Tidbits on February 3, 2009
Bob Jensen
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On May 14, 2006 I retired from Trinity University after a long
and wonderful career as an accounting professor in four universities. I was
generously granted "Emeritus" status by the Trustees of Trinity University. My
wife and I now live in a cottage in the White Mountains of New Hampshire ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm
Bob Jensen's blogs and various threads on many topics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
(Also scroll down to the table at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ )
In case you're wondering what winter is like in the White
Mountains in February
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Auntie Bev forwarded the following picture of
one cohort pleading for early stimulus checks, hopefully before
springtime:
Bailout Game Humor (actually an entertaining chronology of
events to date more than a game) ---
http://www.thebailoutgame.us/
Bob Jensen's hints on how to blow up this game ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
The "Stimulus Act" really
is a euphemism for a "Socialist Revolution"
On Saturday I was having fun and laughs while playing The Bailout Game above.
Then on Sunday I read the most discouraging article of my entire life. Suddenly
I realized that the phrase "Stimulus Act" really is a euphemism for a "Socialist
Revolution" that takes place without any taxation, government debt, or civil
war. And the way it is evolving is so simple --- why didn't I think of that?
Very soon Uncle Sam will own Wall Street, all U.S. banks, General Motors,
Caterpillar, Mobil-Exxon, ConAgra, all the K-12 schools, the colleges, the
physicians, the hospitals, the news media, the accounting firms, nearly all our real
estate, etc. The last to go will be law firms, but that's only because lawyers
control all three branches of Federal and state governments.
How can such a revolution take place without oppressive taxes, massive
borrowing, and bloodshed? The answer is really so simple that no true Western
scholar could dream of such a brilliant way to finance a revolution. For years
economic theorists have had it all wrong about taxes, debt, and sacrifice. The
simple, albeit amazingly simple, solution was invented by the Zimbabwe School of
Finance. It works in phases:
-
Poison the banks with hundreds of millions Main
Street's toxic
fraudulent investments that are virtually worthless to a point where banks
cannot survive on their own with these investments and the stock market
cannot recover without viable banks. It's so hard to blame all the crooks on
every Main Street in every city and town.
-
Have the government take over the banking system of the
entire nation. It's called Nationalization of the Banking System.
-
Install a money printing press in every branch of every
bank in the nation.
-
When anybody with a sob story wants money, simply print
whatever they request and, above all, don't burden them with obligations to
pay back so they don't become disgruntled voters.
If we overlook his human rights abuses,
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe really deserves the 2009 Nobel Prize in
Economics since his monetary theory underlies the entire U.S. 2009 Stimulus
Bill. Instead the 2009 Nobel Prize will probably go to Lawrence Summers who now
supervises economic taxing, borrowing, and spending of the United States.
Summers did not invent the Zimbabwe Theory of Economics, but he's become the
major implementer.
Zimbabwe's central
bank will introduce a 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar banknote, worth about $33 on
the black market, to try to ease desperate cash shortages, state-run media said
on Friday.
KyivPost, January 16, 2009 ---
http://www.kyivpost.com/world/33522
The women at Harvard University were correct all along. The
most dangerous man in the entire world is Lawrence Summers ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers
Lawrence Summers biggest accomplishment will eventually be
to fund a U.S. national health care plan. Canadians have such a plan that they
finance with taxes. Over half of the average Canadian's income each year is
taxed to finance nationalized health care. Larry Summers has a better plan to
finance it without taxes or borrowing. He really is brilliant.
George W. Bush was a spendthrift president who stuck us
with the Medicare Drug Plan, but he was stupid to insist on borrowing to finance
his budget deficits. Bush should've adopted the Mugabe/Summers plan early on to
simply print trillions upon trillions of dollars without taxes or borrowing.
Absolutely brilliant! Why didn't I think of that before now for the bailout
instead of thinking the big and bald Hank Paulson would have a better solution?
He didn't!
What went so terribly wrong in three months time?
Good Bank, Bad Bank by Dr. Seuss ---
http://thereformedbroker.com/2009/01/29/good-bank-bad-bank-by-dr-seuss/
I watched the show on October 19, 2008, in a CBS Sixty
Minutes TV module, when Leslie Stahl interviewed the CEO of Bank of America, Ken
Lewis. Mr. Lewis was charming and forceful when he bragged heavily that BofA was
much stronger than the other failing banks and was only accepting some Bailout
money as a “patriotic duty.” He said BofA really had no need for Bailout cash
since his truly giant international bank was in such strong shape even after the
subprime scandal first made the news.
Bank of America indeed no longer held toxic mortgage
investments before the subprime scandal broke, meaning that any such mortgages
and related toxic paper that BofA or its subsidiaries brokered were quickly sold
for a profit to CitiBank, Fannie, Freddie, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers,
Merrill Lynch, and
other such buyers of deadly mortgage paper.
Bank of America was destined to become almost the largest
and certainly the most profitable bank in the world!
Buying Countrywide Financial, the nation’s biggest culprit
for generating fraudulent subprime mortgages, was one dumb Lewis decision.
Millions of former
home owners are poised to sue Countrywide. But BofA purchases got even
dumb and dumber. BofA became further infected with Merrill Lynch’s toxic
investments and losing operations. BofA impulsively bought a disreputable sick
horse without first consulting an expert veterinarian ---
http://www.bankofamerica.com/merrill/
Bank of America’s Suicide Dealings
BofA bought out Merrill Lynch after one weekend of
negotiation:
This will make an interesting classroom case for accounting, finance, and
business policy courses around the world
“BofA's Lewis: Accepting bailout money was patriotic,” by Peter Moreira,
Dealscape, October 20, 2008 ---
http://www.thedeal.com/dealscape/2008/10/bofas_lewis_accepting_bailout.php
And Stahl focused
primarily on the Oct. 13 meeting when Paulson summoned the heads of the nine
largest U.S. banks to Washington and told them that the government would invest
in them all, so no bank would be stigmatized as a weak bank. In fact, Stahl
said, Paulson told his former peers (he once headed Goldman, Sachs & Co.) that
it was their patriotic duty to participate.
"I don't remember if he
used the word, but there was an element to that," Lewis replied, "that this was
the right thing for the American financial system, and therefore it was the
right thing for America." Lewis added that he agrees with the secretary's
sentiment that it was a patriotic move.
The investment by the
government will probably last three to five years, after which Lewis expects the
government will sell out. And the move is conditional on no executives at the
banks making more than $500,000 per year, unless the institution pays additional
taxes.
Lewis, a critic of
outlandish executive compensation even though he earned $25 million last year,
also said he supports the restrictions on salary. In fact, when one banker began
to argue with Paulson about the compensation restrictions, Lewis cut his
competitor short, telling him he was out of his mind.
"The importance of this
deal getting done versus these elements of executive comp were just out of
sync," Lewis said. "I mean, this was so much more important. And all of us can
take a little less money."
The final segment of the
report highlighted how BofA pounced on Merrill Lynch & Co., buying the Wall
Street titan for $50 billion after one weekend of negotiation. Does Lewis regret
not waiting for Merrill to go to the wall and buying the company for less money?
"Some think that we
should've waited till Monday and see if they would've gone bankrupt," he said.
"Some think we would've gotten it for, you know, dirt cheap. But my point is,
you would have a tarnished brand. You would've had chaos. You would've had a
court ruling over all the sale of assets. And it was worth it to us to pay a
more market price so that we could not have that happen."
-
Now in early 2009, Bank of America is likely to be
nationalized along with other largest banks in the United States?
What went so terribly wrong at BofA over the past three months?
Regulators are split
on what to do next. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is backing a plan
to create what it calls an aggregator bank, which would buy up the loans of BofA,
Citigroup and the rest of our now troubled system, theoretically putting an end
to the escalating losses eating away at the banks' capital. But if the
government buys those assets at current market rates, banks would be forced to
take immediate losses on the sales, doing more harm than if the government just
left the troubled loans where they are. Sources say the Federal Reserve would
prefer to let the banks keep the loans and troubled bonds for now and instead
provide the banks with insurance policies guaranteeing that the government will
swallow a good deal of future credit losses. But a similar deal that the Fed
struck with Citi did little to boost that company's stock or stave off fears
that it may soon go under. That's why a small but growing number of people are
starting to talk about nationalization. Speaker of
the House Nancy Pelosi recently said nationalization, or something close to it,
is a better solution than just buying bad assets ...
"Why Your Bank is Broke," by Stephen Gandel, Time Magazine, February 9,
2009, Beginning on Page 23 ---
Click
Here
But do the math, and you can begin to
understand how really botched this bailout has been. Since October, the
government has deposited $165 billion into the accounts of the nation's
eight
largest banks. Yet those same financial firms are
now worth $418 billion less than they were four months ago, and the
Congressional Budget Office estimates that the government's preferred shares
are worth at least $20 billion less. In Wall Street terms, that's throwing
good money after bad. All told, the government's annualized rate of return
on its investment in the nation's largest banks is -1,096%. That's well
beyond Bernie Madoff territory; he topped out at a mere -100%. (See
pictures of the demise of Bernie Madoff.)
So how could $438 billion — $418 billion
of their money and $20 billion of ours — go poof, just like that? Here's the
easiest explanation: our banking system has sprung a leak.
. . .
TARP does nothing to patch the hole in the
banking system. And it certainly doesn't do anything to encourage banks to
make more loans. Yes, banks have gotten nearly $300 billion in money from
the government, and that's a lot of dough. But it's not free dough. In
return for federal cash, the government has taken preferred-stock shares as
the firm's markers. Unlike common stock, which is the kind you or I would
buy from a broker, preferreds have to eventually be paid back, so they are
really loans, not additional capital. (See
which country has the best bailout plans.)
Say a bank has $5 in capital and $100 in
loans. Now the government gives the bank an additional $100 in preferred
shares and says, "Go make more loans." Well, the bank might then have $200
in loans, but it still has only $5 in common shareholders' equity. The
result: if just 2.5% of its loans go bad, the bank's shareholders are wiped
out. Wisely, the largest banks in the nation lent less in the fourth quarter
of 2008 than in the previous three months — a strategy that has drawn some
complaints. But that hasn't removed the pressure on their shares. That's
because the banks have had to continue to take loan losses. And banks don't
have the option to pass those losses off on the new money they got from the
government. They have to write down their common stockholders' equity first.
And as that capital falls, so go the bank's shares. Some are alarmingly
close to zero.
No bank's stock has fallen more in value
during the past four months than Bank of America's. The combined value of
its shares is now $37 billion. That's $123 billion less than they were worth
at the end of September. In the third quarter, BofA was forced to write down
$4.4 billion in loans, or about 1.8% of its loan portfolio. Compared with
what some of its competitors wrote down, that wasn't a heck of a lot;
Citigroup, for instance, had a $13.2 billion charge in the same quarter,
primarily related to loan losses. But the relatively small loss took BofA's
thin tangible equity, the type of capital that matters most to shareholders,
down to a ratio of just 2.6% of loans, according to FBR. By that measure,
Bofa was a weaker bank than any of its rivals, including Citigroup. But
since the market was so focused on bad loans and the charge-offs banks had
to take, no one seemed to notice BofA's faults.
That is, until the fourth quarter. In
mid-September 2008, in a deal pushed by regulators, BofA agreed to buy
Merrill Lynch. The acquisition actually boosted BofA's capital ratios, but
it also added losses to an already fragile capital structure; Merrill Lynch
lost $15 billion in the fourth quarter alone. Knowledge of the impending
losses forced BofA CEO Ken Lewis to ask the government for an additional $20
billion in TARP funds — on top of the $25 billion it had already received —
as well as about $100 billion in loan guarantees. Without the government
assistance, BofA says, it couldn't have closed the merger.
The Merrill losses, which weren't publicly
revealed until early January, have angered shareholders, some of whom have
sued the company for not informing them sooner. And last week, the losses
also led Lewis to ask Merrill's top executive,
John Thain, to resign for failing to keep BofA
officials apprised of his firm's bottom-line problems. Thain says Lewis knew
all along. (See
pictures of TIME's Wall Street covers.)
. . .
Regulators are split on what to do next.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is backing a plan to create what
it calls an aggregator bank, which would buy up the loans of BofA, Citigroup
and the rest of our now troubled system, theoretically putting an end to the
escalating losses eating away at the banks' capital. But if the government
buys those assets at current market rates, banks would be forced to take
immediate losses on the sales, doing more harm than if the government just
left the troubled loans where they are. Sources say the Federal Reserve
would prefer to let the banks keep the loans and troubled bonds for now and
instead provide the banks with insurance policies guaranteeing that the
government will swallow a good deal of future credit losses. But a similar
deal that the Fed struck with Citi did little to boost that company's stock
or stave off fears that it may soon go under.
That's why a small but growing number of
people are starting to talk about nationalization. Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi recently said nationalization, or something close to it, is a
better solution than just buying bad assets, because if the government
takeovers succeed, then taxpayers get to keep the profits when they
eventually resell the banks. But if the government doesn't turn a
nationalized bank around, it could be very costly to taxpayers.
For the rest of the article ---
Click
Here
Jensen Comment
So why can't the government simply buy up the banks (with printed money so
there are no increases in taxes and national debt), turn things around, and make
the banks private once again in the land of milk and honey?
The reason bluntly is that every cohort in the United
States from General Motors to the 50 states to college campuses and now to ACORN have
already been promised hundreds of billions in stimulus money with election
guarantees of no new taxes to pay for such things. The U.S. is maxed out on its
national debt, so the only answer lately has been to print billions of dollars
under the Zimbabwe Theory of Finance. Yes, our government has already been
financing some of the Bailout with billions of this type of printed money ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#NationalDebt
Who wants to invest in shares
of a denationalizing bank bursting with Zimbabwe dollars?
Barney’s
Bank is here to stay until China cashes in its share of our national debt and
buys out the entire United States.
Barney Frank now owns Fannie and
Freddie, so he might as well add our nation’s bank to his collection. It will
likely remain so until China decides not to roll over its share of our national
debt and, thereby, purchases nearly all of what was once the United States of
America.
A democracy cannot
exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the
voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.
From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the
most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always
collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Alexander Tyler. 1787 - Tyler was a Scottish history professor that had
this to say about 2000 years after "The Fall of the Athenian Republic" and about
the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution.
As quoted at
http://www.babylontoday.com/national_debt_clock.htm (where the debt clock in
real time is a few months behind)
The "Stimulus Bill" has already gone too far after cohorts in the United
States discovered "they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury."
There's no turning back. The Stimulus Bill morphed into a Perfect (Stimulus)
Storm for a socialist revolution in the United States. Although they did
probably not intend to be the members of the first
Politburo of the United
States, the new Politburo will be comprised of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry
Reid, Chris Dodd, and Barney Frank. Egad! This group cannot say no to anybody
with a sob story!
We'll take Manhattan
the Bronx and Staten
Island too.
Lyrics by Karl Marx and Score by Vladimir Lenin
Sadly your retirement funds will probably head toward the deep south in terms
of real, not Zimbabwe-like dollar, spending power.
"Six Errors on the Path to the Financial Crisis," by Alan S. Blinder,
The New York Times, January 24, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/business/economy/25view.html?_r=1&ref=business
My list of errors has
six whoppers, in chronologically order. I omit
mistakes that became clear only in hindsight,
limiting myself to those where prominent voices
advocated a different course at the time. Had these
six choices been different, I believe the inevitable
bursting of the housing bubble would have caused far
less harm.
WILD
DERIVATIVES
In 1998, when Brooksley E.
Born, then chairwoman of the
Commodity Futures Trading Commission,
sought to extend its
regulatory reach into the derivatives world, top
officials of the Treasury Department, the Federal
Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission
squelched the idea. While her specific plan may not
have been ideal, does anyone doubt that the
financial turmoil would have been less severe if
derivatives trading had acquired a zookeeper a
decade ago?
SKY-HIGH LEVERAGE
The second error came in 2004, when the S.E.C. let
securities firms raise their leverage sharply.
Before then, leverage of 12 to 1 was typical;
afterward, it shot up to more like 33 to 1. What
were the S.E.C. and the heads of the firms thinking?
Remember, under 33-to-1 leverage, a mere 3 percent
decline in asset values wipes out a company. Had
leverage stayed at 12 to 1, these firms wouldn’t
have grown as big or been as fragile.
A SUBPRIME SURGE
The next error came in stages,
from 2004 to 2007, as subprime lending grew from a
small corner of the mortgage market into a large,
dangerous one. Lending standards fell disgracefully,
and dubious transactions became common.
Why wasn’t this
insanity stopped? There are two answers, and each
holds a lesson. One is that bank regulators were
asleep at the switch. Entranced by laissez faire-y
tales, they ignored warnings from those like Edward
M. Gramlich, then a Fed governor, who saw the
problem brewing years before the fall.
The other answer
is that many of the worst subprime mortgages
originated outside the banking system, beyond the
reach of any federal regulator. That regulatory hole
needs to be plugged.
FIDDLING ON FORECLOSURES
The government’s continuing failure to do anything
large and serious to limit foreclosures is tragic.
The broad contours of the foreclosure tsunami were
clear more than a year ago — and people like
Representative
Barney Frank, Democrat of
Massachusetts, and
Sheila C. Bair, chairwoman
of the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation,
were sounding alarms.
Yet the Treasury
and Congress fiddled while homes burned. Why?
Free-market ideology, denial and an unwillingness to
commit taxpayer funds all played roles. Sadly, the
problem should now be much smaller than it is.
LETTING
LEHMAN
GO
The next whopper came in
September, when Lehman Brothers, unlike
Bear Stearns before it,
was allowed to fail. Perhaps it was a case of
misjudgment by officials who deemed Lehman neither
too big nor too entangled — with other financial
institutions — to fail. Or perhaps they wanted to
make an offering to the moral-hazard gods.
Regardless, everything fell apart after Lehman.
People in the
market often say they can make money under any set
of rules, as long as they know what they are. Coming
just six months after Bear’s rescue, the Lehman
decision tossed the presumed rule book out the
window. If Bear was too big to fail, how could
Lehman, at twice its size, not be? If Bear was too
entangled to fail, why was Lehman not?
After Lehman went
over the cliff, no financial institution seemed
safe. So lending froze, and the economy sank like a
stone. It was a colossal error, and many people said
so at the time.
TARP’S DETOUR
The final major error is mismanagement of the
Troubled Asset Relief Program,
the $700 billion bailout fund.
As I wrote here last month, decisions of
Henry M. Paulson Jr.,
the former Treasury secretary, about using the
TARP’s first $350 billion were an inconsistent mess.
Instead of pursuing the TARP’s intended purposes, he
used most of the funds to inject capital into banks
— which he did poorly.
To
illustrate what might have been, consider Fed
programs to buy
commercial paper and
mortgage-backed securities. These facilities do
roughly what TARP was supposed to do: buy troubled
assets. And they have breathed some life into those
moribund markets. The lesson for the new Treasury
secretary is clear: use TARP money to buy troubled
assets and to mitigate foreclosures.
Six fateful
decisions — all made the wrong way. Imagine what the
world would be like now if the housing bubble burst
but those six things were different: if derivatives
were traded on organized exchanges, if leverage were
far lower, if subprime lending were smaller and done
responsibly, if strong actions to limit foreclosures
were taken right away, if Lehman were not allowed to
fail, and if the TARP funds were used as directed.
All of this was
possible. And if history had gone that way, I
believe that the financial world and the economy
would look far less grim than they do today.
Jensen Comment
Alan Blinder missed some whoppers.
- The SEC was authorized to regulate investment banking and consistently
failed to do so through several crises, including the dot-com crisis of the
1990s and credit default swap crisis commencing in 2008 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#SEC
Also so see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Bailout
This is an admitted failure of SEC Directors from Arthur Levitt though
Christopher Cox.
- The Federal Reserve failed in regulating investment banks. Alan
Greenspan belatedly admitted that he was largely at fault.
"‘I made a mistake,’ admits Greenspan," by Alan Beattie and James
Politi, Financial Times, October 23, 2008 ---
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aee9e3a2-a11f-11dd-82fd-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1
“I made a mistake in
presuming that the self-interest of organisations, specifically banks
and others, was such that they were best capable of protecting their own
shareholders,” he said.
In the second of two days of tense
hearings on Capitol Hill, Henry Waxman, chairman of the House of
Representatives, clashed with current and former regulators and with
Republicans on his own committee over blame for the financial crisis.
Mr Waxman said Mr Greenspan’s Federal
Reserve – along with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the US
Treasury – had propagated “the prevailing attitude in Washington... that
the market always knows best.”
Mr Waxman blamed the Fed for failing
to curb aggressive lending practices, the SEC for allowing credit rating
agencies to operate under lax standards and the Treasury for opposing
“responsible oversight” of financial derivatives.
Christopher Cox, chairman of the
Securities and Exchange Commission, defended himself, saying that
virtually no one had foreseen the meltdown of the mortgage market, or
the inadequacy of banking capital standards in preventing the collapse
of institutions such as Bear Stearns.
Mr Waxman accused the SEC chairman of
being wise after the event. “Mr Cox has come in with a long list of
regulations he wants... But the reality is, Mr Cox, you weren’t doing
that beforehand.”
Mr Cox blamed the fact that
Congressional responsibility was divided between the banking and
financial services committees, which regulate banking, insurance and
securities, and the agriculture committees, which regulate futures.
“This jurisdictional split threatens
to for ever stand in the way of rationalising the regulation of these
products and markets,” he said.
Mr Greenspan accepted that the crisis
had “found a flaw” in his thinking but said that the kind of heavy
regulation that could have prevented the crisis would have damaged US
economic growth. He described the past two decades as a “period of
euphoria” that encouraged participants in the financial markets to
misprice securities.
He had wrongly assumed that lending
institutions would carry out proper surveillance of their
counterparties, he said. “I had been going for 40 years with
considerable evidence that it was working very well”.
Continued in the article
Jensen Comment
In other words, he assumed the agency theory model that corporate
employees, as agents of their owners and creditors, would act hand and
hand in the best interest for themselves and their investors. But agency
theory has a flaw in that it does not understand Peter Pan.
Peter Pan, the manager of Countrywide Financial on Main
Street, thought he had little to lose by selling a fraudulent mortgage
to Wall Street. Foreclosures would be Wall Street’s problems and not his
local bank’s problems. And he got his nice little commission on the sale
of the Emma Nobody’s mortgage for $180,000 on a house worth less than
$100,000 in foreclosure. And foreclosure was almost certain in Emma’s
case, because she only makes $12,000 waitressing at the Country Café. So
what if Peter Pan fudged her income a mite in the loan application along
with the fudged home appraisal value? Let Wall Street or Fat Fannie or
Foolish Freddie worry about Emma after closing the pre-approved mortgage
sale deal. The ultimate loss, so thinks Peter Pan, will be spread over
millions of wealthy shareholders of Wall Street investment banks. Peter
Pan is more concerned with his own conventional mortgage on his precious
house just two blocks south of Main Street. This is what
happens when risk is spread even farther than Tinkerbell can fly!
Read about the extent of cheating, sleaze,
and subprime sex on Main Street in
Appendix U.
3. U.S. auditing standards explicitly require
careful estimation of bad debts. The auditing firms failed the world when
auditing sub-prime mortgage receivables, the collateralized debt obligation
(CDOs) investments, and the credit derivative instruments sold to insure
those investments? Where were the auditing firms that were paid millions to
audit commercial and investment banks as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mack?
See
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#AuditFirms
4. Subprime: Borne of Sleaze, Bribery, and Lies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Sleaze
Much of this began with good intentions to make housing credit available to
minorities and poor people in general, but politicians figured out how to
play Robin Hood with taxpayer money and used Congressional power over Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mack to do just that.
5. Congress, perhaps intentionally under the leadership of President
Obama, is now turning the economic crisis into a perfect storm to bailout
spendthrift state governments, ailing companies and unions such as American
automobile manufacturers and the United Auto Workers, most anybody else with
a sob story.
Cartoon link forwarded by David
Fordham
http://blogs.indystar.com/varvelblog/archives/2008/11/feeding_time.html
|
The problem
with the current bailout is that the government may be giving money
to companies that don't have a long-term future: zombies. On paper,
for example, the Treasury Dept. says it invests Troubled Asset
Relief Program (TARP) money only in "healthy banks—banks that are
considered viable without government investment" because "they are
best positioned to increase the flow of credit in their
communities." That's the right idea. In practice, though, the
criteria aren't so stringent. Banks like Citigroup still aren't
strong enough to lend. "The bailout model is socialism," says R.
Christopher Whalen, senior vice-president for consultancy
Institutional Risk Analytics. He advocates selling failed
institutions in pieces, as was done to resolve the savings and loan
crisis in the late '80s and early '90s. In fact, Washington may be
moving toward something like that with Citigroup. When a big
employer runs into trouble, it's tempting to keep it going at any
cost. Economists call this "lemon socialism"—the investment of
public money in the worst companies rather than the best. The
impulse is misguided, says Yale University economics professor
Eduardo M. Engel. "You don't want to protect the jobs," he says.
"What you want to protect is workers' income during the transition
from one job to another."
Peter Coy, "A New Menace
to the Economy: 'Zombie' Debtors Call them "zombie" companies. Many
more has-been companies will be feeding off taxpayers, investors,
and workers—sapping the lifeblood of healthier rivals," Business
Week, January 15, 2008 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_04/b4117024316675.htm?link_position=link2
|
What prolongs major economic depressions?
What really raised the United States our of the Great Depression of
the 1930s?
What is different about 2009 versus 1932?"How Government
Prolonged the Depression: Policies that decreased
competition in product and labor markets were especially
destructive," by Harold L. Cole and Lee E. OHanian, The Wall
Street Journal, February 2, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123353276749137485.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
The New Deal is widely perceived to
have ended the Great Depression, and this has led many to
support a "new" New Deal to address the current crisis. But the
facts do not support the perception that FDR's policies
shortened the Depression, or that similar policies will pull our
nation out of its current economic downturn.
The goal of the New Deal was to get
Americans back to work. But the New Deal didn't restore
employment. In fact, there was even less work on average during
the New Deal than before FDR took office. Total hours worked per
adult, including government employees, were 18% below their 1929
level between 1930-32, but were 23% lower on average during the
New Deal (1933-39). Private hours worked were even lower after
FDR took office, averaging 27% below their 1929 level, compared
to 18% lower between in 1930-32.
Even comparing hours worked at the end
of 1930s to those at the beginning of FDR's presidency doesn't
paint a picture of recovery. Total hours worked per adult in
1939 remained about 21% below their 1929 level, compared to a
decline of 27% in 1933. And it wasn't just work that remained
scarce during the New Deal. Per capita consumption did not
recover at all, remaining 25% below its trend level throughout
the New Deal, and per-capita nonresidential investment averaged
about 60% below trend. The Great Depression clearly continued
long after FDR took office.
Why wasn't the Depression followed by a
vigorous recovery, like every other cycle? It should have been.
The economic fundamentals that drive all expansions were very
favorable during the New Deal. Productivity grew very rapidly
after 1933, the price level was stable, real interest rates were
low, and liquidity was plentiful. We have calculated on the
basis of just productivity growth that employment and investment
should have been back to normal levels by 1936. Similarly, Nobel
Laureate Robert Lucas and Leonard Rapping calculated on the
basis of just expansionary Federal Reserve policy that the
economy should have been back to normal by 1935.
So what stopped a blockbuster
recovery from ever starting?
The New Deal. Some New Deal policies certainly benefited the
economy by establishing a basic social safety net through Social
Security and unemployment benefits, and by stabilizing the
financial system through deposit insurance and the Securities
Exchange Commission. But others violated the most basic economic
principles by suppressing competition, and setting prices and
wages in many sectors well above their normal levels. All told,
these antimarket policies choked off powerful recovery forces
that would have plausibly returned the economy back to trend by
the mid-1930s.
The most damaging policies were those
at the heart of the recovery plan, including The National
Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which tossed aside the nation's
antitrust acts and permitted industries to collusively raise
prices provided that they shared their newfound monopoly rents
with workers by substantially raising wages well above
underlying productivity growth. The NIRA covered over 500
industries, ranging from autos and steel, to ladies hosiery and
poultry production. Each industry created a code of "fair
competition" which spelled out what producers could and could
not do, and which were designed to eliminate "excessive
competition" that FDR believed to be the source of the
Depression.
These codes distorted the economy by
artificially raising wages and prices, restricting output, and
reducing productive capacity by placing quotas on industry
investment in new plants and equipment. Following government
approval of each industry code, industry prices and wages
increased substantially, while prices and wages in sectors that
weren't covered by the NIRA, such as agriculture, did not. We
have calculated that manufacturing wages were as much as 25%
above the level that would have prevailed without the New Deal.
And while the artificially high wages created by the NIRA
benefited the few that were fortunate to have a job in those
industries, they significantly depressed production and
employment, as the growth in wage costs far exceeded
productivity growth.
These policies continued even after the
NIRA was declared unconstitutional in 1935. There was no
antitrust activity after the NIRA, despite overwhelming FTC
evidence of price-fixing and production limits in many
industries, and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 gave
unions substantial collective-bargaining power. While not
permitted under federal law, the sit-down strike, in which
workers were occupied factories and shut down production, was
tolerated by governors in a number of states and was used with
great success against major employers, including General Motors
in 1937.
The downturn of 1937-38 was preceded by
large wage hikes that pushed wages well above their NIRA levels,
following the Supreme Court's 1937 decision that upheld the
constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act. These
wage hikes led to further job loss, particularly in
manufacturing. The "recession in a depression" thus was not the
result of a reversal of New Deal policies, as argued by some,
but rather a deepening of New Deal polices that raised wages
even further above their competitive levels, and which further
prevented the normal forces of supply and demand from restoring
full employment. Our research indicates that New Deal labor and
industrial policies prolonged the Depression by seven years.
By the late 1930s, New Deal policies
did begin to reverse, which coincided with the beginning of the
recovery. In a 1938 speech, FDR acknowledged that the American
economy had become a "concealed cartel system like Europe,"
which led the Justice Department to reinitiate antitrust
prosecution. And union bargaining power was significantly
reduced, first by the Supreme Court's ruling that the sit-down
strike was illegal, and further reduced during World War II by
the National War Labor Board (NWLB), in which large union wage
settlements were limited by the NWLB to cost-of-living
increases. The wartime economic boom reflected not only the
enormous resource drain of military spending, but also the
erosion of New Deal labor and industrial policies.
By 1947, through a combination of NWLB
wage restrictions and rapid productivity growth, we have
calculated that the large gap between manufacturing wages and
productivity that emerged during the New Deal had nearly been
eliminated. And since that time, wages have never approached the
severely distorted levels that prevailed under the New Deal, nor
has the country suffered from such abysmally low employment.
The main lesson we have learned from
the New Deal is that wholesale government intervention can --
and does -- deliver the most unintended of consequences. This
was true in the 1930s, when artificially high wages and prices
kept us depressed for more than a decade, it was true in the
1970s when price controls were used to combat inflation but just
produced shortages. It is true today, when poorly designed
regulation produced a banking system that took on too much risk
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
So what's different about 2009 versus 1932?
There are three main differences that complicate economic recovery.
Firstly, technology such as factory robotics displaces unskilled
labor, and we're running out of alternatives for unskilled or
low-skilled labor to find replacement jobs.
Secondly, in the the 21st Century, developing nations in Asia,
Africa, and the southern part of the Western Hemisphere can now make
high quality products (and even produce high quality services in the
networked age) that make it more and more difficult to maintain wage
differentials that are higher in the United States. This leads to
more pressure for destructive trade barriers that, in turn, make
workers in other sectors unemployed such as when a tariff on steel
products puts workers at Caterpillar Tractor (a huge exporter of
products) out of work.
Thirdly, the southern border of the United States has and always
will be a joke in terms of blocking the flow of poor people south of
the Rio Grande River from flooding the labor market. The flow comes
from many more nations other than Mexico, although Mexico's
prosperity or economic collapse is nearly perfectly correlated with
other Latin American nations. At the moment, most of Latin America
is on the brink of civil war, power takeovers by drug cartels, and
economic collapse.
The U.S., however, has a comparative advantage. Because it was so
prosperous in the late 20th Century, it will take longer to be
destroyed by Zimbabwe-like economic policy vis-a-vis other Latin
American nations who will adopt the same destructive policy at a
faster rate.
Sad, because this is likely to be
Obama's last shot at getting this economy on its feet and running by
2010. For Americans are not as patient as they were in the 1930s,
when FDR could try one idea, then another, then another for five
years, and continue to roll up massive electoral victories. If Obama
gets this one wrong, and all this pork and welfare fail to generate
real growth, his party could face a wipeout in 2010, and his
opportunity could be lost forever. Does he really want to bet the
farm on the nag Nancy Pelosi just trotted out of the House?
Patrick Buchanan, "Nancy
Pelosi's New Deal." WorldNetDaily, February 3, 2009 ---
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=87870
|
President Obama could have made big history here
(Stimulus Bill). Instead he just got a win. It's a missed opportunity. It's
a win because of the obvious headline: Nine days after inauguration, the new
president achieves a major Congressional victory, House passage of an
economic stimulus bill by a vote of 244-188. It wasn't even close. This is
major. But do you know anyone, Democrat or
Republican, dancing in the street over this?
You don't. Because most everyone knows it isn't a good bill, and knows that
its failure to receive a single Republican vote, not one, suggests the old
battle lines are hardening. Back to the Crips versus the Bloods. Not very
inspiring.
"Look at the Time In Congress and the boardroom, failure to
recognize a new era," The Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123326587231330357.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Actually there are millions of people dancing in the street over the
Obama/Pelosi/Reid give away!
The "Stimulus Bill" has already gone too
far after special interest (including our colleges) cohorts in the
United States discovered "they can vote themselves largesse from the
public treasury." There's no turning back. The Stimulus Bill morphed
into a Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for a socialist revolution in the United
States.
A
democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse
from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes
for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury,
with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal
policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Alexander Tyler. 1787 -
Tyler was a Scottish history professor that had this to say about 2000
years after "The Fall of the Athenian Republic" and about the time our
original 13 states adopted their new constitution.
As quoted at
http://www.babylontoday.com/national_debt_clock.htm
(where the debt clock in real time is a few months behind)
The "Stimulus Bill" has already gone too
far after special interest (including our colleges) cohorts in the
United States discovered "they can vote themselves largesse from the
public treasury." There's no turning back. The Stimulus Bill morphed
into a Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for a socialist revolution in the United
States.
The Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for California
A new analysis shows that California would get a
whopping $21.5 billion under an economic stimulus plan that's expected to be
approved by the House next week, making it the biggest winner among the 50
states. That's according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which
analyzed the new spending proposals offered by House leaders.
Rob Hotakainen , "California could reap
$21.5 billion from U.S. stimulus plan," The Sacramento Bee, January
24, 2009 ---
http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia/story/1569761.html
Los Angeles hopes to get $5.5 billion ---
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/politics/38517612.html
San Francisco might even stop harassing the U.S. military and the Immigration
Service for a day in return for a few billion.
The Less-Than-Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for Illinois (until they
impeached Blago)
None of the funds provided by this Act may
be made available to the State of Illinois, or any agency of the State,
unless (1) the use of such funds by the State is approved in legislation
enacted by the State after the date of the enactment of this Act, or (2) Rod
R. Blagojevich no longer holds the office of Governor of the State of
Illinois.
Draft of the Stimulus Act
I’m unaware of any previous case of the Congress
dangling a bag of money over state legislators’ heads like this before. I’d
also be surprised if it fails, no matter how commanding Blagojevich looks on
“The View.” Illinois is not really in the position to turn down cash right
now.
David Weigel, "Starving Out Blago," The Washington Independent,
January 26, 2009 ---
http://washingtonindependent.com/27252/starving-out-blago
The Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for Construction After the Recession
An analysis by Forbes publications of where
most jobs will be created singles out engineering, accounting,
nursing, and information technology, along with construction
managers, computer-aided drafting specialists, and project managers.
Unemployment rates among most of these specialists are not high. The
rebuilding of "crumbling roads, bridges, and schools" highlighted by
in various speeches by President Obama is likely to make greater use
of unemployed workers in the construction sector. However, such
spending will be a small fraction of the total stimulus package, and
it is not easy for workers who helped build residential housing to
shift to building highways . . . The likelihood that such a rapid
and large public spending program will be of low efficiency is
compounded by political realities. Groups that have lots of
political clout with Congress will get a disproportionate amount of
the spending with only limited regard for the merits of the spending
they advocate compared to alternative ways to spend the stimulus.
The politically influential will also redefine various projects so
that they can fall under the "infrastructure" rubric. A report
called Ready to Go by the U.S. Conference of Mayors lists $73
billion worth of projects that they claim could be begun quickly.
These projects include senior citizen centers, recreation
facilities, and much other expenditure that are really private
consumption items, many of dubious value, that the mayors call
infrastructure spending. Recessions would be a good time to increase
infrastructure spending only if these projects can mainly utilize
unemployed resources. This does not seem to be the case in most of
the so-called infrastructure spending proposed under various
stimulus plans.
Nobel Laureate Gary Becker,
The Becker-Posner Blog, January 18, 2009 ---
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/
The Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for Signing Up Voters for the Democratic
Party
The House Democrats’ trillion dollar spending bill,
approved on January 21 by the Appropriations Committee and headed to the
House floor next week for a vote, could open billions of taxpayer dollars to
left-wing groups like the Association of Community Organizations for Reform
Now (ACORN). ACORN has been accused of perpetrating voter registration fraud
numerous times in the last several elections; is reportedly under federal
investigation; and played a key role in the irresponsible schemes that
caused a financial meltdown that has cost American taxpayers hundreds of
billions of dollars since last fall. House Republican Leader John Boehner
(R-OH) and other Republicans are asking a simple question: what does this
have to do with job creation? Are Congressional Democrats really going to
borrow money from our children and grandchildren to give handouts to ACORN
in the name of economic “stimulus?” Incredibly, the Democrats’ bill makes
groups like ACORN eligible for a $4.19 billion pot of money for
“neighborhood stabilization activities.” Funds for this purpose were
authorized in the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, signed into law in
2008. However, these funds were limited to state and local governments. Now
House Democrats are taking the unprecedented step of making ACORN and other
groups eligible for these funds:
Rick Moran, "ACORN eligible for billions from stimulus plan,"
American Thinker, January 26, 2009 ---
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/acorn_eligible_for_billions_fr.html
Jensen Comment
Keith Olbermann correctly points out that ACORN will not get the funds
directly but must bid competitively for such funds. What he does not explain
is why ACORN appeals so much to the Democrats controlling the Bailout
disbursements.
The group (ACORN) that pushed banks into the
risky loans that brought the economy down is now eligible for a huge chunk
of stimulus cash. The stimulus plan does create jobs — for community
activists.
"ACORN's Seed Money," Investor's Business Daily,
January 27, 2009 ---
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=317952439188615
Jensen Comment
It's never too late to create new jobs to register fictitious and real
street people to vote for
Democrats. Soon ACORN will have stimulus funds to register more Democrats.
The goal is to have only the most liberal Democrats in all three branches of the Federal Government.
Michael Moore may well replace Obama eight years from now.
The Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for Transfer Payments to Medicaid and the
Poor
Another "stimulus" secret is that some $252 billion
is for income-transfer payments -- that is, not investments that arguably
help everyone, but cash or benefits to individuals for doing nothing at all.
There's $81 billion for Medicaid, $36 billion for expanded unemployment
benefits, $20 billion for food stamps, and $83 billion for the earned income
credit for people who don't pay income tax. While some of that may be
justified to help poorer Americans ride out the recession, they aren't job
creators.
"A 40-Year Wish List You won't believe what's in
that stimulus bill," The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123310466514522309.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Buried deep inside the massive spending orgy
that Democrats jammed through the House this week lie five words that could
drastically undo two decades of welfare reforms. The very heart of the
widely applauded Welfare Reform Act of 1996 is a cap on the amount of
federal cash that can be sent to states each year for welfare payments. But,
thanks to the simple phrase slipped into the legislation, the new "stimulus"
bill abolishes the limits on the amount of federal money for the so-called
Emergency Fund, which ships welfare cash to states.
Charles Hurt, "Change for the
Worse," New York Post, January 30, 2009 ---
Click Here
The Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for school districts, child care centers
and university campuses
The economic stimulus plan that Congress has
scheduled for a vote on Wednesday would shower the nation’s school
districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in
new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double
the Department of Education’s current budget. . . . Critics and supporters
alike said that by its sheer scope, the measure could profoundly change the
federal government’s role in education, which has traditionally been the
responsibility of state and local government.
Sam Dillon, "Stimulus Plan Would
Provide Flood of Aid to Education, "The New York Times, January 31,
2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/education/28educ.html
Jensen Comment
It's beginning to smell like annual entitlements here as recipients become
dependent upon their government checks (which might better be called the
checks and no-balances system of Congressional financing).
The Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for Amtrak, Artists, Child Care
Businesses, and Global Warming Research
We've looked it over, and even we can't quite
believe it. There's $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't
turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50
million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for
the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion
for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There's even $650 million on top
of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.
"A 40-Year Wish List You won't believe what's in that
stimulus bill," The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123310466514522309.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
The Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for Failing Newspapers
Taxpayer cash is going to rescue so many people
these days that it is hard to sort the truly awful ideas from the merely
terrible. Then we heard the doozy out of Pennsylvania, where Governor Ed
Rendell has discussed a state bailout of the company that owns a pair of
Philadelphia newspapers, the Inquirer and the Daily News. Philadelphia Media
Holdings is in default on its loans, having missed debt payments going back
to June. With no buyers knocking on the door, the Philadelphia Bulletin has
reported, owner Brian Tierney went hat-in-hand to the Governor's office to
talk about giving the paper some public help. Mr. Tierney won't comment on
the record, while Mr. Rendell's spokesman tells us the conversations weren't
specific but that state help is a possibility. Times are tough, but as they
say in Philadelphia, this is nuts in eight different ways. Starting as a
business proposition: When McClatchy bought Knight Ridder in 2006, the
Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News were spun off and sold for $515
million to investors led by Mr. Tierney, who made his money in advertising
and public relations. The buyers put up around 20% in equity and took on
some $400 million in debt, enough leverage to raise eyebrows even before the
credit crunch. Mr. Tierney is now no different than thousands of other
Americans who borrowed too heavily during the credit mania.
"Bad News in Philadelphia The worst bailout idea so
far: newspapers," The Wall Street Journal, February 2, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123353263226537457.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Jensen Comment
Only newspapers that were unfledging in support of Obama in the 2008
election might be bailed out. That means almost all of them that are about
to go bankrupt, including The New York Times.
The Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for Labor Unions (Half of Stimulus Goes
to Unions)
Almost half of the $820 billion would end up in the
pockets of Democratic-controlled unions, such as the Service Employees
International Union, and federal, state, and municipal employee unions. At
680 pages long, neither Obama nor any member of the House had enough time to
read the entire bill before the House voted. The $820 billion would be
enough to give every unemployed American $75,000. Says Ben Stein: "There has
been pork-barrel politics since there has been politics, but the scale of
this pork is beyond what had ever been imagined before -- and no one can be
sure it will actually do much stimulation. ... This has been a punch in the
solar plexus to the kind of responsible, far-seeing, mature government
processes that are needed to protect America."
"Ben Stein: Half of Stimulus Goes to Unions," NewsMax,
February 1, 2009 ---
Click Here
The Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for Democrats in Congress
This is supposed to be a new era of bipartisanship,
but this bill was written based on the wish list of every living -- or dead
-- Democratic interest group. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it, "We won the
election. We wrote the bill." So they did. Republicans should let them take
all of the credit.
"A 40-Year Wish List You won't believe what's in that
stimulus bill," The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123310466514522309.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
But the real risk here is to Mr. Obama, and it
isn't from Republicans. It's from his fellow Democrats. Given the miserable
economy and the Beltway's neo-Keynesian policy consensus, a true compromise
would have gathered overwhelming support. But rather than use Mr. Obama's
political capital to craft such a deal, the White House abdicated to Speaker
Nancy Pelosi. House Democrats proceeded to ignore all GOP suggestions as
they wrote the bill, shedding tax cuts while piling on spending for every
imaginable interest group. The bipartisan opposition reflects how much the
Pelosi bill became a vehicle for partisan social policy rather than economic
stimulus.
"A Warning to the President The cost of abdicating to Nancy
Pelosi," The Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123327812504331563.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
After decades of watching their extravagant,
wooly-headed, far-left programs languish in never-never land, Democrats are
now realizing their once-forlorn hopes for a return to the good old days.
Massive giveaways for their pet socialist schemes — and payoffs to labor
unions and other financial supporters — will now be the order of the day.
This time they are outdoing their New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society
overspending extravaganzas, cobbling together an $825 billion package they
laughingly call a stimulus program, allegedly designed to put unemployed
Americans back to work and get the economy back on track.
Michael Reagan, "Unclogging
The Liberal Money Pipeline," The Philadelphia Bulletin, January 30,
2009 ---
http://www.thebulletin.us/articles/2009/01/30/commentary/editorials/doc498284c72d9b0049142444.txt
The Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for a Universal Healthcare Entitlement in
the United States
The more we dig into the pile of spending and tax
favors known as the "stimulus bill," the more amazing discoveries we make.
Namely, Democrats have apparently decided that the way to gun the economy is
to spend even more on health care. This is notable because if there has been
one truly bipartisan idea in Washington, it's that the U.S. as a whole
spends too much on health care. President Obama has been talking up
entitlement reform as a way to free up the money for his other social
priorities. But it turns out that Congress is using the stimulus as cover
for a massive expansion of federal entitlements.
"The Entitlement Stimulus: More giant steps
toward government," The Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123318915075926757.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Jensen Comment
On January 28, ABC News reported how the Canadian Universal Health Care Plan
was so much more efficient in terms of accounting efficiency, largely
because third party billing in the U.S. has become a quagmire.
However, what
ABC failed to mention, probably deliberately, is that over half of the
average Canadian's salary is taxed mostly for health care. Much has been
made about the months or years Canadians wait for non-emergency medical
treatments. But seldom does the liberal U.S. press mention the enormous tax
bill that goes with the Canadian Universal Health Care Plan. Taxpayers need
not worry in the United States however. The new entitlement payment plan in
the U.S. simply entails printing money rather than taxing or borrowing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
The Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Although shareholders in Fannie and Fred sucked gas, the companies
themselves are being bailed out
"Fan and Fred's Lunch Tab A quarter-trillion dollars, and rising,"
The Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123318925593626697.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
It seems a lifetime ago, but it's only been six
months since the Congressional Budget Office put a $25 billion price tag
on the legislation to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. At the time,
then CBO Director Peter Orszag told Congress that there was a "probably
better than 50%" chance that the government would never have to spend a
dime to shore up the two government-sponsored mortgage giants.
So much for that. In the past few days Fannie
and Freddie have requested a combined $51 billion from the Treasury to
compensate for losses in their loan portfolios. This comes on top of the
$13.8 billion that Freddie needed in November.
The latest requests take the tab to $70 billion
or so -- but that's not the end of the story by a long shot. Earlier
this month, CBO released its biannual budget outlook. And largely
ignored underneath the $1.2 trillion deficit estimate for fiscal 2009
was the little matter of a $238 billion charge for rescuing Fan and
Fred. To put that in perspective, $238 billion is more than the entire
federal budget deficit in fiscal 2007
The CBO's $238 billion estimate represents its
guess of the long-term cost of paying for the guarantees that Fannie and
Freddie write on their mortgage-backed securities. Nor is that just a
post-bubble hangover. The last $38 billion of that is for losses on new
business this year. And for all anyone knows, that number, like the
earlier estimates, is wildly optimistic.
For starters, that $238 billion doesn't include
$18 billion that the CBO expected the Treasury to lend the wonder twins
this year. But in any case we're already well beyond $18 billion on that
score: As of this week they've already requested $70 billion since the
fiscal year began -- and we still have eight months to go. So you can
add $70 billion to the $238 billion, which gets us to $308 billion --
and even that might be conservative. Rajiv Setia, an analyst at
Barclays, figures the duo will need $120 billion from Treasury this year
alone, which would mean another $50 billion on top of the $70 billion
already requested.
Back when the bailout was being debated last
July, Senator Jon Tester (D., Mont.) worried that the Fan and Fred
bailout could cost $1 trillion. Given that the two companies combined
have more than $5 trillion in debt and mortgage backed securities
outstanding, Mr. Tester's guess isn't looking worse than anyone else's.
At that same time, Senator Kent Conrad (D.,
N.D.) said that the CBO's $25 billion estimate would be "very helpful to
those who want to advance this legislation." And no doubt it was. A
spokeswoman for Fannie promoter Barney Frank said then, "we especially
like that there is less than a 50% chance that it will be used." The CBO
had figured that there was a 5% chance that losses would reach the $100
billion cap on the credit line created by the July law. Now CBO's best
guess is more than double that.
The bigger picture here is that politicians
like Mr. Frank have been telling us for years that Fannie and Freddie's
federal subsidy was a free lunch. We are now slowly, and painfully,
learning the price of Mr. Frank's famous desire to "roll the dice" with
Fan and Fred. Keep that in mind the next time you hear a politician
propose a taxpayer guarantee. The only sure thing is that the taxpayers
will pay.
Barney's Rubble ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Rubble
Accounting Fraud (when Frank Raines was CEO) at Fannie Mae ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#Manipulation
The Perfect (Stimulus) Storm for Greening the Planet
President Obama will use billions of stimulus dollars to reduce carbon
emissions
From the "Best on the Web Today," The Wall Street Journal,
January 28, 2009:
An additional problem is that
whereas global warmists are emotionally consistent--in a
constant state of alarm, accompanied by contempt, even hatred, for
those who dare ask questions--their claims are filled with logical
inconsistencies. A reader spotted a hilarious example in this
Los Angeles Times
article:
Even if by some miracle of
environmental activism global carbon dioxide levels reverted to
pre-industrial levels, it still would take 1,000 years or longer
for the climate changes already triggered to be reversed,
scientists said Monday.The gas that is already there and
the heat that has been absorbed by the ocean will exert their
effects for centuries, according to the analysis, published
Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Over the long haul, the warming
will melt the polar icecaps more than previously had been
estimated, raising ocean levels substantially, the report said.
And changes in rainfall patterns
will bring droughts comparable to those that caused the 1930s
Dust Bowl to the American Southwest, southern Europe, northern
Africa and western Australia.
"People have imagined that if we
stopped emitting carbon dioxide, the climate would go back to
normal in 100 years, 200 years," lead author Susan Solomon, a
senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, said in a telephone news conference. "That's not
true." . . .
Solomon said in a statement that
absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans and release of heat
from the oceans - the one process acting to cool the Earth and
the other to warm it--will "work against each other to keep
temperatures almost constant for more than 1,000 years."
Glenn Beck Explains What's Wrong With Obama's Stimulus Program (video)
---
http://www.thehopeforamerica.com/play.php?id=249
A Famous Economist Explains What's Wrong With Obama's Stimulus Program
But, in terms of fiscal-stimulus proposals, it would be unfortunate if the best
Team Obama can offer is an unvarnished version of Keynes's 1936 "General Theory
of Employment, Interest and Money." The financial crisis and possible depression
do not invalidate everything we have learned about macroeconomics since 1936.
Much more focus should be on incentives for people and businesses to invest,
produce and work. On the tax side, we should avoid programs that throw money at
people and emphasize instead reductions in marginal income-tax rates --
especially where these rates are already high and fall on capital income.
Eliminating the federal corporate income tax would be brilliant. On the spending
side, the main point is that we should not be considering massive public-works
programs that do not pass muster from the perspective of cost-benefit analysis.
Just as in the 1980s, when extreme supply-side views on tax cuts were
unjustified, it is wrong now to think that added government spending is free.
Robert J. Barro, "Government
Spending Is No Free Lunch: Now the Democrats are peddling voodoo
economics," The Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123258618204604599.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Robert Barro is an economics professor at Harvard
University and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Back in the 1980s, many commentators
ridiculed as voodoo economics the extreme supply-side view that
across-the-board cuts in income-tax rates might raise overall tax revenues.
Now we have the extreme demand-side view that the so-called "multiplier"
effect of government spending on economic output is greater than one -- Team
Obama is reportedly using a number around 1.5.
To think about what this means, first
assume that the multiplier was 1.0. In this case, an increase by one unit in
government purchases and, thereby, in the aggregate demand for goods would
lead to an increase by one unit in real gross domestic product (GDP). Thus,
the added public goods are essentially free to society. If the government
buys another airplane or bridge, the economy's total output expands by
enough to create the airplane or bridge without requiring a cut in anyone's
consumption or investment.
The explanation for this magic is that
idle resources -- unemployed labor and capital -- are put to work to produce
the added goods and services.
If the multiplier is greater than 1.0, as
is apparently assumed by Team Obama, the process is even more wonderful. In
this case, real GDP rises by more than the increase in government purchases.
Thus, in addition to the free airplane or bridge, we also have more goods
and services left over to raise private consumption or investment. In this
scenario, the added government spending is a good idea even if the bridge
goes to nowhere, or if public employees are just filling useless holes. Of
course, if this mechanism is genuine, one might ask why the government
should stop with only $1 trillion of added purchases.
What's the flaw? The theory (a simple
Keynesian macroeconomic model) implicitly assumes that the government is
better than the private market at marshaling idle resources to produce
useful stuff. Unemployed labor and capital can be utilized at essentially
zero social cost, but the private market is somehow unable to figure any of
this out. In other words, there is something wrong with the price system.
John Maynard Keynes thought that the
problem lay with wages and prices that were stuck at excessive levels. But
this problem could be readily fixed by expansionary monetary policy, enough
of which will mean that wages and prices do not have to fall. So, something
deeper must be involved -- but economists have not come up with
explanations, such as incomplete information, for multipliers above one.
A much more plausible starting point is a
multiplier of zero. In this case, the GDP is given, and a rise in government
purchases requires an equal fall in the total of other parts of GDP --
consumption, investment and net exports. In other words, the social cost of
one unit of additional government purchases is one.
This approach is the one usually applied
to cost-benefit analyses of public projects. In particular, the value of the
project (counting, say, the whole flow of future benefits from a bridge or a
road) has to justify the social cost. I think this perspective, not the
supposed macroeconomic benefits from fiscal stimulus, is the right one to
apply to the many new and expanded government programs that we are likely to
see this year and next.
What do the data show about multipliers?
Because it is not easy to separate movements in government purchases from
overall business fluctuations, the best evidence comes from large changes in
military purchases that are driven by shifts in war and peace. A
particularly good experiment is the massive expansion of U.S. defense
expenditures during World War II. The usual Keynesian view is that the World
War II fiscal expansion provided the stimulus that finally got us out of the
Great Depression. Thus, I think that most macroeconomists would regard this
case as a fair one for seeing whether a large multiplier ever exists.
I have estimated that World War II raised
U.S. defense expenditures by $540 billion (1996 dollars) per year at the
peak in 1943-44, amounting to 44% of real GDP. I also estimated that the war
raised real GDP by $430 billion per year in 1943-44. Thus, the multiplier
was 0.8 (430/540). The other way to put this is that the war lowered
components of GDP aside from military purchases. The main declines were in
private investment, nonmilitary parts of government purchases, and net
exports -- personal consumer expenditure changed little. Wartime production
siphoned off resources from other economic uses -- there was a dampener,
rather than a multiplier.
We can consider similarly three other U.S.
wartime experiences -- World War I, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War --
although the magnitudes of the added defense expenditures were much smaller
in comparison to GDP. Combining the evidence with that of World War II
(which gets a lot of the weight because the added government spending is so
large in that case) yields an overall estimate of the multiplier of 0.8 --
the same value as before. (These estimates were published last year in my
book, "Macroeconomics, a Modern Approach.")
There are reasons to believe that the
war-based multiplier of 0.8 substantially overstates the multiplier that
applies to peacetime government purchases. For one thing, people would
expect the added wartime outlays to be partly temporary (so that consumer
demand would not fall a lot). Second, the use of the military draft in
wartime has a direct, coercive effect on total employment. Finally, the U.S.
economy was already growing rapidly after 1933 (aside from the 1938
recession), and it is probably unfair to ascribe all of the rapid GDP growth
from 1941 to 1945 to the added military outlays. In any event, when I
attempted to estimate directly the multiplier associated with peacetime
government purchases, I got a number insignificantly different from zero.
As we all know, we are in the middle of
what will likely be the worst U.S. economic contraction since the 1930s. In
this context and from the history of the Great Depression, I can understand
various attempts to prop up the financial system. These efforts, akin to
avoiding bank runs in prior periods, recognize that the social consequences
of credit-market decisions extend well beyond the individuals and businesses
making the decisions.
But, in terms of fiscal-stimulus
proposals, it would be unfortunate if the best Team Obama can offer is an
unvarnished version of Keynes's 1936 "General Theory of Employment, Interest
and Money." The financial crisis and possible depression do not invalidate
everything we have learned about macroeconomics since 1936.
Much more focus should be on incentives
for people and businesses to invest, produce and work. On the tax side, we
should avoid programs that throw money at people and emphasize instead
reductions in marginal income-tax rates -- especially where these rates are
already high and fall on capital income. Eliminating the federal corporate
income tax would be brilliant. On the spending side, the main point is that
we should not be considering massive public-works programs that do not pass
muster from the perspective of cost-benefit analysis. Just as in the 1980s,
when extreme supply-side views on tax cuts were unjustified, it is wrong now
to think that added government spending is free.
Denny Beresford forwarded the following link. I don't know how long it will
be a free download.
"The Crash: What Went Wrong? How did the most dynamic and sophisticated
financial markets in the world come to the brink of collapse? The Washington
Post examines how Wall Street innovation outpaced Washington regulation.,"
The Washington Post, January 2009 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/risk/index.html
Jensen Comment
The above site has three links to AIG and what went wrong with their credit
default swaps.
Part 1 "The Beautiful Machine" ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/28/AR2008122801916.html
Part 2 "A Crack in the System"---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/29/AR2008122902670.html
Part 3 "Downgrades and Downfall"---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/30/AR2008123003431.html
"Everything You Wanted to Know about Credit Default Swaps--but Were Never
Told," by Peter J. Wallison, RGE, January 25, 2009 ----
Click Here
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Bailout
I sure hope my stimulus check
arrives before springtime. I plan to spend it quickly while it still might buy
something of value, maybe faster horses, younger women, and older whiskey.
Sigh!
My share of Obama's
give-away won't be large enough to feed horses, give credit cards to younger
women, and pay for my new liver?
I guess I'll just fill up my heating oil tank
before the price shoots up to $100 a gallon. Some companies can now afford to by
old oil tankers and store up millions of gallons of oil. Sadly, I don't have an
oil tanker. But I do have a couple of very old gas guzzlers.
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Scary: The Third Jihad (30-minute video) ---
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-864522917532871834
Glenn Beck Explain's What's Wrong With Obama's Stimulus
Program (video) ---
http://www.thehopeforamerica.com/play.php?id=249
Mathematics Illuminated ---
http://www.learner.org/courses/mathilluminated/
The Dynamic Earth ---
http://www.mnh.si.edu/earth/main_frames.html
Folger Shakespeare Library ---
http://folger.edu/index.cfm
Nixon Tapes (multimedia) ---
http://www.nixontapes.org/
Taking Liberties (U.K. history) ---
http://www.bl.uk/takingliberties
Tulia, Texas (video from PBS) ---
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/tuliatexas/
ALL 44 PRESIDENTS MORPH INTO EACH OTHER.---
http://www.flixxy.com/presidents-morphing.htm
Salsa: Watch this 87 year old woman dance ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkHvRCp3z5A
Also at
http://bolstablog.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/salsa/
NFL Fantasy Files: The Best Players ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHH-6ZQktRQ
I think this is a warning to not always trust video evidence in court.
News Item from Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University professor and alumnus Randy
Pausch continues to create an enduring legacy around the world. Because of your
past interest, we wanted to make sure you knew about a new “NFL Films Presents”
segment featuring Randy talking about one of his childhood dreams — playing in
the National Football League. The video (following a commercial)
is available to view online at:
http://www.nfl.com/videos?videoId=09000d5d80e22adc
Please also watch for it over the coming months on
networks such as ESPN and the NFL Network.
Jensen Comment
My tribute to Randy can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/tidbits/2008/tidbits080415.htm
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
TheRadio (my favorite commercial-free
online music site) ---
http://www.theradio.com/
Slacker (my second-favorite commercial-free online music site) ---
http://www.slacker.com/
Gerald Trites likes this
international radio site ---
http://www.e-radio.gr/
Songza:
Search for a song or band and play the selection ---
http://songza.com/
Also try Jango ---
http://www.jango.com/?r=342376581
Sometimes this old guy prefers the jukebox era (just let it play through) ---
http://www.tropicalglen.com/
And I listen quite often to Soldiers Radio Live ---
http://www.army.mil/fieldband/pages/listening/bandstand.html
Also note U.S. Army Band recordings
---
http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp
Saving Folk History, One Recording At A Time ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99372779
Hyman's treasures include recordings of Jim Bowles and Harold Hausenfluck — both
fiddlers, from Kentucky and Virginia, respectively. Their music is called
"old-timey." It's what came before bluegrass.
Composers like Eisler and Matthus experimented
within the tradition of Bach and Mozart ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99814511
Carlo Ponti Jr.: Classical Music For All ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99826016
Old Westerns (Statler Brothers) ---
http://objflicks.com/thoseoldwesterns.htm
Bob Jensen listens to music free online (and no commercials)
---
http://www.slacker.com/
Photographs and Art
Doris Ulmann Photograph Collection (rural South and
Appalachia) ---
http://boundless.uoregon.edu/digcol/ulmann/index.html
University of St. Andrews Photographic Archive
---
http://special.st-andrews.ac.uk/saspecial/
Paul Smith's Typewriter Art Gallery ---
http://www.paulsmithfoundation.org/main_gallery.html
Destruction in Gaza ---
http://www.npr.org/multimedia/2009/01/gaza_01_22/gallery2/index.html
The Collector's Gallery (Fine Canadian Art) ---
http://www.collectorsgalleryofart.com/dynamic/artist.asp?artistid=173&categoryid=
From The Scout Report on January 23, 2009
TinEye Reverse Image Search 0.4
--- http://tineye.com/login
TinEye is essentially a reverse image
search engine that allows users to submit images in order to find out where
it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist,
or to find higher resolution versions. The site includes a FAQ area and a
demonstration video. Visitors will need to sign and create a password, and
afterwards they will be able to use the search engine. This version is
compatible with computers running all operating systems.
Message from Paula
Did you see what they did on CNN?
They asked people at the inauguration to
send pictures to them by cell phone (while they were at the inauguration).
After they had (?) hundreds, they used some new technology – a really
advanced computer – entered all the pictures individually, and the computer
pulled them all together like a jigsaw puzzle. And get this: the image was
3-D. The monitor was a flat screen as big as a dining room tabletop. The guy
who demonstrated this only had to move his finger around on the “tabletop”
to zoom in, zoom out, and look at the scene from any angle!
Here is what Microsoft did to produce
similar, combined pictures:
You have to download a Microsoft viewer,
Photosynth, to see the 3-D pictures.
http://photosynth.net/inauguration.aspx
Also zoom in and out of the high resolution
picture at
http://gigapan.org/viewGigapanFullscreen.php?auth=033ef14483ee899496648c2b4b06233c
Here is how it is done ---
http://snipurl.com/megapixelphoto [www_davidbergman_net]
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various
types electronic literature available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Folger Shakespeare Library ---
http://folger.edu/index.cfm
SOURCETEXT.com (with much emphasis on Shakespeare) A home for specialized,
reason-provoking texts that appeal to the eternally curious and to those who
value wit and character ---
http://www.sourcetext.com/
Taking Liberties (U.K. history) ---
http://www.bl.uk/takingliberties
Good Bank, Bad Bank by Dr. Seuss
---
http://thereformedbroker.com/2009/01/29/good-bank-bad-bank-by-dr-seuss/
From The Scout Report on January 23, 2009
Codex Sinaiticus
[Macromedia Flash Player]
http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/
The Codex Sinaiticus is certainly one of
the most important books in the world, and this delightful website provides
users with a way to view the book in its entirety. The goal of this project
is "to reunite the entire manuscript in digital form and make it accessible
to a global audience for the first time." The project partners include The
British Library, the National Library of Russia, St. Catherine's Monastery,
and Leipzig University Library. First-time visitors may wish to click on the
"About" area to learn more about the document's tremendous significance
(among other things, it includes the oldest complete copy of the New
Testament) and to read answers to several frequently asked questions about
the Codex Sinaiticus. Anyone with an interest in conservation, digitization,
and transcription will want to check out the "About the Project" page. Here
they will find information about all of these subjects, and information
about translations of the Codex. Finally, visitors will obviously want to
head on over to the "See The Manuscript" area. Here they can read a
side-by-side translation of each page, zoom in and out on the Codex, and
even browse around by passage.
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Engineers first noticed Spirit's peculiar behavior
on Sunday. The rover had radioed to say that it had received its driving
commands for the day, but strangely, it had not moved. While NASA says that this
can happen for a number of reasons, the rover also failed to record its day's
activities to its nonvolatile memory--storage that is retained even when the
rover is powered off. The next day, the team asked the rover to determine its
orientation by locating the sun. Spirit found the sun, but it inaccurately
reported its location.
Brittany Sauser, "Mars Rover
Behaving Oddly: After five years of roving the Red Planet, Spirit's
unusual behavior has its operating team worried," MIT's Technology Review,
January 29, 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/
Jensen Comment
Although
2001Space Odyssey was a snapshot of the future that misjudged the date, it's
interesting to finally study how Hal, a super computer, evolved with human
emotions (insanity?). Hal's great grandfather may be the main computer on the
presently strange-acting Mars rover named Spirit. Did anybody ever ask how
lonely solitary confinement can be for five years? Would this be less of a
problem if we had both Mr. and Mrs Spirit touring about on Mars at the same
time? Did anybody stop to think that machines eventually need companions? Would
we even consider putting a man other than George W. Bush all alone on Mars for
five or more years?
Catch & Release
Obama's wildlife strategy extended to the war on terrorism
Metropolitan Police humiliated at the hands of Muslim demonstrators in London
(Video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97hyDRjdXCE
The guys in yellow coats are wearing the appropriate color. They are reminiscent
of the U.K. naval crew that surrendered their warship at the drop of a hat to
the Iranian gunboats.
A devout Muslim, who is devoutly against terror, explains what the West
faces, and how dangerous things really are- and why. As an American Muslim
against terror, he presents a dark scenario (video) ---
http://blip.tv/play/AdmXMI6nSg
Bound for Broadway
An al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an
experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence
official said Monday. The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named
because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press
reports that the accident killed at least 40 al Qaeda operatives, but he said
the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi
Ouzou province in eastern Algeria. He said authorities in the first week of
January intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda
in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda's leadership in the tribal region
of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an
area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been
breached, according to the official.
Eli Lake, "Al Qaeda bungles arms
experiment Biological or chemical weapons," Washington Times, January 20,
2009 ---
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/19/al-qaeda-bungles-arms-experiment/
Don’t look now, but Keith Olbermann’s synapses are
misfiring again. The background: former Gitmo prisoner Said Ali al-Shihri, who
was released in 2007, has received a plum promotion. He’s now an al-Qaeda leader
in Yemen. According to Olbermann’s latest lunacy, al-Shihri was innocently
skipping through the desert picking flowers when he was detained. Only after
being unfairly imprisoned did he begin working his way up international
terrorism’s corporate ladder. “But perhaps the real question is,” the
Olbermaniac said, “Since we never tried him, never found him guilty, and the
Bush administration set him free, what if he wasn’t a terrorist in the first
place but we turned him into one by sending him to Gitmo?” While we’re pondering
“what ifs,” what if Olbermann remembered to take his meds every night.
I Hate the Media, January 28, 2009
--- http://www.ihatethemedia.com/
Watch Olbermann's defense oif Said Ali al-Shihri and judge for yourself ---
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#28820188
Also see more details at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Said_Ali_al-Shihri
Olbermann has laid the groundwork for blaming Republicans for creating
fundamentalist Islamic terrorists. Gitmo is where we should send the Republican
leaders over the past eight years and make them bow at sunset and sunrise toward
the new Washington DC.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for
"profound changes" in U.S. foreign policy on Wednesday, including giving up
support for Israel, during an address to thousands of people in the western city
of Kermanshah. President Obama on Tuesday, in an interview with Arabic
television, called for more dialogue with Iran to express difference and see
"where there are potential avenues for progress."
"Ahmadinejad Demands Apology for U.S. 'Crimes'," Fox News,
January 28, 2009 ---
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,484105,00.html
Jensen Comment
At least we now know what Iran will demand in negotiations with President Obama.
I wonder what Iran will offer in return?
The Taliban told U.S. President Barack Obama on
Tuesday that his plan to close Guantanamo Bay prison camp was a "positive step"
but peace was only possible if he withdraws U.S. forces from Afghanistan and
Iraq. The Taliban, toppled in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, also
told the new president that sending more troops to Afghanistan "and the use of
force against the independent peoples of the world, has lost its effectiveness"
. . . " He must completely withdraw all his forces from the two occupied Islamic
countries (Afghanistan and Iraq), and to stop defending Israel against Islamic
interests in the Middle East and the entire world," the Taliban message said.
"Taliban say Guantanamo closure 'positive step'," Reuters,
January 27, 2009 ---
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LR340030.htm
Jensen Comment
The Taliban also promises to stop throwing acid in the faces of young girls and
women if they cease trying to learn how to read and write.
Scary: The Third Jihad (30-minute video) ---
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-864522917532871834
President Obama warned Republicans to stop listening
to Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with his administration. “You can’t
just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” he said to Republican leaders
attending a White House meeting to discuss his bloated $1 trillion economic
stimulus package. Too many people listen to Rush, the new president thought to
himself. After we’re done redistributing everyone’s income, we’ll start
redistributing Limbaugh’s radio listeners.
"Obama wants to crush Rush," I Hate the Media, January 24,
2009 ---
http://www.ihatethemedia.com/obama-wants-to-crush-rush
Also see
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2009/01/24/obama-tells-congressional-gop-turn-rush-limbaugh-show-will-media-notice
Democrats Launch Petition Against Rush Limbaugh After Firing Back at Obama ---
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/01/27/dems-launch-online-petition-rush-limbaugh/
A few quick facts about Wall Street
bonuses. The pretext for the political outrage was the New York
comptroller's report this week on the aggregate data for bonuses in
2008. That "irresponsible" bonus pool of $18 billion was for every
worker in the New York financial industry, from top dogs to
secretaries. This bonus pool fell 44% in 2008, the largest
percentage decline in 30 years. The average bonus was $112,000;
bonuses typically make up most of an employee's salary on Wall
Street. The comptroller estimates that this decline will cost New
York State $1 billion in lost tax revenue and New York City $275
million. Both city and state may have to announce layoffs.
"'Idiots' Indeed," The Wall Street Journal,
January 31, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123336371503735447.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Jensen Comment
Although this puts our bonus contempt somewhat in a new light, it
also does not lesson opinion that John Thain the other crooks who
declared themselves multi-million bonuses are one of the reasons
that America now despises Wall Street. Actually Thain wanted a $10
million bonus while captain of his sinking ship (Merrill Lynch).
Bob Jensen's threads on outrageous executive compensation ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123336371503735447.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
John Alexander Thain (born May 26, 1955) was the
last chairman and chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch before its merger
with Bank of America. Thain was designated to become president of global
banking, securities, and wealth management at the newly combined company,
but he resigned on January 22, 2009. Bank of America lost
confidence in Thain after he failed to tell the bank about mounting losses at
Merrill in late 2008. The Associated Press
identified him as the best paid among the executives of the S&P 500 companies in
2007. On December 8, 2008, Thain gave up on pursuing a controversial bonus of
$10 million from the compensation committee at Merrill.[2] Thain also decided to
accelerate payments of bonus to employees at Merrill, giving out between $3
billion and $4 billion using money that appeared to come directly from the $15
billion Bank of America and Merrill Lynch had received from US government
taxpayers (via the Troubled Assets Relief Program). Thain has additionally
become infamous for spending $1.22 million in corporate funds to decorate his
office, even as he was asking the government for a bailout of his troubled
company.
Quoted from Wikipedia ***
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thain
Thain has since been fired by Bank of America and has agreed to pay for over $1
million spent redecorating his new office.
My
question is how Bank of America could buy Merrill without audit verification of
Merrill’s 2008 losses and cash flows --- these should've never been a surprise
to Bank of America unless Bank of America was plain stupid about accounting. The
final settlement price at a minimum could've been contingent on an audit of 2008
earnings.
Added Jensen Comment
I've never been a big fan of Merrill Lynch after repeated disclosures emerged
about the repeated frauds instigated by employees of Merrill in the 1990s. Just
do a word search on "Merrill" and note the number of frauds that are documented,
not the least of which is the Orange County massive derivatives instruments
fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
The New York Times Co.'s efforts to
complete the sale of its Midtown headquarters took on greater
urgency yesterday after Moody's Investors Service joined Standard &
Poor's in downgrading the troubled newspaper company's debt to
"junk" status. Moody's move is expected to sharply impact the Times
Co.'s ability to raise debt, as companies with junk ratings often
find it prohibitively expensive to borrow capital through
traditional channels. The rating agency cut the Times Co.'s rating
to Ba3 from Baa3, saying that crumbling advertising revenue will
continue to put "significant downward pressure" on the company's
cash flow.
Keith J. Kelly, "NY
TIMES DEBT JUNKED BY MOODY'S," New York Post, January 24,
2009 ---
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01242009/business/ny_times_debt_junked_by_moodys_151582.htm
The stimulus bill currently steaming through
Congress looks like a legislative freight train, but given last week's analysis
by the Congressional Budget Office, it is more accurate to think of it as a time
machine. That may be the only way to explain how spending on public works in
2011 and beyond will help the economy today. According to Congressional Budget
Office estimates, a mere $26 billion of the House stimulus bill's $355 billion
in new spending would actually be spent in the current fiscal year, and just
$110 billion would be spent by the end of 2010. This is highly embarrassing
given that Congress's justification for passing this bill so urgently is to help
the economy right now, if not sooner. And the red Congressional faces must be
very red indeed, because CBO's analysis has since vanished into thin air after
having been posted early last week on the Appropriations Committee Web site.
Officially, the committee says this is because the estimates have been
superseded as the legislation has moved through committee. No doubt.
David Obey, "The Stimulus Time
Machine That $355 billion in spending isn't about the economy," The Wall
Street Journal, January 26, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123292987008414041.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Evidence suggests that Bernard Madoff, the
“prominent” Wall Street operator and former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market,
had ties to the Russian Mafia, Moscow-based oligarchs, and the Genovese
organized crime family. And, as reported by Deep Capture and Reuters, Madoff did
not just orchestrate a $50 billion Ponzi scheme. He was also the principal
architect of SEC rules that made it easier for “naked” short sellers to
manufacture phantom stock and destroy public companies – a factor in the near
total collapse of the American financial system.
Mark Mitchell, "Strange Occurrences
and a Story about Naked Short Selling," Deep Capture, January 27, 2009
---
http://www.deepcapture.com/strange-occurrences-and-a-story-about-naked-short-selling/
The main reason Brandeis University is selling its valued art collection
"It’s like a one-two-three punch: the economy tanks,
they overbuilt at the peak of the market and their largest donor was hit
dramatically by the Madoff scandal,” said Mark Williams, a Boston University
senior lecturer who specializes in risk management and has studied Brandeis’s
finances. Among the biggest donors to Brandeis are the philanthropist Carl
Shapiro and his wife, Ruth. Carl Shapiro and his family foundation had
losses of $545 million in Madoff’s alleged Ponzi scheme,
according to the Boston Globe.
Forwarded by Caroline Becker
"Brandeis to Sell All (over 6,000 pieces) of Its Art," by Scott Jaschik,
Inside Higher Ed, January 27, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/27/brandeis
Jensen Comment
The meltdown of the stock market also clobbered the $700 million endowment of
Brandeis University. It is not clear what, if any, of the University's endowment
recovered from the Madoff fund before the fraud was disclosed ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x64396.xml
Watching Illinois Gov. Nosferatu (the walking
politically undead) continue his media blitz on ABC's "The View" on Monday was
like watching an old cheesy horror flick—"The Brides of Dracula." (snip) As he
sat with the women of "The View," the Illinois Senate began the final act of the
impeachment. Democrats are certain he's become infected and deadly, and so
they'll amputate in a matter of days.
John Kass, "A comedy for some; for us, a horror show,"
Chicago Tribune, January 27, 2009 ---
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-kass-27-jan27,0,7080273.column
Jensen Comment
It's not that Blago is an honest politician. The problem is that he's too stupid
to be good at his craft. I wonder if he's ever heard the adage: "If you're
deep in the hole, stop digging! His lack of humble apology just may get him
prison time."
Watch Blago on The View ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbs8uw22DKM
I really liked Blago when he schmoozed with the
media out in front of his modest Chicago house and then went jogging in the snow
with no body guards in sight. That was after Blago had, for several weeks, been
sending invisible obscene gestures toward the Daley Machine that he wasn't about
to be a team player and appoint a new senator without getting something in
return for his ownself. Blago showed he had no respect for a fundamental rule of
Illinois politics: The Mayor of Chicago outranks the Governor. Chicago mayors
don't go to jail. But Blago is in line to be the fourth governor in modern times
(after Kerner, Walker and Ryan) to go from the governor's house to the Big
House. He might have some interesting things to say on his way there. So when
Blago jogs without a body guard, he's a warrior. I like him for that. Mafia Sam
"Momo" Giancana was shot seven (7) times in the head with a small caliber pistol
inside his Oak Park home back on June 19, 1975, before he was scheduled to
testify before a Senate committee. The Chicago Police were stationed outside his
house protecting him. I especially like Blago because he made Rahm Emanuel
disappear for awhile. Did you notice that? As soon as it was announced that Rahm
and Rod had a conversation about who would replace Obama (of course they would),
Rahm went into stealth mode and became invisible to the media. No trailing
reporters, except that one that found him on a family outing. No microphones in
the face. No Rahm. Out of sight/out of mind.
Lee Cary, "Why I Like Blago," American Thinker, January 27, 2009
---
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/01/why_i_like_blago.html
Given the increasing frequency of 10% to 15% dips in
sea ice forecast over the next century by the climate models the team used,
Jenouvrier and colleagues predict that the number of Pointe Géologie penguins
will plummet from 3000 to 400 breeding pairs. Finding a new home isn't an
option, says Jenouvrier, because the penguins have to stick to the coast--and in
that part of the continent, it's solid land to the south. "Their conclusions for
the Pointe Géologie colony are reasonable, in fact, optimistic considering the
state of our present world," says penguin expert Gerald Kooyman of the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. Still, penguin lovers
shouldn't despair just yet. Kooyman notes that many of the 400,000 or so emperor
penguins in Antarctica live farther south, where it's colder and sea ice may
behave differently. "Are emperor penguins as a species in trouble?" he asks. "I
don't think so." And sea ice geophysicist Stephen Ackley of the University of
Texas, San Antonio, says that even the Pointe Géologie penguins may be okay, as
he doesn't think the climate models are accurate enough to predict what sea ice
will do. According to the models, "we should have already seen a decline of sea
ice in the 1990s," he says. Instead, "we're seeing an increase. ... I have to be
skeptical about how well they can predict the future."
Helen Fields, "Death March of the
Penguins?" ScienceNOW Daily News, January 26, 2009 ---
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/126/2
Beleaguered Citigroup is upgrading its mile-high
club with a brand-new $50 million corporate jet - only this time, it's the
taxpayers who are getting screwed. Even though the bank's stock is as cheap as a
gallon of gas and it's burning through a $45 billion taxpayer-funded rescue, the
airhead execs pushed through the purchase of a new Dassault Falcon 7X, according
to a source familiar with the deal.
Jennifer Gould Keil and Chuck
Bennett, "Just Plane Despicable," New York Post, January 26, 2009 ---
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01262009/news/nationalnews/just_plane_despicable_152033.htm
Jensen Comment
After Citi's executives pay themselves millions in bonuses they'll need a fast
way to get out of town. Eventually because of the adverse publicity, Citigroup
cancelled the order for this new luxury jet aircraft. Fortunately, there are
hundreds of almost new used corporate jets coming on the market.
John Thain is the guy that looks like a Clark Kent
doll you saw grinning from page one of your paper Friday morning. Thain was just
fired by Bank of America because the square-jawed executive demanded a $30
million bonus after losing $5 billion in just three months at the bank's Merrill
Lynch unit. In addition, Thain spent over a million dollars redecorating his
office while, at the same time, the U.S. Treasury was bailing out his company
with billions in aid. Thain's office re-do included the installation of a
$35,000 toilet bowl. Thain was robbed.
Greg Polast, "Why an a$$hole is always in charge," Suicide Girls,
January 23, 2009 ---
http://suicidegirls.com/news/politics/23528/
The Secret Lives of Philosophers
"Are Philosophers Really Lovers Of Wisdom?" Simoleon Sense,
February 2, 2009 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/are-philosophers-really-lovers-of-wisdom/
I’ve
always been interested in becoming an academic
philosopher. My interest is so profound that I even
majored as one during undergrad, only to quickly switch
to Psychology & Neuroscience. Here’s an article brought
to my attention by a friend and philosopher.
Click
Here To Read About The Secret Lives Of Philosphers
Article Introduction (Via Philosopher’s Net)
Although
academics will hardly raise an eyebrow about this “open
secret”, it comes as a surprise to many others to learn
that many philosophers, in fact an increasing number by
my lights, are little devoted to the love of wisdom. In
only a merely “academic” way do they aspire to
intellectual virtue. Even less often do they exhibit
qualities of moral excellence. On the contrary, many
philosophers, or what pass as philosophers, are, sadly,
better described as petty social climbers, meretricious
snobs, and acquisitive consumerists.
I blush
a bit now to confess that part of what drove me into
philosophy in the first place was the naive conviction
that among those who call themselves lovers of wisdom I
would find something different in kind from the
repugnant and shallow brutalism of the worlds of
finance, business, and the law to which I had suffered
some exposure in Ronald Reagan’s America.
Article Excerpts (Via Philsopher’s Net)
“Instead, I’ve found that the secret lives of
philosophers are more often than not pre-occupied with
status and acquisition.”
“Like
debutantes at the ball, philosophers now often spend
much of their time dropping names, gossiping, promoting
their connections, hawking their publications, passing
out business cards and polishing their self-promotional
web sites.”
“Attitudes toward material consumption are not, I’m
afraid much better. Philosophers seem to pepper their
conversations more and more with remarks about the perks
or bonuses they receive – how much money they have
available for travel, what sort of computer allowances,
how big their research grants are.”
“All of
this suggests a philosophical culture that imitates the
business world not only in its emphasis on product
(publication) but also in its adopting the criteria and
trappings of professional success characteristic of
commercial life.
Conclusions (Via Philosopher’s Net)
“One
implication of this little secret is that professional
philosophers have become less and less egalitarian in
their view of education.”
“Finding
philosophers devoted principally to the love of wisdom
and to sharing it broadly has become, as Spinoza said of
all excellent things, as difficult as it is rare.”
Click Here To Read About The Secret Lives Of Philosphers
The following are included in Bob Jensen's listing of free online videos and
tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Gateway to Philosophy ---
http://www.bu.edu/paideia/index.html
Teach Philosopy 101 ---
http://www.teachphilosophy101.org/
This site presents strategies and
resources for faculty members and
graduate assistants who are teaching
Introduction to Philosophy courses; it also includes material of
interest to college faculty generally. The
mission of TΦ101 is to provide free,
user-friendly resources to the academic community. All of the
materials are provided on an
open source license. You may also
print as many copies as you wish (please
print in landscape). TΦ101 carries no advertising. I am deeply
indebted to
Villanova University for all of the
support that has made this project possible.
John Immerwahr, Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University
Ask Philosophers ---
http://www.amherst.edu/askphilosophers/
This site puts the talents and knowledge
of philosophers at the service of the general public. Send in a
question that you think might be related to philosophy and we
will do our best to respond to it. To date, there have been 1375
questions posted and 1834 responses.
Philosophy Talk (Audio) ---
http://www.philosophytalk.org/
Accounting Professors are the Least Hot Business Professors (according to
students)
Just in case you didn't notice, Finance professors
were rated as the hottest among the business disciplines (and accounting was
rated least hot). So if you're deciding between a PhD in Finance and Accounting,
if you want hotter colleagues, choose Finance, but if you want to look better by
comparison, go with accounting.
The Unknown Professor, Financial Rounds Blog, January 29, 2009 ---
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
Although the Financial Rounds Blog has a lot of tongue in cheek, caution
should be seriously noted about electing to go into a finance doctoral program.
Demand for finance graduates may be down for a long, long time which, in turn,
will affect the demand for new PhD graduates in economics and finance. But I've
not seen anywhere that the demand for accounting PhD graduates will be
relatively low for the long haul (apart from the short term budget crises
colleges are having these days that in many cases has frozen virtually all
hiring). In fact, a lot of undergraduate finance majors may be shifting over to
accounting, thereby creating more need for accounting professors.
Apart from short term hiring freezes, the number of new PhDs in accounting is
greatly in short supply such that it's probably better to consider job
opportunities and to lower expectations about being rated as hot on campus ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
Question
What disciplines on campus have the hottest professors?
Answer ---
Click Here
"Attractiveness, Easiness, and Other Issues: Student Evaluations of
Professors on RateMyProfessors.com," by James Felton Central Michigan
University, Peter T. Koper, John Mitchell, and Michael Stinson, SSRN,
July 2006 ---
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=918283
Question
What criterion emerges as the single most important criterion for professorial
ratings on RateMyProfessor.com?
Answer
Grading. Grade inflation has been heavily impacted by the rise in the use of
required teaching evaluations for performance and tenure evaluations ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor
Bob Jensen's threads on grade inflation are
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#GradeInflation
Question
If median grades for each course are made publically available on the Internet,
will students seek out the high grade average or low grade average courses?
Examples of such postings at Cornell University are at
http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Student/mediangradesA.html
Hypothesis 1
Students will seek out the lower grade average courses/sections thinking that
they have a better chance to compete for high grades.
Hypothesis 2
Students will seek out the higher grade average courses/sections thinking that
particular instructors are easier graders.
However, when Cornell researchers studied about
800,000 course grades issued at Cornell from 1990 to 2004, they found that most
students visited the site to shop for classes where the median grade was higher.
Plus, professors who tended to give out higher grades were more popular.
Students with lower SAT scores were the most likely to seek out courses with
higher median grades.
"Easy A's on the Internet: A surprising Cornell experiment in posting
grades; plus a look at recent research into ethical behavior, service charges,
and volunteer habits," by Francesca Di Meglio, Business Week, December
11, 2007 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/dec2007/bs20071211_885308.htm?link_position=link2
In a striking
example of unintended consequences, a move by Cornell
University to give context to student grades by publicly
posting median grades for courses has resulted in exactly
the opposite student behavior than anticipated.
Cornell's College of Arts & Sciences originally set up a
Web site in 1997 where median
grades were posted, with the intention of also printing
median class grades alongside the grade the student actually
received in the course on his or her permanent transcript.
Administrators thought students would use the information on
the Web site to seek out classes with lower median
grades—because, they reasoned, an A in a class that has a
median grade of B-minus would be more meaningful than say,
an A in a course where the median was A-plus.
Course Shopping Leads to Grade Inflation
However,
when Cornell researchers studied about 800,000 course grades
issued at Cornell from 1990 to 2004, they found that most
students visited the site to shop for classes where the
median grade was higher. Plus, professors who tended to give
out higher grades were more popular. Students with lower SAT
scores were the most likely to seek out courses with higher
median grades.
This
"shopping" in turn led to grade inflation, Vrinda Kadiyali,
associate professor of marketing and economics at Cornell's
Johnson Graduate School of Management,
one of the authors, explained in an
interview. The study, which is undergoing peer review, has
not yet been published.
So far,
however, the university has posted the median course grades
only on the Internet and has not yet put those grades on
transcripts. According to an article in the Cornell
Daily Sun, the school will start posting the grades
on transcripts in the spring. School officials were not
immediately available for comment.
The research
team hopes the school follows through on its plans. "That
will allow Cornell to hold itself to a higher standard
because it lets potential employers know where students
stand relevant to other students," says Kadiyali.
The presence
of the median grade data is well-known to students but less
well-known to faculty. The researchers themselves were
prompted to do the study when one of them learned of the Web
site from a student questioning grades in her course.
Kadiyali says the formula the researchers used to come to
these conclusions could easily be applied to Internet
teacher rating sites, such as
ratemyprofessors.com. It's
something educators should consider, she adds, to find out
how these posts affect the decision-making of students and,
thus, professors and their courses.
Jensen Comment
The problem is that, in modern times, grades are the keys to the kingdom (i.e.,
keys unlocking the gates of graduate studies and professional careers) such that
higher grades rather than education tend to become the main student goals. A
hundred years ago, just getting a degree could open postgraduate gates in life
because such a small proportion of the population got college diplomas. With
higher percentages of the population getting college diplomas, high grades
became keys to the kingdom. In many colleges a C grade is viewed as very nearly
a failing grade.
At the same time, formal teaching evaluations and teacher rating sites like
ratemyprofessors.com have led to marked grade inflation in virtually all
colleges. The median grades are often A, A-, B+, or B. The poor student's C
grade is way below average. Just take a look at these course medians from
Cornell University ---
http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Grades/MedianGradeSP07.pdf
December 19, 2007eply from a good friend who is
also a university-wide award winning teacher
I'm not for easy grading, but I also wonder some
about this study. Could it be that the MORE EFFECTIVE instructors are also
easier graders and vice versa? I have no idea, but I'd like to see a control
for this variable.
And God help us if a professor is popular! What an
awful trait for an educator to have!
Jeez!
December 20, 2007 reply from Bob Jensen
Dear Jeez,
The terms "easy grader" and "easy grading"
are probably not suited for hypothesis testing. They are too hard to
precisely define. Some, probably most, "easy graders" counter by saying that
they are just better teachers and the students learned more because of
superior teaching. In many cases, but certainly not all cases, this is
probably true. Also, it is almost impossible to distinguish easy grading
from easy content. Students may learn everything in a course if the course
is easy enough to do so.
Instructors will also counter that they are
ethical in the sense of scaring off the poor students before the course
dropping deadlines. Instructors who snooker poor students to stay in their
courses and then hammer them down later on can show lower median grades
without punishing better students with C grades. Fortunately I don't think
there are many instructors who do this because they then face the risk of
getting hammered on teaching evaluations submitted by the worst students in
the course.
Easy grading/content is a lot like
pornography. It's probably impossible to precisely define but students know
it when they shop for easier courses before registering. It may be
possible to a limited extent to find easy graders in multiple section
courses having common examinations. For example, I was once a department
chair where our two basic accounting courses had over 30 sections each per
semester. But even there it is possible that all instructors were relatively
"easy" when they put together the common examinations.
It is widely known that nearly every college
in the U.S. suffers from grade inflation. Only an isolated few have been
successful in holding it down. College-wide grade averages have swung way
above C grades and in some instances even B grades. It is typical any more
for median grades of a college to hit the B+ or A- range, and in many
courses the median grade is an A.
The Cornell study sited above covering
800,000 course grades (a lot) did not identify easy graders. It identified
courses/sections having higher median grades. Higher median grades may not
signify easy grading or easy content, but students seem to know what they
are shopping for and the Cornell study found that students do shop around
for bargains. My guess is that the last courses left on the shelf are those
with median grades in the C range.
Bob Jensen
Bob Jensen's threads on grade inflation are
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#GradeInflation
Controversial Advice for Potential Doctoral Students in the Humanities
Jensen Comment
To the extent that professors mislead prospective doctoral students about the
academic job market, the following article is somewhat appropriate. However, it
may make too much of the career motivation of humanities doctoral students. Many
humanities doctoral students are seeking to become researchers, writers, and
just plain scholars irrespective of the rather dismal (highly competitive)
professorial job market for doctoral graduates in humanities. Some graduates
hope to be supported by spouses while they pursue a "career" in research and
writing. Some hope to pursue learning for learning sake even if they have to be
under placed in terms of actually making a living such as being a literary
scholar while having to teach second grade in an elementary school. I truly
respect people who pursue scholarship, research, and writing passions apart from
having to earn a living doing something else. May the fruits of their dedication
pay off in many ways other than money, and if they also pay off in money I say
congratulations!
The biggest problem with the academic job market in humanities and social
science is that it's somewhat snobbish. Given that hundreds of PhDs might apply
for a given tenure track opening in the humanities or social science division,
colleges sometimes are inclined to weight doctorates from prestigious
universities more heavily, especially the Ivy League-level universities. In the
professional schools, the most prestigious universities often trade their own
doctoral graduates, but for the most part doctoral graduates from most any
regionally accredited university or college generally have good shots for top
jobs.
"Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go; It's hard to tell young
people that universities view their idealism and energy as an exploitable
resource," by Thomas H. Benton, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 30, 2009
---
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01/2009013001c.htm?utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en
Nearly six years ago, I wrote a column called
"So You Want to Go to Grad School?" (The
Chronicle,
June 6, 2003). My purpose was to warn undergraduates away from
pursuing Ph.D.'s in the humanities by telling them what I had
learned about the academic labor system from personal observation
and experience. It
was a message many prospective graduate students were not getting
from their professors, who were generally too eager to clone
themselves. Having heard rumors about unemployed Ph.D.'s, some
undergraduates would ask about job prospects in academe, only to be
told, "There are always jobs for good people." If the students
happened to notice the increasing numbers of well-published, highly
credentialed adjuncts teaching part time with no benefits, they
would be told, "Don't worry, massive retirements are coming soon,
and then there will be plenty of positions available." The
encouragement they received from mostly well-meaning but
ill-informed professors was bolstered by the message in our culture
that education always leads to opportunity.
All these years later, I still get
letters from undergraduates who stumble onto that column. They tell
me about their interests and accomplishments and ask whether they
should go to graduate school, somehow expecting me to encourage
them. I usually write back, explaining that in this era of grade
inflation (and recommendation inflation), there's an almost
unlimited supply of students with perfect grades and glowing
letters. Of course, some doctoral program may admit them with full
financing, but that doesn't mean they are going to find work as
professors when it's all over. The reality is that less than half of
all doctorate holders — after nearly a decade of preparation, on
average — will ever find tenure-track positions.
The follow-up letters I receive
from those prospective Ph.D.'s are often quite angry and incoherent;
they've been praised their whole lives, and no one has ever told
them that they may not become what they want to be, that higher
education is a business that does not necessarily have their best
interests at heart. Sometimes they accuse me of being threatened by
their obvious talent. I assume they go on to find someone who will
tell them what they want to hear: "Yes, my child, you are the one
we've been waiting for all our lives." It can be painful, but it is
better that undergraduates considering graduate school in the
humanities should know the truth now, instead of when they are 30
and unemployed, or worse, working as adjuncts at less than the
minimum wage under the misguided belief that more teaching
experience and more glowing recommendations will somehow open the
door to a real position.
Most undergraduates don't realize
that there is a shrinking percentage of positions in the humanities
that offer job security, benefits, and a livable salary (though it
is generally much lower than salaries in other fields requiring as
many years of training). They don't know that you probably will have
to accept living almost anywhere, and that you must also go through
a six-year probationary period at the end of which you may be fired
for any number of reasons and find yourself exiled from the
profession. They seem to think becoming a humanities professor is a
reliable prospect — a more responsible and secure choice than, say,
attempting to make it as a freelance writer, or an actor, or a
professional athlete — and, as a result, they don't make any
fallback plans until it is too late.
I have found that most prospective
graduate students have given little thought to what will happen to
them after they complete their doctorates. They assume that everyone
finds a decent position somewhere, even if it's "only" at a
community college (expressed with a shudder). Besides, the
completion of graduate school seems impossibly far away, so their
concerns are mostly focused on the present. Their motives are
usually some combination of the following:
- They are excited by some
subject and believe they have a deep, sustainable interest in
it. (But ask follow-up questions and you find that it is only
deep in relation to their undergraduate peers — not in relation
to the kind of serious dedication you need in graduate
programs.)
- They received high grades and
a lot of praise from their professors, and they are not finding
similar encouragement outside of an academic environment. They
want to return to a context in which they feel validated.
- They are emerging from 16
years of institutional living: a clear, step-by-step process of
advancement toward a goal, with measured outcomes, constant
reinforcement and support, and clearly defined hierarchies. The
world outside school seems so unstructured, ambiguous, difficult
to navigate, and frightening.
- With the prospect of an
unappealing, entry-level job on the horizon, life in college
becomes increasingly idealized. They think graduate school will
continue that romantic experience and enable them to stay in
college forever as teacher-scholars.
- They can't find a position
anywhere that uses the skills on which they most prided
themselves in college. They are forced to learn about new things
that don't interest them nearly as much. No one is impressed by
their knowledge of Jane Austen. There are no mentors to guide
and protect them, and they turn to former teachers for help.
- They think that graduate
school is a good place to hide from the recession. They'll spend
a few years studying literature, preferably on a fellowship, and
then, if academe doesn't seem appealing or open to them, they
will simply look for a job when the market has improved. And,
you know, all those baby boomers have to retire someday, and
when that happens, there will be jobs available in academe.
I know I experienced all of those
motivations when I was in my early 20s. The year after I graduated
from college (1990) was a recession, and the best job I could find
was selling memberships in a health club, part time, in a shopping
mall in Philadelphia. A graduate fellowship was an escape that
landed me in another city — Miami — with at least enough money to
get by. I was aware that my motives for going to graduate school
came from the anxieties of transitioning out of college and my
difficulty finding appealing work, but I could justify it in
practical terms for the last reason I mentioned: I thought I could
just leave academe if something better presented itself. I mean,
someone with a doctorate must be regarded as something special,
right? |
Continued in article
"The Relevance of the Humanities," by Gabriel Paquette, Inside
Higher Ed, January 22, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/01/22/paquette
The deepening
economic crisis has triggered a new wave of budget cuts and
hiring freezes at America’s universities. Retrenchment is
today’s watchword. For scholars in the humanities, arts and
social sciences, the economic downturn will only exacerbate
existing funding shortages. Even in more prosperous times,
funding for such research has been scaled back and scholars
besieged by questions concerning the relevance of their
enterprise, whether measured by social impact, economic
value or other sometimes misapplied benchmarks of utility.
Public funding
gravitates towards scientific and medical research, with its
more readily appreciated and easily discerned social
benefits. In Britain, the fiscal plight of the arts and
humanities is so dire that the Institute of Ideas recently
sponsored a debate at King’s College London that directly
addressed the question, “Do the arts have to re-brand
themselves as useful to justify public money?”
In
addition to decrying the rising tide of philistinism, some
scholars might also be tempted to agree with Stanley Fish,
who
infamously asserted that
humanities “cannot be justified except in relation to the
pleasure they give to those who enjoy them.” Fish rejected
the notion that the humanities can be validated by some
standard external to them. He dismissed as wrong-headed
“measures like increased economic productivity, or the
fashioning of an informed citizenry, or the sharpening of
moral perception, or the lessening of prejudice and
discrimination.”
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Question
Is this a vulnerability that PwC should've discovered in advance under its Sox
Section 404 responsibility?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act
What I found scary is that this terrible malignant code was only discovered "by
chance." Technology has made our business firms, hospitals, transportation
systems, power grids, food chains, water systems, etc. extremely vulnerable to
destructive computer codes that can crash entire systems. This event at Fannie
Mae serves as a wakeup call to install more backups and safer human interfaces
in internal controls.
"Ex-Fannie Mae worker charged with planting computer virus," by
Freeman Klopott, Washington Examiner, January 29, 2009 ---
http://www.dcexaminer.com/local/012909-Ex-Fannie_Mae_worker_charged_with_planting_computer_virus.html
A fired Fannie Mae contract employee allegedly
placed a virus in the mortgage giant’s software that could have shut the
company down for at least a week and caused millions of dollars in damage,
prosecutors say. Rajendrasinh Makwana, an Indian citizen, was indicted
Tuesday on computer intrusion charges. The former Gaithersburg resident is
out on $100,000 bail, court documents said.
Makwana was fired from his contract position at
Fannie Mae on Oct. 24 for changing computer settings without permission from
his supervisor, FBI agent Jessica Nye wrote in a sworn statement. He had
worked at Fannie Mae for three years as a computer engineer at the Urbana
offices, where he had full access to all of the federally created mortgage
company’s 4,000 servers. Before leaving work Oct. 24, Makwana allegedly
tried to hide a code in server software that was set to activate the morning
of Jan. 31, the agent wrote.
“Had this malicious script executed, [Fannie Mae]
engineers expect it would have caused millions of dollars of damage and
reduced if not shutdown operations at [Fannie Mae] for at least one week,”
Nye wrote. “The total damage would include cleaning out and restoring all
4,000 of [Fannie Mae’s] servers, restoring and securing the automation of
mortgages, and restoring all data that was erased.”
A spokeswoman for Fannie Mae declined to comment.
According to Nye’s statement, a senior computer
engineer discovered the virus Oct. 29. The malicious code was hidden after a
blank page, and “it was only by chance” that
the senior engineer scrolled down and found the virus,
Nye wrote. The engineer locked down Fannie Mae’s servers to determine
whether other viruses were hidden inside and where the virus had come from,
Nye wrote. Only about 20 Fannie Mae employees and contractors, including
Makwana, had access to the server where the virus was stored.
An Internet Protocol address was eventually linked
to Makwana’s company-issued laptop, Nye wrote. He was arrested Jan. 7.
The virus was set to execute at 9 a.m. Jan. 31,
first disabling Fannie Mae’s computer monitoring system and then cutting all
access to the company’s 4,000 servers, Nye wrote. Anyone trying to log in
would receive a message saying “Server Graveyard.”
From there, the virus would wipe out all Fannie Mae
data, replacing it with zeros, Nye wrote. Finally, the virus would shut down
the servers.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Among other things, this could really mess up the PwC audit trail. One of the
risks of technology is that even enormous databases are now vulnerable relative
to days of old when one disgruntled person could not come so close to bringing
down an enormous company.
What I found scary is that this terrible virus was only discovered "by
chance."
January 30, 2009 reply from Jagdish Gangolly
[gangolly@CSC.ALBANY.EDU]
Bob,
This would be a fascinating case to discuss in an
auditing class.
It also would be a fascinating case to discuss in
an AIS class IF the students have a good understanding of the unix operating
system, unix tools, and shell scripting. I would definitely use it at Albany
since our AIS students do have that background.
I am attaching the complaint and a supporting
affidavit filed at the court in Maryland. This should be plenty of reading
for a 20 minutes or so of a lecture in an AIS class.
The disgruntled contract employee was fired, but
his privileges were not terminated. One must wonder where was the sysadmin
or what (s)he was smoking. The one-blank-page trick was discovered by a
diligent person (Nye).
The attached complaint gives details of the modus
operandi of the intrusion. It is a fairly simple set of scripts to write,
and I think one of our better AIS students could have written them with some
work.
The DCExaminer talks about a virus placed in the
system. There was no such thing. It was a much simpler thing.
The important thing for us is to teach the students
the importance of ethics and good behaviour if they are to avoid being the
guests of the US Government.
Jagdish
Scott Bonacker forwarded the following link:
"IT Worker Indicted For Setting Malware Bomb: At Fannie Mae IT
contractor deployed highly malicious script before his administrative rights
were terminated," by Tim Wilson, Dark Reading, January 29, 2009 ---
http://www.darkreading.com/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212903570&cid=nl_DR_DAILY_T
A former IT contractor at Fannie Mae, angry at
being terminated in October, has been thwarted in his attempt to crash all
4,000 servers at the mortgage services institution and wipe out all of their
data.
According to a report from the U.S. Department of
Justice, a federal grand jury in Maryland has indicted Rajendrasinh Babubhai
Makwana, a contractor working at Fannie Mae's Urbana, Md., facility, for
transmitting a malicious script to the company's servers.
The malicious code, which was set to execute on
Jan. 31, was designed to propagate throughout the Fannie Mae network and
destroy all of the company's data, the DoJ says.
According to court documents, Makwana -- who was
employed by OmniTech, a third-party contractor that handles server
administration for Fannie Mae -- was censured by management on Oct. 10 after
unintentionally distributing a server script without authorization. The
documents suggest the mistake was so egregious that Makwana probably knew he
would be fired, although his administrative rights were not revoked until
hours after his official termination on Oct. 24.
Apparently, Makwana had been busy before he was
kicked off the system. On Oct. 29, five days after Makwana had left the
company, a senior Unix engineer found a malicious script buried in a
legitimate script that validates the storage area network connections among
the company's 4,000 servers every morning at 9 a.m. A page break had been
inserted between the malicious script and the legitimate script, making it
less obvious.
The malicious script was set to execute multiple
tasks, all of them bad. First, it would wipe out all of the passwords on the
servers, effectively locking administrators out. Then it would build a list
of all servers that contained Fannie Mae data and wipe out all of the data,
replacing it with zeros. This would also destroy the backup software on the
servers, making the restoration of data more difficult because new operating
systems would have to be installed on all servers before any restoration
could begin, the court documents say.
The script would also remove all "High
Availability" software from any critical server, the complaint continues.
Then it would power off all servers, disabling the ability to remotely turn
on a server. After the second run-through, the script would remove all of
the files on the current host and try to zero out the root file system.
"Had this malicious script executed, [Fannie Mae]
engineers expect it would have caused millions of dollars of damage and
reduced, if not shut down, operations at [Fannie Mae] for at least one
week," the complaint says. "If this script were executed, the total damage
would include cleaning out and restoring all 4,000 [Fannie Mae] servers,
restoring and securing the automation of mortgages, and restoring all data
that was erased."
Makwana faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in
prison. He had his initial appearance in federal district court on Jan. 6,
following the filing of the complaint. Arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 30,
2009.
Industry experts warn that such exploits may become
more common as the economy forces companies to lay off an increasing number
of employees. Enterprises should be careful to terminate all data and
administrative access rights for the affected employees before they have the
opportunity to act in retribution, the experts warn.
Human Error is Still the Big Risk in Design and Application
"Google’s Internet search service malfunctioned for nearly 55 minutes
Saturday morning, upending users around the world with search results that
carried false safety warnings and Web links that did not work. The company
acknowledged Saturday that all searches produced links with the same warning
message: “This site may harm your computer.” Clicking on any of the links led to
an error message stating that the desired site could not be reached.
Liz Robbins, "Google Error Sends Warning Worldwide," The New York Times,
January 31, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/technology/internet/01google.html?_r=1&hp
Jensen Comment
I missed this big Google malfunction, but I wonder how many students and faculty
decided to fill the time by visiting the campus library. Would zero be a good
estimate? Most probably migrated to Yahoo or some other search engine.
What this once again illustrates is how fragile our information systems have
become. Google won't disclose how many servers it has online, but suppose it is
over a million. That would mean that a million servers and over 100 million
people were put on hold because some dope hit the wrong switch. I guess it's
good thing that the earth's spin is not computer controlled!
Computer Purchase Timing: 2009 is the Year of New Windows, Mac, and
Palm Operating Systems
Windows 7 may leave Vista in the dust, but Vista makes switch to Windows 7
much easier
It will be complicated to leap from XP to Windows 7
But there are some downsides to Windows 7. First, you
will only be able to directly upgrade Vista computers to the new version. People
still using Windows XP will need to perform a more cumbersome multistep process.
Microsoft is working on a method to help XP owners preserve all their data
during this process.
"Even in Test Form, Windows 7 Leaves Vista in the Dust," by Walter S.
Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123258632983004629.html
This will be a big year for new operating
systems. Apple plans a new version of its Macintosh operating system, to be
called Snow Leopard. Palm plans an all-new smart phone operating system
called Palm WebOS. But the new release that will affect more users than any
other will be Windows 7, the latest major edition of Microsoft's dominant
platform.
Microsoft hasn't announced an official release
date for Windows 7, but I would be surprised if it wasn't available to
consumers by this fall. The company has just released the first public beta,
or test, version of the software, and I've been trying it out on two
laptops. One is a Lenovo ThinkPad lent me by Microsoft with Windows 7
already installed, and the other is my own Sony Vaio, which I upgraded to
Windows 7 from Windows Vista.
Personal Technology columnist Walt Mossberg
provides a preview of the coming Microsoft Windows 7 operating software,
which he says offers significant improvements over the unpopular Windows
Vista. I won't be doing a full, detailed review of Windows 7 until it is
released in final form, but here's a preview of some of the main features of
this new operating system and some of my initial impressions.
In general, I have found Windows 7 a pleasure to
use. There are a few drawbacks, but my preliminary verdict on Windows 7 is
positive.
Even in beta form, with some features incomplete
or imperfect, Windows 7 is, in my view, much better than Vista, whose
sluggishness, annoying nag screens, and incompatibilities have caused many
users to shun it. It's also a serious competitor, in features and ease of
use, for Apple's current Leopard operating system. (I can't say yet how it
will compare with Apple's planned new release, as I haven't tried the
latter.)
In many respects, Windows 7 isn't a radical
shift from Vista, but is more of an attempt to fix Vista's main flaws. It
shares the same underlying architecture, and retains graphical touches like
translucent Window borders. But it introduces some key new navigation and
ease-of-use features, plus scores of small usability and performance
improvements -- too many to list here.
The flashiest departure in Windows 7, and one
that may eventually redefine how people use computers, is its multitouch
screen navigation. Best known on Apple's iPhone, this system allows you to
use your fingers to directly reposition, resize, and flip through objects on
a screen, such as windows and photos. It is smart enough to distinguish
between various gestures and combinations of fingers. I haven't been able to
test this feature extensively yet, because it requires a new kind of
touch-sensitive screen that my laptops lack.
But even if your current or future PC lacks a
touch screen, Windows 7 will have plenty of other benefits. The most
important may be speed. In my tests, even the beta version of Windows 7 was
dramatically faster than Vista at such tasks as starting up the computer,
waking it from sleep and launching programs.
And this speed boost wasn't only apparent in the
preconfigured machine from Microsoft, but on my own Sony, which had been a
dog using Vista, even after I tried to streamline its software. Of course,
these speed gains may be compromised by the computer makers, if they add
lots of junky software to the machines. Windows 7 is also likely to run well
on much more modest hardware configurations than Vista needed.
The familiar Windows taskbar is more
customizable and useful in Windows 7. The program icons are larger, and can
be "pinned" anywhere along the taskbar for easy, repeated use. There are
also "jump lists" that pop out from the icons in the taskbar and start menu,
showing frequently used or recent actions.
View Full Image
Associated Press A screenshot shows several
application windows on the desktop of the Beta version of the Microsoft
Windows 7 software. Windows 7 also cuts down on annoying warnings and nag
screens. Microsoft notifications have been consolidated in a single icon at
the right of the taskbar, and you can now decide under what circumstances
Windows will warn you before taking certain actions.
Compatibility with hardware and software, which
was a problem in Vista, seems far better in Windows 7 -- even in the beta. I
tried a wide variety of hardware, including printers, Web cams, external
hard disks and cameras, and nearly all worked fine.
I also successfully installed and used popular
programs from Microsoft's rivals, such as Mozilla Firefox, Adobe Reader,
Apple's iTunes, and Google's Picasa. All worked properly, even though none
was designed for Windows 7.
But there are some downsides to Windows 7. First,
you will only be able to directly upgrade Vista computers to the new
version. People still using Windows XP will need to perform a more
cumbersome multistep process. Microsoft is working on a method to help XP
owners preserve all their data during this process.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I'm still hot under the collar about the vulnerability of Windows to malware.
Each year I get closer to buying a Mac out of dirty Windows frustrations.
Question
What are some of the pop-up advertisements to avoid at all times?
What Bob Jensen found out the hard way that legitimate adware programs often
fail in permanently deleting an adware Trojan virus!
"How to Stop Operating-System Attacks Ads for
DriveCleaner, WinFixer,
Antivirus XP,
Antivirus 2009 and others pop up on PCs
all the time, but the software may be fraudulent or ineffective. Also: Mac users
need security updates, too.," by Andrew Brandt, PC Magazine via The
Washington Post, January 29, 2009 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/27/AR2009012701528.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter
A legitimate malware remover--one that
independent testing has objectively demonstrated to be effective--should be
able to deal with the immediate problem of an adware program that won't let
you remove it. Check your security software to see if it will do the trick.
But the real fix may be concerted government action: Late last year the
Federal Trade Commission asked a federal court to stop some perpetrators of
this type of scam. It may be that prison terms or massive fines are the
only useful deterrents.
Bob Jensen's threads on computer and networking security are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection
Google's Rumored New Cloud Computing GDrive
"Google's Rumored GDrive May 'Kill' the PC, Fox News, January
25, 2009 ---
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,482761,00.html
Google's rumored "GDrive," a service that would
enable users to access their PCs from any Internet connection, could kill
off the desktop computer, The Guardian has reported.
The GDrive, unconfirmed by Google, is reported to
launch this year, with tech news sites calling it the "most anticipated
Google product so far."
The Google drive would shift away from Microsoft
Window's operating system, in favor of "cloud computing," where storage and
processing is done in data centers. Users would no longer have to rely on
their computers' powerful hard drives.
Home and businesses have been turning toward
web-based services, such as e-mail — including popular services Hotmail and
Gmail — and photo storage, such as Flickr and Picasa. Users would no longer
have to worry about their hard drives crashing, since data would be saved on
the Web, and can be accessed from any machine.
With the GDrive, a PC would be a device acting as a
portal to the Web, enabling users to think of their computer as software
rather than hardware.
Google refused to confirm the GDrive, but
acknowledged the growing demand for cloud computing.
"There's a clear direction ... away from people
thinking, 'This is my PC, this is my hard drive,' to 'This is how I interact
with information, this is how I interact with the web,'" said Dave
Armstrong, head of product and marketing for Google Enterprise.
Chronology of Windows Operating Systems ---
http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/windows/win2000.htm
Windows 7 (Blackcomb/Vienna) is the next scheduled version of Windows ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7
Whereas Windows 7 will not be a radical departure from Windows Vista, Google's
cloud computing GDrive may force some radical changes in MS Office networking.
Rumors are circulating that there will be a
new version of MS Office in Fall of 2009, but Microsoft seldom meets rumored
schedules in such matters.
You can read more about MS Office at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Office
A free major competitor called Open Office has gotten better over the years ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Office
Also note Google Docs ---
Click Here
January 27, 2009 reply from David Fordham, James Madison University
[fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
Bob, "cloud computing" does indeed appear to be the
way things are going. I remember several years ago at the AIS Educator's
Conference seeing a demo of a company in NC that was selling a
surprisingly-well-done "web-based" accounting package and everyone was
buzzing, 'Why didn't someone think of this before?'. Of course, as you point
out, issues still remain, but I believe we are moving in this direction.
Unlike some others, I am not too uncomfortable with
the Confidentiality and the Integrity pillars of the InfoSec triad when it
comes to web-based services (for all except the most attractive of targets,
that is). I believe the majority of the web is a lot more safe than many
people give it credit for (although I quickly admit nothing is totally
safe!).
What I am most uncomfortable with, however, is the
Availability component. Less than 72 hours ago, for example, a major portion
of our valley's new $21 million emergency communication system went down,
and the critical 911 service we've relied on for many years suddenly no
longer worked for several HOURS, requiring people to look in the phone book
and dial a 7-digit phone number to get a fire truck or amublance or
policeman. As Scotty on Star Trek once said, "the more complicated the
machinery, the easier it is for something to gum up the works." Having been
a self-contained ham radio operator for over 30 years, I can't begin to
count the dozens of times we've been called up to provide backup
communications where the local or even regional communications
infrastructure has failed, been knocked out, or is overwhelmed for any of a
number of reasons ranging from disasters to a mouse chewing through a cable
to a custodian spilling a mop bucket. A small brush fire recently kno! !
cked out power for a day and phone service for almost 3 days near my
sister's home in Georgia last month. The more dependent we become on
infrastructure, the more we suffer when it "goes away", even for a short
time. (That's why I've always owned a generator, and keep a little gas,
water and food stored for emergencies.)
However, in spite of my concerns about availability
(and others' concerns about access and integrity) I do believe the
self-contained computing paradigm is going the way of subsistence farming.
While problems won't be totally 100% overcome, they will (and mostly have
been) addressed to the point where this is fast becoming a workable model. I
wouldn't call it a revolution as much as a logical evolution.
My wife is a computer repairman. Over the past few
years, she has seen her business morph from 90% hardware problems and 10%
software problems, to only 10% hardware and over 90% issues with software...
issues with installation, corruption, malware, operating system conversions,
version incompatibilities, driver conflicts, missing install CD's, adware,
etc. There's no doubt that heavy computer users are getting irritated at the
hassles their computers give them, even though hardware has become far more
reliable. Going back to a "dumb terminal" model, with intuitive software
interfaces (e.g., standardization and consistency and stability of design
across time) will be a huge improvement over the mess we have today.
One huge question in my mind is the authentication
issue. The safety of the mainframe came in its "virtual machine" design
whereby a user "logged on" and was given specific permissions. The internet
needs to abandon its love of of "anonymity" and come up with an acceptable
way of authenticating users reliably (a la the credit card companies
requiring you to activate your card via your home phone using the callerid
infrastructure). Once the authentication hurdle is overcome, a lot of other
issues automatically disappear. This is why I'm such a fan of biometrics,
especially now that the sampling techniques are being perfected to protect
against spoofing and counterfeiting.
Ahhh, progress. And the joys of being old enough to
remember back when....
January 27, 2009 reply from George Wright
[geo@LOYOLA.EDU]
> Once the authentication hurdle is overcome, a lot
of other issues
> automatically disappear. This is why I'm such a fan of biometrics,
> especially now that the sampling techniques are being perfected to
> protect against spoofing and counterfeiting.
Yes, but.... To quote Bruce Schneier, biometrics
are unique, but they're not secret. They're OK for local authentication, but
risky in the cloud. A fingerprint reader on your PDA is good security, but
using one to access your accounting system on the other side of the country
(or world) is risky.
Spoofing and counterfeiting aside, a biometric
(fingerprint scan, voiceprint, palm print scan, physiognomy scan, etc.) is
ultimately nothing but a number. The minutiae of your fingerprint is
converted to a hash code that is a database key. I can intercept the number.
I can steal the database.
Schneier says, "Biometrics are easy, convenient,
and when used properly, very secure; they're just not a panacea."
See
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/6tv365
Geo
More Floating on Google Clouds
"Taking Gmail Offline: An experimental new feature makes the Web
application feel more like desktop software," by Kate Greene, MIT's
Technology Review, January 27, 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/22533/?nlid=1725&a=f
Gmail users will soon no longer need an Internet
connection to access their inboxes and write and send messages. Within the
next few days, in an ongoing push to bring cloud computing to the masses,
Google will introduce a new experimental feature in Gmail Labs called
Offline Gmail. This feature synchronizes email from a user's computer with
Google's servers when she's online and still provides the looks and feel of
Gmail when she's offline. It relies on Gears, a downloadable piece of
software that synchronizes and caches data for Web applications like Google
Docs and Calendar.
From Google's blog post:
Once you turn on
this feature, Gmail
uses
Gears
to download a local
cache of your mail.
As long as you're
connected to the
network, that cache
is synchronized with
Gmail's servers.
When you lose your
connection, Gmail
automatically
switches to offline
mode, and uses the
data stored on your
computer's hard
drive instead of the
information sent
across the network.
You can read
messages, star and
label them, and do
all of the things
you're used to doing
while reading your
webmail online. Any
messages you send
while offline will
be placed in your
outbox and
automatically sent
the next time Gmail
detects a
connection. And if
you're on an
unreliable or slow
connection (like
when you're
"borrowing" your
neighbor's
wireless), you can
choose to use "flaky
connection mode,"
which is somewhere
in between: it uses
the local cache as
if you were
disconnected, but
still synchronizes
your mail with the
server in the
background. Our goal
is to provide nearly
the same
browser-based Gmail
experience whether
you're using the
data cached on your
computer or talking
directly to the
server.
According to the post,
Google employees have
been using the feature
for quite some time,
which isn't surprising
as most new features get
test driven by Googlers
long before they are
released to a wider
audience. For a glimpse
of future of computing,
it's helpful to
look at the habits of
Google employees.
Of course, the cloud
computing push isn't
unique to Google. Adobe
offers AIR, a platform
to turn Web applications
into software that
feels as if it's running
on a computer's hard
drive. And
Microsoft, for its part,
is trying to make
an operating system that
plays well with the
cloud.
|
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How do scholars search for academic references?
Scholarpedia ---
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Main_Page
PLoS One ---
http://www.plosone.org/home.action
Google Scholar ---
http://scholar.google.com/
Not to be confused with Google Advanced Search which does not cover many
scholarly articles ---
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
Google Knol ---
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
Google Research ---
http://research.google.com/
One Million University of Illinois (Free) Books to be Digitized by Google
---
http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/programs/CenterForLibraryInitiatives/Archive/PressRelease/LibraryDigitization/index.shtml
Google Digitized Books ---
http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search?q=Accounting
For example, key in the word "accounting"
Then try "Advanced Managerial Accounting"
Then try "Joel Demski"
Then try "Accounting for Derivative Financial Instruments"
Then try "Robert E. Jensen" AND "Accounting"
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announces
the availability of a newly-digitized collection of Abraham Lincoln books
accessible through the Open Content Alliance and displayed on the University
Library's own web site, as the first step of a digitization project of
Lincoln books from its collection. View the first set of books digitized at:
http://varuna.grainger.uiuc.edu/oca/lincoln/
Microsoft's Windows "Live Search" or "Academic Search" ---
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?scope=academic&q=
Amazon's A9 ---
http://a9.com/-/search/advSearch
The University of California's eScholarship Repository has recently
exceeded
five million full-text downloads,
according to the university
The eScholarship Repository, a service of the
California Digital Library, allows scholars in the University of California
system to submit their work to a central location where any users may easily
access it free of charge. The idea is to ease communication between
researchers. Catherine Mitchell, acting director of the CDL publishing
group, says the number shows that both content seekers and creators have
embraced the service, allaying concerns among researchers that others
wouldn't contribute to the repository.
Hurley Goodall, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 16, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2667&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Beginning October 23, 2003,
Amazon.com offers a text search of entire contents of millions of pages of
books, including new books ---
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/10197021/ref%3Dsib%5Fmerch%5Fgw/104-3984945-7813514
How It Works ---
http://snurl.com/BookSearch
A significant extension of our groundbreaking Look Inside the Book
feature, Search Inside the Book allows you to search millions of pages
to find exactly the book you want to buy. Now instead of just displaying
books whose title, author, or publisher-provided keywords that match
your search terms, your search results will surface titles based on
every word inside the book. Using Search Inside the Book is as simple as
running an Amazon.com search.
Soon to be the largest scholarly library in the world:
Google Book Search ---
http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search
Answers.com ---
http://www.answers.com/
Carnegie Mellon Libraries: Digital Library Colloquium (video lectures)
---
http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/DLColloquia.html
Encyclopaedia Britannica to let readers edit content
Encyclopaedia Britannica, the authoritative reference
book first published in 1768, is to let readers edit its entries, it said
Friday, as it battles to keep pace with Internet resources like Wikipedia. From
next week, visitors to the publication's website, Britannica.com, will be able
to submit proposed changes to editors, who will check them and make alterations
if they think they are appropriate. Users whose suggestions are accepted will
then be credited on the site, the firm said in a statement. Gorge Cauz,
president of the US-based firm, insisted that the publication was not trying to
be a wiki -- a collection of web pages which allows users to edit content --
like Wikipedia . . . But some technology commentators say the step is a doomed
attempt to preserve Britannica's subscription-based business model in the face
of the challenge from Wikipedia, which is free. The Times reported that while
Britannica.com attracts 1.5 million visitors per day, Wikipedia attracts roughly
six million.
PhysOrg, January 23, 2009 ---
http://www.physorg.com/news151938162.html
Jensen Comment
Whereas full text is available on Wikipedia for fee, Encyclopeaedia Britannica
only provides full text to paid subscribers. Subscriptions are about $70 per
year and a complete bound set is $2,000. Britannica is more reliable for
accuracy on topics covered, but Wikipedia overwhelms Britannica in terms of
millions upon millions of more topics covered. A scholarly approach might be to
first look up a topic in Wikipedia and then try to authenticate it in
Britannica, but this will only work for topics covered in Britannica. Also
Wikipedia has millions upon millions of "discussion" commentaries that vastly
widen the perspectives covered on many topics.
How Scholars Search ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars
Sharing School of Business of the Week ---
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/MSTIR/IndustryEvolution/Pages/default.aspx
"MIT's Management School Shares Teaching Materials (Cases) Online," by
Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 27, 2009 ---
Click Here
Though some business schools charge for the “case
studies” they develop as teaching aids, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology announced today that it is making a set of teaching materials
available free online.
MIT’s Sloan School of Management has unveiled a set
of case studies, videos, interactive teaching tools, and teacher’s notes on
a new Web site called MIT Sloan Teaching Innovation Resources ---
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/MSTIR/IndustryEvolution/Pages/default.aspx
The announcement comes eight years after MIT
created its OpenCourseWare project, which makes instructional materials for
courses available online for free.
What distinguishes the new site, according to
JoAnne Yates, deputy dean for programs, is that whereas OpenCourseWare
allows visitors to browse a linear series of resources and notes for a
specific course, the management-school’s site allows them to search for
specific “teaching artifacts”—e.g., case studies or simulation models—that
might be applied to any number of courses. Those artifacts will be
searchable by concept or business problem, like sustainability.
Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing universities (most all of the most
prestigious universities in the U.S.) are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Jensen Comment
MIT actually shares materials from hundreds of courses. The materials are
entirely free online. Although other universities are now more sharing with
videos of all course lectures online, MIT spearheaded the Open Knowledge
Initiative that led to such open sharing.
MIT's Open Courseware Home Page ---
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) has formally
partnered with three organizations that are translating MIT OCW course
materials into Spanish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional
Chinese ---
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Global/AboutOCW/Translations.htm
Dropping a Bomb on Accreditation
The most provocative vision for changing accreditation
put forward at Tuesday’s meeting came from Robert C. Dickeson, president
emeritus of the University of Northern Colorado. Dickeson’s presentation was
loaded with irony, in some ways; a position paper he wrote in 2006 as a
consultant to Margaret Spellings’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education
was harshly critical of the current system of accreditation (calling it rife
with conflicts of interest and decidedly lacking in transparency) and suggested
replacing the regional accrediting agencies with a “national accreditation
foundation” that would establish national standards for colleges to meet.
Dickeson’s presentation Tuesday acknowledged that there remained legitimate
criticisms of accreditation’s rigor and agility, noting that many colleges and
accrediting agencies still lacked good information about student learning
outcomes “40 years after the assessment movement began in higher education.”
Doug Lederman, "Whither Accreditation," Inside Higher Ed, January 28,
2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/28/accredit
Dickerson's 2006 Position Paper "Dropping a Bomb on Accreditation" ---
http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/03/31/accredit
Bob Jensen's threads on accreditation and assessment are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm
"2 Universities' Plagiarism Policies Look a Lot Alike," by Thomas
Bartlett, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 28, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/01/10350n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
In 2007, after several high-profile plagiarism
scandals, Southern Illinois University released a 17-page report on how to
deal with the issue. The report includes a lengthy definition of plagiarism,
explaining exactly what does and does not merit the dreaded "p" word.
One problem: That definition appears to have been
plagiarized.
The 139-word definition used in the report is
nearly identical to the definition adopted by Indiana University in 2005.
Here, for example, are passages from each definition, explaining what
constitutes plagiarism:
Southern Illinois: "... directly quoting another's
actual words, whether oral or written; using another's ideas, opinions, or
theories; paraphrasing the words, ideas, opinions, or theories of others,
whether oral or written; borrowing facts, statistics, or illustrative
material; and offering materials assembled or collected by others in the
form of projects or collections without acknowledgment."
Indiana: "1. Directly quoting another person's
actual words, whether oral or written; 2. Using another person's ideas,
opinions, or theories; 3. Paraphrasing the words, ideas, opinions, or
theories of others, whether oral or written; 4. Borrowing facts, statistics,
or illustrative material; or 5. Offering materials assembled or collected by
others in the form of projects or collections without acknowledgment."
In other passages, just a few words of some
sentences have been changed. For instance, Indiana University's policy says:
"What is considered 'common knowledge' may differ from course to course."
Southern Illinois's report changes the end of the sentence to "subject to
subject."
Uncertain Authorship
So how, when writing a report on plagiarism, did
Southern Illinois manage to lift much of the content without citation?
The chairman of the committee that put the report
together, Arthur M. "Lain" Adkins, said he didn't know. Mr. Adkins, who is
the director of the university's press, acknowledged that the language is
"very similar" but wasn't convinced that his committee had done anything
wrong. "It could be a coincidence," Mr. Adkins said. "Any definition by
nature is going to be close to another definition."
While the report was signed by all 10 members of
the committee, that particular section of the report was, according to Mr.
Adkins, "most likely" written by R. Gerald Nelms, an associate professor of
English at Southern Illinois at Carbondale. Mr. Nelms has been quoted as a
plagiarism expert by publications like The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Nelms said he wasn't sure if he was responsible
for that definition and didn't know why the language would be almost exactly
the same. "If there are any similarities," he said, "my suspicion is they
are coincidental."
Both men said they did not believe that anyone on
the committee had intentionally copied the definition. Mr. Adkins said he
didn't remember any mention of Indiana's policy during the committee's
discussions.
Indiana adopted the current version of its
plagiarism policy in 2005, well before Southern Illinois issued its report.
Pamela W. Freeman, an associate dean of students and director of the office
of student ethics and antiharassment programs at Indiana University at
Bloomington, has been involved in writing the university's polices on topics
like plagiarism for 15 years.
"I don't think it would be the norm to verbatim use
it without citing it," said Ms. Freeman.
Her response after hearing the two policies read
aloud was simply, "Wow."
In fact, Indiana's policy has been cited elsewhere.
Case Western Reserve University's School of Dental Medicine uses (and
credits) Indiana's definition as part of its policy on academic integrity.
The Web site Scriptovia.com, which allows students to share class notes,
also includes Indiana's definition and conspicuously cites the university.
Previous Problems
In recent years, Southern Illinois has had more
than its share of plagiarism cases. In 2006, the chancellor of the
Carbondale campus was asked to step down after it was discovered that
portions of a strategic plan he wrote for Southern Illinois had been taken
from a strategic plan he helped write for another university (The
Chronicle, November 9, 2006).
The following year it was revealed that the
president of the system, Glenn Poshard, had copied large sections of his
1984 dissertation without citation (The
Chronicle, September 10, 2007). A university
committee deemed the copying "errors and mistakes" rather than plagiarism (The
Chronicle, October 12, 2007).
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on plagiarism and cheating are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm
Jensen Comment
This reminds me of an incident where a student turned in a totally plagiarized
term paper in once of my courses. He was also the CEO of a very small company.
My student was not a plagiarist in one sense of the word plagiarism, although he
was a plagiarist in another sense of the word plagiarism. He'd simply assigned
one of his employees to write the term paper. My student submitted the term
paper as his own work without knowing that it was plagiarized. I felt so sorry
about having to give him a F grade and report the incident to the Vice President
for Academic Affairs at my university. Later I found out that he fired the
plagiarizing employee, and a short time thereafter the small corporation
evaporated into thin air.
Question
If Madoff's stock trades were faked for 28 years, where did the cash come from
to pay some investors?
Larry Brown's Ponzi hypothetical is now turning into Ponzi reality
Madoff made off with $50 Billion!
Where did it go?
Who will pay it back?
A Tale of Four Investors
Forwarded by Dennis Beresford
Four investors made different
investment decisions 10 years ago. Investor one was extremely risk
averse so he put $1 million in a safe deposit box. Today he still
has $1 million. Investor two was a bit less risk averse so she
bought $1 million of 6% Fanny Mae Preferred. She put the $15,000
she received in dividends each quarter in a safe deposit box. After
receiving 40 dividends, she recently sold her investment for $20,000
so she now has $620,000 in her safe deposit box. Investor three was
less risk averse so he bought and held a $1 million well diversified
U.S. stock portfolio which he recently sold for $1 million, putting
the $1 million in his safe deposit box. Investor four had a friend
who knew someone who was able to invest her $1 million with Bernie
Madoff. Like clockwork, she received a $10,000 check each and every
month for 120 months. She cashed all the checks, putting the money
in her safe deposit box. She was outraged to learn that she will no
longer receive her monthly checks. Even worse, she lost all her
principal. She only has $1,200,000 in her safe deposit box. She
hopes the government will bail her out.
Lawrence D. Brown
J. Mack Robinson Distinguished Professor of Accounting
Georgia State University
December 18, 2008
|
"Madoff 'Victims' Do Math, Realize They Profited," SmartPros,
January 2009 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x64396.xml
The many Bernard Madoff investors who withdrew
money from their accounts over the years are now wrestling with an ethical
and legal quandary. What they thought were profits was likely money stolen
from other clients in what prosecutors are calling the largest Ponzi scheme
in history. Now, they are confronting the possibility they may have to pay
some of it back.
The issue came to the forefront this week as about
8,000 former Madoff clients began to receive letters inviting them to apply
for up to $500,000 in aid from the Securities Investor Protection Corp.
Lawyers for investors have been warning clients to
do some tough math before they apply for any funds set aside for the
victims, and figure out whether they were a winner or loser in the scheme.
Hundreds and maybe thousands of investors in
Madoff's funds have been withdrawing money from their accounts for many
years. In many cases, those investors have withdrawn far more than their
principal investment.
"I had a call yesterday from a guy who said, 'I've
taken out more money then I originally put in, but I still had $1 million
left with Madoff. Should I file a $1 million claim?'" said Steven Caruso, a
New York attorney specializing in securities and investment fraud.
"I'm hard-pressed to give advice in that
situation," Caruso said.
Among the options: Get in line with other victims
looking for restitution. Keep quiet and hope nobody notices. Return the
money. Or hire a lawyer and fight to keep profits that were probably
fraudulent.
No one knows yet how many people will emerge as net
winners in the scandal, but the numbers appear to be substantial. Many of
Madoff's long-term investors have, over time, cashed out millions of dollars
of their supposed profits, which routinely amounted to 11 percent to 15
percent per year.
Jonathan Levitt, a New Jersey attorney who
represents several former Madoff clients, said more than half of the victims
who called his office looking for help have turned out to be people whose
long-term profits exceeded their principal investment.
"There are a lot of net winners," he said.
Asked for an example, Levitt said one caller, whom
he declined to name, invested $1.8 million with Madoff more than a decade
ago, then cashed out nearly $3 million worth of "profits" as the years went
by.
On paper, he still had $4 million invested with
Madoff when the scheme collapsed, but it now looks as if that figure was
almost entirely comprised of fictitious profits on investments that were
never actually made, leaving his claim to be owed anything unclear.
Other attorneys report getting similar calls.
Under federal law, the court-appointed trustee
trying to unravel Madoff's business can demand that people who profited from
the scheme return some or all of the money.
These so-called "clawbacks" are generally limited
to payouts over the last six years, but could still amount to big bucks for
some investors.
When a hedge fund run by the Bayou Group collapsed
and was revealed to be a Ponzi scheme in 2005, the trustee handling the case
sought court orders forcing investors to return false profits. Many experts
anticipate a similar process in the Madoff case.
Applying for the aid could give the trustee
evidence he needs to initiate a clawback claim. On the other hand, investors
who ignore the letter would most likely forfeit any chance of recovering
lost funds.
No matter how they respond, it may only be a matter
of time before investors wiped out in the scandal turn on those who
unknowingly enjoyed the fruits of the fraud.
"The sharks are all circling," Caruso said.
Some hedge funds that had billions of dollars
invested with Madoff are already going through years worth of records,
trying to figure out which of their investors withdrew more than they put
in.
That data could be used by the fund managers to
defend themselves against lawsuits, or go after clients deemed to have
profited from the scheme and get them to return the cash.
The future is equally cloudy for investors who
cashed out entirely before Madoff's arrest.
Continued in article
All Reported Trades in Madoff's Investment Fund Were Fakes for 28 Years:
How could the "auditors" not be complicit in the Ponzi fraud?
"BERNIE'S FAKE TRADES REGULATORS: NO TRACE OF MADOFF STOCK BUYS SINCE
1960s," by James Doran, The New York Post, January 16, 2009 ---
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01162009/business/bernies_fake_trades_150467.htm
The mystery surrounding Bernard Madoff's alleged
$50 billion Ponzi scheme deepened further yesterday after the securities
industry's watchdog said there was no evidence that the accused swindler
ever traded a single share on behalf of his clients, suggesting financial
irregularities going back to the 1960s.
Officials at the Financial Industry Regulatory
Authority, known as FINRA, told The Post that after examining more than 40
years' worth of financial records from Madoff's now-defunct broker dealer,
there are no signs that Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities ever traded
shares on behalf of the investment-advisory business at the center of the
scandal.
The startling findings contradict statements that
Madoff's advisory clients received showing hundreds, if not thousands of
trades, completed by the broker dealer every year.
"Our investigations of Bernard Madoff's broker
dealership showed no evidence that any shares were ever traded on behalf of
his investment advisory business," a FINRA spokesman said, adding that the
regulator has looked at Madoff's books going back to 1960.
Ira Lee Sorkin, a Madoff lawyer, declined to
comment.
Madoff was arrested last month after his sons said
their father had confessed to them that his investment-advisory business was
a Ponzi scheme that had bilked $50 billion out of wealthy friends,
vulnerable charities and universities. Madoff remains free on $10 million
bail.
While his advisory business is at the center of the
scandal, all signs point to Madoff's broker dealer being a legitimate
business that traded shares wholesale on behalf of investment banks, mutual
funds and other institutions.
Madoff was previously vice chairman of FINRA's
predecessor NASD. He was also a member of the Nasdaq stock exchange, where
he served as chairman of its trading committee.
Richard Rampell, a Florida-based certified
accountant who counts as clients several of Madoff's victims, said his
review of dozens of statements supports FINRA's findings.
"Everything I saw on those statements told me that
Madoff was clearing his own trades," he said. "There was no third party
mentioned on any of those statements."
Steve Harbeck, CEO of Securities Industry
Protection Corp., the outfit overseeing the Madoff bankruptcy to ensure
clients get some sort of compensation, said his findings are similar to
FINRA's.
"I do not have any evidence to contradict that," he
said. "This is an amazing story that something like this could have gone on
undetected for so long."
Harbeck added that he believed Madoff has been
defrauding clients for at least 28 years. "I have seen evidence to that end
and I have nothing to contradict it," he said.
Question
If Madoff's stock trades were faked for 28 years, where did the cash come from
to pay some investors?
Answer
The definition of a Ponzi scheme depends upon new investors paying cash to
distribute to earlier investors ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi
This almost eliminates the amount of $50 billion Madoff stole that can be
recovered for the latest investors in his investment fund.
Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Why Madoff's Hedge Fund Could Be Audited by
Non-registered Auditors
We all know that Bernie Madoff's brokerage firm was
audited by an obscure 3-person accounting firm that is not registered with the
Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. This was permitted because the SEC
exempted privately owned brokerage firms from the SOX requirement that firms are
audited by registered accountants. Floyd Norris reports, in today's NY Times,
that the SEC has now quietly rescinded that exemption. As a result, firms that
audit broker-dealers for fiscal years that end December 2008 or later will have
to be registered. However, under another SOX provision, PCAOB is allowed to
inspect only audits of publicly held companies. NYTimes,
Oversight for Auditor of Madoff.
"Why an Obscure Accounting Firm Could Audit Madoff's Records," Securities Law
Professor Blog, January 9, 2008 ---
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/securities/
"Audit: More Bad Accounting in Veterans Health Care," AccountingWeb,
January 23, 2009 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x65142.xml
Two years after a politically embarrassing $1
billion shortfall that imperiled veterans health care, the Veterans Affairs
Department is still lowballing budget estimates to Congress to keep its
spending down, government investigators say.
The report by the Government Accountability Office,
set to be released Friday, highlights the Bush administration's problems in
planning for the treatment of veterans that President Barack Obama has
pledged to fix. It found the VA's long-term budget plan for the
rehabilitation of veterans in nursing homes, hospices and community centers
to be flawed, failing to account for tens of thousands of patients and
understating costs by millions of dollars.
In its strategic plan covering 2007 to 2013, the VA
inflated the number of veterans it would treat at hospices and community
centers based on a questionably low budget, the investigators concluded. At
the same time, they said, the VA didn't account for roughly 25,000 - or
nearly three-quarters - of its patients who receive treatment at nursing
homes operated by the VA and state governments each year.
"VA's use, without explanation, of cost assumptions
and a workload projection that appear unrealistic raises questions about
both the reliability of VA's spending estimates and the extent to which VA
is closing previously identified gaps in noninstitutional long-term care
services," according to the 34-page draft report obtained by The Associated
Press.
The VA did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
In the report, the VA acknowledged problems in its
plan for long-term care, which accounts annually for more than $4 billion,
or 12 percent of its total health care spending. In many cases, officials
told the GAO they put in lower estimates in order to be "conservative" in
their appropriations requests to Congress and to "stay within anticipated
budgetary constraints."
As to the 25,000 nursing home patients unaccounted
for, the VA explained it was usual clinical practice to provide short-term
care of 90 days or less following hospitalization in a VA medical center,
such as for those who had a stroke, to ensure patients are medically stable.
But the VA had chosen not to budget for them because the government is not
legally required to provide the care except in serious cases.
The GAO noted the VA was in the process of putting
together an updated strategic plan. Retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who was
sworn in Wednesday as VA secretary, has promised to submit "credible and
adequate" budget requests to Congress.
"VA supports GAO's overarching conclusion that the
long-term care strategic planning and budgeting justification process should
be clarified," wrote outgoing VA Secretary James Peake in a response dated
Jan. 5. He said the department would put together an action plan within 60
days of the report's release.
The report comes amid an expected surge in demand
from veterans for long-term rehabilitative and other care over the next
several years. Roughly 40 percent of the veteran population is age 65 or
older, compared to about 13 percent of the general population, with the
number of elderly veterans expected to increase through 2014.
In 2005, the VA stunned Congress by suddenly
announcing it faced a $1 billion shortfall after failing to take into
account the additional cost of caring for veterans injured in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The admission, which came months after the department insisted
it was operating within its means and did not need additional money, drew
harsh criticism from both parties.
The GAO later determined the VA repeatedly
miscalculated - if not deliberately misled taxpayers - with questionable
methods used to justify Bush administration cuts to health care amid the
burgeoning Iraq war. In Friday's report, the GAO said it had found similarly
unrealistic assumptions and projections in the VA's more recent budget
estimates submitted in August 2007.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Too-Fat Tails Lead to All Sorts of Troubles in Life
The Value at Risk (VaR) Model of Investment Risk ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VaR
"In Plato's cave," The Economist, January 24, 2009, pp. 10-14 ---
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12957753
...
Almost as damaging is the hash that banks have made
of “value-at-risk” (VAR) calculations, a measure of the potential losses of
a portfolio. This is supposed to show whether banks and other financial
outfits are being safely run. Regulators use VAR calculations to work out
how much capital banks need to put aside for a rainy day. But the
calculations are flawed.
The mistake was to turn a blind eye to what is
known as “tail risk”. Think of the banks’ range of possible daily losses and
gains as a distribution. Most of the time you gain a little or lose a
little. Occasionally you gain or lose a lot. Very rarely you win or lose a
fortune. If you plot these daily movements on a graph, you get the familiar
bell-shaped curve of a normal distribution (see chart 4). Typically, a VAR
calculation cuts the line at, say, 98% or 99%, and takes that as its measure
of extreme losses.
Tail spin However, although the normal distribution
closely matches the real world in the middle of the curve, where most of the
gains or losses lie, it does not work well at the extreme edges, or “tails”.
In markets extreme events are surprisingly common—their tails are “fat”.
Benoît Mandelbrot, the mathematician who invented fractal theory, calculated
that if the Dow Jones Industrial Average followed a normal distribution, it
should have moved by more than 3.4% on 58 days between 1916 and 2003; in
fact it did so 1,001 times. It should have moved by more than 4.5% on six
days; it did so on 366. It should have moved by more than 7% only once in
every 300,000 years; in the 20th century it did so 48 times.
In Mr Mandelbrot’s terms the market should have
been “mildly” unstable. Instead it was “wildly” unstable. Financial markets
are plagued not by “black swans”—seemingly inconceivable events that come up
very occasionally—but by vicious snow-white swans that come along a lot more
often than expected.
This puts VAR in a quandary. On the one hand, you
cannot observe the tails of the VAR curve by studying extreme events,
because extreme events are rare by definition. On the other you cannot
deduce very much about the frequency of rare extreme events from the shape
of the curve in the middle. Mathematically, the two are almost decoupled.
The drawback of failing to measure the tail beyond
99% is that it could leave out some reasonably common but devastating
losses. VAR, in other words, is good at predicting small day-to-day losses
in the heart of the distribution, but hopeless at predicting severe losses
that are much rarer—arguably those that should worry you most.
When David Viniar, chief financial officer of
Goldman Sachs, told the Financial Times in 2007 that the bank had seen
“25-standard-deviation moves several days in a row”, he was saying that the
markets were at the extreme tail of their distribution. The centre of their
models did not begin to predict that the tails would move so violently. He
meant to show how unstable the markets were. But he also showed how wrong
the models were.
Modern finance may well be making the tails fatter,
says Daron Acemoglu, an economist at MIT. When you trade away all sorts of
specific risk, in foreign exchange, interest rates and so forth, you make
your portfolio seem safer. But you are in fact swapping everyday risk for
the exceptional risk that the worst will happen and your insurer will
fail—as AIG did. Even as the predictable centre of the distribution appears
less risky, the unobserved tail risk has grown. Your traders and managers
will look as if they are earning good returns on lower risk when part of the
true risk is hidden. They will want to be paid for their skill when in fact
their risk-weighted returns may have fallen.
Edmund Phelps, who won the Nobel prize for
economics in 2006, is highly critical of today’s financial services.
“Risk-assessment and risk-management models were never well founded,” he
says. “There was a mystique to the idea that market participants knew the
price to put on this or that risk. But it is impossible to imagine that such
a complex system could be understood in such detail and with such amazing
correctness…the requirements for information…have gone beyond our abilities
to gather it.”
Every trading strategy draws upon a model, even if
it is not expressed in mathematical symbols. But Mr Phelps believes that
mathematics can take you only so far. There is a big role for judgment and
intuition, things that managers are supposed to provide. Why have they
failed?
"In Defense Of Value At Risk (VaR) And Other Risk Management Methods,"
by Suna Reyent, Seeking Alpha, January 19, 2009 ---
http://seekingalpha.com/article/115339-defending-var-but-you-still-need-common-sense
In the beginning of the month, New York
Times Magazine published an article by Joe Nocera called “Risk
Mismanagement” that created quite a stir in the blogosphere and beyond.
Despite the watering-down of certain aspects related to risk management
tools, as well as the diversity with which these tools are applied practice,
the article was a success because of the buzz it created as well as the
ensuing debate.
The article portrays a debate over value
at risk methodology between well-known practitioners of VAR and the critics
of the methodology led by Nassim Taleb. It is hard not to get carried away
with Mr. Taleb’s tabloid-like descriptions of VAR as a “fraud” and its
practitioners as “intellectual charlatans.”
I love how the debate is construed. The
premise is that value at risk and other valuation models (such as Black-Scholes)
assume normal distribution of asset returns. Okay, they do that in their
most primitive forms, but let’s just accept the oversimplification as a fact
for a moment because the debate would hardly exist in this simplistic form
if we didn’t go along with the show here.
This is where our hero Mr. Taleb, an
experienced options trader no less, emerges to the public mainstream to
inform all of us ignorant folks that asset returns do not follow a normal
distribution! The horror! The painful realization that this stuff continues
to be taught in business schools! All that wasted class time learning
statistics!
It is fair to say that this assumption
will mislead naïve market participants about the nature of their risk
exposures as “Black Swan” events happen a lot more frequently than suggested
by Gaussian distributions. The problem is, almost anyone in finance already
knows that asset prices are not normally distributed, and many practitioners
build models or apply extensions to existing ones in order to take this into
consideration.
I decided to give a little background on
value at risk in order to get the points across that I feel strongly about.
Since I teach VAR in the classroom as part of a risk management curriculum,
I feel it is best to give some preliminary information.
A Primer On Value At Risk
Depending on the confidence interval
chosen, value at risk, in its simplest form, exists of applying a one-sided
test to figure out the loss that a portfolio may weather in a given time
period. For instance, a 95% daily VAR of ten million dollars indicates that
a portfolio is likely to lose at most that amount of money 95% of the time,
or once a month assuming 20 trading days in a given month. At the same time,
it displays the LEAST amount of money that the portfolio can lose 5% of the
time. I appreciated it when Mr. Nocera mentioned this in his article
prepared for general readership. As VAR is unable to tell us about what kind
of a loss we should expect in that tail of 5%, the limitation of this metric
if taken as gospel becomes apparent even to the untrained eye.
More on the tail risk later. But first, I
would like to talk about three established ways of calculating value at risk
for one asset and analyze the current risk management crisis within this
framework:
Analytical VAR – “Misunderestimating”
Risks
Otherwise known as variance-covariance
method of calculating the value at risk, this is the well-known method of
calculating VAR and the easiest one to apply. It assumes a normal
distribution of returns. All it takes to calculate VAR is a standard
deviation, which represents the “volatility” of the asset as well as a mean,
which is the expected return on the same asset.
This is the VAR that Mr. Taleb seems to
conveniently focus on, because it will indeed underestimate the risk at the
tails of a negatively skewed or a leptokurtic distribution.
Stock markets in general exhibit negative
skewness, which means that the distribution of returns will exhibit a long
tail (a few extreme losses) to the left side. They also exhibit
leptokurtosis, which means that both tails of the distribution are fatter
than implied by normal distribution.
So we could go nuts over how wrong the
normal distribution assumption is, and apparently people do. But we should
also be very concerned over how sensitive this measure is to the standard
deviation as well the mean, both of which are subject to change as markets
change especially in the light of the current crisis.
Historical VAR – Good As Long As Future
Resembles Past
This method does not need any assumptions
about the distribution of returns and is certainly superior to analytical
VAR because it is not parametric. The more data there is, the better the
measurement. Historical data will exhibit characteristics such as skewness
or kurtosis as long as the asset itself exhibits these qualities as well.
Assuming 250 trading days in a given year,
in order to measure the 95% daily VAR you need to rank the returns from
worst to best and pick the greatest return among those that correspond to
the bottom 5% of returns. So the worst 12th return (or you could interpolate
between the 12th and13th worst return, since 250 divided by 20 is 12.5, but
since VAR itself is an approximation, why bother?) will tell you the maximum
percentage loss 95% percent of the time, or the minimum percentage loss 5%
of the time. Multiply the loss by your portfolio value and you get the neat
VAR value in terms of dollars.
Moreover, the majority of investment
houses use historical VAR as the basis for measurement as it is a clear
improvement over the analytical VAR. You do not need return assumptions or
standard deviation values to come up with this value.
Historical VAR calculations replace
parametric assumptions with historical data. This means that if you had
positions in mortgage derivative securities and started the year 2007 with
models that were built around data of the previous two years encompassing
the “peaceful” periods of 2005 and 2006, you would soon be awakened to a
world where your VAR measures no longer reflected the reality of the
marketplace. Note that such limitations of VAR as an all-encompassing risk
measure were visible to any professional who understood risk management
models as well as the limitations of historical data that went into them.
As Mr. Nocera’s article conveys, this is
precisely what Goldman Sachs (GS) did. When it became obvious that the
mortgage markets had changed in fundamental ways and aggressive positions in
these securities started bringing in gigantic losses (as opposed to reaping
the usual gigantic profits on the back of the ever-rising housing market),
the team decided to limit its risk exposure by “getting closer to home.”
I don’t think the article conveys what
“getting closer to home” really means. Let me use day trading as an example
here. In day trading terms, this means that when your positions start
showing huge losses at the end of the day, you accept “defeat” and take your
losses as opposed to trying to ride them in the hope that the market will
come around. So instead of wishing for market to make a comeback to recoup
losses, you close out your open positions, take your losses and go home.
Then you go back to the drawing board to strategize for the next day given
the new reality of the marketplace.
Of course, looking retrospectively, the
decision to limit exposure and take losses as opposed to trying to ride them
in the expectation of a housing market turnaround has been the right
decision to make. However, as we have seen with many other bubbles, managers
do not have the incentive to make the sound trading decisions, nor do they
have the incentive to listen to their risk managers as long as they get a
huge piece of profits made during the ride and the taxpayer ends up holding
the bag when the market finally blows up.
We have seen this movie over and over
again. What surprises me is the heavy blame put on models for not reflecting
“reality,” whereas those in charge knew that the mortgage bubble was
collapsing, they had many opportunities to get rid of their huge exposures
to the derivatives securities, but they chose not to do it most likely
because of expectations of a market turn around. This is trading 101. If you
try to ride your losses, you may make comebacks, but you will eventually
blow up.
Now the next episode features critics who
tell us that the “models” have been faulty and wrong. Hence the conclusion
that value at risk is an erroneous and misleading measure, not to mention a
“fraud.”
Ladies and gentleman, we found the “fraud”
haunting the trading floor on the street, and it is not a human being: Shame
on you, VAR and other risk management tools! Of course, we can blame the car
manufacturers for the accident: the car’s faulty speedometer, or its lack of
an apparatus to show us the bumps on the road ahead. But why is the culture
that is reticent to blame the drunk driver who was clearly intoxicated with
the thrill of making green?
These “models” are as guilty as the
“accounting” that was used with a sleight of hand to conceal what was really
going on behind the curtains during the Enron debacle and others. Of course,
given the mathematical complexities of models, the quantitative brainpower
needed to understand some of them, and the assumptions required in creating
a map of your territory, there is more of an opportunity to either blame the
models or to pretend that you didn’t understand them when things turned
sour.
As I ventured with this essay, hoping to
make my points within the value at risk framework featured in textbooks, I
will move on to the third methodology used in calculating the measure.
Monte Carlo Simulation – Anything Goes,
But More Of An Art Than Science
Monte Carlo Simulation is especially
useful in calculating risk exposures of assets that have either little
historical data or whose historical data is rendered irrelevant due to
changing economic conditions that affect both the price of securities and
the way these securities interact with each other in a portfolio. Also,
historical returns of assets with asymmetric payoffs or returns of
derivative securities that interact with variables such as interest rates,
housing prices, and the like will not reflect the future when factors that
influence the return of the security change as the economic climate shifts.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on VaR are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133glosf.htm#VaR
Bob Jensen's threads on the banking crisis ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
RPI's President Got a 36-Acre Second Home
While Stanford University's President Got a Scandalously Expensive Shower
Curtain
"Camp Jackson," by Jack Stripling, Inside Higher Ed, January 26, 2009
---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/26/rpi
University presidents are
often criticized for excessive compensation, but Shirley Ann Jackson is
taking heat for a benefit that may place her in a class all her own.
Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is taking heat for
her high pay, and a notable perk: a second home in the Adirondacks, provided
by RPI in addition to her presidential residence. Inside Higher Ed surveyed
all 26 private institutions within the Association of American Universities,
and officials with 25 of those colleges confirmed that their presidents are
not provided a second residence. The University of Chicago was the only
institution not to respond, but Chicago’s 2006 Form 990 only mentions a
single home provided to the president.
While RPI is
not a member of the AAU, the elite cohort of research
universities surely constitutes the institute’s aspirational
peer group.
Jackson’s $1.3 million compensation
makes her one of the highest-paid private university
presidents in the country, and her generous perks have drawn
particular scrutiny as the university faces financial
challenges. RPI recently laid off 80 of its more than 2,100
employees, and Jackson’s Adirondacks home, first reported on
by
The Albany Times Union,
has emerged as a symbolic structure of inequity.
“We’re kind
of upset,” said Brian Dolan, an RPI student who has led a
petition drive for Jackson to decrease her pay. “It seems
like it would be easy enough for her to cut a few of her
luxuries, because she certainly has them, to help a few
people maintain their livelihood here.”
Jackson
declined an interview request, but RPI issued a statement
about the second home, which the college purchased for
$450,000, the Times Union reported. The home sits on
36 acres, a tract of land roughly one-third the size of Camp
David.
“The
purchase of this property was funded entirely by a
restricted gift by a donor to the Institute,” William
Walker, an RPI spokesman, said in an statement e-mailed to
Inside Higher Ed. “The gift by the donor was given
specifically to purchase this property. The Board of
Trustees has made it available to the president as a
retreat, and as a facility to host high level official
activities, at her discretion.”
The chair
and vice chair of the board did not return calls for
comment.
Jackson has
for many years been a prominent figure in government and
academic science. She serves on many panels related to
science and technology policy, and she was appointed in 1995
by then-President Clinton to serve as chair of the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Jackson has also been heralded for her fundraising prowess,
securing a $360 million unrestricted gift to RPI in 2001 and
regularly landing major donations.Yet she has been a
controversial figure on the Troy, N.Y. campus, where a
no confidence
vote in Jackson was only narrowly defeated in 2006. While
the measure did fail by a six-vote margin, it revealed
simmering tensions about Jackson’s leadership, and growing
objections to her generous compensation.
On
Smithsonian Board, Jackson Heard Similar Criticism
Criticism of executive compensation levels should be nothing
new to Jackson, who has been a member of the all-volunteer
Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution since 2005.
In the summer of 2007, an independent
panel
criticized the Smithsonian regents in a
report
for failing to recognize the lavish spending practices of
Lawrence Small, the former Smithsonian director who resigned
amid an accounting probe. An audit of the institute
uncovered a string of unauthorized expenses, including
charges for chartered jet travel and a trip to Cambodia for
Small’s wife.
Dean Zerbe,
who aided Sen. Charles Grassley’s investigations into the
compensation of college chiefs and other spending practices
on university campuses, said he was surprised Jackson would
accept a presidential retreat, particularly given her work
with the Smithsonian.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
College debate matches can be physically intense —
with participants rattling off arguments at top speed and gesturing
dramatically. So it will be interesting to see if a debate contest can work
in Second Life, the virtual world.
This week Stephen Llano, the director of debate at
St. John’s University, in New York,
announced what is billed as the first tournament debate held in Second Life.
It will take place on February 4 at 8 p.m. Eastern Time in
the university’s
virtual campus (shown
here). A two-person team from St. Johns will
go head-to-head with two students from the University of Vermont. The topic
will be whether or not colleges should limit tenure for professors.
The event will not be an official competition, but
if it goes well, it could lead to virtual matches in the future that would
count toward tournament scoring, said Mr. Llano.
He said the technology could be particularly
helpful in letting students compete against teams in other countries. “Not
everyone gets a chance to travel internationally to debate against
universities all over the world,” Mr. Llano said. “We could have some
international debate online where people could stay at home and particpate
in an international debate at very low costs.”
He said he was not sure how well the technology
would work. The plan is to use a voice-chat feature of Second Life so that
competitors can hear each other. Meanwhile, the participants can use their
cartoon-like virtual characters, or avatars, to gesture to emphasize their
points.
Mr. Llano said Second Life was chosen for the event
over other types of online chat environments because so many colleges have
built virtual campuses there. In the past, some debates have been held
online using Web cams rather than virtual worlds like Second Life, he said.
Bob Jensen's threads on Second Life virtual worlds, including applications
in accounting education and research are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
Google closed down Lively ---
http://www.lively.com/goodbye.html
"Colleges Get Poor Grades on Teaching Web Fundamentals," by Josh
Keller, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 28, 2009 ---
Click Here
Colleges do a poor job preparing students for
careers designing Web sites or for related positions in Web development,
often because they teach out-of-date curricula and fail to hire instructors
with recent experience in the field, according to a survey of top Web
designers and developers.
The survey, “Teach the Web,” was culled from
interviews with 32 prominent Web designers and developers. Many of them said
that colleges often forgo teaching the fundamentals of making Web sites in
favor of teaching narrow skills like Flash and Photoshop, leaving students
unprepared for getting a job.
“I know many good people are trying, but I’ve yet
to see anyone come out of a university program knowing what they’d need to
know in order for us to hire them,” said James Archer, chief executive of
Forty Agency, a branding firm. “Most of the time, they’ve been brought a
long way down the wrong path.”
The author of the survey, Leslie Jensen-Inman, an
assistant professor of art at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga,
wrote in A List Apart magazine that instructors at colleges must do a better
job keeping up with the fast-changing standards of the Internet. She
encouraged Web-design professionals to do more outreach to local colleges
and offer discounts to educators at professional training and networking
conferences.
Other recommendations to colleges from the survey:
require students to do internships; revise course content more frequently;
and drop requirements that instructors must have a graduate-level degree to
be hired.
"U. of Central Florida Associate Dean Faces Fraud and Theft," by
Charles Huckabee, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 28, 2009 ---
Click Here
Charges An associate dean at the University of
Central Florida is facing fraud and theft charges after he allegedly charged
$40,000 worth of home electronics to a university-issued credit card and
tried to conceal the purchases from the university, The Orlando Sentinel
reported.
The newspaper said Jamal Nayfeh, associate dean of
the university’s College of Engineering, turned himself in at a local jail
this afternoon and was expected to be released after posting bond.
A university spokesman, Grant Heston, said Mr.
Nayfeh was suspended with pay this month after auditors discovered the
purchases, made in December. The arrest affidavit says that Mr. Nayfeh gave
the auditors an “altered receipt to make it appear that non-taggable
business related items were purchased … rather than a home-entertainment
system.”
According to the Sentinel, Mr. Nayfeh’s annual
salary as associate dean is $181,000.
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Question
Has an accounting, finance, or business professor ever been sued by a university
for patent or copyright royalties?
"U. of Missouri Sues a Professor in Dispute Over Royalties, by Charles
Huckabee, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 28, 2009 ---
Click Here
The University of Missouri is suing one of its
professors in an intellectual-property dispute, the Associated Press
reported.
In a lawsuit filed on Monday in the U.S. District
Court in Kansas City, Mo., the university accuses a professor of chemical
engineering, Galen J. Suppes, and his business partner of depriving the
university of an undetermined amount of royalty income on inventions that it
says they developed in laboratories at the institution’s flagship campus, in
Columbia.
The partner, William R. Sutterlin, received his
doctorate at Columbia and worked there as postdoctoral fellow, but is no
longer affiliated with the university.
Mr. Suppes told the Associated Press that he and
Mr. Sutterlin had formed a company to commercialize their work on fuel-cells
and other fuel-related technologies because he thought the university had a
poor track record in pursuing patents on professors’ research. He said
university officials had shown no interest in his efforts until he “informed
them that royalties had been paid.”
The lawyer who has been handling the case for the
university did not respond to the news service’s request for comment today.
While university lawsuits against their own
professors are uncommon, there are precedents. Purdue University, Yale
University, and the University of Massachusetts have filed similar
complaints, and universities in general have become more aggressive in
recent years in trying to stop professors from taking their ideas “out the
back door” and commercializing their inventions themselves.
Jensen Comment
I know that a few universities require the royalties for textbooks written by
faculty employees. But I don't know that there's ever been a legal dispute over
such royalties. Textbook writers probably just avoid those universities. There's
a gray zone where a professor might write drafts of textbook chapters at a
royalty hugging university and then change jobs before signing on with another
university.
"Predicting Breakdowns A new system that monitors the health of vehicles
could save money and lives," by Brittany Sauser, MIT's Technology Review,
January 29, 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22030/?nlid=1729&a=f
Most new vehicles are studded with hundreds of
sensors that collect raw performance data. While beneficial, such
information can only be interpreted by the manufacturer or dealer and is
usually only read after the car breaks down. Now researchers at Rochester
Institute of Technology (RIT) and Lockheed Martin, a security company in
Bethesda, MD, have developed a monitoring system that can better assess the
health of a vehicle and can alert drivers to any potential problems.
The system uses a network of embedded smart sensors
that are strategically located near automotive components that are prone to
problems. The information is sent wirelessly to a central command center,
where it is automatically analyzed by software. The monitoring system is
similar to OnStar, an in-vehicle security, communications, and diagnostics
system built by GM. But Nabil Nasr, assistant provost and director of the
Center for Integrated Manufacturing at RIT, says that the system goes "far
beyond" anything commercially available by predicting "future health or
failures."
The project is part of a $150 million contract
between Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Marine Corp, which is equipping up to
12,000 military vehicles with the new technology. The system can assess the
health of military vehicles before they are sent on missions so that
commanders can know if a vehicle is up to the task. "It could save money and
lives, and extend the lifetime of equipment," says Nasr.
The technology has also been tested in a
public-transit bus at the Rochester Genesee Regional (RGR) Transportation
Authority for the past 18 months. Eight months ago, a spinoff company called
LIBAN formed to develop the technology for commercial fleet vehicles.
The system uses standard sensors--such as
temperature, vibration, and electronic sensors, as well as customized smart
sensors--to monitor a vehicle. The sensors are placed near different
components on the vehicle, such as the transmission, alternator, and
drivetrain. "Most systems on the market today are just reporting fault codes
coming out of the engine-control module. We are looking at data from
individual components to get better details . . . and to predict future
conditions," says David Chauncey, CEO of LIBAN.
The data from the sensors is processed by an
onboard computer system that analyzes the information. That data is sent at
regular intervals to a control center via a cellular network, satellite, or
private data network, depending on the customer. "Every vehicle is an
intelligent, potential source of information, and we have the technology to
make the data useful; we just need to develop communication protocols and
standards so we can build the infrastructure to share information, beyond
just the manufacturers and dealers," says Kirk Steudle, director of the
Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), which just announced a
partnership with Michigan International Speedway to create an open testing
environment for cross-brand vehicle communication.
Continued in article
Form the Scout Report on January 30, 2009
ReminderFox 1.9 ---
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1191
For those times when you need to remember an
important birthday (aren't they all important?), a paper due date, or a
special occasion, ReminderFox 1.9 can be of great assistance. The
application was designed for users who don't want to run a whole calendar
application, but they still want to be kept alert about various happenings
and such. This version is compatible with all operating systems.
OpenOffice 3.0.1 ---
http://www.openoffice.org/
Open Office is a fine choice for those looking for
an alternative to some of the other commercial word processing software
packages. This latest version of OpenOffice includes several new templates
for professional writers, weblog publishing, and a tool that will help users
export documents for functionality with Google Docs. This particular version
is compatible with all operating systems.
John Updike, Critic and Author, Dies At Age 76 Pulitzer Prize-Winning
Author John Updike Dies at Age 76 [Real Player]
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99942825
Remembering Updike
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/remembering-upd/
For better or worse, John Updike produced a nearly endless stream of work
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-mew-updike-appreciate28-2009jan28,0,6965396.story
John Updike: This I Believe [Real Player]
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99919409
Invisible Cathedral: A Walk Through the New Modern
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/11/15/041115crat_atlarge
Updike Desert Comix
http://harvardlampoon.com/?q=node/266
Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/hub_fans_bid_kid_adieu_article.shtml
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Tutors from the United Kingdom
January 23, 2009 message from Mark Smith
[tutors@tutorhunt.com]
Hi Bob,
I was wondering whether you would like to link to
my site http://www.tutorhunt.com
from your page?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
We provide a completely free service both tutors
and students to locate each other, and think it would be a useful resource
for your readers.
Thank you for your consideration.
Kind Regards,
Mark
http://www.tutorhunt.com
January 23, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Mark,
I added your link as requested to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
It would be nice if you added accounting, and finance topics to your
following categories, although these are covered somewhat under the topic
headings Business Studies and Economics. Since only U.K. tutors are listed,
this will be of limited use to U.S. students of business, accounting, and
finance where there are significant differences in course content.
Arts
Art | Basic Skills | Drama | English | French | German | Geography | History
| Media | Music | Politics | Psychology | Religious Studies | Sociology |
Spanish
Sciences
Astronomy | Biology | Business Studies | Chemistry | Computing | Economics |
General Science | Maths | Physics
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Essentials of Geology ---
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/geo/egeo/welcome.htm
MIT OpenCourseWare: Introduction to Geology ---
Click Here
Global Canopy Programme (geology and climate) ---
http://www.globalcanopy.org/
Marine Mineral Studies ---
http://www.mms.gov/SandAndGravel/MarineMineralStudies.htm
The Dynamic Earth ---
http://www.mnh.si.edu/earth/main_frames.html
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
Gateway to Philosophy ---
http://www.bu.edu/paideia/index.html
Teach Philosopy 101 ---
http://www.teachphilosophy101.org/
This site presents strategies and
resources for faculty members and
graduate assistants who are teaching
Introduction to Philosophy courses; it also includes material of
interest to college faculty generally. The
mission of TΦ101 is to provide free,
user-friendly resources to the academic community. All of the
materials are provided on an
open source license. You may also
print as many copies as you wish (please
print in landscape). TΦ101 carries no advertising. I am deeply
indebted to
Villanova University for all of the
support that has made this project possible.
John Immerwahr, Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University
Ask Philosophers ---
http://www.amherst.edu/askphilosophers/
This site puts the talents and knowledge
of philosophers at the service of the general public. Send in a
question that you think might be related to philosophy and we
will do our best to respond to it. To date, there have been 1375
questions posted and 1834 responses.
Philosophy Talk (Audio) ---
http://www.philosophytalk.org/
American Social History ---
http://www.dlfaquifer.org/home
Ohio's Digital Resource Commons
http://drc.ohiolink.edu/
Tulia, Texas (video from PBS) ---
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/tuliatexas/
International Indian Treaty Council ---
http://www.treatycouncil.org/
Nixon Tapes (multimedia) ---
http://www.nixontapes.org/
Taking Liberties (U.K. history) ---
http://www.bl.uk/takingliberties
Open University: The Politics of Devolution (Open University Course) ---
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=2545
Reversing the Decline: An Agenda for U.S.-Russian Relations in 2009 ---
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2009/01_us_russia_relations_pifer/01_us_russia_relations_pifer.pdf
Debating Our Destiny ---
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/debatingourdestiny/index.html
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Law and Legal Studies
International Indian Treaty Council ---
http://www.treatycouncil.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
Mathematics Illuminated ---
http://www.learner.org/courses/mathilluminated/
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
Doris Ulmann Photograph Collection (rural South and Appalachia) ---
http://boundless.uoregon.edu/digcol/ulmann/index.html
Reversing the Decline: An Agenda for U.S.-Russian Relations in 2009 ---
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2009/01_us_russia_relations_pifer/01_us_russia_relations_pifer.pdf
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Debating Our Destiny ---
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/debatingourdestiny/index.html
International Indian Treaty Council ---
http://www.treatycouncil.org/
Nixon Tapes (multimedia) ---
http://www.nixontapes.org/
Open University: The Politics of Devolution (Open University Course) ---
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=2545
Gateway to Philosophy ---
http://www.bu.edu/paideia/index.html
Folger Shakespeare Library ---
http://folger.edu/index.cfm
Arden: World of William Shakespeare ---
http://swi.indiana.edu/arden/gi_specs.shtml
SOURCETEXT.com (with much emphasis on Shakespeare) A home for
specialized, reason-provoking texts that appeal to the eternally curious
and to those who value wit and character ---
http://www.sourcetext.com/
Taking Liberties (U.K. history) ---
http://www.bl.uk/takingliberties
Furness Image Collection (Shakespearian theatrical productions) ---
http://imagesvr.library.upenn.edu/f/furness/
Tulia, Texas (video from PBS) ---
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/tuliatexas/
University of St. Andrews Photographic Archive ---
http://special.st-andrews.ac.uk/saspecial/
Australia Dancing ---
http://www.australiadancing.org/
From The Scout Report on January 23, 2009
Codex Sinaiticus [Macromedia Flash Player]
http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/
The Codex Sinaiticus is certainly one of the most
important books in the world, and this delightful website provides users
with a way to view the book in its entirety. The goal of this project is "to
reunite the entire manuscript in digital form and make it accessible to a
global audience for the first time." The project partners include The
British Library, the National Library of Russia, St. Catherine's Monastery,
and Leipzig University Library. First-time visitors may wish to click on the
"About" area to learn more about the document's tremendous significance
(among other things, it includes the oldest complete copy of the New
Testament) and to read answers to several frequently asked questions about
the Codex Sinaiticus. Anyone with an interest in conservation, digitization,
and transcription will want to check out the "About the Project" page. Here
they will find information about all of these subjects, and information
about translations of the Codex. Finally, visitors will obviously want to
head on over to the "See The Manuscript" area. Here they can read a
side-by-side translation of each page, zoom in and out on the Codex, and
even browse around by passage.
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
Australia Dancing ---
http://www.australiadancing.org/
Dance Teacher Magazine ---
http://www.dance-teacher.com/
Science of Music: Exploratorium's Accidental Scientist ---
http://www.exploratorium.edu/music/index.html
The Visual Dictionary ---
http://www.infovisual.info/
Science of Music: Exploratorium's Accidental Scientist ---
http://www.exploratorium.edu/music/index.html
Hear HERE!: The Royal Philharmonic Society ---
http://www.hearhear.org.uk/
Great Conversations in Music [multimedia] ---
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/greatconversations/great-home.html
Bob Jensen's links to online music tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music
Bob Jensen's liniks to online music ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
"Fewer Calories = Better Brains? A trial in humans suggests that calorie
restriction can boost memory," by Courtney Humphries, MIT's Technology
Review, January 27, 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22023/?nlid=1722
Cutting calories has been shown to
increase the life span of some animals and protect them from
signs of aging and disease. Although some humans have been eager
to adopt a low-calorie diet to see similar results, so far,
there is relatively little evidence that calorie restriction has
the same benefit in people. A new study from researchers at the
University of Münster, in Germany, adds new evidence in favor of
cutting calories: older adults who reduced calories for three
months fared better in memory tests. The results, published in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offer the first
evidence that calorie restriction could prevent age-related
mental decline in humans.
The study's subjects ranged from normal
weight to overweight, so cutting back calories did not
necessarily translate into severe weight loss; instead, it
allowed many subjects to reach a healthier weight. Mark Mattson,
a neuroscientist at the National Institutes of Aging, who was
not involved in the study, says that it "adds to considerable
evidence from animal and human studies that high calorie intake
is not only bad for your heart, but it's bad for your brain."
Agnes Flöel, lead author of the study,
says that most evidence for the benefits of a low-calorie diet
in humans comes from long-term epidemiological studies, such as
one on an aging population in Okinawa, Japan. But ongoing trials
testing the effects of calorie restriction in humans have not
yet produced definitive findings. These include the
U.S.-government-funded CALERIE study, which follows adults ages
25 to 50 on a calorie-restricted diet. "Animal experiments
suggest that both calorie restriction and modified fat intake
could be beneficial for the brain," Flöel says.
The new trial tested reducing total
calorie intake, as well as boosting the ratio of unsaturated fat
over saturated fat, which is thought to help brain function. A
group of 50 healthy older adults with an average age of 60 were
divided into three groups: one group was counseled to follow a
calorie-restricted diet; another increased the proportion of
unsaturated fat over saturated fat in their diets; and the third
group had no dietary changes. Flöel says that the subjects in
both interventions received dietary counseling and an
individualized plan for modifying their diets. Those in the
calorie-restricted group were advised to reduce their food
intake by about 30 percent without changing the proportions of
nutrients in their diet. Subjects reported lowering their
typical intake by anywhere from 200 to 1,000 calories per day.
Not every person in the calorie-restriction group was able to
cut calories by 30 percent, but overall, the subjects in the
group lost weight, supporting their own reports that they were
eating less.
Continued in article
"A Digital Health-Care Revolution: Twenty billion
dollars might finally turn the U.S. health-care system digital,"
by Emily Singer, MIT's Technology Review, January 28, 2009
---
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22026/?nlid=1725
The more wired the hospital, the better
off its patients: there are fewer deaths and complications, and
lower bills. That's the conclusion of a large study of Texas
hospitals released earlier this week. Unfortunately, only a
small percentage of hospitals and doctors' offices in the United
States are wired, and the country lags far behind other
developed nations in implementing such systems. However,
legislators and health-technology specialists hope to change
that with a $20 billion cash influx, part of the U.S.
government's proposed stimulus bill.
Dubbed the Health Information
Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), the
plan would encourage doctors and hospitals to use electronic
record-keeping and ordering systems by providing $18 million in
incentives through Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements.
Starting in 2011, physicians who show that they are
"meaningfully" using health IT would be eligible for $40,000 to
$65,000, and hospitals would be eligible for several million
dollars. The incentives would be phased out over time, with
penalties in place by 2016.
The bill allocates $2 billion over the
next two years for planning and training, including ensuring
that new programs adhere to specific interoperability standards.
That will be crucial in making certain that data can be
transferred between different medical centers and physicians,
and that doctors are schooled in how to incorporate electronic
record keeping and other technologies into their practices. It
would also strengthen privacy and security laws to protect the
growing amount of personal medical information that will become
electronic.
Currently, less than a quarter of
physicians in the United States are using electronic health
records (EHRs). The stimulus spending should help overcome two
of the major barriers to adoption: lack of funding and
misaligned incentives, says John Halamka, chief information
officer and dean for technology at Harvard Medical School.
Currently, doctors must invest time and money to implement EHR
systems, but it's the insurers and payers who ultimately
benefit, thanks to a reduction in unnecessary tests and
medications.
The $20 billion boost will be a huge
leap for an industry that has seen little government spending.
According to a 2006 study, the United States spends 43 cents per
capita on health-care IT, compared with the $193 per capita
spent in the United Kingdom. The entire health-care IT industry
had an estimated budget of $26 billion in 2008, says Halamka. He
reckons that the bill could create 50,000 new IT jobs. "We're
not talking about MDs or PhDs," says Halamka. "I think we can
take tech professionals and train them in health care within the
next two years."
Forwarded by Auntie Bev
Ramblings of a Retired Mind
I was thinking about how a status symbol of today is those cell phones that
everyone has clipped onto their belt or purse. I can't afford one. So, I'm
wearing my garage door opener. I also made a cover for my hearing aid and now I
have what they call blue teeth, I think.
You know, I spent a fortune on deodorant before I realized that people didn't
like me anyway.
I was thinking that women should put pictures of missing husbands on beer
cans!
I was thinking about old age and decided that old age is 'when you still have
something on the ball, but you are just too tired to bounce it.'
I thought about making a fitness movie for folks my age, and call it 'Pumping
Rust'.
I've gotten that dreaded furniture disease. That's when your chest is falling
into your drawers!
When people see a cat's litter box, they always say, 'Oh, have you got a
cat?' Just once I want to say, 'No, it's for company!'
Employment application blanks always ask who is to be notified in case of an
emergency. I think you should write, 'A Good Doctor'!
Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office? What are we
supposed to do...write to these men? Why don't they just put their pictures on
the postage stamps so the mailmen could look for them while they deliver the
mail? Or better yet, arrest them while they are taking their pictures!
I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as
they get older. Then, it dawned on me, they were cramming for their finals.
As for me, I'm just hoping God grades on the curve.
Forwarded by Col. Bob Booth
THE YEAR 1908
This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine! The year is 1908.
One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes! Here are
some statistics for the Year 1908 :
************ ********* ********* ******
The average life expectancy was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles
Of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
The average wage in 1908 was 22 cents per hour.
The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year .
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, A
dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000
per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME .
Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which
Were condemned in the press AND the government as 'substandard. '
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used
Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from
Entering into their country for any reason.
Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza 2. Tuberculosis 3. Diarrhea 4. Heart
disease 5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars.
The population of Las Vegas , Nevada, was only 30!!!!
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea
Hadn't been invented yet.
There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write.
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the
counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said,
'Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind,regulates
the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of
health'
( Shocking? DUH! )
Eighteen percent of households had at least
One full-time servant or domestic help..
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE ! U.S.A. !
Now I forwarded this from someone else without typing
It myself, and sent it to you and others all over Canada & U.S.A
Possibly the world, in a matter of seconds!
Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.
IT STAGGERS THE MIND
Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Three Finance Blogs
Jim Mahar's FinanceProfessor Blog ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/
FinancialRounds Blog ---
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
Karen Alpert's FinancialMusings (Australia) ---
http://financemusings.blogspot.com/
Some Accounting Blogs
Paul Pacter's IAS Plus (International
Accounting) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/index.htm
International Association of Accountants News ---
http://www.aia.org.uk/
AccountingEducation.com and Double Entries ---
http://www.accountingeducation.com/
Gerald Trites'eBusiness and
XBRL Blogs ---
http://www.zorba.ca/
AccountingWeb ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/
SmartPros ---
http://www.smartpros.com/
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Shared Open Courseware
(OCW) from Around the World: OKI, MIT, Rice, Berkeley, Yale, and Other Sharing
Universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Free Textbooks and Cases ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Mathematics and Statistics Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
Free Science and Medicine Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Free Social Science and Philosophy Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Free Education Discipline Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Teaching Materials (especially
video) from PBS
Teacher Source: Arts and
Literature ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/arts_lit.htm
Teacher Source: Health & Fitness
---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/health.htm
Teacher Source: Math ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/math.htm
Teacher Source: Science ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/sci_tech.htm
Teacher Source: PreK2 ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/prek2.htm
Teacher Source: Library Media ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/library.htm
Free Education and
Research Videos from Harvard University ---
http://athome.harvard.edu/archive/archive.asp
VYOM eBooks Directory ---
http://www.vyomebooks.com/
From Princeton Online
The Incredible Art Department ---
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/
Online Mathematics Textbooks ---
http://www.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html
National Library of Virtual Manipulatives ---
http://enlvm.usu.edu/ma/nav/doc/intro.jsp
Moodle ---
http://moodle.org/
The word moodle is an acronym for "modular
object-oriented dynamic learning environment", which is quite a mouthful.
The Scout Report stated the following about Moodle 1.7. It is a
tremendously helpful opens-source e-learning platform. With Moodle,
educators can create a wide range of online courses with features that
include forums, quizzes, blogs, wikis, chat rooms, and surveys. On the
Moodle website, visitors can also learn about other features and read about
recent updates to the program. This application is compatible with computers
running Windows 98 and newer or Mac OS X and newer.
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accountancy Discussion ListServs:
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a
ListServ (usually for free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc
Roles of a ListServ ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
|
CPAS-L (Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo
(Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation
Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu