In these mountains we find versatile and
independent workers who can do almost anything.
Dorothy Corey has two degrees in entomology and the Sundial Landscaping Business
She's built miles upon miles of New Hampshire's famous countryside rock walls
She's not much more than 100 lbs but could win weight lifting contests
She recently installed new windows in a house down the road
She's a single mom, a house painter, and an expert with wall paper and tile and
slate laying.
Her daughter recently had a baby so now Dorothy's a grandmother
Her son is in the first year of college
Dorothy also cares for her own 90-year old mother
Below is a picture taken last summer --- Dorothy's painting our widows walk
At
the moment Dorothy is hiking (solo) in the
Great Smokey Mountains of
Tennessee
In the past few
years she's walked most of the Appalachian Trial ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_Trail
In the winter she climbs snow-covered mountains in Maine, New Hampshire, and
Vermont
Below Erika and Dorothy are looking at the stone housing she built around the
top of our underground propane tank
We're pleased to call Dorothy a great friend
After snapping the picture below, I poked around the
end of the rainbow, but there was no pot of gold
We may have the only toilet in front of a fireplace
Since this bathroom is on the north side of the cottage, we make great use of
the Swedish stove in the fireplace
Auntie Bev forwarded the picture of
Clydesdale feet below.
Below is a picture showing how something can be viewed from entirely different
perspectives
Tidbits on April 6, 2009
Bob Jensen
For earlier editions of Tidbits go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.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/.
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
CPA
Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free
Residential and Business Telephone Directory (you must listen to an opening
advertisement) --- dial 800-FREE411 or 800-373-3411
Free Online Telephone Directory ---
http://snipurl.com/411directory [www_public-records-now_com]
Free online 800 telephone numbers ---
http://www.tollfree.att.net/tf.html
Google Free Business Phone Directory --- 800-goog411
To find names addresses from listed phone numbers, go to
www.google.com and read in the phone number without spaces, dashes, or
parens
Bob Jensen's search helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
Bob Jensen's essay on the financial crisis bailout's aftermath and an alphabet soup of
appendices can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
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/ )
If you want to help our badly injured troops, please check out
Valour-IT: Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops ---
http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/
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
Magnificent
Figure Skating 2009 World Championship Kim Yuna SP (English commentary ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFeW9Ml92YM
Great Scholarly Video: The MediaScape from
YouTube to Blogosphere to Social Networks
YouTobe
distributes more original programming in six months than the U.S. TV networks
did in 30 years
Highly Educational and Entertaining About the YouTube Generation
Forwarded by anthropology professor John Donahue
An anthropological introduction to YouTube (and social networks) by
Michael Wesch (55 minute video)---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU
More than 100 colleges have set up
channels on YouTube ---
http://www.youtube.com/edu
Many universities offer over 100 videos,
whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583
"YouTube Creates New Section to Highlight
College Content," by Jeffrey R. Young,
Chronicle of Higher Education, March 27, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3684&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Ten Trillion and Counting (a full-length PBS
Frontline video) ---
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tentrillion/view/
All of the federal government's efforts to
stem the tide of the financial meltdown have added hundreds of billions of
dollars to an already staggering national debt, a sum that is expected to double
over the next 10 years to more than $23 trillion. In Ten Trillion and Counting,
FRONTLINE traces the politics behind this mounting debt and investigates what
some say is a looming crisis that makes the current financial situation pale in
comparison
South Park's animated cartoon solutions to the economic crisis
Part 1 ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx_sH_G38oY
South Park's animated cartoon solutions to the economic crisis Part 2 ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUIDG0n74J0
South Park's animated cartoon solutions to the economic crisis Part 3 ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbFcYuJ_H8c
From PBS: Touch Table Computing Video ---
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/231-touchtable.html
A Video Version of the Periodic Table (a video for each element) ---
http://www.periodicvideos.com/
World Food: International Year of Natural Fibres ---
http://www.naturalfibres2009.org/en/index.html
I Don't Do Windows because ---
http://www.frontiernet.net/~shelby304/specials/dontdowindows/nowindows.htm
Forwarded by Maureen who takes this advice to heart.
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
More than 41,000 Spanish-language songs that go back to the
early 1900s were placed online this week by the Chicano Studies Center, a
research unit at the University of California at Los Angeles ---
http://frontera.library.ucla.edu/
Born Again American ---
http://www.bornagainamerican.org/
Two Trillion Tons
(takeoff on Sixteen Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U6Yg9ckZv8
Old 45s from from 1950s
---
http://oldfortyfives.com/TakeMeBackToTheFifties
Send in the Clowns (History in YouTube
Video for Bob Jensen's retirement theme song)
A song written in two days and never intended to be such a hit:
Simone Dinnerstein Plays Bach Old And New ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101102623
John Pizzarelli: Rodgers, Hart And The Gershwins,
Too ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102300845
Snowball - The Dancing Cockatoo ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7IZmRnAo6s
The Bird That Loves Ray Charles ---
http://www.maniacworld.com/bird-loves-ray-charles.html
The Beatles (I never did care for their music)
---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQOATAW-ZqE
Classical Guitar ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101262890
The father, Celedonio Romero, and his three sons — Celín, Pepe and Ángel —
started performing as a guitar quartet around the Santa Barbara area. The
Romeros quickly found a following, and before long, they toured the U.S., played
Carnegie Hall, found themselves on The Ed Sullivan Show and landed a recording
contract.
Web outfits like
Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content
that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2
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
Bob Jensen listens to music free online (and no commercials)
---
http://www.slacker.com/
Photographs and Art
Beautiful Science: Ideas That Changed The World ---
http://huntington.org/thehuntington_full02.aspx?id=3000
The Atlas of Early Printing (interactive slide show) ---
http://atlas.lib.uiowa.edu/
Top Ten Most Amazing Pictures Taken by Hubble
Space Telescope ---
http://www.paralore.com/blogs/Top-Ten-Most-Amazing-Pictures-Taken-by-Hubble-Space-Telescope/
Hidden Planet Discovered in Old Hubble Data ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090401/sc_space/hiddenplanetdiscoveredinoldhubbledata
The Bunraku (Puppet Theatre) Collection ---
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/eastasian/bunraku/
Images of Russia and Caucasus Region, 1929-1933
---
http://www.uwm.edu/Library/digilib/georgia/index.html
Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in
Renaissance Venice ---
http://www.mfa.org/venice/
Arabic Script: Mightier than the Sword ---
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/online_tours/museum_and_exhibition/arabic_script/arabic_script.aspx
The Art of the First Fleet ---
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/jdsml/nature-online/first-fleet/
Art 21 (art and war video) ---
http://www.pbs.org/art21/
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
Library of Congress Survey: Most Influential Books ---
http://www.amazon.com/Library-Congress-Survey-Influential-Books/lm/133GLJVXVIBLN
Link forwarded by Richard Sansing
Many of these books can be downloaded free if you do a bit of hunting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Poets & Writers ---
http://www.pw.org/mag/
International War Veterans' Poetry Archives ---
http://iwvpa.net/index.php
Open Humanities Press ---
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/
Representative Poetry On-line ---
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/index.cfm
Poets' Gravesites ---
http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/
Many free classic poems by famous poets ---
http://www.well.com/user/eob/poetry.html
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
Ten Trillion and Counting (a full-length PBS
Frontline video) ---
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tentrillion/view/
All of the federal government's efforts to
stem the tide of the financial meltdown have added hundreds of billions of
dollars to an already staggering national debt, a sum that is expected to double
over the next 10 years to more than $23 trillion. In Ten Trillion and Counting,
FRONTLINE traces the politics behind this mounting debt and investigates what
some say is a looming crisis that makes the current financial situation pale in
comparison
A New Definition of Life on the Edge
Loss of dollar purchasing power since 1775 ---
http://manualofideas.com/blog/2009/03/declining_value_of_us_dollar_s.html
Once the spigot is turned on it's almost never turned off: That's
how special appropriations become entitlements
Several university presidents and higher-education officials went to Capitol
Hill on Tuesday to thank lawmakers for committing more ($21.5
billion) funds for scientific research, but they
worried about what might happen to their budgets if that commitment didn't
continue.
Paul Baskey, "Universities Are Wary
of Drawbacks to a Huge Boost in Federal Spending," Chronicle of Higher
Education, March 25, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/03/14470n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
This is the same argument that will be raised by virtually all recipients of the
2009 massive Stimulus (Recovery) Act handouts to states, education/research
institutions, welfare programs, public works projects, etc. Once the spigot is
turned on such handouts are hard to stop in future budget years. They become
entitlements that will make President Obama's promise to reduce the Year 2012
budget deficit a complete and utter failure. Both logic and sob stories make it
virtually impossible to turn the spigots off once they've been turned on. This
is one of the common problems of budgeting in general except for Zero-Based
Budgeting that almost never takes place in industry and probably has never taken
place in state and federal governments.
Bob Jensen's threads on the entitlements disaster are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Why Obama's Big Spending, Big Taxing Regime Will Cripple the U.S. Economy
Before any article on savings and investment can
really make sense, it must first define what savings and investment really mean.
Saving is the process of transforming present goods into future goods. Present
goods are consumption goods and future goods are capital goods. When we save, we
transfer purchasing power from consumption to the production of capital goods,
many of which will then be used to produce more capital goods. (This is why
growth is sometimes called forgone consumption.) Investment in more capital (the
material means of production) makes for increased future consumption, i.e.,
higher living standards. It needs little imagination to realise that taxing
savings amounts to taxing future living standards. What needs to be remembered
is that when defined in real terms, investment and savings are (a) always equal
and (b) saving is clearly the only means by which resources can be directed from
consumption to investment. To put it another way: The function of savings is to
redirect resources from the production of consumption goods to the production of
capital goods.
"Why Obama's Big Spending, Big Taxing Regime Will Cripple the
U.S. Economy," Seeking Alpha, March 23, 2009 ---
http://seekingalpha.com/article/127312-why-obama-s-big-spending-big-taxing-regime-will-cripple-the-u-s-economy
Ten Trillion and Counting (a full-length PBS Frontline video) ---
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tentrillion/view/
All of the federal government's efforts to stem the
tide of the financial meltdown have added hundreds of billions of dollars to an
already staggering national debt, a sum that is expected to double over the next
10 years to more than $23 trillion. In Ten Trillion and Counting, FRONTLINE
traces the politics behind this mounting debt and investigates what some say is
a looming crisis that makes the current financial situation pale in comparison
And for the much bigger non-sustainability problem of unbooked debt for
entitlements
IOUSA (the most frightening movie in American history) ---
(see a 30-minute version of the
documentary at
www.iousathemovie.com ).
Nancy Pelosi: Republicans have no voice in restraining budget
deficits in face of the Democratic Party monopoly
“I hope the bill will pass with bipartisan
support,” said Pelosi, who has often preached against banking on Republican
support in the lower chamber. “But the bill will pass.” She made her comments
after lunching with Vice President Joe Biden, who emerged — all smiles — to
predict President Barack Obama’s $3.6 trillion spending plan will pass “with all
major elements intact.”
Glenn Thrush, "Pelosi: We don't need
GOP on budget," Politico, March 26, 2009 ---
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20502.html
Deliberation in Washington is dead. We don't have
legislators. We have lemmings. We don't have debates. We have high-speed
hysteria sessions. After ramming through stimulus legislation that no one read
and bailout bills that no one understood, Congress is now poised to stuff down
taxpayers' throats a deficit-exploding $3.5 trillion budget that enshrines the
largest tax increase in American history.
Michelle Malkin, "The Shut Up and Swallow Congress ,"
Townhall, April 1, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2009/04/01/the_shut_up_and_swallow_congress
Unfortunately, there is no way out of our immoral
quagmire. The reason is that now that the U.S. Congress has established the
principle that one American has a right to live at the expense of another
American, it no longer pays to be moral. People who choose to be moral and
refuse congressional handouts will find themselves losers. They'll be paying
higher and higher taxes to support increasing numbers of those paying lower and
lower taxes. As it stands now, close to 50 percent of income earners have no
federal income tax liability and as such, what do they care about rising income
taxes? In other words, once legalized theft begins, it becomes too costly to
remain moral and self-sufficient. You might as well join in the looting,
including the current looting in the name of stimulating the economy.
Walter E. Williams, "Our Problem is
Immorality," Townhall, April 1, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2009/04/01/our_problem_is_immorality
Something MSNBC Refuses to Report Let Alone Debate
More than 350 professional economists, including three Nobel Prize winners,
signed a Cato Institute petition opposing the stimulus
That's all we seem to hear from politicians and pundits: "Every economist"
agrees that this massive stimulus is the only answer.
But that's not true. More than 350 professional
economists, including three Nobel Prize winners, signed a Cato Institute
petition opposing the stimulus, arguing that
government spending will only worsen the situation. "Government should, instead
of increasing spending, it should cut spending," said David Tuerck of Suffolk
University. He and the other economists in the petition argue that the
government simply cannot spend its way out of a crisis. "How is it the
government is going to be able to spend a dollar in such a way that it generates
a dollar or more in value?" asked George Mason University economist Peter Leeson.
"A more likely possibility is that a dollar that government takes out of the
private sector is a dollar the private sector doesn't have to spend anymore."
John Stossel and Andrew Kirell,
"Is the Government Bailout Just Dollars and Nonsense? Let the Bubble Burst: Some
Economists Say the Market Needs to Self-Correct," ABC News, March 13,
2009 ---
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=7067596&page=1
In essence, the Geithner plan is the same as the
Paulson plan from six months ago: buy up the toxic assets, and hope that this
unfreezes the markets. Don’t be fooled by the apparent role of private
enterprise: more than 90 percent of the funds will come from taxpayers. And the
way the funds are structured provides a strong incentive for investors to
overpay for assets (see my explanation
on my blog).
Paul Krugman, Nobel (Liberal)
Economist, Princeton University Professor, and NYT Columnist, The New
York Times, March 24, 2009 ---
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/will-the-geithner-plan-work/?hp#krugman
Professor Krugman is not optimistic about the Paulson/Geitner Plan and calls it
more waste of billions of dollars (video) ---
http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/video/2009/03/24/paul-krugman-obamas-economic-policy
Krugman thinks the Fed should nationalize troubled large banks, clean them up,
and then decide if they're worth selling back to investors.
Paul Krugman has emerged as Obama's toughest liberal
critic. He's deeply skeptical of the bank bailout and pessimistic about the
economy. Why the establishment worries he may be right.
Evan Thomas, "Obama's Nobel
Headache," Newsweek Magazine Cover Story, March 28, 2009 ---
http://www.newsweek.com/id/191393/page/1
We must learn the painful lessons of A.I.G. and
create laws, put in place procedures, and hire people who can clean up massive
financial messes. The magic of the market will likely not get us out of this
morass; we need a new Resolution Trust Corporation-type structure and we need it
fast.
Simon Johnson,
MIT Sloan School Economist and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for
International Economics, The New York Times, March 24, 2009 ---
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/will-the-geithner-plan-work/?hp#krugman
Professor Krugman is not optimistic about the Paulson/Geitner Plan and calls it
more waste of billions of dollars.
The Geithner plan offers only $500 billion. The
Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing plan will add another $1 trillion. I
should hasten to say that the administration thinks that information-sharing
effects of the plan will do three times as much good in raising asset prices as
the simple change in asset supply (I discount that entirely So from their
perspective the glass is 3/4 full. I think that 3/8 full is better than having
no glass at all. Why isn’t the administration doing the entire job? My guess is
that the Obama administration wants to avoid anything that requires legislative
action. The legislative tacticians appear to think that after last week’s furor
over the A.I.G. bonuses, doing more would require a Congressional coalition that
is not there yet. The Geithner plan is one the administration can do on
authority it already has.
Brad DeLong, Professor of Economics
at University of California, Berkeley, and blogs at
Grasping Reality with Both
Hands, The New York Times, March 24, 2009
---
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/will-the-geithner-plan-work/?hp#krugman
Unfortunately, however, the loan terms make it
unlikely that we’ll have timely information on the percentage of bad loans. But
there is something else we can watch to assess the health of the loans: the
price of the toxic assets purchased with the loans. If the price of these assets
is increasing sufficiently fast, then the loans will be safe. But if the prices
do not respond to the program, then the loans will be in trouble. In that case,
we will need to end the program as quickly as possible and minimize losses. The
next step will have to be bank nationalization, though the political climate
will likely be difficult. Sticking with the plan until it completely crashes and
burns on the hope that a little more time is all that is needed will make
nationalization much more difficult.
Mark Thoma,
Economics Professor at the University of
Oregon and blogs at
Economist’s View, The New York Times,
March 24, 2009 ---
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/will-the-geithner-plan-work/?hp#krugman
"Part I: Geithner's Plan Extremely Dangerous, Economist Galbraith Says,"
by Henry Blodgett, Yahoo Finance, March 23, 2009 ---
Click Here
Tim Geithner has
finally revealed his plan to fix the banking system and economy. Paul Krugman,
James Galbraith, and others have already trashed it.
[We spoke with noted
economist Galbraith this morning. In the accompanying segment, he calls the
Treasury Secretary’s plan “extremely dangerous.”]
Why?
In short, because the
plan is yet another massive, ineffective gift to banks and Wall Street.
Taxpayers, of course, will take the hit
Why does Tim Geithner
keep repackaging the same trash-asset-removal plan that he has been trying to
get approved since last fall? In our opinion, because Tim Geithner formed his
view of this crisis last fall, while sitting across the table from his
constituents at the New York Fed: The CEOs of the big Wall Street firms. He
views the crisis the same way Wall Street does--as a temporary liquidity
problem--and his plans to fix it are designed with the best interests of Wall
Street in mind.
If Geithner's plan to
fix the banks would also fix the economy, this would be tolerable. But no smart
economist we know of thinks that it will.
Continued in article
The Mother of All Ponzi Schemes According to Top Liberal (Progressive)
Economists
The Latest Bailout Plan’s a Disaster According to
Paul Krugman and
James K. Galbraith
And yet American policy-makers appear convinced
that more debt can rescue an economy already drowning in it. If we can just keep
the leverage party going, all will be well. $787 billion to fund “stimulus,”
another $9 trillion committed to guarantee bad debts, 0% interest rates and
quantitative easing to drive more lending, new off balance sheet vehicles to
hide from the public the toxic assets they’ve absorbed. All of it to be funded
with debt, most of it the responsibility of taxpayers. If I may offer just one
reason this will all fail: rising interest rates. Interest rates need only
revert to their historical median in order to hammer asset values, and balance
sheets, into oblivion.
"Added Debt Won't Rescue the Great American Ponzi
Scheme," Seeking Alpha, March 23, 2009 ---
http://seekingalpha.com/article/127261-added-debt-won-t-rescue-the-great-american-ponzi-scheme?source=article_sb_picks
"Why Congress Will Kill the Bank Rescue: What happens when the hedge
funds make profits?" by Vincent Reinhart, The Wall Street Journal, March
25, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123794001751932433.html
Americans can be forgiven for experiencing
a sense of deja vu as they digest the details of Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner's Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP) for troubled bank
assets. What was rolled out on the pages of newspapers this week read like
press releases on the various plans over the past year from Mr. Geithner's
predecessor, Hank Paulson.
The two Treasury secretaries share a
touching faith in public-private cooperation to lift the value of troubled
assets. This assumes, of course, that those assets are troubled because
their true values are obscured by irrational self-doubt and market
illiquidity, and not by fundamental problems in the prospects of repayment.
It also assumes that the solution to problems created by excessive leverage
is for government to encourage more leverage.
. . .
Notably absent in the Geithner plan is any
progress on the barrier at which Mr. Paulson stumbled last year: What are
the right prices for troubled assets? To believe that the solution lies in
harnessing the public and private sectors in tandem shows a misunderstanding
of these sectors' incentives.
Public officials want this problem to go
away without being stuck with the smoldering wreckage of large and
complicated financial institutions. That requires buying assets quickly from
problematic firms at the highest prices possible.
Private investors want to make a profit.
That can best be achieved by delaying purchases, thereby lowering prices and
sticking the government with as much of the loss as possible.
The possibility of outsized profit, made
possible by government guarantees and matching capital contributions, is the
carrot government can offer to those with private capital willing to commit
to the enterprise. The problem is that Congress has been demonizing the
financial sector and considering ex post expropriation of bonuses.
For the PPIP to work, the government will
have to use the expertise of much-vilified financial professionals, create
massive expected profit opportunities to entice capital, and tap places
where there are deep pools of money -- including sovereign wealth funds. If
the PPIP is successful, is there any chance that Congress would not be
holding hearings complaining about the massive rewards to those who took on
the risk? Unless members of Congress cool the heat of their rhetoric, the
potential profits Mr. Geithner is putting on the table will simply be left
there.
Adjusted for inflation, the federal bailout of $8.5
trillion is more expensive than every war the US has ever fought, the Louisiana
Purchase, the Marshall Plan, the New Deal, and the NASA Space Program COMBINED.
Dartmouth Professor Mary Flanagan and her collaborators
---
http://tiltfactor.org/layoff/play.html
The President said there is a
limit to the amount of money the government can
spend and print to solve the crisis. Asked if the government is getting close to
that limit, Obama said, "The limit is our ability
to finance these expenditures through borrowing.
"Obama On AIG Anger, Recession, Challenges Also Tells 60 Minutes How He Is
Adjusting To The Job, And His Family To The White House," CBS Sixty Minutes,
March 22, 2009 ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/18/60minutes/main4873938.shtml
Just When You Thought it Can't Get Much Worse
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation government operation that
takes over pension funding of failed corporations (like United Airlines)
normally had a conservative investment strategy that protected the insurance
premiums it collects from companies that elect to pay for pension insurance.
That is it was conservative until --- Guess when?
Damn, Damn, Damn! Just before the PBGC will likely take over the pensions of
General Motors and Chrysler!
From Jim Mahar's Finance Professor Blog on March 30, 2009 ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/
*****Begin Quotation
Market timing (or do you want something else to worry about?)
Today's lesson showing the difficulty in market timing
comes from the good people at
the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. It seems
that just prior to the market collapse they decided to go INTO stocks.
From the Boston Globe:
Pension insurer shifted to stocks - The Boston Globe: "
Just months before the start of last year's stock
market collapse, the federal agency that insures the retirement funds of
44 million Americans departed from its conservative investment strategy
and decided to put much of its $64 billion insurance fund into stocks."
Since September that have been quiet as to their
losses (yeah, no transparency here either, do you see a pattern?), but given
their assets are no doubt down and their potential claims are up (firms
going bankruot etc), it has the look of a bad situation (and probably many
billions more of bailout money).
Again from the
Boston Globe:
"...analysts expressed concern that large portions
of the trust fund might have been lost at a time when many private
pension plans are suffering major losses. The guarantee fund would be
the only way to cover the plans if their companies go into bankruptcy.
"The truth is, this could be huge," said Zvi
Bodie, a Boston University finance professor who in 2002 advised the
agency to rely almost entirely on bonds. "This has the potential to be
another several hundred billion dollars. If the auto companies go under,
they have huge unfunded liabilities" in pension plans that would be
passed on to the agency."
Trivia aspect of story: "Charles E.F. Millard, the
former agency director who implemented the strategy" was "a former managing
director of Lehman Brothers...."
*****Begin Quotation
Soros may claim to love America, but he makes another billion dollars
betting against the U.S. Dollar and Financial System
Other hedge funds make it big time shorting America
"Top hedge funds boom despite recession," by Andrew Clark, The
Guardian, March 25, 2009 ---
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/25/top-earning-hedgies
Among the big names on the list is George Soros,
who famously made more than $1bn by betting against sterling on Black
Wednesday in 1992. Soros made $1.1bn last year partly by anticipating a fall
in the dollar in early 2008.
Paulson shot to fame two years ago when one of his
key funds exploded five-fold in value by predicting that the US sub-prime
mortgage industry would collapse. In 2008 Paulson's firm made more than
£200m shorting shares in Lloyds Banking Group and at least $100m betting on
a fall in RBS's stock.
Another billion-dollar earner was John Arnold, a
former trader at Enron whose Houston-based Centaurus Energy fund delivered
an 80% return dealing largely in derivatives linked to the price of natural
gas and other sources of power.
Two of the top-ranking managers are at firms
headquartered in London. David Harding, 47, a Cambridge graduate in
theoretical physics, scooped $250m in a bumper year for his Kensington-based
Winton Capital Management.
Winton, launched in 1997, employs 180 people and
uses an opaque "black box" method of trading using complex algorithms to bet
on movements in the price of bonds, shares and commodities such as energy
and grain.
Also earning $250m was Alan Howard, whose Brevan
Howard Asset Management is thought to be Britain's biggest hedge fund with
$24bn of assets. Howard, 45, is a prominent donor to the Conservatives Party
but his firm last year threatened to quit Britain in protest at non-domicile
tax reforms.
Despite the deep recession, it was the third most
lucrative year on record for the top tranche of hedge fund managers.
Charles Geisst, a financial historian at Manhattan
College, said the new breed of super-rich financiers differed from banking
titans of the past in making their money simply through trading rather than
through activities such as mergers, acquisitions and underwriting.
"These are the highest earners of all time," said
Geisst. "They're not exactly masters of the universe in the traditional
sense but then money's money."
He said many of the big winners had benefited from
the troubles affecting major financial institutions: "They've been selling
short a lot of the mortgage-backed assets which became toxic."
Also see "Soros Cashing In On Financial Meltdown" ---
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/9649
Emerging markets, led by China and Russia, plan
to jointly challenge the U.S. dollar’s role as the world’s sole benchmark
currency at the April 2 meeting of the Group 20 nations - a move that
underscores the currency’s weakness and fading support around the world. The
creation of a new reserve currency to be issued by international financial
institutions was one of the measures Russia proposed to the G20 on March 16,
ahead of the group’s summit next week . . . China is the world leader with $2
trillion in foreign currency holdings. About half of that is held in U.S.
Treasuries and notes issued by other government-affiliated agencies, such as
Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE). Half of Russia’s currency reserves - the
world’s third-largest stockpile - consist of U.S. dollars, as well.
Jason Simpkins, "'Dump the Dollar' Campaign Shows China's Discomfort with
Treasuries Holdings," Seeking Alpha, March 24, 2009 ---
http://seekingalpha.com/article/127530-dump-the-dollar-campaign-shows-china-s-discomfort-with-treasuries-holdings
Jensen Comment
Soaring booked national debt and zooming unbooked entitlements spell doom and
gloom for the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar and the interest cost of
servicing the massive National Debt. Congress and Obama have ignored the
non-sustainability of the U.S. economy under reckless budget deficits and new
entitlements.
With its myriad of “desk officers” and “stovepipes,”
the hierarchy of the executive branch is well-suited for managing stability. But
when new problems arise, it tends to take them piecemeal, often with little
consideration of how they are interrelated or of the larger historical questions
at stake. At the White House — which in the modern era has become a permanent
campaign perpetually harried by the crisis of the moment — there is little time
for meditation on ultimate historical issues. As a result, the nation has become
woefully bereft of the capacity for choice on a historical scale.
Mario Loyola, "Obama and Philosophy
101: On national security, Obama sounds more like a precocious college
student than a great," National Review, March 26, 2009 ---
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDEzMGE2ODA4ZjU2NDlmNDU4MzY5ZTY1NGZiNjkzMjc=
America, what
is happening to you?
“One thing seems probable to me,” said Peer
Steinbrück, the German finance minister, in September 2008....“the United States
will lose its status as the superpower of the global financial system.” You
don’t have to strain too hard to see the financial crisis as the death knell for
a debt-ridden, overconsuming, and underproducing American empire . . .
Richard
Florida,
"How the Crash Will Reshape America," The Atlantic, March 2009 ---
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200903/meltdown-geography
South Park's animated cartoon solutions to the economic crisis Part 1 ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx_sH_G38oY
South Park's animated cartoon solutions to the economic crisis Part 2 ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUIDG0n74J0
South Park's animated cartoon solutions to the economic crisis Part 3 ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbFcYuJ_H8c
Ohio's Controlling Board, which oversees various spending
projects authorized by the state, on Monday rejected plans by Miami University
to purchase $167,000 worth of office chairs. The problem, The Columbus Dispatch
reported, is that many of the chairs were priced at $522 each, when there are
less expensive options available. On of the board members who voted against the
spending did note, however, that the board members were all discussing the
matter while sitting in $2,000 black leather chairs.
Inside Higher Ed, March 25, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/25/qt#194880
Hardball in the Real World
FedEx Corp is threatening to cancel the purchase of
billions of dollars worth of new Boeing Co cargo planes if Congress passes a law
that would make it easier for unions to organize at the package-delivery
company, the Wall Street Journal said. FedEx may cancel plans to buy as many as
30 new Boeing planes should Congress pass a bill that would remove truck
drivers, couriers and other employees at FedEx's Express unit from the
jurisdiction of the federal Railway Labor Act of 1926, the paper cited the
company spokesman as saying.
Yahoo News, March 25, 2009 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090325/us_nm/us_fedex_orders
Hard Ball in the Real Washington DC: Hire My Spouse!
Senate banking-committee Chairman Christopher Dodd who
has received $280,000 in campaign contributions from AIG isn't the only person
in his family to benefit from a relationship with the embattled insurance
behemoth. His wife, Jackie Clegg Dodd, worked as an outside "director" for a
Bermuda-based company affiliated with AIG, according to a report. The
Connecticut Democrat's wife worked at IPC Holdings Ltd. for three years,
beginning in 2001, according to a proxy statement obtained by Real Clear
Politics.
Jennefer Fermino, "Dodd's Wife, Too,
Had Money Link to AIG," New York Post, March 25, 2009 ---
Click Here
Jensen Comment
Another example is when, then, Senator Gramm's wife was appointed to Enron's
Board of Directors .
Enron had done its
homework in Washington. Help came largely from the husband-and-wife team of
economists Senator Phil Gramm and his wife, Wendy. Before joining the Enron
board, Wendy Gramm had exempted energy futures contracts from government
oversight in 1992; her husband now pushed for the Commodity Futures
Modernization Act in December 2000, which would deregulate energy trading. There
was strong opposition to Phil Gramm's bill in the House, mainly from the
President's Working Group on Financial Markets, who included Secretary of the
Treasury Lawrence Summers; Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve;
and Arthur Levitt, chairman of the SEC. But Enron spent close to $2 million
lobbying to combat that opposition, while Gramm kept the bill from floor debate
in the waning days of the Clinton administration. He reintroduced it under a new
name immediately after Bush assumed office and got his bill passed. Enron, in
turn, got the opportunity to trade with abandon. No one needed to know--or could
find out--how much power Enron owned and how or why the company moved it from
place to place.
Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron, by Mimi Swartz,
Sherron Watkins, Page 227. See "What was
Enron getting for its political bribes?"
As quoted at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm
Rep. Maxine Waters arranged meetings with U.S.
Treasury Department officials (in September, 2008) for OneUnited Bank to plead
for federal cash. It had been heavily invested in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae,
and its capital was "all but wiped out" after the U.S. government took them
over. Her husband is a stockholder (more than
$250,000 as of May 2008) and former director of
the bank. The bank's executives were major
contributors to her campaigns. Rep. Barney Frank counseled her against
participating in the matter. The bank has its headquarters in Boston,
Massachusetts, and offices in Los Angeles and Miami. It did secure $12 million
in TARP money
Wikipedia ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxine_Waters
How Jon Stewart Went Bad (along with Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews)
With Bush gone and the Republican Party in chaos, most of Stewart’s targets
have disappeared. Yet rather than pivot with the times and challenge those now
in power, Stewart continues to attack the same old enemies, at this point mostly
straw men and pipsqueaks.
Tucker Carlson, Free Republic ---
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2213856/posts
Jensen Comment
Reasons are the same for the plunging viewership of Obama's MSNBC Disciples
Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews. What gets me about Olbermann is the way he
was merciless against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (because she was
linked to the policies of the despised President Bush). He was also merciless on
Hillary Clinton when she was competing with Obama for the nomination of the
Democratic Party. Now that Secretary of State Clinton is part of the Obama team,
and expounding many former policies of Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton can do
no wrong as far as Olbermann is concerned. He is the most outrageous commentator
in history with respect to biases and selection of topics and personalities
invited to his Countdown. MSNBC truly is the Official Obama Network. Never is
there a criticism of Obama or his staff.
What happened, Keith, to your former rants against military operations in
Afghanistan?
Chris Matthew's Hard Ball game with the Presidency has become a Fluff Ball.
One way to avoid hangovers is "staying drunk."
Anonymous, as quoted by
Rich Tucker at
http://townhall.com/columnists/RichTucker/2009/03/27/money_matters
Shocking many of its listeners, the left-leaning
National Public Radio recently ran a commentary pointing out that Fox News
Channel, which NPR considers to be very conservative, is amassing record ratings
in the wake of the Democratic takeover in Washington. All things considered,
that was not great news for some NPR folks. The reason that Fox is doing so well
while some committed-left media operations are failing is what I call the
remorse factor. Almost 62 million Americans voted against Barack Obama last
November, many of them convinced that his vision for America was, well, kind of
dangerous. Also, exit polling showed that some who supported the president did
so out of disgust with the Bush administration, which lost control during its
last two years in power.
Bill O'Reilly, "The Loyal
Opposition," Townhall, March 28, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/BillOReilly/2009/03/28/the_loyal_opposition
Bush's war costs in Afghanistan have been $173
billion from 2001 through 2009. Obama's proposals for Iraq/Afghanistan are $144
billion this fiscal year, but are not broken down. The secret war by the
US-trained "Freedom Corps" in Pakistan is budgeted at $400 million. As America's
infrastructure decays, the Army Corps of Engineers is spending $4 billion for
construction in Afghanistan this year, including 720 miles of roads this year
alone. The expansion of Afghanistan's army will cost "up to" $20 billion in the
next several years, while Afghanistan's entire national budget is $1.1 billion
this year. Cost overruns and corruption being what they are, it is easy to
predict the Afghan/Pakistan wars costing $1 trillion by the end of the
president's first term. Military spending will continue to outpace civilian
reconstruction aid indefinitely. In summary, be prepared for a war that spans
the length of the Obama presidency, an Obama War. Expect the Congress to be
inert and distracted. Expect little help from the media (read that
MSNBC, the Obama-CanDo-No-Wrong Network).
Tom Hayden, "Don't Go There Mr.
P:resident!" The Nation, March 27, 2009 ---
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090413/hayden?rel=hp_picks
Suddenly it Becomes a Winnable War
That "losing policy" under Bush becomes a "winning policy" in the biased liberal
press unwilling to find fault with Obama policies
After the trauma in Iraq, it would have been easy
for the U.S. to withdraw into exhaustion and realism. Instead, President Obama
is doubling down on the very principles that some dismiss as neocon fantasy: the
idea that this nation has the capacity to use military and civilian power to
promote democracy, nurture civil society and rebuild failed states.
David Brooks, "The Winnable War," The New York Times, March 26, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/opinion/27brooks.html?_r=1&hpw
Gen. Richard Myers: U.S. Enemies Seek WMDs to End 'Our Way of Life'
Former top military commander Gen. Richard Myers tells
Newsmax that America’s enemies in the war on terror are “ruthless” and
“relentless” and will not hesitate to use nuclear or biological weapons if they
obtain them. “They want to do away with our way of life,” Myers tells Newsmax
TV’s Ashley Martella. “They could bring great harm to this country and our
friends and allies.” Myers, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
from October 2001 until September 2005 ...
Jim Meyers, Newsmax, March 25, 2009 ---
http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/richard_myers_wmds/2009/03/25/196103.html
Speaking of Broken Markets: Luxury boats are less popular than free
buildings in Detroit
Derelict boats are environmental and navigational
hazards, leaking toxins and posing obstacles for other craft, especially at
night. Thieves plunder them for scrap metal. In a storm, these runabouts and
sailboats, cruisers and houseboats can break free or break up, causing havoc.
Some of those disposing of their boats are in the same bind as overstretched
homeowners: they face steep payments on an asset that is diminishing in value
and decide not to continue. They either default on the debt or take bolder
measures. Marina and maritime officials around the country say they believe,
however, that most of the abandoned vessels cluttering their waters are fully
paid for. They are expensive-to-maintain toys that have lost their appeal. The
owners cannot sell them, because the secondhand market is overwhelmed. They
cannot afford to spend hundreds of dollars a month mooring and maintaining them.
And they do not have the thousands of dollars required to properly dispose of
them. . . . The owners cannot sell them, because the secondhand market is
overwhelmed. They cannot afford to spend hundreds of dollars a month mooring and
maintaining them. And they do not have the thousands of dollars required to
properly dispose of them.
David Streitfield, "Boats Too Costly to Keep Are Littering Coastlines," The
New York Times, April 1, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/business/01boats.html?_r=1&hpw
Jensen Comment
I suspect the market is also broken
for some used aircraft.
Speaking of Broken Markets:
Over 57,000 Unclaimed New Cars Rusting Away
The sea of new cars, 57,000 of them, stretches for
acres along the Port of Baltimore. They are imports just in from foreign shores
and exports waiting to ship out -- Chryslers and Subarus, Fords and Hyundais,
Mercedeses and Kias. But the customers who once bought them by the millions have
largely vanished, and so the cars continue to pile up, so many that some are now
stored at nearby Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport.
Brady Dennis, "Too Many Cars, And
They're Not on the Road," Washington Post, April 3, 2009 ---
Click Here
The New University of Illinois Online Global Campus
Online-education venture at the U. of Illinois tries to distinguish itself
from other distance-learning programs
"The Global Campus Meets a World of Competition," by Dan Turner, The
Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review, April 3, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i30/30a01001.htm
The University of Illinois Global Campus, a
multimillion-dollar distance-learning project, is up and running. For its
March-April 2009 term, it has enrolled 366 students.
Getting to this point, though, has looked a little
like the dot-com start-up bubble of the late 1990s. Hundreds of
Internet-related companies were launched with overly ambitious goals, only
to later face cutbacks and other struggles to stay alive. Most crashed
anyway. Some observers now say the Global Campus must try to avoid the same
fate of churning through a large initial investment while attracting too few
customers.
The project, planned about four years ago, was
designed to complement existing online programs offered by individual
Illinois-system campuses at Urbana-Champaign, Springfield, and Chicago.
Those programs primarily serve current students as an addition to their
on-campus course work. The Global Campus, in contrast, seeks to reach the
adult learner off campus, who is often seeking a more focused,
career-related certification or degree, such as completing a B.S. in
nursing.
Online education has proved popular with
institutions, students, and employers across the United States, with
opportunities and enrollment growing. According to the Sloan Consortium, a
nonprofit organization focused on online learning, the fall 2007 term saw
3.9 million students enroll in at least one online course, many at
for-profit institutions like DeVry University and the University of Phoenix.
That growing popularity, says David J. Gray, chief
executive of UMassOnline, the online-learning arm of the University of
Massachusetts system, is part of the Global Campus's problem. The Illinois
program, he says, is "fighting uphill in a market that's a lot more uphill."
The slope didn't seem as steep in the fall of 2005,
when Chester S. Gardner, then the university's vice president for academic
affairs, led a committee to investigate ideas for the future of online
education at Illinois. That resulted in a proposal and business plan
presented to the Board of Trustees the next year. The system's "existing
online programs were not structured for adult learners," says Mr. Gardner,
who is now leading the Global Campus.
The program was formally established in March 2007.
The university initially financed it with $1.5-million of general revenue.
The program started teaching its first 12 students in 2008.
Now, Mr. Gardner says, the Global Campus has a
budget of approximately $9.4-million for the 2008-9 fiscal year.
Approximately $1-million of that comes from the state, he says, and the
remaining money comes from various grants, tuition, and loans from the Board
of Trustees.
The trustees' investment has produced heavy
involvement, Mr. Gardner says. "They're acting like venture capitalists," he
notes, adding that "they're certainly doing their job of holding my feet to
the fire."
This year the 366 Global Campus students are
enrolled in five different degree and four different certificate programs;
Mr. Gardner expects the number of students to rise to around 500 by May.
Those numbers put the program on a much slower
track than earlier, sunnier estimates of 9,000 students enrolled by 2012.
Mr. Gardner says the 9,000 figure came from his 2007 budget request to the
trustees and was not precise. "We had no direct experience upon which to
base our projections," he says.
Now, Mr. Gardner says, he has more realistic
figures. Once 1,650 students are enrolled, the monthly income from tuition
will equal monthly expenses, on average. His current projections show the
Global Campus reaching that point of stability by the 2011 fiscal year.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on cross border distance education and training
alternatives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Distance Education is Rapidly Gaining Acceptance in the 21st Century ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#DistanceEducation
Bob Jensen's threads on education technology and distance education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
"Military Robots and the Terrifying Future of War," Simoleon Sense,
April 3, 2009 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/military-robots-and-the-terrifying-future-of-war/
Why printing money to pay off the National Debt is highly inflationary
Hi David Fordham,
Your long message involves much more than your original question about why we
refer to the National Debt as "Debt."
Below I will describe a "hidden agenda" about why Hank Paulson elected to
save AIG and not Lehman Brothers. I will also predict that the U.S. will one day
give China its entire Navy.
The U.S. Government has two types of financial obligations.
Booked Debt = National Debt ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Debt
This is simply the cash we've borrowed (treasury bonds, savings
bonds, etc.) upon which we are paying interest of slightly less than a million
dollars a minute at the moment. Due to budget deficits National Debt will double
in the next few years from the present level of between $10 and $11 trillion.
Most of the interest on our National Debt is being funded with more borrowing
rather than taxation. This is one of the main reasons why the U.S. Budget has
become the mother of all Ponzi schemes.
Unbooked Debt = Entitlement obligations that are not yet booked ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Entitlement obligations are not yet booked but in most cases
they are already legislated and can be measured with reasonable accuracy by
actuarial methods, including obligations for military retirement, Veterans
medical benefits, Social Security retirement and disability pay, Congressional
retirement and medical benefits, Medicare, a portion of Medicaid, etc.
Entitlements also include many contingency obligations such when the President
declares disaster areas of the country after hurricanes, tornados, forest fires,
etc. The government also has millions of pending lawsuits.
Former Controller General, David Walker, places the unbooked debt at around
$60 trillion, but it will soon explode to $100 trillion under proposed
entitlement programs for universal education, universal health care, and massive
environmental protection legislation being proposed. Since U.S. voters will
almost never vote for massive tax increases, the Government has little choice
for legislated entitlements other than adding to the National Debt or
Zimbabwe-style printing of money that spells economic disaster.
Until David Walker got serious about the magnitude of the unbooked
obligations, I don't think anybody tried to seriously measure this unbooked
debt. Now David is trying his best to warn the public about how these
entitlements may destroy the United States unless we start taxing to pay for
them.
IOUSA (the most frightening movie in American history) --- (see a 30-minute
version of the documentary at
www.iousathemovie.com
).
A Must Read for All Americans
The most important article for the world to read now is the following interview
with a former Andersen Partner and former Chief Accountant of the United States:
"Debt Crusader David Walker sounds the alarm for America's financial future,"
Journal of Accountancy, March 2009 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2009/Mar/DebtCrusader.htm
The good news about entitlement obligations is that, until they come due, we
are not usually paying interest. The bad news is that legislated entitlements
are so massive before we legislate the proposed Obama entitlements. Universal
health care is the mother of all entitlements unless U.S. voters are willing to
devote half their incomes to a universal health care tax (which is how Canada
and European nations fund health care). U.S. voters are not likely to accept
such a 50% universal health care tax.
Thus far most of the stimulus outflows to date have been with borrowed money,
although a small portion was printed money. There's a huge difference in terms
of inflation. Printed money directly boosts inflation and angers former
investors in our National Debt such as China, Germany, and oil-rich rich Arabs.
It would be curtains for the United States if those investors stopped rolling
over their investments in our National Debt. Of course they don't want to see
their investments go up in smoke.
Hank Paulson's Suspected Hidden Agenda
It's not likely that cash-rich nations like China, Germany, and oil-Arabs will
destroy their own investments in our National Debt by not rolling over the debt
at maturity dates. However, they are likely to be less willing to add trillions
more investing in our newer annual spendthrift deficits.
I think what perplexed Hank Paulson, as Treasury Secretary, was that AIG's
main problem was undercapitalized credit derivative obligations that insured
toxic CDO mortgage bonds purchased by the same investors who hold much of our
National Debt.
If Paulson allowed AIG's credit derivative defaults to really piss off
investors needed for added National Debt, the U.S. Treasury would have been in
deep, deep trouble. We had to keep those investors content by making good on
AIG's trillions in credit derivatives. And thus we bailed out AIG.
Lehman Bothers was an investor counterparty in AIG's credit derivatives, but
Lehman was not obligated to China, Germany, and oil-Arabs like AIG was obligated
to investors in our National Debt. Hence, Paulson could let Lehman fail without
the same massive repercussions on our issuance of new Treasury Bonds.
That was my "Hidden Agenda" speculation early on, although I don't claim to
be the only one suspecting a hidden bailout agenda for AIG ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#HiddenAgendaDetails
There are two ways to really piss off investors in our massive National Debt.
The first way is to print money that has an indirect effect of greatly
cheapening their investments of dear dollars in our National Debt. The second
way is to not make good credit insurance (credit derivatives) purchased from
U.S. companies like AIG.
I suspect that if we continue to become better allies with China, we will
find innovative methods for reducing our National Debt. One way will be to give
China the U.S. Navy. I'm not really trying to be funny here. I only hope that
China also takes on the entitlement obligations that accompany the U.S. Navy.
New Off Balance Sheet Financing Vehicles
Accounting for the Shadow Economy
Property is much more than a body of norms. It is also a huge information system
that processes raw data until it is transformed into facts that can be tested
for truth, and thereby destroys the main catalysts of recessions and panics --
ambiguity and opacity.
See below
There are trillions of dollars of off balance sheet
obligations that cannot be easily accounted for.
Hernando de Soto
A Lesson for Auditors: Accounting for the shadow economy
"Toxic Assets Were Hidden Assets: We can't afford to allow shadow
economies to grow this big," by Hernando de Soto, The Wall Street
Journal, March 25, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123793811398132049.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
The Obama administration has finally come
up with a plan to deal with the real cause of the credit crunch: the
infamous "toxic assets" on bank balance sheets that have scared off
investors and borrowers, clogging credit markets around the world. But if
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner hopes to prevent a repeat of this global
economic crisis, his rescue plan must recognize that the real problem is not
the bad loans, but the debasement of the paper they are printed on.
Today's global crisis -- a loss on paper
of more than $50 trillion in stocks, real estate, commodities and
operational earnings within 15 months -- cannot be explained only by the
default on a meager 7% of subprime mortgages (worth probably no more than $1
trillion) that triggered it. The real villain is the lack of trust in the
paper on which they -- and all other assets -- are printed. If we don't
restore trust in paper, the next default -- on credit cards or student loans
-- will trigger another collapse in paper and bring the world economy to its
knees.
If you think about it, everything of
value we own travels on property paper.
At the beginning of the decade there was
about $100 trillion worth of property paper representing tangible goods such
as land, buildings, and patents world-wide, and some $170 trillion
representing ownership over such semiliquid assets as mortgages, stocks and
bonds. Since then, however, aggressive financiers have manufactured what the
Bank for International Settlements estimates to be $1 quadrillion worth of
new derivatives (mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt
obligations, and credit default swaps) that have flooded the market.
These derivatives are the root of the
credit crunch. Why? Unlike all other property paper, derivatives are not
required by law to be recorded, continually tracked and tied to the assets
they represent. Nobody knows precisely how many there are, where they are,
and who is finally accountable for them. Thus, there is widespread fear that
potential borrowers and recipients of capital with too many nonperforming
derivatives will be unable to repay their loans. As trust in property paper
breaks down it sets off a chain reaction, paralyzing credit and investment,
which shrinks transactions and leads to a catastrophic drop in employment
and in the value of everyone's property.
Ever since humans started trading, lending
and investing beyond the confines of the family and the tribe, we have
depended on legally authenticated written statements to get the facts about
things of value. Over the past 200 years, that legal authority has matured
into a global consensus on the procedures, standards and principles required
to document facts in a way that everyone can easily understand and trust.
The result is a formidable property system
with rules and recording mechanisms that fix on paper the facts that allow
us to hold, transfer, transform and use everything we own, from stocks to
screenplays. The only paper representing an asset that is not centrally
recorded, standardized and easily tracked are derivatives.
Property is much more than a body of
norms. It is also a huge information system that processes raw data until it
is transformed into facts that can be tested for truth, and thereby destroys
the main catalysts of recessions and panics -- ambiguity and opacity.
To bring derivatives under the rule of law,
governments should ensure that they conform to six longstanding procedures
that guarantee the value and legitimacy of any kind of paper purporting to
represent an asset:
- All documents and the assets and
transactions they represent or are derived from must be recorded in
publicly accessible registries. It is only by recording and continually
updating such factual knowledge that we can detect the kind of overly
creative financial and contractual instruments that plunged us into this
recession.
- The law has to take into account the
"externalities" or side effects of all financial transactions according
to the legal principle of erga omnes ("toward all"), which was
originally developed to protect third parties from the negative
consequences of secret deals carried out by aristocracies accountable to
no one but themselves.
- Every financial deal must be firmly
tethered to the real performance of the asset from which it originated.
By aligning debts to assets, we can create simple and understandable
benchmarks for quickly detecting whether a financial transaction has
been created to help production or to bet on the performance of distant
"underlying assets."
- Governments should never forget that
production always takes priority over finance. As Adam Smith and Karl
Marx both recognized, finance supports wealth creation, but in itself
creates no value.
- Governments can encourage assets to
be leveraged, transformed, combined, recombined and repackaged into any
number of tranches, provided the process intends to improve the value of
the original asset. This has been the rule for awarding property since
the beginning of time.
- Governments can no longer tolerate
the use of opaque and confusing language in drafting financial
instruments. Clarity and precision are indispensable for the creation of
credit and capital through paper. Western politicians must not forget
what their greatest thinkers have been saying for centuries: All
obligations and commitments that stick are derived from words recorded
on paper with great precision.
Above all, governments should stop
clinging to the hope that the existing market will eventually sort things
out. "Let the market do its work" has come to mean, "let the shadow economy
do its work." But modern markets only work if the paper is reliable.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm
Off Balance Sheet Vehicles
The Mother of All Ponzi Schemes According to Top Liberal (Progressive)
Economists
The Latest Bailout Plan’s a Disaster According to
Paul Krugman and
James K. Galbraith
And yet American policy-makers appear convinced
that more debt can rescue an economy already drowning in it. If we can just keep
the leverage party going, all will be well. $787 billion to fund “stimulus,”
another $9 trillion committed to guarantee bad debts, 0% interest rates and
quantitative easing to drive more lending, new
off balance sheet vehicles
to hide from the public the toxic assets they’ve absorbed. All of it to be
funded with debt, most of it the responsibility of taxpayers. If I may offer
just one reason this will all fail: rising interest rates. Interest rates need
only revert to their historical median in order to hammer asset values, and
balance sheets, into oblivion.
"Added Debt Won't Rescue the Great American Ponzi
Scheme," Seeking Alpha, March 23, 2009 ---
http://seekingalpha.com/article/127261-added-debt-won-t-rescue-the-great-american-ponzi-scheme?source=article_sb_picks
Bob Jensen's threads on off-balance sheet financing (OBSF) are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#OBSF2
Bob Jensen's threads on the bailout mess ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
We need honest accounting
more than ever, not fantasy teases for investors
This is a pretty good article on how players (banks), umpires (regulators),
and fans (like billionaires Steve Forbes and Warren Buffet) have inappropriately
blamed the scorekeepers (accounts) for the demise of the big banks. In fact the
December 30, 2008 research report calls this attribution of blame just plain
wrong (and self-serving).
The wonderful December 30, 2008 research report of the SEC shows that fair value
accounting is neither the cause nor the cure for the banking crisis. The
liquidity problem of the holders of the toxic investments is caused by trillions
of dollars invested in underperforming (often zero performing) of bad
investments mortgages or mortgaged-backed bonds that have to be written down
unless auditors agree to simply lie about values. That is not likely to happen,
but client pressures on auditors to value on the high side for many properties
will be heavy handed.
The wonderful full SEC report that bankers and
regulators do not want to read can be freely downloaded at
http://www.sec.gov/news/studies/2008/marktomarket123008.pdf
"We Need Honest Accounting: Relax regulatory capital rules if need
be, but don't let banks hide the truth," by James A. Chanos, The Wall
Street Journal, March 24, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123785319919419659.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Mark-to-market (MTM) accounting is under
fierce attack by bank CEOs and others who are pressing Congress to suspend,
if not repeal, the rules they blame for the current financial crisis. Yet
their pleas to bubble-wrap financial statements run counter to increased
calls for greater financial-market transparency and ongoing efforts to
restore investor trust.
We have a sorry history of the banking
industry driving statutory and regulatory changes. Now banks want accounting
fixes to mask their recklessness. Meanwhile, there has been no
acknowledgment of culpability in what top management in these financial
institutions did -- despite warnings -- to help bring about the crisis.
Theirs is a record of lax risk management, flawed models, reckless lending,
and excessively leveraged investment strategies. In the worst instances,
they acted with moral indifference, knowing that what they were doing was
flawed, but still willing to pocket the fees and accompanying bonuses.
MTM accounting isn't perfect, but it does
provide a compass for investors to figure out what an asset would be worth
in today's market if it were sold in an orderly fashion to a willing buyer.
Before MTM took effect, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB)
produced much evidence to show that valuing financial instruments and other
difficult-to-price assets by "historical" costs, or "mark to management,"
was folly.
The rules now under attack are neither as
significant nor as inflexible as critics charge. MTM is generally limited to
investments held for trading purposes, and to certain derivatives. For many
financial institutions, these investments represent a minority of their
total investment portfolio. A recent study by Bloomberg columnist David
Reilly of the 12 largest banks in the KBW Bank Index shows that only 29% of
the $8.46 trillion in assets are at MTM prices. In General Electric's case,
the portion is just 2%.
Why is that so? Most bank assets are in
loans, which are held at their original cost using amortization rules, minus
a reserve that banks must set aside as a safety cushion for potential future
losses.
MTM rules also give banks a choice. MTM
accounting is not required for securities held to maturity, but you need to
demonstrate a "positive intent and ability" that you will do so. Further, an
SEC 2008 report found that "over 90% of investments marked-to-market are
valued based on observable inputs."
Financial institutions had no problem in
using MTM to benefit from the drop in prices of their own notes and bonds,
since the rule also applies to liabilities. And when the value of the
securitized loans they held was soaring, they eagerly embraced MTM. Once
committed to that accounting discipline, though, they were obligated to
continue doing so for the duration of their holding of securities they've
marked to market. And one wonders if they are as equally willing to forego
MTM for valuing the same illiquid securities in client accounts for margin
loans as they are for their proprietary trading accounts?
But these facts haven't stopped the charge
forward on Capitol Hill. At a recent hearing, bankers said that MTM forced
them to price securities well below their real valuation, making it
difficult to purge toxic assets from their books at anything but fire-sale
prices. They also justified their attack with claims that loans, mortgages
and other securities are now safe or close to safe, ignoring mounting
evidence that losses are growing across a greater swath of credit. This
makes the timing of the anti-MTM lobbying appear even more suspect. And not
all financial firms are calling for loosening MTM standards; Goldman Sachs
and others who are standing firm on this issue should be applauded.
According to J.P. Morgan, approximately
$450 billion of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) of asset-backed
securities were issued from late 2005 to mid-2007. Of that amount, roughly
$305 billion is now in a formal state of default and $102 billion of this
amount has already been liquidated. The latest monthly mortgage reports from
investment banks are equally sobering. It is no surprise, then, that the
largest underwriters of mortgages and CDOs have been decimated.
Commercial banking regulations generally
do not require banks to sell assets to meet capital requirements just
because market values decline. But if "impairment" charges under MTM do push
banks below regulatory capital requirements and limit their ability to lend
when they can't raise more capital, then the solution is to grant temporary
regulatory capital "relief," which is itself an arbitrary number.
There is a connection between efforts over
the past 12 years to reduce regulatory oversight, weaken capital
requirements, and silence the financial detectives who uncovered such
scandals as Lehman and Enron. The assault against MTM is just the latest
chapter.
Instead of acknowledging mistakes, we are
told this is a "once in 100 years" anomaly with the market not functioning
correctly. It isn't lost on investors that the MTM criticisms come, too, as
private equity firms must now report the value of their investments. The
truth is the market is functioning correctly. It's just that MTM critics
don't like the prices that investors are willing to pay.
The FASB and Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) must stand firm in their respective efforts to ensure that
investors get a true sense of the losses facing banks and investment firms.
To be sure, we should work to make MTM accounting more precise, following,
for example, the counsel of the President's Working Group on Financial
Markets and the SEC's December 2008 recommendations for achieving greater
clarity in valuation approaches.
Unfortunately, the FASB proposal on March
16 represents capitulation. It calls for "significant judgment" by banks in
determining if a market or an asset is "inactive" and if a transaction is
"distressed." This would give banks more discretion to throw out "quotes"
and use valuation alternatives, including cash-flow estimates, to determine
value in illiquid markets. In other words, it allows banks to substitute
their own wishful-thinking judgments of value for market prices.
The FASB is also changing the criteria
used to determine impairment, giving companies more flexibility to not
recognize impairments if they don't have "the intent to sell." Banks will
only need to state that they are more likely than not to be able to hold
onto an underwater asset until its price "recovers." CFOs will also have a
choice to divide impairments into "credit losses" and "other losses," which
means fewer of these charges will be counted against income. If approved,
companies could start this quarter to report net income that ignores sharp
declines in securities they own. The FASB is taking comments until April 1,
but its vote is a fait accompli.
Obfuscating sound accounting rules by
gutting MTM rules will only further reduce investors' trust in the financial
statements of all companies, causing private capital -- desperately needed
in securities markets -- to become even scarcer. Worse, obfuscation will
further erode confidence in the American economy, with dire consequences for
the very financial institutions who are calling for MTM changes. If need be,
temporarily relax the arbitrary levels of regulatory capital, rather than
compromise the integrity of all financial statements.
Bob Jensen's threads about all this bull crap blaming of the bean counters
can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#FairValueAccounting
Bob Jensen's threads on fair value accounting are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#FairValue
We had no need to eviscerate the U.S. financial
services industry in the past year. Mark to market -- applied to regulatory
capital --- was one of many contributors to
this debacle.
Robert D. Arnott, The Wall Street
Journal, March 26, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123811401157753457.html#mod=todays_us_opinion
Jensen Comment
Barf ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#FairValueAccounting
Many cops, judges, school administrators, and legislators really are pigs
Thousands of public officials caught on tape: Bribes, public corruption, ABC
News, March 25, 2009 ---
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/FedCrimes/story?id=7024797&page=1
"With the Economy Down, Vasectomy Rates Are Up,"
HealthDay.com, March 20, 2009 ,,
The same might be said for Viagra sales uplifts
"More Women Needing Cash Go From Jobless to Topless"
Associated Press, March 22, 2009,
Saves on the budget for clothing
"Wild, Energetic Sex Is Key to Conception,"
Observer (London), March 22, 2009
At last we know why older couples rarely conceive new children
Wild Energetic Sex is the Key to AIDs Infliction (along with promiscuity)
"We have found no consistent associations between
condom use and lower HIV-infection rates," said (Harvard University researcher)
Green, "which, 25 years into the pandemic, we should be seeing if this
intervention was working." . . . "There is," Green added, "a consistent
association shown by our best studies, including the U.S.-funded 'Demographic
Health Surveys,' between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not
lower) HIV-infection rates. This may be due in part to a phenomenon known as
risk compensation, meaning that when one uses a risk-reduction 'technology' such
as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by 'compensating' or
taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction
technology."
WorldNetDaily, March 23, 2009
Jensen Comment
Research reports like this are very dangerous. If life expectancy in the United
States did not decline across the Korean, Viet Nam, Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan
wars, tell this to a soldier in the face-off with the enemy on the ground.
"A woman attempting to reconcile with her estranged husband handcuffed
herself to him as he slept and then bit him on his torso and arms as he phoned
for help, police said,"
Associated Press, March 24, 2009
'Till death do us part.
"Teenager Paints Giant Phallus on Roof of Parents' Home"--headline,
Daily Mail (London), March 24, 2009
And I thought Hoover's last erection on the Stanford University campus was bad
enough.
"Auditors say the state Medicaid program may have overpaid $2.9 million for
services like teeth cleaning for toothless patients. Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli
says auditors found the state health department's Medicaid claims processing
system lacks necessary controls."
New York Post, March 25, 2009
Jensen Comment
But you should see their gums glow!
This is crap
Palestinian factions in Lebanon accused the army on
Saturday of contaminating Iranian food aid destined for a refugee camp by using
sniffer-dogs to search the shipment. "Camp residents refuse to eat what the
police dogs have soiled," several Palestinian factions in northern Lebanon,
including the Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, said in a statement
received by AFP. It referred to a shipment donated by Iran for residents of the
Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon, which was devastated by deadly battles
between a fringe Islamist group and the army in 2007.
Yahoo News, March 25, 20096 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090321/wl_mideast_afp/lebanonpalestinianiranaid
The New York Times electronically publishes a truly bad taste cartoon that with a
Moslem religion symbol instead of the Star of David would get NYT editors and
the cartoonist killed ---
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20090325/cx_po_uc/po20090325
Jensen Comment
This is in your back yard
Sen.
Schumer.
In fairness, the NYT tuned into the political danger involved and never placed
the cartoon in the print edition.
Good News: Some new biofuels are cheap to make such as those that
come from cooked coal
Bad News: The environmental damages are prohibitive
"Bad News: Scientists Make Cheap Gas From Coal," byAlexis Madrigal, Wired
News, March 26, 2009 ---
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/coaltoliquids.html
But the problem with all the new fuels is that they
have to scale up — and that's harder than it sounds. Plus, many fear that
biofuels could cause massive, negative land-use changes.
The process of cooking coal into liquid fuel, on
the other hand, has already proven itself on a massive scale. Take coal, add
some water, cook it, and you've got a liquid fuel for your car. The hydrogen
in the water bonds to the carbon and voila: hydrocarbons, such as octane.
It's the very fact that coal-to-liquids could work that make them such a
scary idea for people devoted to fighting climate change.
The Nazis used the so-called Fisher-Tropsch process
to provide up to half of their transportation fuel needs during World War
II. Later, South Africa began a major coal-to-liquids program during the
Apartheid era and now maintain the world's largest CTL industry in the
world. The country's factories produce 160,000 barrels of fuel a day, a
little more than all the residents and businesses in Utah use each day.
Continued in article
Ireland's Gang Leader Philip Collopy is a Leading Candidate (posthumously)
for a Darwin Award
Gangsters videoed their crime boss accidentally
blowing his brains out with a handgun during a drink and drugs party, police
revealed yesterday. Philip Collopy, 29, a member of a gang in Limerick, Ireland,
apparently did not realise his Glock 9mm pistol was loaded when he pointed it at
his head and pulled the trigger in front of shocked onlookers. Collopy, who was
aligned to the Keane-Collopy gang in a long-running gangland feud, had emptied
the magazine from the handgun, but there was still a bullet in the chamber.
Alan Sherry, "Gang leader accidentally blows his brains out during drink and
drugs party," Daily Mail, March 24, 2009 ---
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1164385/Gang-leader-accidentally-blows-brains-drink-drugs-party.html
What does Amazon claim are the first and second most
influential books in the world?
The book at Rank 2 will probably be a surprise!
AIG Shrugged by Ayn Rand
For Jim Mahar's Finance Professor Blog on March 25, 2009 ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/
Ok, I can't make this stuff up.
Ayn Rand's
Atlas Shrugged is so life like that it is now as
if reading (or in my case ristening) to a script.
Background:
Atlas Shrugged
is a novel written in 1957 by Ayn Rand. In it, in
response to a largely governmental caused "emergency" the top leaders of the
business world give up and just walk away in response to taxes, regulation,
and other confiscatory governmental policies. Indeed, it seems that whoever
is in the hottest spotlight, is the next to go.
So without further comment, a letter from Jake DeSantis announcing his
resignation from AIG.
From
the NY Times
"The following is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an
executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial
products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G."
"DEAR Mr. Liddy,
It is with deep regret that I submit my notice
of resignation from A.I.G. Financial Products. I hope you take the time
to read this entire letter. Before describing the details of my
decision, I want to offer some context:"
later:
"After 12 months of hard work dismantling the
company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be
rewarded in March 2009 — we...have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being
unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will
now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to
those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep
none of the money myself.
.... I can no longer effectively perform my duties
in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like
you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of
a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come
to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify
spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of
those who have let me down."
The only difference now between now and then, is that
DeSantis (unlike Galt, Wyatt, Dannager, et al) left an explanation.
BTW if you have not
read the book, I can not give it a higher
recommendation except to say it is in my Top Ten (maybe top five) of all
time.
Jensen Comment
A lot of scholars, especially liberal scholars, despise Ayn Rand. But Atlas
Shrugged ranks second behind The Bible in terms of influence
according to a U.S. Library of Congress survey.
Library of Congress Survey: Most Influential Books ---
http://www.amazon.com/Library-Congress-Survey-Influential-Books/lm/133GLJVXVIBLN
Link forwarded by Richard Sansing
March 26, 2009 reply from Patricia Walters
[patricia@DISCLOSUREANALYTICS.COM]
Bob:
Thank you for forwarding the link to the Jake
DeSantis' resignation letter. I have been appalled at some of the emotional
diatribes by our elected officials regarding the "bonuses" paid to AIG
employees. As someone who, in what I know refer to as a "previous life", had
"at risk" salary, I know that the word "bonus" is often misinterpreted. "At
risk" salary is the part of one's compensation that will only be paid if the
employee meets certain goals and objectives agreed between the employee and
employer. It is salary withheld and paid in a lump sum at the end of the
fiscal year. It is not a "gift" given to the employee if the employer has a
certain amount of net income and is not dependent (as long as the company
continuesin existence) on the company's performance, only the employee's
performance.
What have I learned from the comments of our
congressional representatives and others from their comments in recent
weeks? Unfortunately, it's a confirmation of what I initially learned having
attended hearings on derivatives disclosures proposed by the SEC in the late
90s. Most of our elected official know little (or nothing) about the issue
on which they opine. They are only interested in making a statement for the
public record that will appeal to their constituents and get them
re-elected. I was in shock at the comments of members of the congressional
subcommittee back then (who made statements generally illustrating their
ignorance of derivatives and simply left the hearing, not even bothering to
listen to the testimony of the people invited or called to testify on the
topic). Although I am no longer shocked, I am still embarrassed and appalled
at what I have seen as callousness based on this ignorance.
Jake DeSantis' letter breaks my heart. How betrayed
by us must the rest of the employees at AIG who have worked diligently and
effectively to try to accomplish the government's objectives feel? It will
serve those who have vilified them right if they all quit on masse. Perhaps
our elected officials can go work at AIG for reduced salaries to get us out
of this mess. I for one think they may do less harm than staying in
Congress.
Regards Pat
March 26, 2009 reply from Bender, Ruth
[r.bender@CRANFIELD.AC.UK]
I fell for John Galt when I was already what you’d
call a ‘mature adult’! I re-read the book every few years, to remind myself
that I need to try harder. (I then generally re-read the Ragged Trousered
Philanthropist, to get the opposite view of life, even though I think that
is quite badly written.)
I think Ayn Rand’s fiction is enjoyable, and Atlas
Shrugged is her best. But I dislike her non-fiction books. And I really
can’t take objectivism seriously. (And only have one acquaintance this side
of the Atlantic who does.)
Ruth Bender
Cranfield, UK.
Virtually all MIT faculty research papers will now be free online (but
there's a catch highlighted in red below)
Many teaching materials are also available on MIT's Open Source Web Site
"MIT Professors Approve
Campuswide Policy to Publish Their Scholarly Articles Free Online," by Jeffrey
R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 24, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3675&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is known
for its ambitious effort to give away its course materials free online, and
now the university is giving away its research, too.
Last week MIT’s
professors voted unanimously to adopt a policy stating that all faculty
members will deposit their scholarly research papers in a free, online
university repository (in addition to sending them to scholarly journals),
in an effort to expand access to the university’s scholarship. The policy is
modeled on one
adopted last year by
Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
At MIT, like at Harvard,
professors can opt out of the policy if, for instance, a journal their paper
is accepted to does not allow free publication of articles.
Peter Suber, a research professor of philosophy at
Earlham College and a longtime promoter of open access to scholarly
publishing, said the move was a sign of growing momentum for open-access
policies. “It’s a strong signal that these measures have faculty support,”
he said. “The more momentum there is for open access, the more it looks like
a mainstream idea,” he added. “There’s no doubt that it started out as a
fringe idea.”
He said there were now about 30 colleges and
universities around the world that have adopted similar open-access policies
for their research, and he pointed to
a list of such
policies maintained by ePrints, a company that
makes open-access archiving software. Most of those institutions are in
Europe, and many of the U.S. colleges that have jumped in have adopted
policies only in a school or department.
In the past, some publishers have expressed concern
about university open-access policies — especially some scholarly societies
that publish journals and worry about whether giving away articles will
undermine their ability to keep their publishing efforts afloat.
Jensen Comment
One might conclude that only rejects get published free, but that would be
neither fair nor accurate. Some winners may get published early on as working
papers before they get accepted by a journal that does not open share. Also,
some researchers who totally support open sharing may refuse to submit research
papers to journals that will not allow the MIT professors to open share on the
MIT server.
Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
"The Evolution of American Women's Studies" by Scott Jaschik,
Inside Higher Ed, March 26, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/27/women
Q: How would you evaluate the success of women's
studies today?
A: There is no question that women’s studies
has been and is a very successful venture. There are over 800 women’s
studies programs nationwide, including the opportunity to get a Ph.D. in
women’s studies, and to take courses online. Also, as previously mentioned,
the creation of the National Women’s Studies Association was instrumental in
that it provided a forum for women’s studies scholars to share resources and
network. The success of women’s studies is also found in the huge
proliferation of books, journals, networks, blogs, and conferences about the
field -- both nationally and internationally. The genuine inclusion of
“women of color” (which I use in quotes) is still a challenge for the field,
but there are many prominent women’s studies scholars who are of different
races and ethnicities.
The other great success of women’s studies is that
in the early 1990’s several significant studies came out about how girls
were being “short-changed” or “cheated.” The issue of gender bias and gender
socialization in primary and secondary schools became big news. It was
discussed on popular talk shows such as "The Oprah Winfrey Show," and
featured in prominent news journals like Newsweek.
In recent years there has been a lot of scholarship
about how boys too are subject to discrimination and being socialized
into narrowly defined gender stereotypes. There is a pressing need to move
beyond gender polarities (e.g., if girls win boys lose and vice versa), by
raising issues of awareness and equity for both sexes. In the K-12
environment it is also vital to make connections between the importance of
studying gender and more recognized school problems like teen pregnancy,
sexual harassment, high dropout rates, and school violence.
Although not mentioned in the above study, public accountancy is one of the
most if not the most women-opportunity and motherhood-opportunity professions in
the world. Well over half of the new entrants into public accounting are women
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#careers
The desire for women to enter professions like accounting, nursing, education,
and pharmacy draw women away from majoring in Women's Studies, although some
still minor is such studies.
One of the controversial issues is the relatively high proportion of women
physicians who go part time shortly after graduation from medical school or,
when full time, refuse night call where physicians in general are in short
supply such as in rural towns like where I live ---
http://www.jobbankusa.com/news/employment_careers/women_physicians_seek_flexible_careers.html
There are some advantages to medical centers if part-time physicians are
willing to take night and week end duties. Whereas accounting professionals can
often do much of their work for clients at home online, medical patients usually
want face-to-face contact except in a few areas like radiology and pathology.
Interestingly, some women physicians prefer emergency room employment vis-a-vis
private practice because emergency room physicians are sometimes guaranteed no
more than 40-hour work weeks. Private practice physicians generally endure
longer work weeks and more unpredictable hours. My neighbor up in the mountains
is a noted cardiologist from Boston. While on holiday up here he is
frequently paged by his patients or colleagues. In other words he can't
responsibly get away from his work.
"What I Wish I'd Known About Tenure," by Leslie M. Phinney, Inside
Higher Ed, March 27, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2009/03/27/phinney
1. Striving for tenure at a university is like gambling in a casino;
2. Becoming tenured is like joining a fraternity;
3. A tenure case is like a hunk of Swiss cheese;
4. The majority of those embarking on an academic career will end up with
tenure cases in the gray zone;
5. Just as there are risk factors for contracting a disease, risk factors
exist for not obtaining tenure;
6. True tenure is always being able to obtain another position;
7. The best type of tenure is that which matches your ideals and values;
8. Fight or flight decisions are part of the tenure process;
9. While important, tenure is only one facet in life.
Leslie M. Phinney was an assistant professor of mechanical engineering
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1997 until 2003. She
received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award from 2000-2004 and a
2000 NASA/ASEE Faculty Fellowship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories. She is
now a principal member of the technical staff at Sandia National
Laboratories, in Albuquerque, N.M.
Jensen Comment
I agree with Dr. Phinney on many points, but I disagree that tenure seeking is
like casino gambling. In a fair-game casino the odds are known and always in
favor of the house. In tenure seeking there are so many unpredictable factors
(departmental colleagues, college colleagues, university-level P&T members,
etc.) that the odds are most certainly not knowable. There are many factors that
are unpredictable such as what weight decision makers will put upon student
evaluations and journal quality where published work appears. Tenure seeking is
more like running for public office than casino gambling.
One of the big problems with tenure seeking is that
decision makers are usually not held accountable, although committee chairs are
often forced to write down reasons for rejection decisions.
One of the big advantages of tenure seeking is that most
colleges now require documentation of progress toward tenure every two years or
thereabouts. Tenure decisions should not come as a huge surprise in the sixth
year of appointment.
Another controversial problem is arises when the tenure
clock is suspended, sometimes unpaid, for a variety of reasons for which there
is some justification --- health of a family member, pregnancy, leaves of
absence from teaching, etc. The reason that these tenure clock suspensions are
controversial is that in many instances the tenure candidate can do research and
writing during the tenure clock suspension and thereby gain some advantage over
other candidates given no more than six years before a final tenure decision is
reached.
Rethinking tenure ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#MLA
Almost 20 years after the first edition came out, the
editors of
The Academic’s Handbook (Duke University Press)
have released a new version — the third — with many chapters on faculty careers
updated and some completely new topics added. Topics covered include teaching,
research, tenure, academic freedom, mentoring, diversity, harassment and more.
The editors of the collection (who also wrote some of the pieces) are two Duke
University professors who also served as administrators there. They are A. Leigh
Deneef, a professor of English and former associate dean of the Graduate School,
and Craufurd D. Goodwin, a professor of economics who was previously vice
provost and dean of the Graduate School.
Inside
Higher Ed, January 10, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/workplace/2007/01/10/handbook
Find out what changes in the last ten years of academe are the most
significant!
Top Global Business Schools According to Business Week ---
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_43/b4006014.htm
Slide Show ---
Click Here
The 15 business schools included here are strong contenders among the world's
top MBA programs, but lower marks keep them just shy of the top tier
Top European Business Schools According the Business Week ---
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/europe/special_reports/03/31/2008europeanb-s.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on ranking controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
This is hardly a victory for free speech in academe!
It’s more of a
victory for plagiarism.
Since Ward Churchill admits that some of his writings were plagiarized, I think
it will now be more difficult to fire tenured professors who allow plagiarism in
their writings and multimedia productions. It would indeed be a very dangerous
precedent if Judge Naves now forced the university to re-hire a terminated
professor. In the past, the courts have always resisted forcing hiring decisions
on higher education. If Judge Naves rules otherwise, there’s little doubt in my
mind that this will move on to higher courts at the behest of the University of
Colorado.
In the back of my mind I wonder if the jury just wanted to make it more
difficult for Churchill to appeal the verdict? Now that Mr. Churchill is free to
move on, let’s hope he does so as soon as possible.
"Churchill Wins Lawsuit, but Only $1 in Damages," by Peter Schmidt,
Chronicle of Higher Education, April 3, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/04/15190n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
A jury ruled on Thursday that the University of
Colorado had illegally fired Ward Churchill in response to statements
protected by the First Amendment. But it awarded the controversial
ethnic-studies scholar only a token $1 in damages, leaving experts on
academic freedom confused as to exactly what message other colleges should
draw from the verdict.
Judge Larry J. Naves, who presided over the
four-week trial in a state court in Denver, gave both sides 30 days to file
motions related to the next phase of the proceedings, a hearing in which the
judge will determine Mr. Churchill’s status at the university. Judge Naves
could demand that Mr. Churchill be reinstated at the University of Colorado
at Boulder, or he could order the university to pay Mr. Churchill a lump sum
for money he could have earned if he had kept his university job, which paid
$94,000 a year.
Mr. Churchill’s lawyers said they hoped to have him
back teaching in university classrooms by the fall. That outcome, however,
is likely to be strongly resisted by the university, which continues to
stand by its conclusions that Mr. Churchill committed academic misconduct
that merited his dismissal in 2007.
In awarding Mr. Churchill only $1 in damages, the
jury rejected a call by his chief lawyer, David A. Lane, to award an amount
that would send a message “in a big way” to faculty members and students at
colleges around the nation.
After the verdict was read, however, Mr. Churchill
jokingly held up a $1 bill and waved it. Speaking to reporters in a
courthouse hallway, he said, “What was asked for and what was delivered was
justice.” He added that his lawsuit had exposed “the fraud of the
university’s campaign and collaboration with private right-wing interests.”
Mr. Lane called the jury’s decision “a great
victory for the First Amendment and academic freedom,” and said he expects
to recoup hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees from the
university.
The University of Colorado system’s president,
Bruce D. Benson, issued a written statement that said, "While we respect the
jury’s decision, we strongly disagree.” The verdict, he said, “doesn’t
change the fact that 21 of Ward Churchill’s faculty peers on three separate
panels unanimously found he engaged in deliberate and repeated plagiarism,
falsification, and fabrication that fell below the minimum standards of
professional conduct.”
Mr. Bensen called the jury’s $1 award for punitive
damages “an indication of what they thought of the value of Ward Churchill’s
claim.” He said the university was weighing what to do next.
'Speech Was the Flashpoint'
The trial in Mr. Churchill’s lawsuit lasted nearly
four weeks, during which 45 witnesses took the stand. Among those who
testified were Colorado’s former governor, Bill Owens; a long list of
administrators and faculty members involved in the university’s
investigation of charges that Mr. Churchill had committed academic
misconduct; and several scholars in Mr. Churchill’s field of expertise,
American Indian studies.
The university’s lawyers focused on trying to show
that the university had treated Mr. Churchill fairly and had given him due
process in the proceedings that led to his firing for scholarly misconduct.
Mr. Churchill’s lawyers sought to convince the jury that his dismissal was
in response to the uproar over an essay in which he compared many of the
office workers killed in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the
World Trade Center to a Nazi bureaucrat, and said they were not truly
innocent victims.
The six-member jury—consisting of four women and
two men, all of whom appeared to be in their 20s or early 30s—deliberated
for 10 hours before reaching its verdict late Thursday afternoon. Earlier in
the day, it had tipped its hand by returning to the courtroom to ask Judge
Naves if it needed to be unanimous in its decision on how much to award Mr.
Churchill, and whether it had the option of awarding him no money at all.
Judge Naves said yes, its decision had to be unanimous, and that $1 was the
least it could award Mr. Churchill if it decided in his favor.
Mr. Churchill’s legal team appeared to suffer a
major setback on Tuesday, when Judge Naves dismissed one of the professor's
two claims against the university—that its investigation of Mr. Churchill
was, in itself, an act of retaliation. But the jurors' responses to the
various questions Judge Naves had posed to them to shape their deliberations
showed that its members had clearly agreed with the lawsuit’s other key
claim, that Mr. Churchill’s termination was a retaliatory act.
The jury concluded that the controversy over Mr.
Churchill’s essay, which was protected under the First Amendment, was “a
substantial or motivating factor” in the college’s decision to discharge
him. It also said that the university had failed to show that he would have
been fired even if he had never made his controversial remarks.
Ken McConnellogue, a university spokesman, said he
disagreed with the verdict but could see how the jury came to its decision.
"The speech was the flashpoint that got all of this going,” he said. “But we
maintain we ruled early and said often it wasn’t about the speech, it was
about his academic misconduct. Those two things were in such close proximity
that you can see where the jury would make that connection.”
Cause for Caution
Robert M. O’Neil, a prominent First Amendment
scholar who heads the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free
Expression, in Charlottesville, Va., said the jury’s verdict was so
“superficially inconsistent” that he found it hard to guess what
implications it might have for colleges elsewhere.
“It just seems to be there is a curious paradox,”
he said, between the jury’s finding that university officials violated Mr.
Churchill’s rights and its decision to give him a nominal damage award
suggesting he had not been harmed in any way. “I find it very hard to
reconcile those conclusions.”
Cary Nelson, president of the American Association
of University Professors, expressed concern before the verdict that a jury
of people without extensive backgrounds in academe would fail to grasp the
nuances of controversy among scholars. He said a decision in the
university’s favor would have had “a chilling effect” on academic freedom,
sending “a message that, justly or unjustly, your recourse to the courts is
limited if you feel that you have been basically sacrificed for political
reasons.”
Continued in article
It’s Culture, Not Morality: What if
everything you learned about fighting plagiarism was doomed to failure?" by
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, February 3, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/03/myword
Bob Jensen's threads on plagiarism are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
Where does responsibility for plagiarism stop?
Is a sole author responsible for the plagiarism of assistants?
Are all co-authors responsible for the plagiarism of one of the co-authors?
Is a student responsible for plagiarism caused by the student's hired assistant?
(one of Bob Jensen's former students offered this line of defense)
Ward Churchill, who is suing the University of
Colorado at Boulder to get his job back, admitted on Tuesday that portions of a
book he edited and wrote parts of were plagiarized, but he said he wasn't
responsible for doing so,
9 News reported. "Plagiarism occurred," Churchill said
in reference to the writings. But Churchill (who prefers to be called "Doctor"
Churchill) said that others who were involved in the project did the
plagiarizing and that he was unaware of it. Churchill has generally not
admitted that any plagiarism occurred in his work, arguing that minor errors
have been stretched by the university to fire him for his controversial
political views. University of Colorado officials also asked Churchill on
Tuesday why he had indicated that he wanted to be called "Dr. Churchill" when he
has only a master's degree. Churchill responded that he has an honorary
doctorate and asked the lawyer, "You wish to dishonor it?"
The
Denver Post noted that while there were some sharp
exchanges in the testimony, much of it was detailed discussion of sources and
the details of scholarly writing, and that the judge had to call a recess at one
point when a juror appeared to be having difficulty staying awake.
"Churchill: 'Plagiarism Occurred' (But He Didn't Do It)
Jensen Comment
If Doctor Churchill pursues this babe-in-the woods line of defense it seems to
me he should name the plagiarists who led him on.
One of the most liberal academic associations is the highly liberal Modern
Language Association. However, even the MLA could not muster up a vote critical
of the firing of Ward Churchill by the University of Colorado.
While material distributed by those seeking to condemn
Churchill’s firing portrayed him favorably, and as a victim of the right wing,
some of those who criticized the pro-Churchill effort at the meeting are
long-time experts in Native American studies and decidedly not conservative.
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed,
December 31, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/31/mla
Question
What does a leading Native American scholar think of Ward
Churchill's scholarship and integrity?
And this
was the judgment of Churchill's academic peers. UCLA professor
Russell Thornton, a Cherokee tribe member whose work was
misrepresented by Churchill, said "I don't see how the
University of Colorado can keep him with a straight face,"
calling his material on smallpox a "fabrication" of history, and
accusing him of "gross, gross scholarly misconduct." Real
American Indian history, he told the Rocky Mountain News, is
vitally important, not "a bunch of B.S. that someone made up."
R.G. Robertson, author of Rotting Face: Smallpox and the
American Indian and another scholar who has accused Churchill of
misrepresenting his work, says that he's "happy that [he was
fired], that he's been found out, and by his peers—meaning other
university people—and been called what he is, a plagiarizer and
a liar." Thomas Brown, a professor of sociology at Lamar
University who has also investigated Churchill's smallpox
research, said his work on the subject is "fabricated almost
entirely from scratch."
Michael C. Moynihan, "Ward of the State: Why the
state of Colorado was right to sack Ward Churchill," Reason
Magazine, August 1, 2007 ---
http://www.reason.com/news/show/121682.html
A huge factor in the granting of tenure to Ward
Churchill was purportedly his affirmative action claim of being Native American.
Bob Jensen's threads on Doctor Churchill, the "Cherokee Wannabe" who most likely
does not have drop of Native American blood, are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HypocrisyChurchill.htm
March 25, 2009 reply from Ravenscroft, Sue P
[ACCT] [sueraven@IASTATE.EDU]
As a junior faculty member I looked into a textbook
I had not assigned in order to see how the distinguished author of an
alternative textbook addressed a topic. I was looking for ideas and another
way to explain the topic to students. Imagine my surprise when I found out
the distinguished author addressed the topic almost word for word like the
authors of our assigned text.! I was stunned!
I notified the author who had been plagiarized, who
was hurt and insulted and who hastened to assure me that his book was much
more venerable than that of the distinguished author, who had only recently
moved into this arena......I also told the sales rep of DA (Distinguished
author) and he was quite cavalier, said he would not bother DA with the
trivial news, that DA had lots of graduate students and hired help and
clearly couldn't be held responsible for this. The more modest author, who
actually wrote the material, decided it would be unwise politically to get
crosswise with DA....End of story.??????
If I gave you DA's name you would ALL recognize
it....LOTS of textbooks bear the man's name...I won't use them, even though
one is a classic in its field, and I will always wonder how much -- if any
of any books bearing his name-- he actually wrote. And if he didn't write
it, is it plagiarism? or is it something else? Selling under false colors?
I don't condone Ward Churchill, but I know he is
not alone.....and by the way, the DA? He's been honored by the AAA in a
multitude of ways and was never fired from his position.
Sue Ravenscroft
March 25, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Sue,
I don't seen any reason to protect
plagiarists. But it seems to me that it may be possible that when Author A
and Author B both have virtually identical passages of text without
cross-citation by either one, then one or both of these authors is a
plagiarist --- it could be that Author C was plagiarized by both A and B or
their assistants.
What I recommend in virtually all instances
is to first disclose the identical passages to A and B and their publishers
to see how the parties themselves respond. Then if the mystery is not
resolved to your satisfaction with apologies made by the guilty parties, the
next step is to make the identical passages known to the public such as by
pointing these suspicious passages to subscribers on AECM without blaming A
or B at that point in time.
If both A and B are college employees, their
supervisors should also be notified about the suspected passages. I am very
familiar with such a case by a well known Accounting Professor X at a very
prestigious university (PU). PU called back a former doctoral student and
threatened to revoke his diploma in the Management Department because
passages of his dissertation appeared to be taken from a journal article by
Professor X. But the investigation committee at PU determined that Professor
X actually plagiarized from the doctoral student's dissertation. Then
everything went hush-hush. The accused alumnus was sent back home with an
embarrassing apology from PU. Professor X remained an employee, but for all
practical purposes he was never heard from again outside the classes he
still taught. He no longer published anything and stopped going to
professional meetings. He's now retired. I suspect he's not well respected
by former colleagues even though in other respects he was a heck of a nice
guy. The incident never became public, but I know about it because the
accused doctoral student was at one time my Department Chair. He told me
about this over lunch one day with a request that I not name names.
I don't think you should protect a
plagiarist Sue, but use caution when making accusations about who did what.
Let others be the judge after you disclose the identical passages.
It would seem that in this age of litigation, the publishing companies
themselves would resolve this issue. At the least the plagiarist's book
should be withdrawn from the market.
I don’t agree with your “end of story” decision. At a minimum, the
publishing firms and employers should be formally notified. If necessary,
this can be done anonymously. But I think you should eventually do more than
the minimum.
Bob Jensen
It’s Culture, Not Morality: What if
everything you learned about fighting plagiarism was doomed to failure?" by
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, February 3, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/03/myword
Bob Jensen's threads on plagiarism are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
The Secret Behind Twitter's Astonishing Growth
The most popular Tweets in the world are CNN (Rank 1) and Britney Spears (Rank
2)
It’s highly unlikely that Britney Spears does her own Tweets
First you may want to read
about the explosive growth of social networks ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Networks
Then you will appreciate the unique features of Twitter
A social network
is a
social structure made of nodes (which are generally
individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more
specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions,
ideas, financial exchange, friendship,
sexual relationships,
kinship, dislike,
conflict or
trade.
Social network analysis views
social relationships in terms of nodes and
ties.
Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and
ties are the relationships between the actors. The resulting
graph-based structures are often very
complex. There can be many kinds of ties between the
nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has shown
that social networks operate on many levels, from families
up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in
determining the way problems are solved, organizations are
run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in
achieving their goals.
In its simplest
form, a social network is a map of all of the relevant ties
between the nodes being studied. The network can also be
used to determine the
social capital of individual actors. These concepts are
often displayed in a social network diagram, where nodes are
the points and ties are the lines.
Continued at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Networks
Then read about computerized social network services ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_services
A social network
service focuses on building
online communities of people who share interests and/or
activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests
and activities of others. Most social network services are
web based and provide a variety of ways for users to
interact, such as
e-mail and
instant messaging services.
Social networking has
encouraged new ways to communicate and share information.
Social networking websites are being used regularly by
millions of people, and it now seems that social networking
will be an enduring part of everyday life.
While it could be
said that email and websites have most of the essential
elements of social network services, the idea of proprietary
encapsulated services has gained popular uptake relatively
recently.
The main types of
social networking services are those which contain category
divisions (such as former school-year or classmates), means
to connect with friends (usually with self-description
pages) and a recommendation system linked to trust. Popular
methods now combine many of these, with
MySpace and
Facebook being the most widely used in North America;
Nexopia (mostly in
Canada);[
Bebo,
Facebook,
Hi5,
MySpace,
Tagged,
XING; and
Skyrock in parts of Europe;
Orkut,
Facebook and
Hi5 in
South America and
Central America;[and
Friendster,
Orkut,
Xiaonei and
Cyworld in Asia and the Pacific Islands.
There have been
some attempts to standardize these services to avoid the
need to duplicate entries of friends and interests (see the
FOAF standard and the
Open Source Initiative), but this has led to some
concerns about privacy.
Egads! A Masters Degree on How to Twitter
Birmingham City University, in Britain, is
attracting attention and some skepticism with
its announcement that it is starting a new master's
degree program in social media, with an emphasis on training people to work in
marketing or consulting for those who want to better understand Twitter,
Facebook and other popular online services. One student told
The Telegraph: "Virtually all of the content
of this course is so basic it can be self taught. In fact most people know all
this stuff already. I think it's a complete waste of university resources." One
faculty member responded (on
Twitter, of course) that the student was
"uninformed."
Inside Higher Ed, March 31, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/31/qt#195429
"The Secret Behind
Twitter's Growth," by Kate Greene, MIT's
Technology Review, April 1, 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/
At the Web2.0 Expo today in San Francisco,
Twitter's Alex Payne discussed the technical details of the programming
language he hopes can help his company handle the upswing in traffic it's
experienced over the past few years. The company is leaving behind a
programming language that's caused it much pain in the past, and embracing a
new and somewhat obscure language called Scala.
Some background: Twitter, a service that allows
people to post 140-character messages to friends and the public was launched
in 2006, and is now estimated to have roughly 8 million unique users. A
person posts a short message to Twitter and the service posts it to the Web
and sends it to people's cell phones and Twitter software applications. The
concept is simple, but under the hood, the technology is more complicated.
The popular Web programming language Ruby on Rails
is responsible for the look and feel of Twitter's user-interface, as well as
that of many other websites. Since the user-interface, known as the "front
end," relied on Ruby, it made sense to use Ruby for "back-end" operations
like queuing messages too. But as Twitter's popularity grew, the back end
built on Ruby wasn't able to handle the torrent of messages that came its
way. Hence, the "Fail Whale" and Twitter's reputation for frequently
crashing was born.
So the Twitter team turned to Scala, a programming
language with its origins in research done by Martin Odersky, a professor at
EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, around 2003. During his presentation, Payne,
who's also writing a book on the language, explained that Scala has many of
the benefits of other languages but without the drawbacks. Some of the
characteristics that make Scala so appealing to Twitter is that it's able to
efficiently handle concurrent processing--that is, separate instructions
that need to use the same system resources at the same time. This is useful
when messages from millions of people need to be sent out instantly to
different devices all over the world.
It's also flexible for programmers to use, says
Payne. If a programmer wants more structure, then Scala offers structure,
but if she wants more free-form programming, it allows for that as well. And
importantly, for Payne and the engineers at Twitter, Scala is a new,
exciting, and "beautiful" language that keeps the team engaged, unlike Java,
or C++. There's still room for programmers to feel like they're contributing
to the development of something new and fresh. This isn't the case with more
established languages.
Scala isn't perfect, notes Payne, but its benefits
far outweigh its drawbacks. The most glaring drawback is that it's somewhat
difficult to learn because it has a huge number of features and a syntax
with which some programmers might not be familiar, he says. Additionally,
Scala is relatively new, which means that it doesn't have a proven track
record. But Payne says he and Twitter are willing to take the risk because
the language already worked well in a number of test cases.
Right now Twitter's user interface runs entirely on
Ruby on Rails, which is "fine for people clicking around Web pages," Payne
says. By the end of the year Twitter hopes to have a set of services in the
back end that are written entirely in Scala. And the company plans to make
sure that all the third-party services that connect to Twitter via the
application programming interface (API) go through Scala code, bypassing
Ruby on Rails completely. When you're talking about a bunch of programs
hitting the API rapidly," Payne says, "We found we can better optimize
things...using Scala."
Social Networks ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Networks
Bob Jensen's Technology Glossary ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245gloss.htm
Jensen Comment
I'm repeatedly invited, especially by former students, to become part of a
social network, especially the
LinkedIn
network. I would find joining these networks too overwhelming. I hate Twitter
tweets. I will just stick to my favorite ListServs and Blogs in order to
maintain some control over information overload ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
The Outrageous Cost of Hard Copy Textbooks
March 25, 2009 message from Ramsey, Donald
[dramsey@UDC.EDU]
The cost accounting book I'm using retails for
$190.30. I see on a textbook search website called Bigwords.com that no less
than 9 large dealers are offering it at under $50 for a new copy, including
shipping. How can this be possible?
My concern would be how to get the word to students
early enough so they could (1) not buy books at retail, and (2) get delivery
in time for the first assignment.
Cheers,
Don
March 25, reply from Zane Swanson
[ZSwanson@UCO.EDU]
Convince your university/college/department to go
completely electronic (like Kindle) and the pricing problem would be gone.
This recession may well drive some cost-sensitive programs to go to
electronic books looking for a comparative advantage or a means of covering
a budgetary shortfall. The tipping point will center around the trade-off
costs of the campus book store versus outsourcing the textbooks
electronically.
Zane Swanson
March 26, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Zane and Don,
If there is learning value added in the expensive accounting texts,
students might be “paying more” than they are saving in cash by going
electronic.
The top-selling accounting textbooks are not yet available any electronic
medium. Some accounting textbooks are available in PDF alternatives, but
these may not be what instructors and students view as the best textbooks.
For example, better textbooks may already have better IFRS or XBRL
integration in some form or another. Some of the best textbooks may have
better supplemental materials such as multimedia, although to date I’ve not
been as impressed with the multimedia for accounting textbooks vis-à-vis the
tremendously expensive multimedia accompanying mathematics and science
textbooks. The larger markets in science and mathematics have been
accompanied with much larger investments by publishers in the supplementary
multimedia.
Some instructors pride themselves in using their own text material. But
is this truly as good for students as some of the best textbooks on the
market?
I’m totally turned off by the ethics of some sales reps such as reps that
will give adopters 20 free copies to garner a market of 500 book sales per
semester. The adopters, in turn, sell each free copy to used book dealers
for about $50 per book. Be that as it may, the textbooks they’ve adopted may
in fact be great for student learning.
What instructors can do is carefully discern whether revisions in a
textbook are worth the cost to students (who cannot by used revised
textbooks). One year Prentice-Hall tried to sell me on a revised version of
a textbook I was using. The revisions were a bad joke --- not at all
substantive. So I kept the older version where there when more than enough
used books available at the time.
By the way Don. I think Bigwords is mostly selling used books, some of
which are the new inspection copies given to adopters or potential adopters.
What I don't understand is the $50 price from Bigwords. If a new text sells
for $200, the sleazy used book dealers knocking at your door will usually
pay at least 25% of new book prices for a clean copy.
Bank of America effectively set up a branch in a
Long Island office that helped Nicholas Cosmo carry out a $380 million Ponzi
scheme, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in federal court.
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in
Brooklyn late Thursday, contends that Bank of America “established, equipped
and staffed” a branch office in the headquarters of Mr. Cosmo’s firm, Agape
Merchant Advance. As a result, the lawsuit contends that the bank knowingly
“assisted, facilitated and furthered” Mr. Cosmo’s fraudulent scheme.
“Bank of America was at the epicenter of this
scheme,” said the lawsuit, which seeks $400 million in damages from the bank
and other defendants. “Without Bank of America’s participation, the scheme
would not have succeeded and grown to such an enormous size.”
Mr. Cosmo surrendered to authorities at a Long
Island train station in January in connection with a suspected Ponzi scheme
involving what Mr. Cosmo called “private bridge loans” that promised
investors returns of 48 percent to 80 percent a year. Many of his 1,500
investors were blue-collar workers and civil servants.
Bank of America declined to comment, saying that it
had not yet seen the suit.
According to the suit, representatives of Bank of
America worked directly out of Mr. Cosmo’s West Hempstead office, which was
about 30 miles from the branch where Agape and Mr. Cosmo maintained their
bank accounts. In addition, Bank of America provided on-site representatives
at Agape with bank equipment and computer systems that allowed direct access
to the bank’s accounts and systems, the suit said.
“Essentially, Bank of America established a fully
functional bank branch manned by its own representatives within Agape’s
offices, which is contrary to normal banking practices,” the lawsuit said.
As a result, the bank’s representatives had “actual knowledge” that Mr.
Cosmo was “diverting money to his own account” and “engaging in virtually no
legitimate business whatsoever.”
In a complaint filed against Mr. Cosmo in January
by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, the government contends that
from 2004 to 2008, Mr. Cosmo operated a fraudulent trading scheme in which
investors were solicited to provide short-term bridge loans but that the
money instead went into commodities trading contracts that lost money.
This is the second time that Mr. Cosmo has been
accused of fraud. He had previously served 21 months in federal prison in
Allenwood, Pa., for mail fraud. Upon his release in 2000, his broker’s
license was revoked. He founded Agape after leaving prison.
The lawsuit also names a number of futures and
commodities trading firms that, the lawsuit said, “assisted Cosmo in running
an illegal unregistered commodities pool.” The suit says that the trading
firms should “never have accepted this business,” which violated “know your
customer” duties that are required of these firms.
One of the firms named in the suit was MF Global.
Diana DeSocio, a spokeswoman for MF Global, said that when the firm became
aware of Mr. Cosmo’s background last October, it closed Mr. Cosmo’s account
and notified regulators.
Ms. DeSocio added that the account that Mr. Cosmo
had was an individual account and was not an account set up on behalf of his
investors.
Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Two years ago Kevin Roose took a semester’s leave
from Brown University to study at Liberty University, the Rev. Jerry
Falwell’s Christian liberal-arts institution in Lynchburg, Va., and then to
write about it.
His book on the experience,
The Unlikely Disciple: A
Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University
(Grand Central Publishing), goes on sale Thursday at
bookstores everywhere. Well, almost everywhere. More on that in a minute.
Mr. Roose grew up in Oberlin, Ohio, in a household
he describes as “practically religion-free,” and his transfer to Liberty
surprised everyone who knew him — his dean, friends, and family
(particularly his lesbian aunts). The impetus for his “domestic study
abroad” was a culturally stilted conversation he’d had a few months earlier
with a clutch of Liberty students at Mr. Falwell’s sprawling Thomas Road
Baptist Church, which adjoins the campus. The Brown sophomore had been
helping the journalist A.J. Jacobs research his book The Year of Living
Biblically (Simon & Schuster, 2007), and the evangelical students had
unnerved Mr. Roose with a question about his relationship with Christ.
(“It’s just not my thing” was his lame reply.)
“Here, right in my time zone, was a culture more
foreign to me than any European capital,” thought Mr. Roose.
His goal, he explains, was to immerse himself in
the culture of Liberty’s students — to eat with them, study with them, pray
with them — in hopes of better understanding what he calls America’s “God
Divide.” He did not reveal his intentions to people at Liberty, but he says
he did not lie to them either.
The Unlikely Disciple is frequently
self-deprecating and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. It is no hatchet
job. Yes, Mr. Roose describes a roommate who spews homophobia, a professor
who repudiates evolution, and Liberty’s Big Brother-like policy of
monitoring Internet traffic. But he also finds much to admire, like his
fellow students’ infectious optimism and a no-contact rule for couples that
serves to depressurize the dating scene.
Indeed, Liberty’s chancellor, Jerry Falwell Jr.,
offered measured praise for The Unlikely Disciple in an interview
with
The Daily Beast:
“No college president can be expected to like every part of any book about
his/her school but, all in all, I think the book will give outsiders a
better understanding about what Liberty University is all about.”
What remains unclear is whether Liberty students
will be able to buy the book at the campus Barnes & Noble. An employee who
answered the phone on Wednesday would not say. “I’m just doing what I’m
told,” she said after giving the number to the bookseller’s corporate office
in New Jersey. A Barnes & Noble spokeswoman knew nothing about the book, and
a call to the chancellor’s office was not immediately returned.
Mr. Roose says Mr. Falwell had told him that a
bookstore advisory committee would decide whether to stock The Unlikely
Disciple.
“Even though I’m getting a lot of good feedback
from people at Liberty, I don’t think they’re going to do it,” says Mr.
Roose. “I never expected to be a banned author. Me, Tropic of Cancer,
and Harry Potter.”
And everyone knows what banning did for the Harry
Potter franchise.
New Teaching Cases in Corporate Responsibility and Compensation
Topic:
Corporate Responsibility |
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The markets are down and the economy is in a recession. The causes are
complex and varied, but many people are focusing the blame on a
breakdown in corporate responsibility. How much corporate directors and
executives are to blame remains debatable, but most would agree that the
investing public has lost confidence in the corporate governance and
ethics of boards and executives.
The following articles present some of the reactions and consequences
resulting from the leadership lapses reported recently. Current and
future business professionals need to be aware of the consequences that
will impact all businesses and industries, regardless of whether those
businesses have acted improperly. Additionally, all in the business
world must deal with negative perceptions the investing public now has
of boards and corporate activity. On a positive note, with the
widespread lack of confidence in the markets, fiscally and
ethically-responsible companies can use that reputation to develop a
distinct advantage in the marketplace. This month's articles highlight
some of the recent ethical and leadership lapses, as well as the public
outcry and emerging rules and regulations resulting from those
decisions. Regardless of your position or industry, there are important
lessons to be learned and shared so that you and your organizations are
not punished, but instead thrive.
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FOCUS ARTICLE>> Legislation, Shareholder Rights
Policy Makers Work to Give Shareholders More Boardroom Clout
by: Kara Scannell
Date: Mar 26, 2009
SUMMARY: Policy makers are advancing plans to give shareholders more
power in boardrooms at a time when decisions about executive pay have
ignited a public furor.
DISCUSSION:
- What measures are policy makers considering that would provide
shareholders with additional rights in corporate governance? What
authority and interests do each of these policy-making groups have
in the governance arena? Why are corporations regulated by many
different bodies?
- What are proxies and why are they a point of contention between
corporations and shareholders? What are the pros and cons of
shareholder access to proxies? Why are shareholder rights so
important? Up to this point, what parties have had most of the
control over a corporation? What are some reasons that these types
of rules were not enacted sooner?
- What could be some unintended negative consequences of these new
laws and rules? What are the costs involved? Would small and
medium-sized businesses impacted by these rules? How does this
information impact your attitudes and concerns regarding your
current and future investment decisions? What are some of the
cumulative effects of those concerns when held by millions of
shareholders?
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FOCUS ARTICLE>> Government Oversight
The U.S.'s Fly on the Wall at AIG
by: Peter Lattman
Date: Mar 27, 2009
SUMMARY: Government-appointed lawyer James Cole has been on site and
inside AIG board-committee meetings for the past four years, but his
reports to regulators aren't public.
DISCUSSION:
- What is a deferred-prosecution agreement? Why would companies
agree to this? What are the costs involved versus the corresponding
benefits? Why would the government agree to one of these agreements?
Why do these agreements seem to be more common today than they have
been in the past?
- What AIG activities led to its deferred-prosecution agreement?
What have been the duties of the government-appointed attorney? How
were day-to-day operations affected by the agreement? Have these
activities corrected the problems that triggered the government
actions at AIG? Were they meant to prevent further problems as well?
- Are deferred-prosecution agreements effective tools for
punishing and preventing negative corporate activity? Should similar
plans be implemented for currently troubled companies? Please give
reasons for your answers.
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FOCUS ARTICLE>> Corporate Governance, Director Responsibility
Corporate Directors' Group Gives Repair Plan to Boards
by: Joann S. Lublin
The Wall Street Journal
Date: Mar 24, 2009
SUMMARY: A directors' trade group in a new report urges boards to do
a better job of governing corporate America.
DISCUSSION:
- What is the NACD and what is its purpose? What is the reasoning
for its new report and why was the report issued? What specific
suggestions does it contain? What is your opinion of the ideas
presented in the report? Do you think that these ideas will restore
investor confidence? Why or why not?
- What is the purpose of a corporate board of directors? What are
its duties and responsibilities? Why is the board so important? Why
do business professionals serve on boards?
- Have any of these ideas been implemented at one of your past or
current employers? What other ideas could be implemented to increase
corporate governance at your current employer or other companies?
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FOCUS ARTICLE>> Executive Compensation, Nonprofits
Pay at Nonprofits Gets a Closer Look
by: Mike Spector and Shelly Banjo
The Wall Street Journal
Date: Mar 27, 2009
SUMMARY: Furor over big AIG bonuses and other Wall Street firms is
prompting nonprofits to brace for more scrutiny of their executive pay
practices.
DISCUSSION:
- What nonprofit industries and organizations are being impacted
by the increase in scrutiny? What are some of the positive outcomes
that could result from this closer examination of nonprofits? What
would be some negative outcomes from these current pressures?
- Corporations are facing increased scrutiny as a result of the
market meltdown. Why are nonprofits also feeling pressure from
additional scrutiny for compensation and other expenses? How are
nonprofits different from profit-seeking entities? Should they be
held to the same standards? Why or why not?
- How might this additional scrutiny impact nonprofits? How might
your career, business, or industry be affected by increased scrutiny
of nonprofits? How will you be affected personally, either through
services you receive or donations that you make?
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FOCUS ARTICLE>> Risk Management, Market Regulation
Geithner Calls for Tougher Standards on Risk
by: Damian Paletta, Maya Jackson Randall, and Michael Crittenden
The Wall Street Journal
Date: Mar 26, 2009
SUMMARY: Geithner will call for changes in how the government
oversees risk-taking in financial markets, pushing for tougher rules on
how big companies manage their finances.
DISCUSSION:
- What changes is Geithner proposing? What ideals would this new
regulation support? Do you think that the newly proposed rules would
achieve these goals? Are there other ways to achieve those same
goals?
- Why is Geithner calling for changes in the regulation of risk
management? What will be the costs to industry for this new
government oversight? Who will pay these costs, both directly and
ultimately?
- How will these rules change your current or future industry and
career? How could these rules impact you as an investor?
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"Executives Took, but the Directors Gave,"
by Heather Landy, The New York Times, April 4, 2009 ---
http://nytimes.com/2009/04/05/business/05board.html?8dpc
Little of the ire
against outsize C.E.O. paychecks has been aimed at the people who
signed off on them: corporate directors.
Instead, the anger
has been concentrated on the executives themselves, particularly
those running companies at the heart of the financial crisis. And
boards — thrust into the limelight only rarely, as when the
directors of the New York Stock Exchange were in a legal battle over
the pay collected by Richard A. Grasso — have managed to stay in the
background.
The exchange’s board
“really took a lot of heat for that controversy,” says Sarah
Anderson, an analyst on executive pay at the Institute for Policy
Studies in Washington. “But so far, with this crisis, I don’t feel
like boards have been getting as much attention as they should be.”
Last spring, the
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform examined pay
practices at Countrywide Financial, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup, but
those issues eventually took a back seat to broader concerns about
the viability of the country’s financial system. As investors
frustrated by the continuing crisis start seeking ways to avoid the
next one, advocates of change in corporate governance expect boards
to come under renewed scrutiny that could yield big changes.
Emboldened
shareholder activists are pressing more companies to hold annual
nonbinding votes on executive pay packages. They’re also pursuing,
and appear increasingly likely to win, rules to make it easier for
investors to nominate or replace board members.
And as more people
start connecting the dots between pay incentives that boards laid
out for executives and the risk-taking at the heart of the financial
crisis, some lawmakers have been eager to step in, and many
directors themselves are re-examining their approach to
compensation.
“When you look at
cases where compensation of senior management was out of line, or
where people arguably were overpaid, it’s definitely the fault of
the compensation committee of the board,” says Thomas Cooley, dean
of the Stern School of Business at New York University and a
director of Thornburg Mortgage. “Congress has gotten into the
business of dictating executive pay now, and they shouldn’t be in
that business. What they should be doing is turning the light on the
committees.”
Activist
shareholders have been criticizing executive pay practices for well
over a decade, accusing directors of being too cozy with C.E.O.’s,
too eager to lavish pay on them and too ambiguous about the formulas
they use for setting compensation.
Improved standards
for determining director independence and disclosing the procedures
of board compensation committees were supposed to help solve those
problems. And activist shareholders played a major role in spreading
the notion of pay-for-performance, by which executives would be
compensated based on their ability to meet board-devised financial
targets.
But amid all the
changes, a crucial piece of the equation — the unintended risks that
could arise from these pay-for-performance incentives — went
unnoticed, said James P. Hawley, co-director of the Elfenworks
Center for the Study of Fiduciary Capitalism at St. Mary’s College
of California.
“The problem isn’t
just when people in a particular firm are getting rewarded in ways
that take away from the shareholder. That’s been well recognized,”
Mr. Hawley says. “What’s not been recognized is that the
misalignment of incentives has resulted in firm, sector and systemic
risks. None of the corporate governance activists ever made the
connection.”
It took the
disastrous results of 2008 to expose such links, and to make
compensation a central issue for politicians and corporate America.
TWO factors
contributed to the pay scales that now have C.E.O.’s earning more
than 300 times the pay of the average American worker.
First was the advent
of giant stock option grants, a form of compensation made all the
more attractive by a 1993 change to the tax law that maintained
corporate tax deductions for executive pay over $1 million, but only
if the pay was tied to performance.
Second was the
widespread practice of linking pay to the levels at companies of
similar size or scope. Every time a board tries to keep an executive
happy by offering above-average pay, the net effect is to raise the
average that everyone else will use as a baseline.
In the absence of
fraud or self-dealing, it’s hard for shareholders to make a legal
argument that boards have failed at their job. State law in
Delaware, where most big public entities are incorporated, simply
requires companies to have boards that direct or manage their
affairs, and it affords broad legal protection to board members so
long as they act in good faith and in a manner “believed to be in or
not opposed to the best interests of the corporation.”
That was the basis
for the recent ruling of a Delaware judge who threw out most of the
claims in a shareholder lawsuit seeking to hold Citigroup directors
and officers liable for big losses tied to subprime mortgages. But
the judge did allow the plaintiffs to pursue one of their claims,
which alleged corporate waste stemming from a multimillion-dollar
parting pay package that Citigroup’s board awarded Charles O. Prince
III, the former C.E.O., in 2007.
Continued in article
Outrageous Executive and Director Compensation Schemes That Reward Failure
and Fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#OutrageousCompensation
Corporate Governance is in a Crisis ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Governance
Rotten to the Core ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
Transparency, Regulation, and XBRL
"Transparency Is More Powerful Than Regulation FDR sided with advisers who
argued for disclosure," by L. Gordon Crovitz, The Wall Street Journal,
March 30, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123837223623167841.html
In 1933, newly elected president Franklin
D. Roosevelt had to make a tough choice in dealing with the aftermath of the
stock-market crash that wiped out much of the equity in American companies.
Leading members of FDR's brain trust wanted federal regulators to get the
power to make key decisions over markets, such as which companies deserved
to be publicly traded. Today, many of President Barack Obama's advisers want
unprecedented authority to oversee details of the credit markets, and how
banks lend.
FDR decided instead to side with advisers
who argued for disclosure as the key operating principle of our markets.
Helping markets function better, they reasoned, was a sounder safeguard than
trusting regulators to decide.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis had
made the point that "sunlight is the best disinfectant," and the Securities
Act of 1933 mandated the information that public companies would have to
share. One indicator that disclosure was more important than regulatory
power is that it wasn't until the following year that the Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC) was created.
What worked to restore confidence in the
equity markets then can help to restore confidence in the debt markets now:
more disclosure, aimed at making the terms of debt such as mortgages more
transparent. Unlike the case of stocks, under current law no one in the
chain of making, insuring and rating debt is required to disclose full terms
to regulators or to the market. Instead, debt markets function based on best
estimates, with mathematical models determining probabilities of cash flows
and defaults.
Ever since the models failed due to an
unpredicted bubble, the market has been paralyzed with uncertainty. There is
still a wide gap between what banks think their bad debt might be worth and
what the Treasury or private investors are willing to pay.
It didn't get much attention, but earlier
this month Congress got a lesson on the potential of better disclosure.
"Today's financial crisis was driven in part by a lack of accurate, easily
usable information to give investors what they need to make informed,
responsible decisions," testified Mark Bolgiano, chief executive of a
nonprofit technology and accounting consortium called XBRL US. "The value of
toxic asset-backed securities remains a mystery because information on the
underlying loans and ongoing viability of those loans and the securities
themselves was not collected consistently and even if it had been, it would
not have been in a usable, portable form."
XBRL sounds complicated, but eXtensible
Business Reporting Language is simply a new technology language that allows
data to be easily extracted, searched and analyzed. XBRL is already being
used for some equity disclosures, tagging financial information into a
globally consistent, computer-readable format.
Philip Moyer, who runs the Edgar Online
service that distributes SEC data, studied more than 500 mortgage-backed
securities priced between 2006 and mid-2008. He found there were only 600
relevant data points needed to assess the risk of a mortgage, which is many
fewer than the tens of thousands of factors used to report on stocks. "This
crisis has proven that lack of transparency ultimately destroys a market,"
Mr. Moyers said.
The good news is that with the innovation
of XBRL, tracking debt instruments is no longer a technological challenge.
Instead, it's a political challenge.
Regulators would need to define new
disclosures robust enough that data can be collected and compared, even as
credit instruments continue to be rolled into complex securities and their
derivatives. Other factors would include tracking the institutions holding
various positions and how much leverage is involved. Put another way: If bar
codes can track down bad peanuts on store shelves, shouldn't we be able to
use technology to track details of mortgages and other debt instruments?
Paul Wilkinson, a lawyer who worked with
former SEC Chairman Chris Cox to support the development of XBRL, has set
the goal of making debt markets as regularized as titling property or
registering shares. "Thanks to XBRL, there is a means to achieve the goal of
moving from pseudocapitalism based on speculation to real capitalism based
on facts, and a world where willing buyers and sellers can make markets
based on those facts," he said.
This is an encouraging vision during these
anxious times. But even with the country's long tradition of relying on
disclosure, the discussion in Washington has focused almost exclusively on
new powers for regulatory agencies.
FDR was no Milton Friedman, and neither
was Brandeis, but they grasped what we seem to be forgetting, which is that
markets are too complex for even the most powerful regulators to dictate.
Better transparency is the surest way to make markets more efficient and
less volatile. Market wisdom results when more people access better
information.
The global credit crisis was made possible
by real-time markets powered by new technologies that enabled massive global
trading and the creation of opaque securities. It would be fitting now to
use another new technology, in the form of XBRL, to make the credit markets
simpler, more transparent and better insulated against bubbles.
Bob Jensen's threads on XBRL are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
No fines for parking illegally at the University of British Columbia:
But consider the alternatives
A Vancouver accountant has won a victory for all of
those who have clashed with the all-powerful campus parking police. Ruling in a
class action, a provincial court has found that the University of British
Columbia never had the power to issue parking tickets,
The Vancouver Province reported. While the
university has the right to remove cars that are illegally parked, the court
ruled that the university could only charge for costs, not impose additional
fines. As a result, the university has been ordered to repay million of dollars
of fines it has collected. The case was started by an accountant who was fined
and had his Jaguar impounded. Court records in the case suggest that many of
those who park at the university weren't waiting for a court ruling: From 1990
through 2005, 432,847 traffic tickets were issued and more than half were never
paid.
Inside Higher Ed, April 3, 2009
Jensen Comment
A large fleet of tow trucks and drivers on call 24/7 can be very, very
expensive. If the ownership depreciation/leasing costs along with licensed
driver salaries can be allocated to "costs" and not paid for with fines, parking
violators may be sorry that this issue was ever resolved by courts to not allow
"fines" but to allow "costs." As an alternative, UBC could hire at great cost,
Vancouver police on overtime pay to issue fines large enough to cover the cost
of of the overtime. Plus the violators would then have to deal with the
"all-powerful" City of Vancouver Court. Sometimes success is trouble turned
inside out!
From the Scout Report on March 27, 2009
WinPatrol 16.0.2009 ---
http://www.winpatrol.com/download.html
The goal of the WinPatrol program is quite simple:
to help users identify which programs are running on their computer and to
alert them to any new programs that might be added without their permission.
The WinPatrol mascot is a Scotty, and this dog serves as an appropriate
symbol for their work. The program works to look for alterations created by
various malware programs and visitors can view full reports about what
WinPatrol finds during the course of its work. This version is compatible
with computers running Windows 95 and newer.
GIMP 2.6.6 ---
http://www.gimp.org/
As it may be time to get out the digital family
photo album, it's nice to have a bit of help along the way. That's where the
GIMP program can be of assistance. GIMP stands for GMU Image Manipulation
Program and it performs as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo
retouching program, and a mass production image renderer. The program also
includes a full suite of advanced painting tools and it has compatibility
with a wide range of file formats. This version is compatible with computers
running Mac OS X 10.5.6 and newer
Food activists seek to change agricultural policy from Oakland to Orono
Sustainable-food campaign reaches a critical mass of influence in the United
States
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/23/business/food.php
With Food Democracy now, Iowan Dave Murphy Is Challenging Corporate
Farming
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/24/AR2009032400754.html
Safeguard Food Supply But Respect Small Farms
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/mar/23/na-safeguard-food-supply-but-respect-small-farms/
Big Island Video News: Sustainable farming with tilapia
http://www.bigislandvideonews.com/hamakua/2009/20090323talapia.htm
Even city folk can make vegetable gardens flower
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-schmich-25-mar25,0,4687726.column
USDA: Sustainable Agriculture
http://www.usda.gov/oce/sustainable/agriculture.htm
University of California: Agriculture and Natural Resources Free
Publications ---
http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/FreePublications/
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
From PBS: Touch Table Computing Video ---
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/231-touchtable.html
Using MindMaps To Teach, Learn, & Much More (video), Simoleon Sense,
March 27, 2009 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/
Bob Jensen's threads and tricks and tools of the trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
There are now nearly 7,000 accounting education videos on YouTube, most of
which are in very basic accounting.
But there are nearly 150 videos in advanced accounting.
Sometimes the videos are advertisements such as an advertisement for downloading
INTERMEDIATE ACCOUNTING 12th ED Solutions Manual by
KIESO, WEYGANT, WARFIELD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca08uh1cq1Y
There are nearly 70 YouTubevideos on XBRL.
Great Scholarly Video: The MediaScape from YouTube to
Blogosphere to Social Networks
YouTube distributes more original programming in six
months than the U.S. TV networks did in 30 years
Highly Educational and Entertaining About the YouTube Generation
Forwarded by anthropology professor John Donahue
An anthropological introduction to YouTube (and social networks) by Michael
Wesch (55 minute video)---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU
More than 100 colleges have set up channels on YouTube ---
http://www.youtube.com/edu
Many universities offer over 100
videos, whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583
More than 100 colleges have set up channels on
YouTube, and this week the popular video service unveiled a new section that
brings together all of that campus content in one area.
It had been difficult to find college lectures on
YouTube, since they are generally far less popular than the site’s humorous
and outrageous clips, and so they do not show up in lists of the most viewed
videos on the site. Although YouTube has long had an
education category,
it relies on users who post videos to decide whether to categorize their
videos as educational, and as a result the definition of education is very
broad. The new YouTube
EDU page includes only
material submitted by colleges and universities.
Spencer Crooks, a spokesman for YouTube, said in a
statement that the site now features complete lectures for some 200 full
college courses. “Subjects range from computer science to literature,
biology to philosophy, history, political science, psychology, law, and much
more,” he said. “You can search within YouTube EDU
to find videos on topics of interest.”
The new section makes it possible to find out which
college-produced video is most popular. The winner so far is an interview
with a University of Minnesota professor discussing
the science behind the
new movie Watchmen. That video has been
viewed about 1.5 million times. The most popular lecture video on YouTube is
from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, on the subject of “Advanced
Finite Elements Analysis” (which has been viewed about 19,000 times).
Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
A Nursery of Patriotism: The University at War, 1861-1945 ---
http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/exhibits/patriotism/
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
A Video Version of the Periodic Table (a video for each element) ---
http://www.periodicvideos.com/
Beautiful Science: Ideas That Changed The World ---
http://huntington.org/thehuntington_full02.aspx?id=3000
The Atlas of Early Printing (interactive slide show) ---
http://atlas.lib.uiowa.edu/
Nevada Natural Heritage Program ---
http://heritage.nv.gov/
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Coping with a Disaster or
Traumatic Event ---
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/
World Food: International Year of Natural Fibres ---
http://www.naturalfibres2009.org/en/index.html
Yahoo Science ---
http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/
The American Journal of Science ---
http://ajs.library.cmu.edu/
Physics Question of the Week ---
http://www.physics.umd.edu/lecdem/outreach/QOTW/active/questions.htm
PhysOrg Science Newsletter ---
http://physorg.com/
From PBS: Touch Table Computing Video ---
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/231-touchtable.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
Great Scholarly Video: The
MediaScape from YouTube to Blogosphere to Social Networks
YouTobe
distributes more original programming in six months than the U.S. TV
networks did in 30 years
Highly Educational and Entertaining About the YouTube Generation
Forwarded by anthropology professor John Donahue
An anthropological introduction to YouTube (and social networks)
by Michael Wesch (55 minute video)---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU
More than 100 colleges have set
up channels on YouTube ---
http://www.youtube.com/edu
Many universities offer
over 100 videos, whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583
"YouTube Creates New
Section to Highlight College Content," by Jeffrey R. Young,
Chronicle of Higher Education,
March 27, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3684&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
New Europe ---
http://www.neurope.eu/
American Women's History: A Research Guide ---
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history/women.html
Women's History Month ---
http://womenshistorymonth.gov/
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
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
More than 41,000 Spanish-language songs that go back to the early 1900s were
placed online this week by the Chicano Studies Center, a research unit at the
University of California at Los Angeles ---
http://frontera.library.ucla.edu/
A Nursery of Patriotism: The University at War, 1861-1945 ---
http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/exhibits/patriotism/
Eisenhower National Historic Site ---
http://www.nps.gov/history/museum/exhibits/eise/index.html
Papers of the War Department, 1784-1800 ---
http://wardepartmentpapers.org/
The Bunraku (Puppet Theatre) Collection ---
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/eastasian/bunraku/
Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice ---
http://www.mfa.org/venice/
Images of Russia and Caucasus Region, 1929-1933 ---
http://www.uwm.edu/Library/digilib/georgia/index.html
Arabic Script: Mightier than the Sword ---
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/online_tours/museum_and_exhibition/arabic_script/arabic_script.aspx
Arab Media & Society ---
http://www.arabmediasociety.com/
American Women's History: A Research Guide ---
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history/women.html
Women's History Month ---
http://womenshistorymonth.gov/
The Art of the First Fleet ---
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/jdsml/nature-online/first-fleet/
Art 21 (art and war video) ---
http://www.pbs.org/art21/
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
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
More than 41,000 Spanish-language songs that go back to the early 1900s were
placed online this week by the Chicano Studies Center, a research unit at the
University of California at Los Angeles ---
http://frontera.library.ucla.edu/
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music
Writing Tutorials
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Coping with a Disaster or
Traumatic Event ---
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/
"Brain Images Reveal the Secret to Higher IQ: The integrity of
neural wiring is a big factor in determining intelligence. It's also
inheritable," by Emily Singer, MIT's Technology Review, March 24, 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22333/?nlid=1882
New research suggests that the layer of insulation
coating neural wiring in the brain plays a critical role in determining
intelligence. In addition, the quality of this insulation appears to be
largely genetically determined, providing further support for the idea that
IQ is partly inherited.
The findings, which result from a detailed study of
twins' brains, hint at how ever-improving brain-imaging technology could
shed light on some of our most basic characteristics.
"The study answers some very fundamental questions
about how the brain expresses intelligence," says Philip Shaw, a child
psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health, in Bethesda, MD,
who was not involved in the research.
The neural wires that transmit electrical messages
from cell to cell in the brain are coated with a fatty layer called myelin.
Much like the insulation on an electrical wire, myelin stops current from
leaking out of the wire and boosts the speed with which messages travel
through the brain--the higher quality the myelin, the faster the messages
travel. These myelin-coated tracts make up the brain's white matter, while
the bodies of neural cells are called grey matter.
White matter is invisible on most brain scans, but
a recently developed variation of magnetic resonance imaging, called
diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI), allows scientists to map the complex neural
wiring in our brains by measuring the diffusion of water molecules through
tissue. Thanks to the fatty myelin coating, water diffuses along the length
of neural wires, while in other types of brain tissue it moves in all
different directions. Researchers can calculate the direction of fastest
diffusion at each point in the brain and then construct a picture of the
brain's fiber tracts. A well-organized brain has well-functioning myelin, in
which water can be seen clearly moving along specific paths. "Diffusion
imaging gives a picture of how intact your brain connections are," says Paul
Thompson, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who
lead the study.
Thompson and his colleagues took DTI scans of 92
pairs of fraternal and identical twins. They found a strong correlation
between the integrity of the white matter and performance on a standard IQ
test. "Going forward, we are certainly going to think of white matter
structure as an important contributor of intelligence," says Van Wedeen, a
neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who was also not
involved in the research. "It also changes how you think about what IQ is
measuring," says Wedeen. The research was published last month in the
Journal of Neuroscience.
This forward from Bud could easily be urban legend, but it does hit home
When my dad attended Texas Tech, he had an economics professor that said he
had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class.
That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and
no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will
have an experiment in this class on socialism.
All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no
one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test the grades
were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and
the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled
around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who
studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little. The
second Test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around
the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in
hard feelings and no one would study for anyone else. All failed, to their great
surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail
because the harder to succeed the greater the reward but when a government takes
all the reward away; no one will try or succeed.
Diners Can 'Have a Ball' at Testicle Festival"--headline,
Associated Press, March 27 ,2009
Forwarded by my good neighbors
The economy is so bad:
CEO's are now playing miniature golf.
Even people who have nothing to do with the Obama administration aren't
paying their taxes.
Hotwheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM.
Obama met with small businesses to discuss the Stimulus Package: GE, Pfeizer
and Citigroup.
PETA serves chicken wings at their meetings
McDonalds is selling the 1/4- ouncer.
People in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children's
names.
A truck of Americans got caught sneaking into Mexico ...
The most highly-paid job is now jury duty.
Dick Cheney took his stockbroker hunting.
People in Africa are donating money to Americans.
Mothers in Ethiopia are telling their kids, "finish your plate, do you know
how many kids are starving in the US ?"
Motel Six won't leave the light on.
The Mafia is laying off judges.
finally,
Congress says they are looking into this Bernard Madoff scandal. So, the guy
that made $64 billion disappear is being investigated by the people who made
$750 billion disappear.
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