to make a profit. A healthy economy relies on money from investors to finance business expansion, and investors will not invest in a market that they do not trust.

Henry Paulson is the secretary of the US Treasury and his article on the Foreign Affairs Magazine for the September/October 2008 Issue shows a perspective that the prosperity of the United States and China depends heavily on helping China further integrate itself into the global economic system through trade, investments and the integration of the financial markets. According to Paulson, the launch of the U.S. - China Economic Dialogue (SED) was an important step taken in 2006 by President Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao in expanding the relationship of these two superpowers over the long term. Despite the long history of interaction between the two nations, they both have had misunderstandings in various areas. Thus the SED began to play a big role in enabling policy makers from both sides to meet each other as equals and to work toward a strategic goal. Early on, China always was very defensive of its national interests, especially against foreign demands thus the US, in particular, was perceived as arrogant aggressive bully in China even when these foreign powers were legitimately pursuing their interests with China. However, since the creation of the SED under President Bush, legitimate high level avenues of diplomatic contact was made possible for China and the US to corporate and avoid such misunderstandings.

After its creation, the SED began to focus on a number of issues including the rising growth imbalances, US-Chinese economic relationship, energy security, environmental sustainability, trade and investment issues, product safety and China's position in the global economic system. Unlike the image the Americans have about China, china is actually facing a growing crisis behind all the façade of power. The same reason that spurned growth in China is now becoming an obstacle to Chinese social stability and sustained economic growth. The Chinese growth was all based on exports and investments in its capital, which has led to rise of rapid energy consumption, environmental damage, an unequal amount of infrastructure in the coastal China compared to inland China and increasing tensions with trade partners due to Chinese market policies and trade surpluses. China also faces a population crisis as the traditional source for retirement benefits were their Children but the one child policy and the dangers in society have drastically made China's biggest resources - their children a scare resource. So now China must find a way to help the rapidly aging population with retirement and health benefits.

As two of the biggest consumers of oil, China and the US share a large interest in energy security and developing alternative energy sources. Chinese policy to set price caps on subsidized oil and electricity to promote stable social life has failed as it led to wasteful consumption. Now the control of energy demand has become a growing concern in the country among the middle and upper class. The US also has begun to address the issue of inadequate protection of intellectual property rights in China through the SED and also began to press China into opening its closed market practices to foreign businesses. In the years to come, three possible choices exist for Chinese - US relations: robust engagement, dispute resolution through multilateral and bilateral enforcement measures and punitive measures - being that the first two tend to work better with China than punitive measures.

There is a tool that every trader use to control the damage you can accept in a trade. It is called stop loss order. It is an automated order that the trader enters following a newly opened position. This preset order tells the broker's computer when to get out of the trade. You may usually enter this value as points in percent (pip) or as dollar value.

Now the question that most traders face is, where to put the stop loss. No one wants to place an order too close to the actual trading price and get out of the trade in a small fluctuation. At the other end, we don't want to loose too much money at any trade.

The answer to that question is highly personal in my opinion. It depends on your account size, your appetite for the risk, how crazy you are, etc. But there is also some commonly accepted  ways of defining risk levels.

Most of the traders go for a fix percentage of their account as an acceptable loss. So if you have 10.000 $ in your account and you never want to loose more than 5% in a given trade, your maximum loss should be 500$. Now that is the step one.

The biggest mistake of beginner traders is to get this as a fixed position for a lot. So if you are trading one standard lot, this would be approximately 50 pips. This may be a large, or not enough range depending of market conditions. Let's take a look at the chart below.

It is the 1h chart at the time I am writing this article. The market is extremely volitile these days and you can see the pair has moved between 196.800 and 194.400 during the day (which is a 240 pips range).  If we decide to get in a trade now, 50 pips stop loss will be hit very easily.

Let's go to 4h chart and see the support levels for a long trade (buy trade).

First support level below the actual position is around 193.300, about 150 pips below.  It is likely that the pair may test this value one more time before going higher. So if we get in this trade right now, we should be ready to tolerate this back move until the support is broken.

So our 50 pips is not enough. We still want to keep our percentage fixed. We, then, should reduce the trade size. Instead of 1 standard lot, we should trade with 1/3 lot.

The problem at this point is that not every broker accepts less than 1 lot trades. If you do not have an account to tolerate 150 pips within the percentage you have already defined, you should not enter in the trade. Doesn't matter how good the trade is, how much money you can make, how likely that the pair will move in the direction you want. You don't have enough money to get in that trade.

First rule I have learned in forex trading is to be able to let it go. It happens often that the market is to volatile so that the risk is not acceptable for my account size. Yes these are the times you can make a lot more money than you can usually make. But remember, these are the times that you can loose a lot more money than you usually loose.

I hope it helps to my fellow new traders. Let me know if there is anything you want to see in my future articles.

The location of Germany helps the trade by a lot in the north. On the north-east, they have the Baltic Sea, and on the North West, they have the North Sea, which leads to the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean. They have great sea lanes to Poland, Denmark, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and a lot more. The Climate of Germany isn't too bad. It has below freezing temperatures in winter, and moderate summers. Overall, the climate is mainly a moderate temperature, which is good. Germany is a great distributor of Coal. It has great coal sources in the iron and steel industrial center of the Ruhr, and also has some load, zinc, and copper mined. There is also some oil drilling. Population is very dense in main cities such as Berlin and Hamburg. Overall, Germany has great trade.

Italy

Italy has a good location for trade. They have great access to many other countries in the Mediterranean Sea, and have access to sea lanes in the Atlantic Ocean by going through the Strait of Gibraltar. Italy has a very moderate climate. The Alps in the north keep the cold out of Italy, so Italy maintains a great temperature all year long. There is a good amount of rain, but summers are hot and dry. Winters are mild, which makes it easier to trade. Mercury, sulfur, and marble are great natural resources that keep Italy's economy at a great point. Italy is the world's leading producer of marble, mostly from the Apuane Alps. All other resources don't have a large enough availability to export. Marble helps Italy a lot, and the peninsula location helps population distribution on the coastline. Most of Italy is accessible by sea, which makes trade a LOT easier.

I believe it is very important to see how one is trading under different conditions. Not all trades are easy, not all are winning either.

I am not going to put many examples at once. Rather I prefer to put one example at a time, and discuss.

Here is the trade I want to discuss about:

Pair : EUR/JPY

Position : Short

Open at : 161.749  @ 8/25/2008 - 11:36:59 AM

Closed at : 161.422 @ 8/25/2008 - 12:41:46 PM

Profit : 27 pips (about  300$ for a standard lot)

Although this was a winning trade, it is not an ideal one.

I am not a full time trader. I have my own full time job and I trade whenever I have time. This was the problem of this trade. Nothing is ideal in the world.

Let's see the chart for a second. This is 1h chart which includes the trade time and couple of hours more.

When I got on the computer, the pair has already started a big fall. After checking the trends on daily chart, I have decided that the move would go on. So I got in.

After a 35-40 pips fall, pair started to loose its speed. Now again, in a not so ideal world, where there are a lot of part time traders, I had to make a decision if I leave the trade open or not, before leaving the computer.

I have set the stop loss at +300$, and left the computer. When I came back, I saw that the stop loss was touched right after I left. The pair kept going down after it. But, you cannot always be in front of the screen to catch all.

There are many part time traders like myself, who cannot follow the charts for hours everyday. It is a part of the rules for us,  to make decisions with what we have, sometimes to be satisfied with less profit than what we could have made.

This is my first article about my trades. Let me know if you find it useful, give me your comments about how to make it more useful.

The first thing you need to do is to find some useful B2B web site in your trade, if you want to make good use of the internet to find business partners. To my knowledge, alibaba.com is one of the best places to go to find business partners from around the world. You can make a list of them.

Get registered with the web site. When you pay a visit to a B2B web site, you are asked to fill in some of the information to be a member of the web site, free or paid, as you like. When you want to make a good use of it, you need to be a paid member of the site. Just fill the forms required, and submit the form. Sometimes, you can log in at once, while some web sites require that you need to prove your information submitted. However, it usually can be done within 24 hours.

The next step is to fill in your product or any demands or any business lead that you want the others know. This kind of information will usually be proved by the web site, so you need to be patient to see your information appear on line. Once there is a requirement from another businessman, which can reach you by email or via the online communication tools, you need to reply to the requirement as soon as possible. Sometimes, the buyers will ask for samples. Under this situation, you need to know about the buyers first, to make sure that they are the right buyers for your products.

When you need to buy something, you can act as a buyer. Post your information on the web site. Later, you will find many sellers will contact you. Select the ones that you want to do business with, and sign contracts with them, if necessary.

Since there are many scams on the web site, you need to use your head to avoid being cheated. So, find the buyers or sellers with credit, and sign contracts. Also, you need to probe a little bit about your buyers or sellers. This is very important. Once you can use the B2B web sites well, you can expand your trade much faster. There will be more business partners for you to do business with. You need to be an expert of it if you want to use online trade method well. As we know, international trade, with the development of the globalization, it is becoming more and more active around the world. Though this kind of trade can be traced back to ancient times, and the very idea of the international trade is not quite different from the past, there are dramatic changes in this area.

If you want to do international trade, you need to be a student of so many things first. This experience is a must. Since the procedure of the international trade is much more complicated than the domestic trade, the costs and expenses on the same amount goods vary a lot. There are transportation fees, duty, risks, etc.

Therefore, you are suggested that you should take part in a class about international trade first, or follow some one who has been in this area for a long time, and let him or her be your tutor. You can learn a lot from him or she, definitely. Also, you can start as a salesman who sells products around the world, or a buyer agent, who helps purchase from abroad. Even you are a staff member of a trade company, you can learn from what you do.

If you have enough knowledge, and you have your channels, you can start your own international business. You will prepare samples for the buyers, attend international trade exhibitions, take part in international trade meetings etc. This will help to expand your network in your area.

Another thing to remind you is that you need to be very careful in this kind of trade. “You can never be careful enough.” From producing procedure to sending them to your buyers, there are too many things that can spoil the trade, and even can make you be fined by failing to accomplish the contract signed with the buyer. Even a few days delay will make you lose money instead of make some profit.

Learn about the trading rules of the countries that you have business. Pay attention to both political and economic environment of the countries, in case there are some events that can influence your business greatly. Last year, during the trade war between China and EU, millions of dollars loss occurred.