Read the excerpt from flannery o’connor’s "the life you save may be your own." he held the pose for almost fifty seconds and then he picked up his box and came on to the porch and dropped down on the bottom step. "lady," he said in a firm nasal voice, "i’d give a fortune to live where i could see me a sun do that every evening." keeping in mind the ending of the story, which best describes the irony of mr. shiftlet’s statement?
a) mr. shiftlet does not need a fortune, as he places no value on financial wealth or the security of having a permanent home.
b) instead of staying at the plantation, where he can see sunsets like these for the rest of his life, he runs away with mrs. crater’s car and money.
c) according to mrs. crater, the sun sets like this every evening, and if he stays at the plantation, mr. shiftlet will see this regularly.
d) no amount of money can ensure that an individual will witness a sunset to equal this one and will see it every single day.

Last year, western corporation had sales of $5 million, cost of goods sold of $3 million, operating expenses of $175,000 and depreciation of $125,000. the firm received $40,000 in dividend income and paid $200,000 in interest on loans. also, western sold stock during the year, receiving a $40,000 gain on stock owned 6 years, but losing $60,000 on stock owned 4 years. what is the firm's tax liability?

Onsider the following subscription behavior information from genie, a web site that provides tools for constructing a family tree (ancestor search). subscriptions cost $9.99 per month, but you are charged for the entire year at the time of purchase. there is a one-year minimum term when you sign up for the service. once purchased, subscriptions are set to renew automatically unless the subscriber cancels them. when a membership renews, it renews for a one-year term and again you are charged for the entire year. there are no variable costs associated with providing this service to an individual customer, but genie does engage in customer relationship activities that they believe will increase customer retention. these customer relationship activities cost genie about $10 per year per customer. based on a sample of 1000 customers that joined genie five years ago, near the time when the company was founded, they were able to determine how many of those customers remained subscribers in the second year, third year etc. based on this information, genie calculated the average annual retention rate to be 20%. genie uses an annual discount rate of 8%. a. last year, genie spent $10,000 placing advertisements on google. genie management believes that these advertisements were responsible for about 300 new subscribers. would you recommend to genie management that they purchase more google ads? b. suppose a newly-introduced loyalty program increases the number of customers that remained to 30%. does this new data change your answer to 9.a? c. do you have any hesitations or concerns about making recommendations to management based on your above estimate of customer lifetime value?

Bill dukes has $100,000 invested in a 2-stock portfolio. $62,500 is invested in stock x and the remainder is invested in stock y. x's beta is 1.50 and y's beta is 0.70. what is the portfolio's beta? do not round your intermediate calculations. round the final answer to 2 decimal places.