Ellie Enterprises - Deloitte Audit Case Essay Example for Free

Ellie Enterprises Deloitte Audit Case Essay Alternative Investments Among the five funds, three of the funds, Cloudy Retirement 500 Index, Cloudy High-Yield Hedge Strategies, and Cloudy Real Estate All starts, are alternative investments. Those three funds, as the case states, are not registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 or under the Securities Act of 1933. Thus, they are not offered to the investing public or are not been required to offer significant information to public. Moreover, the investment product held by Cloudy High-Yield Hedge Strategies is hedge fund. It is not traditional investment, such as stock or bonds, and is difficult to determine the current market value. Existence of the investments The confirmation did not provide sufficient competent audit evidences to support the existence of the investments; therefore, the engagement team must perform additional procedures. AU Session 332 states, â€Å"Confirmation of the holdings on a security-by-security basis typically would constitute adequate audit evidence with respect to the existence assertion.† The confirmation Union provided, which is on fund-by-fund basis, is not detail enough to typically be considered as adequate audit evidence. Moreover, the audited financial statement of the alternative investment, which could provide significant audit evidence, is not available before the issuance date of the auditors’ report on Ellie’s consolidated financial statements. This fact further proves that the engagement team needs to conduct substantive procedures. To assess the existence of the investments, following procedures can be performed. First, the engagement team can request transactions involved in each five of funds during the funds’ fiscal years. Actual transactions prove that Ellie’s investments have been held in those five different funds. Second, as the case states, the Committee periodically review plan performance and assets allocation. Therefore, the Committee must kept reports and memos regarding their plan performance or discussions with Union. The engagement team can collect documents related to Ellie’s investments in those five funds from Ellie and Union. Documents from the investor entity and trustee entity can prove the existence of investment activities. Moreover, by comparing those documents, the engagement team can test whether Union’s investment behavior has aligned with the strategies or  any adjustments made to the Ellie’s investments. An example can further illustrate. For example, the Committee decided to change the investment allocation. It is expected to see Union held documents which contain details showing the change of the strategy, specific investment that Union made, and the performance after adjustments. Such documents are sufficient evidence to prove that Ellie’s investments are in the funds and being appropriately management by Union. Lastly but no lease, obtaining related information directly from a third party may also be helpful in this case. The engagement team can directly contact five fund managers and inquire them whether Ellie’s investments were held in the funds. Value of the investments Simply confirming investments in the aggregate neither prove the existence of the investments, nor support the valuation of the investments. Furthermore, there is a time lag in reporting between the date of the financial statements of the funds and the date of the auditor’s report on Ellie’s consolidated financial statements; thus, the engagement team should perform additional procedures. Cloudy Retirement intermediate-Term U.S. Treasury To check the accuracy of the amount of share held by Ellie, the engagement team could request the fund manager to provide documents stating the amount of shares held by Ellie. This fund is registered with the SEC under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and under the Securities Act of 1933. Normally quoted market prices for such funds are available from sources such as financial publications, the exchanges, or NASDAQ. The engagement team could obtain the quoted market prices of the fund and check the prices with those on the confirmation. Cloudy High-Yield Hedge Strategies Since this fund is not registered with SEC under the Investment Company Act of 1940 or under the Securities Act of 1933, the engagement team is unable to get quoted market prices and compare with numbers on the confirmation. However, the engagement team could request a more detailed confirmation providing information of the underlying investments. Next step the engagement team can take is to evaluate the underlying investment and the reasonableness of the assumptions used in fair value calculation. Since  evaluation may involve a lot of specialized knowledge and techniques, the engagement team could employ a specialist. Under the situation that the engagement team did not receive a detailed confirmation of the underlying investments, there are several procedures can help with the assessment. First, the engagement team can collect previously audited financial statement for the funds to compare information the team obtains for this year. If Ellie didn’t make a lot of change on its investments and the performance of funds held by Ellie are stable in recent years, but investment balance of this year is very different from ones of previous years, the engagement team need to increase the risk and take a closer look at the evaluation of Ellie’s investment of this year. Other than previously audited financial statement for the funds, meeting minutes, memos, or summaries that document valuation or judgments made during managing the investment are evidence that auditor should collect and review to help assessment. Second, the engagement team can call or visit the auditors of Union to ask their opinion about the valuation of the investments that Union managed. Besides, the engagement team also could pick some sample transactions and then test the fair value measuremen t involved in those transactions to see whether the fair value measurement are reasonable or comply with industry standard. Last but not least, the auditing team can directly contact the five fund managers to check out Ellie’s balance.

Analysis of Gandhi Quote :: Mohandas Gandhi Essays

Revenge spreads like wild fire in the United States. It?s all one big chain reaction. One person says something about another person. The other retaliates. It?s a never ending cycle. ?An eye for an eye only makes the world blind? says Mohandas Gandhi. People are blinded by there own personal compulsions to seek revenge that they don?t see that they are perpetuating the hatred. An eye for an eye, you punch me ill punch you. You hurt my feelings ill hurt your feelings. Makes the world blind, the spell binding reaction keeps going until there is nothing left to fight for. Gangs in the inner cities are continuously attacking each other and seeking revenge. I?m blind and you?re blind. My friends are gone and your friends are gone. Not stopping the vicious cycle can only cause more harm. A former gang member who killed four people was put to death last night in California calling up the notions of retribution and redemption. How sad for those families whose loved ones died horrific deaths. And how sad for our society that we killed a man last night as well. Death is death. I have not walked in those family member's shoes. I don't know what it feels like to lose a loved one to violent murder. I cannot imagine their lives. I feel such sadness for their loss. The terrible truth is that five people have been killed. And now what do we do? If we keep killing each other what will that do?(Crossleft.org). There needs to be some one to start a new reaction. Some one who is the bigger person. Some one like Gandhi. Gandhi never resorted to violence as a solution. He used his mind and his words to fight his battles. Gandhi was arrested many times for his protest against violence(kamat.

A Passing of the Torch; Europe from 1500-1800

A Passing of the Torch; Europe from 1500-1800 When you step back and observe history from afar you’re missing part of the story. Observing the rise of Europe, you cannot simply take into account it happened. To understand the past you need to look into past, in documents and first-hand accounts to observe the underlining issues. To best explain the major shift in energy from the Indian Ocean Basin to the North Atlantic in 1500 to 1800 you have to observe the world and the people in context. Europe is an underdog to rise to the top.Having just experiencing the worst of the Black Death wiping out a majority of its populations, a tragedy in all senses, turned into a blessing. It sparked the scientific revolution; inspiring the Europeans to shift their views towards knowledge and discovery (Reilly, 434) . Sprinting ahead, Europe took the world by surprise. With their footing in a ‘new world’ the opportunities were endless. Exhausting their colonies at its full potenti al, with the cash crop, sugar they were able to revolutionize commerce into a representative model of modern trade.The Europeans weren’t the only ones making radical changes in the era. The Confucian Scholars were forcing Chinese to push inward and were eliminating commerce (Kristof, 551). Shifting of energy from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean; Europe gained power in the era through two main triggers, the scientific revolution and the developments of the sugar plantations in the new world. To better understand what’s happening with Europe in the 1500’s and later you need to also look back at the past and see where they have been and the events leading up to the beginning of a new era in European success and discovery.When you examine Europe today they are one of the world’s leaders, less than a thousand years ago the now prominent country was spiraling down, on the brink of demise. In the mid-fourteenth century the Bubonic Plague, also known as th e Black Death, originated somewhere in Asia and progressively spread though out Europe, the Near East and North Africa. Without doubt it became the greatest health disaster to date; mass graves were being dug to compensate for the dead. The Plague spread like wildfire wiping out an estimated one-fourth to one-third of the population (Reilly, 436).With no known source of treatment available or why the disease was spreading the Europeans turned to what they knew best, Religion. The Christian consensus was that God had bestowed the plague as a devastating judgment with the meaning of punishing the inflicted for his sins. People tried anything to avoid their seeming inevitable deaths, from walking around with incense to mask the wreaking stench of death, fleeing from their homes to find unaffiliated areas, or most commonly turning to God. The priest with the duty of serving the people, considered holy and without sin, were the main care takers of the stricken.Unsurprisingly, they too ne eded to be cared for, for they as well, contracted the disease joining their following to the death beds. We know today that the Black Death was not a punishment from god, but at the time, they had only to believe what the church told them (Reilly, 460). As priest died alongside the commoners their belief system was shattered. It was common of the time to believe what the church had told them and take it as true. For instance the church stated that the earth was the center of the universe, and it was heresy to state otherwise.With the church being proven wrong, people began to look outward for new knowledge. â€Å"Without visiting a deep ravine, one cannot understand how deep the earth is†¦ ,† just like Emperor Taizong said Europe began looking at the world to discover the truths; what is now known as the Scientific Revolution and the beginning of their restoration. Today, it is impossible to think about Modern Times and the way we live without thinking about science. We have pushed the scientific front to our limits, and now reap the benefits, from cars, phones, to healthcare. The scientific revolution truly lives up to its name.It truly was revolutionary, the standard of knowledge in the Modern world. The revolution can be traced back to Europe in a dispirit search for new understanding. Looking outward for answers from other countries such as the Muslim world and China, who already had beginnings of scientific thought, a sense of discovery and development; inspired the Europeans. In the year 1492, sailing in search of new discovery, specifically a new trade route to China, Columbus had stumbled on a seemingly endless supply of natural resources, land, and opportunity. It was called America.Entirely changing the way the ancient Greeks had depicted the world, helping enlighten the people that common knowledge was wrong (Goldstone 715-716). The Scientific Revolution and the desire to reach for new understanding that came with it pushed the European s. Now doubting all they had been taught before tested the fabrics of their society, the discovery of America was the most significant aspect of the shift of energy into the Atlantic Ocean. This was exactly what Europe needed. Now having the mass amounts of resources, to utilize the discovery they required manpower.Slaves were the perfect tool for procuring the workforces they required. Where better to look than Africa? Packed with able bodied men, the African tribes lacking in the ability to retaliate, found their freedom relinquished; crammed into unsanitary, overcrowded slave ships (Mintz, 47). Martinique, a sugar plantation located on the island Lesser Antilles located in the Caribbean Sea, is an example of where they could have landed (Martinique, 628). In the drawing, Field Gang, you can see the sugar plantation, a large field being worked by a multitude of black workers and one controlling master watching over them, the multitude of slaves.To compensate for the disparity in t he work force, the plantation owners had revolutionized the process in which they operated their plantations. Specialized tasks were given to each worker to increase efficiency. This specialization resembled the earliest forms of assembly line. However, instead of the machines we have today, they had an agro energy focus. This means that the plantations shifted toward the use of human energy over the use of machinery (In Class).Unknowingly the systems used on plantations translated directly to the factories which began to pop up in the urban cities. At the end of the Black Death, Europe was a country in chaotic state. They were looking for a change and this desire paved the way. With a lack of populous, the lords of the current system, serfdom collapsed with little to no one to work the fields. Unlike their competitors Europe moved into the cities in search of opportunity (In Class). Drawing from their experiences in the sugar plantation, and the slave trade the Europeans became the frontier in production.Springing up in the industrial cities, factories played a large part of the shifting of energy to Europe, with them, goods and services could be provided with a significantly lower cost and at more efficient rates. This without a doubt gave them an edge over the competition. With the coming times, Europe in the sense of the world scope began to break into the picture. The Transatlantic Trade, shipping of goods between Europe and its colonies, set the stage for the shift of energy to the Atlantic Ocean. Allowed access to the resources in the ‘New World’ causality benefited the colonizers with the cheapest production of desirables.It also set for a sense of manifest destiny for the country (In Class). In conclusion this marked the beginnings of modern society developing. The question of the era is why Europe? A country stricken by plague, the collapse of feudalism, and lacking in internal stability in the form of natural resources or people; happen s to be the perfect candidate. The desire for knowledge and their desire to look outward fit the bill perfectly. To make the circumstances even more perfect China lost its edge in the commerce propelling Europe ahead.David Christian writes in his essay World History in Context â€Å"One of the aims of world history is to see the history of human beings as a single, coherent story, rather than as a collection of the particular stories of different communities. † When looking at the rise of Europe as a superpower in the world, you can’t focus on the singular efforts and happenings of Europe. The rest of the world had an influence on the future. The shift in energy wasn’t only accountable to the success of Europe, notably looking at China you can see the ties between the two. For Centuries China had been a leader in commerce and trade.They assembled the largest fleet known to date consisting of over 3500 ships which had the capabilities to sail across the Pacific e nabling the most secure and cost efficient form of trade. The Merchants of this era were prospering but all good things have to come to an end. After the death of the Yongle Empire in 1424, a struggle for power out broke internally. Under suspicious circumstances the successor to the empire who was selected to rule the country died. The Confusion Scholars ceased control of the country introducing new policy and deep-rooted idealisms of their ancestors.Trying to turn the focus of the country inward by 1500 they dissembled the entire fleet, destroyed the records, and made it illegal for any ship to be constructed with more than two masts. By 1525 any ocean going ship had to be destroyed. Along with the disappearance of a great Chinese fleet the ports in India, it marked one of history’s biggest lost opportunities. Without the ability of merchants to export their goods, they fell from their former glory. To add burden to this the Scholars viewed them as â€Å"necessary evils at best† (Kristoff, 555-556).Also their country already vastly spread out over thousands of miles of land, contained almost all the necessary natural resources to self-sustain itself and found no need to search elsewhere for goods. Europe on the other hand, lacked in many natural resources, which cause the need for colonization and expansion of their limits. China’s unwillingness to become a global market, unlike Europe, hurt their chances of being at the top of the era (In Class). Instigating the shift in power during the era in question, the scientific revolution and developments made in the New World, lead to a drastic change in history.Imagine if Europe had not been affected by the Bubonic Plague. We might never have explored outwards to the Americas leaving the Native population to expand. It serves evidence to the fact that changing parts of the past would alter the future. If it wasn’t for the fact that Europe had rose to power. It is not irrational to assum e many of the discoveries made in this time would differ. We live in the world we do today, because the shift in energy brought about from the scientific revolution and the developments with the sugar plantations, lead to the passing of the torch from China to Europe.

The Internal and External Conflicts of Willy Loman Essay

Individuals explore their responses to conditions of internal and external conflicts throughout literature. Going in depth to a character allows the reader to better understand that character’s internal and external conflicts. Arthur Miller uses this technique in several of his plays, including Death of a Salesman. Miller portrays the character of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman through his internal and external conflicts. The internal conflict begins with Willy’s expectations for his sons and The Woman. Willy struggles throughout the play with having extremely high expectations for his sons, Happy and Biff. Happy and Willy get along well because they are most alike of the two sons. Happy has the same materialistic mindset as†¦show more content†¦The reader can see this when The Woman says, â€Å"I’ll put you right through to the buyers,† (Miller 39). Thus, Willy has multiple expectations for his sons and The Woman. The internal conflict continues with Willy’s dreams. The beginning of the play tells us that it is about dreams (Eisinger 2). Willy dreams of the American dream and family dreams. Willy characterizes the American dream as success, which creates conflict within himself. Willy longs for the dream so much that he focuses solely on achieving this goal that he loses desire for anything less. Willy interprets his desire for success when he defines Dave Singleton: And he was eighty-four years old and he’d drummed merchandise in thirty-one states. And old Dave he’d go up to his room, y’understand, put on his green velvet slippers – I’ll never forget – and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without ever leaving his room at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. (Miller 81) Dave Singleton is a model for Willy because he shows that a salesman can be remembered, loved, and helped in many different places in the country (Eisinger 4). 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