Tidbits on March 26, 2009
Bob Jensen

In the winter hungry birds flock to our deck, but in early
springtime the bears awaken and will rip out our bird feeders.
After two seasons of having bears on our deck, we
stopped feeding the birds in late March.

Great Bird Photographs --- http://www.howardcheekphotography.com/gallery.php
To see a slide show, click on one of the pictures, then click on the blue arrow at the top of the picture.

Wild turkeys forage for themselves year around in our lawn.

This is what happens if we set out window boxes too early in the spring.

What a difference a few weeks in May can make in bringing color of springtime.
Compare the rock garden on the left on May 1 versus May 20
The phlox and bleeding hearts commenced to bloom in the middle of May.

Between May 20 and May 25 I added to this color around all sides of the cottage.
Erika no longer can bend to plant seedlings, so I dug in over 250 of the blooming things.
This year I mostly planted pansies, snap dragons, verbena, alyssum, and bordering yellow-bidens.
I took some pictures of my latest efforts but have not yet finalized the disk in my camera.
For now you can view some roses and marigolds from last summer.
Bull frogs in the pond serenade us on summer nights.

This is what the pond looks like when it's frozen over and the roses are covered in burlap.

Below is the type of N.H. White Mountains' view I get each sunrise in the wintertime.
I'm a lucky man to be able to truly enjoy the dormancy of winter months
when I don't have to plant, weed, water, or mow. I hate gardening but I love pleasing my ill wife!

Below is a view from our bedroom window facing Vermont's Green Mountains to the west.
This picture was taken when the moon was exceptionally close to earth and appeared very large.
The colored rings around the moon are camera effects. The moon was actually all white and very bright.

On May 24, 2009 PBS Television broadcast its National Memorial Day Concert --- http://www.pbs.org/memorialdayconcert/concert/ 
Featured this year was our (former) Sugar Hill Chief of Police on the two-man force. Chief Pequeño was called up to Iraq in the New Hampshire National Guard. His tragic story was broadcast as follows during the Concert:

José Pequeño was a Staff Sergeant in the New Hampshire National Guard when he volunteered to deploy to Iraq. While on duty, he was calling in about a suicide bomber when an insurgent tossed a grenade into his Humvee.

José lost the bottom two lobes of the left side of his brain, and doctors held out very little hope for his recovery. His mother Nellie and sister Elizabeth went immediately to his side and remain there over three years later. Here they describe getting the news of José’s injury.
Watch the video about him at http://www.pbs.org/memorialdayconcert/features/families.html

I knew Chief Pequeño only slightly and recall that he was an especially handsome young man who was admired in our community. When he was so severely wounded my good neighbor up the road, Fire Chief Alan Clark, commenced a campaign to build a new home for Jose's wife and two school-age children. The new house was built as a labor of love in nearby Lisbon where the family lived while Jose was still able to be our Sugar Hill Chief of Police.

I'm told that his children still attend the Lisbon school. Their father was taken by the Army to be honored by the entire world at the May 24 National Memorial Day Concert on PBS. These children must be especially proud of their brave father who essentially gave his life for his country. He can no longer communicate in any way with his family. I just could not muster up the will to show his picture now after his severe and permanent brain injury. God bless his mother and the rest of his family for setting an example for the world concerning what caring is all about.

Joseph Stalin once said that the loss of over a million soldiers in war is a statistic.
He added that it's the loss of one soldier that's a great tragedy.

Thank You America --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/ThankYouAmerica.PPS
I never can watch this slide show without crying out loud.

Forwarded by Doug Jenson
1/2 boy 1/2 man

The average age of the military man is 19 years. He is a short haired, tight-muscled kid who, under normal circumstances is considered by society as half man, half boy.

Not yet dry behind the ears, not old enough to buy a beer, but old enough to die for his country.

He never really cared much for work and he would rather wax his own car than wash his father's, but he has never collected unemployment either.

He's a recent High School graduate; he was probably an average student, pursued some form of sport activities, drives a ten year old jalopy and has a steady girlfriend that either broke up with him when he left, or swears to be waiting when he returns.

He listens to rock and roll or hip-hop or rap or jazz or swing and a 155mm howitzer.

He is 10 or 15 pounds lighter now than when he was at home because he is working or fighting from before dawn to well after dusk.

He has trouble spelling, thus letter writing is a pain for him, but he can field strip a rifle in 30 seconds and reassemble it in less time in the dark.

He can recite to you the nomenclature of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either one effectively if he must.

He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid like a professional.

He can march until he is told to stop, or stop until he is told to march.

He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation, but he is not without spirit or individual dignity.

He is self-sufficient.

He has two sets of fatigues: he washes one and wears the other.

He keeps his canteens full and his feet dry. He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth but never to clean his rifle.

He can cook his own meals, mend his own clothes and fix his own hurts.

If you're thirsty, he'll share his water with you; if you are hungry, his food. He'll even split his ammunition with you in the midst of battle when you run low.

He has learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons like they were his hands. He can save your life - or take it because that is his job.

He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half the pay and still find ironic humor in it all.

He has seen more suffering and death than he should have in his short lifetime. He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and is unashamed.

He feels every note of the National Anthem vibrate through his body at rigid attention, while tempering the burning desire to 'square-away' those around him who haven't bothered to stand, remove their hat, or even stop talking.

In an odd twist, day in and day out, far from home, he defends their right to be disrespectful..

Just as did his Father, Grandfather, and Great-grandfather, he is paying the price for our freedom. Beardless or not, he is not a boy. He is the American Fighting Man that has kept this country free for over 200 years.

He has asked nothing in return, except our friendship and understanding.

Remember him, always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood.

And now we have women over there in combat, doing their part in this tradition of protecting us when our nation calls them to do so.

Thank You America --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/ThankYouAmerica.PPS
I never can watch this slide show without crying out loud.

Tidbits on March 26, 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

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

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
The Master List of Free Online College Courses --- http://universitiesandcolleges.org/

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

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

Video on the Long-term Disaster of Beranke's Money Supply Printing Press That Will Kick in Hyperinflation ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlHBYQrCnIk
Will the U.S. become Zimbabwe? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#NationalDebt

This is a great learning resource:  Very Effective
Visual Guide to the Federal Reserve," Simoleon Sense, May 22, 2009 --- http://www.simoleonsense.com/

General Petraeus fights for the wounded --- http://www.theneweditor.com/index.php?/archives/9550-Currahee.html

Virtual Microbiology --- http://inst.bact.wisc.edu/inst/index.php?module=Book&func=toc&book_id=3 

The Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings --- http://frontera.library.ucla.edu/

Fashioning Felt --- http://exhibitions.cooperhewitt.org/Fashioning-Felt/

How to Live a Better Life --- http://www.lshs64.com/enjoytheride.html

Free music downloads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

PBS Television will now answer your personal finance questions ---
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/insider/business/jan-june09/pocketchange_05-05.html

Two Oldsters Standing at the Piano --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI-l0tK8Ok0

Banker Rescues Ducks (featured on May 18 by Charlie Gibson) --- http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=7618021

The Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings --- http://frontera.library.ucla.edu/

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

Flag of Two Million Larkspur Flowers --- http://www.snopes.com/photos/patriotic/floralflag.asp

Alaska's Hubbard Glacier is advancing at an amazing seven feet per day (see the Image Gallery) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbard_Glacier

Images from the History of Medicine --- http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/ihm/ 

Laura den Hertog Fine Art (Laura claims she's taken her art to a new level) --- http://lauradenhertog.com/

Old Cars --- http://www.billsretroworld.com/cars.htm

Fashioning Felt --- http://exhibitions.cooperhewitt.org/Fashioning-Felt/

Ebony --- http://books.google.com/books?id=r9QDAAAAMBAJ

Tate Liverpool: Glenn Brown http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/glennbrown/

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

Jewish American Heritage Month http://www.jewishheritage.gov/index.html

AgeSource/AgeStats Worldwide --- http://www.aarpinternational.org/database/

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

Peter Schiff is a widely-known economist who predicted the financial crisis well ahead of most everybody, but  nobody listened when he blared out warnings throughout the media, some of which are on YouTube
No, the main issue with Schiff seems to be that he hasn't changed his tune (in 2009) --- and it isn't a pleasant tune to listen to. He thinks the "phony economy" of the U.S. is headed for even harder times. He believes that the crisis-fighting measures coming out of Washington are merely delaying the inevitable, debasing the dollar and loading future taxpayers with huge debts.
Justin Fox, "Excluding the Extremist:  Peter Schiff predicted the credit collapse long before the 'experts." So why is it so hard to hear him now," Time Magazine, June 1, 2009, Page 48.

Ten (now eleven) 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

"As U.S. Spending Balloons, Concerns Grow over Size and Cost of Debt," International Herald Tribune via SmartPros, May 5, 2009 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x66461.xml

The U.S. debt clock is ticking faster than ever, and Wall Street is getting worried.

As the administration of President Barack Obama racks up an unprecedented spending bill for bank bailouts, Detroit rescues, health care overhauls and stimulus plans, the bond market is starting to push up the cost of trillions of dollars in borrowing for the government.

Last week, the yield on 10-year Treasury notes rose to its highest level since November, briefly touching 3.17 percent, a sign that investors are demanding larger returns on the masses of U.S. debt being issued to finance an economic recovery.

While that yield is still low by historical standards - it averaged about 5.7 percent in the late 1990s - investors are starting to wonder whether the United States is headed for a new era of rising market interest rates as the government borrows, borrows and borrows some more.

Already, in the first six months of this fiscal year, the U.S. government deficit is running at $956.8 billion, or nearly one- seventh of gross domestic product - proportional levels not seen since World War II, according to Wrightson ICAP, a research firm.

Debt held by the public is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to rise from 41 percent of gross domestic product in 2008 to 51 percent in 2009 and to a peak of about 54 percent in 2011 before declining again in the following years. For all of 2009, the administration probably needs to borrow about $2 trillion.

The rising bill has prompted warnings from the Treasury that the Congressionally mandated debt ceiling of $12.1 trillion will most likely be breached in the second half of this year.

Last week, the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, a group of industry executives that advises the Treasury on its financing needs, warned about the consequences of higher deficits at a time when tax revenue was "collapsing" by 14 percent in the first half of the fiscal year.

"Given the outlook for the economy, the cost of restoring a smoothly functioning financial system and the pending entitlement obligations to retiring baby boomers," a report from the committee said, "the fiscal outlook is one of rapidly increasing debt in the years ahead."

While the real long-term interest rate will not rise immediately, the committee concluded, "such a fiscal path could force real rates notably higher at some point in the future."

In some ways, ballooning deficits should not matter. Deficits are a useful way for governments to use public spending to stimulate the economy when private demand is weak. That works as long as a country closes its deficit and pays back its borrowings after its economy starts to recover.

The trouble is that government borrowing risks crowding out private investment, driving up interest rates and potentially slowing a recovery still trying to take hold. That is why the Federal Reserve announced an extraordinary policy this year to buy back existing long-term debt - $300 billion over six months - to drive down yields. The strategy worked for a while, but now the effect of that decision appears to be wearing off as long-term interest rates tick up again.

Then there is the concern that the interest the government must pay on its debt obligations may become unsustainable or weigh on future generations. The Congressional Budget Office expects interest payments to more than quadruple in the next decade as Washington borrows and spends, to $806 billion by 2019 from $172 billion next year.

"You're just paying more and more interest and having to borrow more and more money to pay the interest," said Charles S. Konigsberg, chief budget counsel for the Concord Coalition, which advocates lower deficits. "It diverts a tremendous amount of resources, of taxpayer dollars."

Of course, no one is suggesting the United States will have problems paying the interest on its debt. On Wednesday, even as it announced its huge financing needs for the latest quarter, the Treasury said financial markets could accommodate the flood of new bonds. "We feel confident that we can address these large borrowing needs," said Karthik Ramanathan, the Treasury's acting assistant secretary for financial markets.

One worry, however, is that there are fewer eager lenders to buy all that American debt. Most of the world is in recession, and other countries have rising borrowing needs as well. As other nations' surpluses turn to deficits, America will face competition in global financial markets for its borrowing needs. For the moment, the United States is actually benefiting from a flight to quality into Treasury securities brought on by the global financial crisis, which helped reduce rates to record lows over the winter. But the influx will not continue forever.

China has lent immense sums to the United States - about two- thirds of its central bank's $1.95 trillion in foreign reserves is believed to be in U.S. securities - but it has begun to voice concerns about America's financial health.

To calm nerves and fill the deficit hole, the government is getting creative. The Treasury is speeding up its auction calendar, holding more frequent sales of government debt and selling the debt in expanded amounts. It is now holding sales of its 30-year bond each month, up from four times annually.

It is also resuscitating previously discontinued bonds, like the seven-year note and the three-year note, to try to mop up any available money all along the yield curve. There is even talk of issuing billions of dollars in a new 50-year bond, though the idea has not won official approval.

On a second front, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are trying to bolster the mechanics of the market to make sure every auction goes smoothly. With such enormous sums involved, every additional basis point on the interest rate the government pays could mean extra billions of dollars for the taxpayer.

Bernanke's money printing press
On March 18, the Federal Reserve announced it would purchase up to $300 billion of long-term bonds as well as $750 billion of mortgage-backed securities. Of all the Fed's moves, this "quantitative easing" gets money into the economy the fastest -- basically by cranking the handle of the printing press and flooding the market with dollars (in reality, with additional bank credit). Since these dollars are not going into home building, coal-fired electric plants or auto factories, they end up in the stock market. A rising market means that banks are able to raise much-needed equity from private money funds instead of from the feds. And last Thursday, accompanying this flood of new money, came the reassuring results of the bank stress tests. The next day Morgan Stanley raised $4 billion by selling stock at $24 in an oversubscribed deal. Wells Fargo also raised $8.6 billion that day by selling stock at $22 a share, up from $8 two months ago. And Bank of America registered 1.25 billion shares to sell this week. Citi is next. It's almost as if someone engineered a stock-market rally to entice private investors to fund the banks rather than taxpayers .
Andy Kessler, "Was It a Sucker's Rally? You can have a jobless recovery but you can't have a profitless one," The Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2009 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124208415028908497.html

Video on the Long-term Disaster of Beranke's Money Supply Printing Press That Will Kick in Hyperinflation ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlHBYQrCnIk
Will the U.S. become Zimbabwe? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#NationalDebt

Stop Imitating Hyper-inflated Zimbabe:  The U.S. Treasury Should Cease Monetizing the Debt
The U.S. should borrow or tax to pay its debts, but stop printing money to pay deficit-driven debt

"Don't Monetize the Debt: The president of the Dallas Fed on inflation risk and central bank independence," by Mary Anastasia O'Grady, The Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124303024230548323.html

From his perch high atop the palatial Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, overlooking what he calls "the most modern, efficient city in America," Richard Fisher says he is always on the lookout for rising prices. But that's not what's worrying the bank's president right now.

His bigger concern these days would seem to be what he calls "the perception of risk" that has been created by the Fed's purchases of Treasury bonds, mortgage-backed securities and Fannie Mae paper.

Mr. Fisher acknowledges that events in the financial markets last year required some unusual Fed action in the commercial lending market. But he says the longer-term debt, particularly the Treasurys, is making investors nervous. The looming challenge, he says, is to reassure markets that the Fed is not going to be "the handmaiden" to fiscal profligacy. "I think the trick here is to assist the functioning of the private markets without signaling in any way, shape or form that the Federal Reserve will be party to monetizing fiscal largess, deficits or the stimulus program."

The very fact that a Fed regional bank president has to raise this issue is not very comforting. It conjures up images of Argentina. And as Mr. Fisher explains, he's not the only one worrying about it. He has just returned from a trip to China, where "senior officials of the Chinese government grill[ed] me about whether or not we are going to monetize the actions of our legislature." He adds, "I must have been asked about that a hundred times in China."

A native of Los Angeles who grew up in Mexico, Mr. Fisher was educated at Harvard, Oxford and Stanford. He spent his earliest days in government at Jimmy Carter's Treasury. He says that taught him a life-long lesson about inflation. It was "inflation that destroyed that presidency," he says. He adds that he learned a lot from then Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who had to "break [inflation's] back."

Mr. Fisher has led the Dallas Fed since 2005 and has developed a reputation as the Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC) lead inflation worrywart. In September he told a New York audience that "rates held too low, for too long during the previous Fed regime were an accomplice to [the] reckless behavior" that brought about the economic troubles we are now living through. He also warned that the Treasury's $700 billion plan to buy toxic assets from financial institutions would be "one more straw on the back of the frightfully encumbered camel that is the federal government ledger."

In a speech at the Kennedy School of Government in February, he wrung his hands about "the very deep hole [our political leaders] have dug in incurring unfunded liabilities of retirement and health-care obligations" that "we at the Dallas Fed believe total over $99 trillion." In March, he is believed to have vociferously objected in closed-door FOMC meetings to the proposal to buy U.S. Treasury bonds. So with long-term Treasury yields moving up sharply despite Fed intentions to bring down mortgage rates, I've flown to Dallas to see what he's thinking now.

Regarding what caused the credit bubble, he repeats his assertion about the Fed's role: "It is human instinct when rates are low and the yield curve is flat to reach for greater risk and enhanced yield and returns." (Later, he adds that this is not to cast aspersions on former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and reminds me that these decisions are made by the FOMC.)

"The second thing is that the regulators didn't do their job, including the Federal Reserve." To this he adds what he calls unusual circumstances, including "the fruits and tailwinds of globalization, billions of people added to the labor supply, new factories and productivity coming from places it had never come from before." And finally, he says, there was the 'mathematization' of risk." Institutions were "building risk models" and relying heavily on "quant jocks" when "in the end there can be no substitute for good judgment."

What about another group of alleged culprits: the government-anointed rating agencies? Mr. Fisher doesn't mince words. "I served on corporate boards. The way rating agencies worked is that they were paid by the people they rated. I saw that from the inside." He says he also saw this "inherent conflict of interest" as a fund manager. "I never paid attention to the rating agencies. If you relied on them you got . . . you know," he says, sparing me the gory details. "You did your own analysis. What is clear is that rating agencies always change something after it is obvious to everyone else. That's why we never relied on them." That's a bit disconcerting since the Fed still uses these same agencies in managing its own portfolio.

I wonder whether the same bubble-producing Fed errors aren't being repeated now as Washington scrambles to avoid a sustained economic downturn.

He surprises me by siding with the deflation hawks. "I don't think that's the risk right now." Why? One factor influencing his view is the Dallas Fed's "trim mean calculation," which looks at price changes of more than 180 items and excludes the extremes. Dallas researchers have found that "the price increases are less and less. Ex-energy, ex-food, ex-tobacco you've got some mild deflation here and no inflation in the [broader] headline index."

Mr. Fisher says he also has a group of about 50 CEOs around the U.S. and the world that he calls on, all off the record, before almost every FOMC meeting. "I don't impart any information, I just listen carefully to what they are seeing through their own eyes. And that gives me a sense of what's happening on the ground, you might say on Main Street as opposed to Wall Street."

It's good to know that a guy so obsessed with price stability doesn't see inflation on the horizon. But inflation and bubble trouble almost always get going before they are recognized. Moreover, the Fed has to pay attention to the 1978 Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act -- a.k.a. Humphrey-Hawkins -- and employment is a lagging indicator of economic activity. This could create a Fed bias in favor of inflating. So I push him again.

"I want to make sure that your readers understand that I don't know a single person on the FOMC who is rooting for inflation or who is tolerant of inflation." The committee knows very well, he assures me, that "you cannot have sustainable employment growth without price stability. And by price stability I mean that we cannot tolerate deflation or the ravages of inflation."

Mr. Fisher defends the Fed's actions that were designed to "stabilize the financial system as it literally fell apart and prevent the economy from imploding." Yet he admits that there is unfinished work. Policy makers have to be "always mindful that whatever you put in, you are going to have to take out at some point. And also be mindful that there are these perceptions [about the possibility of monetizing the debt], which is why I have been sensitive about the issue of purchasing Treasurys."

He returns to events on his recent trip to Asia, which besides China included stops in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea. "I wasn't asked once about mortgage-backed securities. But I was asked at every single meeting about our purchase of Treasurys. That seemed to be the principal preoccupation of those that were invested with their surpluses mostly in the United States. That seems to be the issue people are most worried about."

As I listen I am reminded that it's not just the Asians who have expressed concern. In his Kennedy School speech, Mr. Fisher himself fretted about the U.S. fiscal picture. He acknowledges that he has raised the issue "ad nauseam" and doesn't apologize. "Throughout history," he says, "what the political class has done is they have turned to the central bank to print their way out of an unfunded liability. We can't let that happen. That's when you open the floodgates. So I hope and I pray that our political leaders will just have to take this bull by the horns at some point. You can't run away from it."

Voices like Mr. Fisher's can be a problem for the politicians, which may be why recently there have been rumblings in Washington about revoking the automatic FOMC membership that comes with being a regional bank president. Does Mr. Fisher have any thoughts about that?

This is nothing new, he points out, briefly reviewing the history of the political struggle over monetary policy in the U.S. "The reason why the banks were put in the mix by [President Woodrow] Wilson in 1913, the reason it was structured the way it was structured, was so that you could offset the political power of Washington and the money center in New York with the regional banks. They represented Main Street.

"Now we have this great populist fervor and the banks are arguing for Main Street, largely. I have heard these arguments before and studied the history. I am not losing a lot of sleep over it," he says with a defiant Texas twang that I had not previously detected. "I don't think that it'd be the best signal to send to the market right now that you want to totally politicize the process."

Speaking of which, Texas bankers don't have much good to say about the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), according to Mr. Fisher. "Its been complicated by the politics because you have a special investigator, special prosecutor, and all I can tell you is that in my district here most of the people who wanted in on the TARP no longer want in on the TARP."

At heart, Mr. Fisher says he is an advocate for letting markets clear on their own. "You know that I am a big believer in Schumpeter's creative destruction," he says referring to the term coined by the late Austrian economist. "The destructive part is always painful, politically messy, it hurts like hell but you hopefully will allow the adjustments to be made so that the creative part can take place." Texas went through that process in the 1980s, he says, and came back stronger.

This is doubtless why, with Washington taking on a larger role in the American economy every day, the worries linger. On the wall behind his desk is a 1907 gouache painting by Antonio De Simone of the American steam sailing vessel Varuna plowing through stormy seas. Just like most everything else on the walls, bookshelves and table tops around his office -- and even the dollar-sign cuff links he wears to work -- it represents something.

He says that he has had this painting behind his desk for the past 30 years as a reminder of the importance of purpose and duty in rough seas. "The ship," he explains, "has to maintain its integrity." What is more, "no mathematical model can steer you through the kind of seas in that picture there. In the end someone has the wheel." He adds: "On monetary policy it's the Federal Reserve."

Bob Jensen's threads on the National Debt Crisis are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#NationalDebt

Bob Jensen's threads on the Entitlements Crisis are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/entitlements.htm

Not a single county in the entire state (California) voted for the tax-and-spend propositions on yesterday's referendum ballot, not even the peculiar folks who live in Nancy Pelosi's far-left 8th Congressional District who persist in sending the Wicked Witch of the West to the Nation's Capitol to wage war on the CIA and the nation's taxpayers. The only measure voters did approve was one to freeze salaries of senior public officials during budget emergencies.
Michael Reagan, "Terminating the Terminator," Townhall, May 20, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelReagan/2009/05/20/terminating_the_terminator
Jensen Comment
What's worse in many respects is that California voters sent a message to President Obama that taxing the middle class (the only way to raise serious deficit-cutting revenue) to halt deficit-induced halt hyperinflation of the U.S. dollar will not be supported by voters.
See http://townhall.com/columnists/MattTowery/2009/05/21/california,_here_we_come

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Alexander Tyler. 1787 - Tyler was a Scottish history professor that had this to say about 2000 years after "The Fall of the Athenian Republic" and about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution.
As quoted at http://www.babylontoday.com/national_debt_clock.htm (where the debt clock in real time is a few months behind)
The National Debt Amount This Instant (Refresh your browser for updates by the second) --- http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Bob Jensen's threads on impending disaster in the United States are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#NationalDebt

Watch the CBS Sixty Minutes Video While its Free Online
Of all the corporate bailouts that have taken place over the past year, none has proved more costly or contentious than the rescue of American International Group (AIG). Its reckless bets on subprime mortgages threatened to bring down Wall Street and the world economy last fall until the U.S Treasury and the Federal Reserve stepped in to save it. So far, the huge insurance and financial services conglomerate has been given or promised $180 billion in loans, investments, financial injections and guarantees - a sum greater than the annual cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
"Why AIG Stumbled, And Taxpayers Now Own It," CBS Sixty Minutes, May 17, 2009 ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/15/60minutes/main5016760.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_5016760
Jensen Comment
To add pain to misery, AIG lied to the media about the extent of bonuses granted after receiving TARP funds.
Bob Jensen's threads on AIG are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Bailout

AIG now says it paid out more than $454 million in bonuses to its employees for work performed in 2008. That is nearly four times more than the company revealed in late March when asked by POLITICO to detail its total bonus payments. At that time, AIG spokesman Nick Ashooh said the firm paid about $120 million in 2008 bonuses to a pool of more than 6,000 employees. The figure Ashooh offered was, in turn, substantially higher than company CEO Edward Liddy claimed days earlier in testimony before a House Financial Services Subcommittee. Asked how much AIG had paid in 2008 bonuses, Liddy responded: “I think it might have been in the range of $9 million.”
Emon Javers, "AIG bonuses four times higher than reported," Politico, May 5, 2009 --- http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22134.html

The housing bubble was unique, and uniquely awful. Each of the previous waves had come in response to a profound shift in the real economy. With the housing bubble, by contrast, there was no meaningful development in the real economy that could explain why homes were suddenly so much more attractive or valuable. The only thing that had changed, really, was that banks were flinging cheap money at would-be homeowners, essentially conjuring up profits out of nowhere. And while previous booms (at least, those of the twenties and the nineties) did end in tears, along the way they made the economy more productive and more innovative in a lasting way. That’s not true of the past decade. Banking grew bigger and more profitable. But all we got in exchange was acres of empty houses in Phoenix.
James Surowiecki, "Have We Gained Anything from the Housing Bubble?" Seeking Alpha, May 20, 2009 --- http://seekingalpha.com/article/138677-have-we-gained-anything-from-the-housing-bubble
Bob Jensen's threads on Greed, Sleaze, Bribery, and Lies in the housing bubble are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Sleaze

PBS Television will now answer your personal finance questions ---
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/insider/business/jan-june09/pocketchange_05-05.html

Helpful Personal Finance Calculators free from the Florida Institute of CPAs --- http://www.ficpa.org/ficpa/ResourceCenter/Calculators

First Quarter (2009) net cash flow hemorrhage of General Motors
Per Day: $113.3 million
Per Hour: $4.72 million
Per Minute: $78,704
Per Second: $1,312
Jim Mahar, Finance Professor Blog, May 7, 2009 --- http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/
Jensen Comment
This is one of those classroom illustrations of where accrual accounting alone paints a misleading picture unless accompanied by cash flow statements. Note that net cash flow in this case includes all cash coming in, including government loans.
Bob Jensen's threads on cash flow vs. accrual accounting are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#CashVsAccrualAcctg 

Obama may earn millions from taxpayer-funded schools in his new book deal. Five days before taking the oath of office, President-elect Barack Obama signed a book deal with Crown Publishing Group to publish a version of his best-selling book, "Dreams from My Father", aimed at middle school and young adult age groups. Obama would receive a $500,000 advance payment against royalties, plus ongoing royalty payments. Some in the media have questioned the propriety of this deal from the angle that the President might be unduly influenced by Bertelsmann AG, the German based media publishing empire which owns Random House, which is the parent company of Crown Publishing. But there is a far larger dynamic at work. Random House and Crown are interested in selling books. And most middle and high school students do not buy lots of books, but the schools they attend do. So we presume that Crown Publishing will primarily pitch the book to schools along with libraries. The real issue then becomes the tremendous influence that President Obama now enjoys over the spending plans of thousands of school districts which just received $44.5 Billion from the Stimulus Bill plus additional billions in the Omnibus Spending Bill, both of which Obama signed.
Richard Henry Lee, "Obama may earn Millions from Schools in Book Deal," American Thinker, May 20, 2009 ---
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/obama_may_earn_millions_from_s.html

The Death of Print?
Oddly enough, newspapers are reaching more people than ever before. In 1999, The Washington Post had a circulation of 786,000, essentially limited to Washington and its suburbs. Now the print circulation is 665,000 and The Post's Web site is drawing 9.4 million unique monthly visitors from around the world.
Howard Kurtz, "The Death of Print?" The Washington Post, May 11, 2009 --- Click Here

Something you will never learn from MSNBC or the NYT or Washington Post
Media Covering Up The $100+ billion per month hemorrhage of Fan..it and Free...die
Weisenthal also reminds us that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are losing e money ($400 B to date) faster than AIG and GM combined but we hardly hear anything. (in the liberal media)
Jim Mahar, Finance Professor Blog, May 9, 2009 --- http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/

But the news of the quarterly loss is getting hardly any attention....The problem is that the Fannie and Freddie disasters don't fit into any conventional media narrative....Fannie Mae? They help nice families get into homes. Their motto is something about helping the people who help house America. Who could be against that? Plus, the Fannie and Freddy story doesn't help explain the idea that laissez-faire deregulation is what allowed Wall Street to go crazy. Fannie and Freddy had their own freakin' regulator....
Joe Weisenthal, Media Still Covering Up The $400 Billion Fannie And Freddie Scandal," Business Insider, May 8, 2009 --- Click Here

"We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama -- $60.7 million to be exact -- and we're proud of it," boasted Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, to the Las Vegas Sun this week. The behemoth labor organization's leadership is getting its money's worth. Whether rank-and-file workers and ordinary taxpayers are profiting from this ultimate campaign pay-for-play scheme is another matter entirely . . . Obama champions the SEIU's top legislative priorities: expansive government health care (paid for with regressive sin taxes) and the "Employee Free Choice Act" to do away with private-ballot union elections in the workplace. He has SEIU-blessed bureaucrats installed in every corner of his administration to carry out the agenda. The SEIU scored not one but two Cabinet appointees: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. The SEIU pitched in with maximum donations to Solis' first congressional campaign and lent her nearly 300 canvassers and ground troops. "I wouldn't be here, were it not for my friends in the labor movement," she gushed. Indeed, over four terms in Congress, Solis has pocketed more than $900,000 in union campaign contributions.
Michelle Malkin, "Big Labor's Investment in Obama Pays Off," Townhall, May 13, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2009/05/13/big_labors_investment_in_obama_pays_off

Can you see why I believe this is a sucker's rally?
The stock market still has big hurdles to clear. You can have a jobless recovery, but you can't have a profitless recovery. Consider: Earnings are subpar (and may get worse with more concessions to labor unions), Treasury's last auction was a bust because of weak demand, the dollar is suspect, the stimulus is pork, the latest budget projects a $1.84 trillion deficit, the administration is berating investment firms and hedge funds saying "I don't stand with them," California is dead broke, health care may be nationalized, cap and trade will bump electric bills by 30% . . . Shall I go on? Until these issues are resolved, I don't see the stock market going much higher. I'm not disagreeing with the Fed's policies -- but I won't buy into a rising stock market based on them. I'm bullish when I see productivity driving wealth.
Andy Kessler, "Was It a Sucker's Rally? You can have a jobless recovery but you can't have a profitless one," The Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2009 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124208415028908497.html
Jensen Comment
Nobody can be counted on to predict the stock market and the unpredictable shocks that affect it. One shock that will ultimately drive equity market prices up is inflation, and inflation is inevitable with Obama's annual egalitarian deficits of $2 trillion or more. One problem with inflation is that nobody can accurately predict just when the stock market will make huge upward moves for Zimbabwe-like inflation. A second problem is that paper profits on equity are not real profits. They're probably losses in spending power. If these huge Obama deficits continue in the future, both debt and equity will have to be indexed for inflation when investors cease to be suckers. For many years investors in high-inflation nations like Brazil stopped being suckers. Virtually all security investments in Brazil are indexed for inflation.

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

California is Liberalism's "Canary in the Coal Mine"
Carol Platt Liebau ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/CarolPlattLiebau/2009/05/18/california_is_liberalisms_canary_in_the_coal_mine

For union members, life is good. California teachers earn 25% more than the national average, even though some of the most incompetent, indifferent or downright dangerous of them cannot be fired because of concessions won by the teachers’ unions. The SEIU is so powerful that some of its members were able to listen in on a phone call between the Obama administration and the state – which resulted in the President’s threat to withhold stimulus money if the cash-strapped state made even modest cuts in the salaries of unionized home health care employees. In fact, state government is routinely held hostage by public employee unions; not surprising when one considers that California is home to 356,000 state workers – 9.3 of them for every 1,000 residents.
Carol Platt Liebau, Townhall, May 18, 2009 --- Click Here

Updating some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found that from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts. Did the greater prosperity in low-tax states happen by chance? Is it coincidence that the two highest tax-rate states in the nation, California and New York, have the biggest fiscal holes to repair? No. Dozens of academic studies -- old and new -- have found clear and irrefutable statistical evidence that high state and local taxes repel jobs and businesses.
Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, "Soak the Rich, Lose the Rich:  Americans know how to use the moving van to escape high taxes," The Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124260067214828295.html#mod=djemEditorialPage
Jensen Comment
Sadly, when hoards of people flock to a tax haven the taxes and crime rates tend to increase.
Bob Jensen's threads on state tax rates are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#010304Taxation
Actually one of the best tax havens, aside from Alaska, is Delaware. If you're thinking of moving to New England, you will find that Maine and Vermont are lovely states with more shoreline than New Hampshire. And New Hampshire does have an income tax of sorts --- 5% of cash dividends and interest received. I'd avoid New Hampshire if I were in your place.

In his book "The Enemy at Home," Dinesh D'Souza shows little patience with the leftists who reacted to 9/11 by declaring that America had it coming. And yet, his book is a variant on that theme. It was our cultural decadence, our foul popular movies, music and pornography, D'Souza argues, that enraged traditional Muslims worldwide and moved some to violence.
Mona Charen, "Is It All About Britney? Frontpage, May 22, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2009/05/22/is_it_all_about_britney

A Georgia man was sentenced to 100 years in prison for poisoning his two children to extort money from Campbell Soup Co. William Cunningham was sentenced Thursday after a jury found him guilty of five counts of cruelty to children and two counts of aggravated assault, said Kellie Perry, a clerk at the Clayton County Superior Court.
Yahoo News, May 22, 2009 --- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090522/ap_on_re_us/us_tampered_soup_children

Bob Jensen’s threads on impending disaster --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#NationalDebt

Nancy Pelosi raised such a fuss about having to have a small UASF jet like previous Speakers of the House, she now has an enormous Boeing 757 for all personal as well as business trips. The cash operating cost for fuel and crew is around $6 million a year. And people complain about $500 tennis shoes for President Obama's wife.

The Obama administration, while trumpeting "transparency," wants to rescind accountability and financial disclosure regulations for America's unions. And while that's music to the ears of union bosses, it's a sour note for dues-paying members. It's one thing if the tougher regulations initiated by the Bush administration served no purpose. But the record shows otherwise. Since 2001, heightened fiscal scrutiny has led to more than 1,000 indictments of union officials and 929 convictions, according to The Heritage Foundation. A small cross section of bad apples? Perhaps. But those rotten to the core also were slapped with $93 million in court-ordered restitution to union members. Among the casualties of exposure: Tyrone Freeman, who led the 160,000-member Service Employees International Union of Los Angeles. That is, until filings revealed that the union paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to companies owned by Freeman's family members with nary any benefit for the union's members. Mr. Freeman ultimately resigned.
"Obama's union sop," Pittsburgh Trib., May 10, 2009 --- http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/s_624311.html
Jensen Comment
Although Obama expounds accountability and transparency, the desire of the Democratic party for illegal political contributions takes priority when it comes to labor unions.

What if terrorists in the United Kingdom plan once again to blow up U.S. airplanes leaving England?
This is a lousy policy for U.S. airliners President Obama
The Obama administration says it may curtail Anglo-American intelligence sharing if the British High Court discloses new details of the treatment of a former Guantanamo detainee.
"Obama threatens to limit U.S. intel with Brits:  Justice letter filed in court," Washington Times, May 12, 2009 ---
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/12/obama-threatens-to-limit-us-intel-with-brits/

Catherine Scott left her wealthy parents' home to have a baby Four years later, she has just had twins by another man more than twice her age. She says taxpayers should provide a four-bedroom house in a more affluent area for her, jobless 40-year-old Dean Evans and their children. Miss Scott, whose boyfriend has five other children by three ex-wives, is also demanding more benefits, saying that £16,000 a year is not enough to live on. At 14, she gave birth to a son but after six months she left him with her parents . . .
Rebecca Camber, Mail Online, May 11, 2009 --- Click Here

Gen. David Petraeus  said he believes Usama bin Laden and his No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri remain in charge of the terrorist network. "They surface periodically. We see communications that they send out," Petraeus said. Though Petraeus said nobody can provide an accurate location for either terrorist, he said Al Qaeda senior leadership clearly is now rooted in the border region of western Pakistan. "There's no question that Al Qaeda's senior leadership has been there and has been in operation for years," Petraeus said.
"Petraeus: Al Qaeda No Longer Operating in Afghanistan," Fox News, May 10, 2009 ---
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/10/petraeus-al-qaeda-longer-operating-afghanistan/

Much has been made about the claim issued in November by the U.S. Joint Forces Command that Mexico, along with Pakistan, is at risk of becoming a failed state. Yet in a ranking of the Western Hemisphere's most at-risk countries, where criminal networks threaten to overwhelm the authority of the state, Mexico might not even make the top 10. Central America and parts of South America are in far worse shape.
O'Grady, "Finally, a Real Revolution A civil-society movement emerges in Central America," The Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124260191911428369.html#mod=djemEditorialPage
 

US firms seized, Obama lets him get away with it
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has sent troops to take over companies that provide services for the oil industry. "This is a revolutionary offensive," he told workers near Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela's main oil-producing area. Military vehicles were used as the state oil company seized supply boats and two US-owned gas facilities.
"Chavez seizes oil service firms," BBC News, May 9, 2009 --- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8041366.stm

What assurance is there that after a ransom is paid these felons still would not sell the data?
The FBI and Virginia State Police are searching for hackers who demanded that the state pay them a $10 million ransom by Thursday for the return of millions of personal pharmaceutical records they say they stole from the state's prescription drug database. The hackers claim to have accessed 8 million patient records and 35 million prescriptions collected by the Prescription Monitoring Program. "This was an intentional criminal act against the commonwealth by somebody who was trying to harm others," Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) said. "There are breaches that happen by accident or glitches that you try to work out. It's difficult to foil every criminal that may want to do something against you." Although the hackers had threatened to sell the data if they did not receive payment by Thursday, the deadline passed with no immediate sign that they followed through.
Brian Krebs and Anita Kumar, "Hackers Want Millions For Data on Prescriptions:  Theft of Va. Patient Records Claimed," The Washington Post, May 8, 2009 --- Click Here

There's nothing a teenager hates more than being manipulated, yet they are so skillfully twisted by today's media world that they don't even know it. Encourage them to dissect advertisements and look critically at programming content and how it shapes their own attitudes. Show them how they are being preyed upon. I highly recommend viewing with them a PBS video entitled, "The Merchants of Cool." Produced several years ago it is still the definitive study on how teens are being used by an industry peddling a worldview that keeps them hyped up and caught up in the worst inclinations of the teen years. Viewing the program together will help foster a closer relationship and joint understanding of what to do next. We must deliberately work to bring out the best of the transitional teen years - a time that is supposed to be a bridge from childhood into responsible adulthood. Rally around your children during these vulnerable years and find other adults who will help you shape your girls into women of intelligence and virtue and your sons into gentlemen of strong character. Parents must cut through the garbage and make adolescence productive, fun and healthy. But it doesn't happen by accident or by absentee parenting. It takes your time and daily commitment to them as people, determined to pass on your values instead of the values of those who only see your children as cash cows.
Rebecca Hagelin, "We Must Do Better By Our Children," Townhall, May 19, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/RebeccaHagelin/2009/05/19/we_must_do_better_by_our_children

Here's a pleasant surprise: The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to hear arguments in a case challenging the constitutionality of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. This could get interesting.
"Sarbox and the Constitution," The Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2009 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124268754900032175.html
Jensen Comment
This is a pleasant surprise for CEOs who do not want to take responsibility for internal controls in their companies and for companies that want weaker and cheaper financial audits. It is not a pleasant surprise for auditing firms. It could return auditing to the 1990s when audits became unprofitable commodities.

This could be a disaster to auditing firm revenues. Hopefully the Supreme Court will instead lock in SOX for the smelly feet of unscrupulous corporations. It also could badly hurt the recovery of the stock market since investors will have less confidence in the integrity of financial statements.

The poor services of auditing firms became a focal point in the U.S. Congress when equity markets appeared of the verge of collapse due to fear and distrust of the financial reporting of corporations dependent upon equity markets for capital. The Roaring 1990s burned and crashed. In a desperation move Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act

SOX was a shot in the arm for the auditing industry. SOX forced the auditing industry to upgrade services with SOX legal backing that doubled or even tripled or quadrupled fees for such services. Clients continue to grumble about the soaring costs of audits, but in my opinion SOX was a small price to pay for saving our equity capital markets.

The (gay) activist is Andrew Sullivan, one of the movers and shakers in the international homosexual movement. "The real reason for hate crime laws is not the defense of human beings from crime. There are already laws against that," Sullivan writes on his blog, "and Matthew Shepard's murderers were successfully prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in a state with no hate crimes law at the time." Sullivan continues: "The real reason for the invention of hate crimes was a hard-left critique of conventional liberal justice and the emergence of special interest groups which need boutique legislation to raise funds for their large staffs and luxurious buildings. Just imagine how many direct mail pieces have gone out explaining that without more money for [Human Rights Campaign], more gay human beings will be crucified on fences. It's very, very powerful as a money-making tool -- which may explain why the largely symbolic federal bill still hasn't passed."
Charlie Butts, "'Hate crimes' a bogus argument for raising funds," One News Now, May 18, 2009 ---
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=531184

"Busted At Last: KB Home, Countrywide (now owned by Bank of America) Hit With $2.8 Billion Racketeering Charge," Money News, May 8, 2009 ---
http://moneynews.newsmax.com/headlines/kb_home_countrywide/2009/05/08/212443.html

Homeowners brought a federal racketeering lawsuit on Thursday against KB Home (KBH.N), the former Countrywide Financial Corp and appraiser LandSafe Inc, accusing the companies of operating a scheme to fraudulently inflate sales prices of KB homes in Arizona and Nevada.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Phoenix, claims the three companies colluded to overprice as many as 14,000 homes in the two states by an average of $20,000, for an estimated total of $2.8 billion between 2006 and the present. The plaintiffs seek class action status and triple damages.

A KB Home spokeswoman said the Los Angeles-based home builder had not seen the lawsuit and had no comment. Calabasas, California-based Countrywide, which was acquired last year by Bank of America (BAC.N), could not be reached for comment.

The lawsuit contends that KB and Countrywide formed the joint venture Countrywide KB Home Loans to "rig and falsify" appraised values of the homes they were selling and financing in the two states.

The joint venture steered prospective buyers of KB Homes to hand-picked appraisers at Countrywide subsidiary LandSafe who would "come in with the appraisal at whatever number was necessary to close the deal," the lawsuit said.

LandSafe appraisers "blatantly falsified" sales prices for comparable properties, using prices from homes as much as 10 miles away, and citing comparable properties that were in different planned communities, the suit said.

The homes were generally priced between $250,000 and $350,000 -- inflated sums that homeowners discovered when they attempted to sell their homes and hired independent appraisers, said plaintiffs attorney Steve Berman of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP in Seattle.

"Most of these people were underwater from the get-go," said Berman.

The Hagens firm filed a similar lawsuit against KB and Countrywide earlier this year in California, citing claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and violation of the state's unfair competition law.

The case is Nathaniel Johnson v. KB Home et al., 2:09-CV-00972-MHB, in U.S. District Court in Arizona.

Bob Jensen's threads on Rotten to the Core are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on Countrywide Financial (now owned by Bank of America) fraud are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Sleaze

CEO Pay:  How to get your bailout taxpayer cake and eat it too

The new Chrysler is among the first companies to fall under rules outlined in February by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, for companies getting "extraordinary assistance" from the Treasury that would cap pay for top executives at $500,000, excluding restricted shares of stock. The final rules for the limits have not been released. . . . Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has already indicated he will replace Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli. But under the deal, any of Chrysler's top officers can be deemed a Fiat employee who's "seconded" to Chrysler, and therefore take pay from Fiat beyond any Treasury cap.
"Fiat plans to bypass U.S. exec pay limits," by Justin Hyde and Greg Gardner, Freep.com, May  13, 2009---
http://www.freep.com/article/20090513/BUSINESS01/905130318
PS:  Fiat is not putting up any cash to get control of Chrysler. What a deal!

"Golden coffins, golden offices, golden retirement:  Ten of the most egregious executive perks,"
by Allistair Barr, Market Watch, May 13, 2009 ---
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/golden-coffins-10-of-the-most-egregious-ceo-perks?pagenumber=1

Bob Jensen's threads on outrageous executive compensation schemes are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#OutrageousCompensation

Running Your On Campus Computer from Off-Campus Using GoToMyPC Software

I am afraid I don’t have much to add other than what you can read under “Security” at https://www.gotomypc.com/en_US/helpIndex.tmpl

The 30-day free trial is important since you can test whether GoToMyPC can penetrate your campus firewall. Keep in mind that your on-campus computer has to be booted up, which may entail having a secretary boot it up now and then (e.g., after there’s a power failure on campus).

Also keep in mind that if you have a laptop that you use on campus, there’s not added risk in connecting that same laptop off campus.

I used GoToMyPC for a few years and was able to penetrate the Trinity University firewall. There were not problems using my laptop off campus to access my office computer on campus. I was somewhat surprised that GoToMyPC could penetrate the sensitive firewall at Trinity University.

After I retired, Trinity requested that I instead use their Cisco VPN system which is much more limited (albeit free) than GoToMyPC. With VPN, I can update files stored on network drives (e.g., Web server files, BlackBoard files, and my LAN private-access drives on the Trinity network) but not my on-campus computer (which no longer exists after my retirement). I suspect that I could access my on-campus secretary’s computer with GoToMyPC, but I have no need to do that. When I want to send files to her, I upload files via VPN or FTP to my Drive J LAN drive on campus. She also has rights to access my Drive J. She can also access my Web server files such that the few times I’ve had trouble accessing the Web server from New Hampshire she can update my Web files on campus. For a few weeks recently, the Clean Sweep security program for Web server access was giving me trouble. I actually had to send my laptop to techies on campus to fix up the Clean Sweep problem. In the meantime I uploaded files to Drive J on campus, and Debbie then uploaded them into the Drive W Web server on campus. Fortunately this is no longer necessary after my laptop was returned from the techies on campus.

The VPN system really does not add much more than what I can also do with the old fashioned FTP protocol. I actually use VPN and FTP with equal effectiveness. But I miss my GoToMyPC full access to a campus computer.

Other alternatives to GoToMyPC --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoToMyPC

Bob Jensen

Controversial humanist and bioethicist Leon Kass delivers Jefferson Lecture,
warning that, like the sciences, the humanities seem to have lost their soul.

"Tough Love for the Humanities," by Serena Golden, Inside Higher Ed, May 22, 2009 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/05/22/kass

While he described himself as “stunned” to be chosen as this year’s Jefferson Lecturer, Leon Kass was hardly apologetic. The University of Chicago professor is best known for the years he spent as chair of President Bush’s Council on Bioethics, and he was invited to give the lecture last fall by the then-chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bruce Cole, himself twice appointed by President Bush. But Kass -- whose selection was not made public until March 23, two months into the Obama administration -- dismissed the idea that it might be in any way odd for him to deliver the first Jefferson Lecture in the age of Obama.

“My view of the humanities,” he told Inside Higher Ed, “has nothing to do with whose administration it is.”

The Jefferson Lecture is sponsored by the NEH, which describes it as "the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities." And in his lecture, “’Searching for an Honest Man’: Reflections of an Unlicensed Humanist” -- delivered Thursday night at Washington’s Warner Theatre -- Kass summed up his philosophy by saying that “[t]he search for our humanity, always necessary, yet never more urgent, is best illuminated by the treasured works of the humanities….”

But Kass did not come to Washington to defend the humanities; far from it. In his speech, Kass argued that we only benefit from studying the humanities if we do so “in search of the good, the true, and the beautiful” -- and that most institutions of higher learning today are teaching nearly the opposite.

Kass’s reservations about humanistic studies mirror his well-known reservations about scientific advances, and his lecture drew repeated parallels between the two, describing how his early career and studies led him to his current beliefs about both.

In 1965, having completed an M.D. at the University of Chicago and while working on a Ph.D in biochemistry at Harvard University, Kass -- along with his wife, Amy -- spent a summer doing civil rights work in Mississippi. The experience forced him to drastically rethink his world view: “A man of the left, I had unthinkingly held the Enlightenment view of the close connection between intellectual and moral virtue: education and progress in science and technology would overcome superstition, poverty, and misery, allowing human beings to become… morally superior creatures.”

But “the uneducated, poor black farmers” he met that summer “seemed to display more integrity, decency, and strength of character, and less self-absorption and self-indulgence, than did many of my high-minded Harvard friends who shared my progressive opinions.”

This cognitive dissonance, Kass said, was exacerbated by his readings: Rousseau’s Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man. His concerns about education, and about scientific progress in particular, led him, in 1970, to trade his scientific career for one in the humanities; he wanted to study "not the hidden parts of the human being," in the manner of the sciences, but "the manifest activities of the whole" -- for in Kass's view, the great failure of the modern sciences is their refusal to define a human being as anything beyond the precise sum of his physical parts.

In his ensuing career as a humanist -- besides his years on the President’s Council on Bioethics, Kass has been, since 1976, a professor of humanities at the University of Chicago, where he is currently the Addie Clark Harding Professor in the College and the Committee on Social Thought; he is also Hertog Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute -- Kass became known for his misgivings about scientific and technological advances. And while in his speech he referred frequently to those misgivings, his message was about the humanities.

For while the sciences have lost touch with their humanistic origins, Kass said, the humanities have forgotten their relationship “to the ‘divinities’ -- the inquiry into matters metaphysical and ultimately theological.”

Kass argued that it is the job of the humanities to address “questions of ultimate concern: the character and source of the cosmic whole and the place and work of the human being within it.” Unfortunately, the modern “direction of humanistic learning” has “culminat[ed] in a cynical tendency to disparage the great ideas and to deconstruct the great works that we have inherited from ages past….”

This trend, Kass said, is not only antithetical to the proper mission of the humanities, but unfair to college students, most of whom “are in fact looking for a meaningful life or listening for a summons.”

As he told Inside Higher Ed, “There are people who would love to study English literature -- but they go to the English department, where, obsessed with theory, they’re not teaching the books the way the students want to read them.

"We live in a world in which very few people have anything positive to say; there's a kind of intellectual chaos that surrounds us. The last thing young people need is cynicism and a belief that the truth about these matters is whatever you want it to be. They deserve the best help that the best books can offer them, the best thinkers."

In the conclusion of his lecture, Kass argued for a return to his own “old-fashioned” brand of humanism. It is best to read books, he said, “in a wisdom-seeking spirit”; that is, students and professors both should “search [for] the true, the good, and the beautiful.”

Asked by Inside Higher Ed to expound upon this, he complied: “I'm basically saying look, especially in an age in which science is promising or threatening major alterations in human nature and in which the world is changing beyond our comprehension, it seems crucial for humanists to keep alive the important questions of what is a human being, what is a good life for a human being -- individually and communally -- and make sure that everyone is as thoughtful and concerned about those things as possible.”

To Kass, the humanities need not and should not be locked in the ivory tower away from the everyday world; they are not – as Stanley Fish would have it – an end unto themselves. On the contrary, humanistic learning is our best hope for finding the wisdom we need to deal with "the profound ethical dilemmas of our biotechnological age."

At the beginning of his speech, Kass had offered his own life as an example of "what anyone can learn with and through the humanities." But, of course, Leon Kass is not just anyone -- and thus his closing list of those to whom he owes gratitude included "President Bush for the privilege of leading wonderful colleagues... in exploring and defending what is humanly at stake in our emerging brave new world."

At this point, the audience's respectful quiet (broken with laughter at the appropriate points) became a rather more awkward silence, punctuated only by coughs. As he'd promised, the gist of Kass's lecture did not have much to do with whose administration it is.

Bob Jensen's threads on political correctness in academia are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#PoliticalCorrectness

A Knew Kind of Knowledge and Calculating Site:  I found it disappointing for accounting research
Wolfram Alpha --- http://www.wolframalpha.com/index.html

A few things to try: enter any date (e.g. a birth date) june 23, 1988
enter any town (e.g. a home town) new york
     I entered Sugar Hill, New Hampshire and got Sugar Hill, Georgia
enter any two stocks IBM Apple
enter any calculation $250 + 15%
enter any math formula x^2 sin(x)
enter any two first names andrew, barbara
enter any food 1 apple + 2 oranges
enter any measurement 45 mph
enter any chemical formula H2SO4
enter any musical notes C Eb G C
more » Examples by Topic »
Visual Gallery of Examples »
Watch Overview Video »

"Physicist Set to Unveil 'WolframAlpha' Web Site, a New Kind of Research Helper," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 12, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3766&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

What if you could ask your encyclopedia to not only spit out facts, but to perform an analysis with those facts or compute the answers to a math problem for you? A free Web site set to go live this month promises to do just that, potentially becoming a virtual research assistant for professors — or a new way for students to cheat on their homework.

The new site, called WolframAlpha, seems bound to be a useful — and possibly controversial — tool on college campuses. The service will present users with a simple search box, as Google does. But WolframAlpha won’t just point to Web sites about what the user types; it will attempt to compute an answer based on its vast collection of facts and statistical-analysis software.

The hype for the service has been building all week, after a New York Times article called it “one of the most anticipated Web products of the year.”

The site is the brainchild of Stephen Wolfram, a scientist and entrepreneur who is best known for creating Mathematica, number-crunching software popular with engineers and mathematicians.

The product is so new and different that the best way to get a sense of it is to watch a demonstration. Thankfully, Mr. Wolfram presented a sneak peek to researchers at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society late last month. A video of the talk is available online.

Jensen Comment
Wolfram Alpha needs a much faster server. Most of my attempts to access items failed with a message that the site was under extreme user stress (even at 4:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning). The site also needs to add many modules in accounting, business, and finance. I don't think there's much risk that business students will be using this site to find homework answers. The site no doubt works better for science students. The site is good for looking up listed-company summary statistics.

Question
Will the business school faculty shortage be a thing of the past?

"Business PhD Applications on the Rise:  A weak job market has many contemplating PhDs and faculty jobs. Will the business school faculty shortage be a thing of the past?" by Alison Damast, Business Week, May 11, 2009 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/may2009/bs20090511_815452.htm?link_position=link1

With expenses such as business lunches being curtailed and a dwindling list of new clients, Wayne Nelms knew it was only a matter of time before he would be laid off by accounting firm Grant Thornton.

"The writing was on the wall. I just didn't know when," says Nelms, 36, who worked as senior internal auditor at the company's Baltimore office for two-and-a-half-years. "Then I got the e-mail."

By January he was out of a job and found himself at a crossroads. Reluctant to jump back into the job market immediately, he started exploring his options and stumbled upon the PhD Project, a nonprofit that encourages minority business professionals to earn PhDs and go on to become professors. He'd heard of the program back when he was an MBA student at Howard University but had put it on the back burner after graduation.

"When D-day happened, I decided, well I can do one of two things with my future: Either get a doctorate or look for a good old dependable job," said Nelms, who got in contact with the PhD Project. A few weeks later he applied and was accepted to the accounting PhD program at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Md., where he'll be starting full-time this fall. Says Nelms: "With a doctorate, I thought my destiny would be a little more in my control."

Nelms is part of a growing wave of professionals who are leaving the battered business world behind for a career in the hallowed halls of academia. Applications are up substantially this year at many top business PhD programs, with some business schools reporting jumps in applications as high as 40%. PhD program directors attribute the jump to professionals fleeing a weak job market, coupled with a surge of interest from undergraduates bypassing that job market entirely to head straight for school.

An Encouraging Sign Meanwhile, organizations like the PhD Project say more people than ever before are expressing interest in their programs and annual conference, which attracted the largest number of participants in the organization's 15-year history this fall. It's an encouraging sign for the world of management education, where a looming faculty shortage has had B-school deans worried for years.

The surge of interest in becoming a business professor comes just as a backlash is being felt among those in the business community who hold MBAs, says Yuval Bar-Or, an adjunct at Johns Hopkins University's Carey Business School and author of Is a PhD for Me? A Cautionary Guide for Aspiring Doctoral Students, slated for release on May 19. Many fleeing the business world for academia may view it as a more venerable profession, he says.

"MBAs are now persona non grata in many places, and there is a fair amount of animosity being directed at them for living in the fast lane, spending everyone's money, and not being responsible enough," Bar-Or says. "So business leaders, in society's eyes, have been knocked off a pedestal, and that may be causing a lot of people with an interest in business to want to go down a path that is more respected in society."

Those who have been thinking about getting a PhD are not wasting any time exploring their options. Potential PhD students were out in full force this fall at the PhD Project's annual conference in Chicago last November, where attendees mingled with professors and deans from nearly 100 business schools around the country. The conference usually attracts around 330 people, but this year 832 people applied, about 534 of whom were invited to attend.

"This was a substantial increase. It was so big that we were starting to worry from a budgetary standpoint about how we were going to pay for everything and if the room and hotel was going to be big enough," said Bernie Milano, president of the PhD Project. He expects that interest will continue to grow. He's already received 65 applications for next year's conference, triple the amount he usually receives by this time of year, he says.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
There are a number of things working against an explosion of doctoral students in accountancy.
Firstly, the traditionally large accounting doctoral programs (Illinois, Texas, Michigan, Indiana, Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio State, etc.) have greatly shrunk in size since their days of glory before the "accountics" revolution commenced in the 1960s. Shrinking departmental budgets will further dry up funding going into doctoral programs and accounting research in general. Generosity of hard-pressed accounting firms and alumni may also shrink private donations that are often used heavily to fund endowed chair faculty and other needs of doctoral programs.

Secondly, many jobless accountants with high GMAT scores often have children and financial responsibilities and will be turned off by the five-year average time it takes to get an accounting PhD, especially for jobless applicants who have weak and or maybe  forgotten  accountics prerequisites (calculus, advanced calculus, linear algebra, mathematical statistics, econometrics, data mining, etc.) for which few have interest in studying for five more years of their lives. Accounting doctoral programs now have little to do with accounting and everything to do with making graduates scientists in econometrics, mathematics, and psychometrics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

Thirdly, virtually all colleges and universities are now being forced to downsize in some way due to shrinking budget allocations. Recovery of these budgets will be slow long after the current recession turns around because of the many demands placed upon states for other priorities such as Medicare and expanded welfare that was only temporarily shrunk by the Clinton Administration.. While expanding entitlements for poor people, President Obama promises to eventually reduce the Federal deficit which means more and more of the funding burdens will fall upon state taxation. Californians are now showing the world that taxpayers are not in the mood for higher state taxes. I do not anticipate that the shrinking doctoral programs in accountancy will get heavy revival funding for years to come.

Fourthly, due to shrinking budgets and explosive growth in undergraduate accountancy programs, virtually all colleges and universities, with blessings from the AACSB, are creating full-time faculty positions for former practitioners who do not have accounting doctoral degrees (although many have law degrees or doctorates in other disciplines). These faculty reduce the demand for more expensive graduates from accountancy doctoral programs. And this is an outlet for early retirees who are great instructors with specialized skills (e.g., ERP, auditing, and tax) that are more in line with undergraduate teaching curricula in accountancy undergraduate and masters programs.

The new AICPA-sponsored fellowship program for doctoral students who elect auditing and tax will help but the number of students funded in these professional specialties is too small to have much of an impact on filling empty tenure track positions. The KMPG Foundation fellowships for minority students has helped to get more African Americans into accounting doctoral programs, but I do not anticipate great increases in this funding source. The numerical impact of both these dedicated programs will be very small among the thousands of accountancy education programs in the United States.

There will be substantial increases in the doctoral programs in management, marketing, MIS, and economics. Finance is a question mark since the number of undergraduate students majoring in finance will greatly decline due to black hole in job opportunities for graduates in finance. With declines in undergraduate finance majors there will be less demand for newly-minted professors of finance. Economics will probably fare better because the fact that economics doctoral students on average only take three years beyond a bachelors degree to complete the doctoral program. Three-year doctorates are  drawing cards to many returning jobless graduate students who do not want to spend more than three years earning a doctorate. And there will probably be increased opportunities for economists in Obama's exploding Federal government. Purportedly increasing numbers of doctoral students in economics are looking forward to civil service careers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers

May 20, 20096 reply from Zane Swanson [ZSwanson@UCO.EDU]

One other mitigating factor which could increase space at PhD schools may happen “if” PhD students opt for leaving campus “all but dissertation” due to the monetary attraction from schools who need to fill faculty shortage positions.

Zane Swanson

May 21, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Zane,

I think there are more reasons these days not to leave ABD until the dissertation draft is completed and given preliminary approval by the dissertation advisor. Firstly, most PhD programs provide financial incentives to say on campus (e.g., assistantships for the first three or four years and fellowships at the dissertation stage).

Secondly, most hiring schools place increased stress on dissertation completion. Tenure clocks start running upon arrival at a new job whether or not the dissertation is completed. Since publishing is more difficult for ABD faculty concentrating on both teaching and thesis completion, this is a huge incentive to delay startup of a new job.

Thirdly, student evaluation of instructors has become an enormous factor in performance evaluation. A newly hired ABD tenure track professor cannot shirk on teaching preparation and time spent with students. This factor has changed greatly over the past few decades. In 1970 an ABD professor could afford to spend less time on teaching until the dissertation was accepted. Not anymore!

Of course there are many other factors that complicate matters. An ABD candidate may follow a spouse to a new job. An ABD candidate may go beyond five years when there is little financial support in the sixth year of a doctoral program. Sometimes there is a new expected baby adding to financial burdens.

Sadly, most excuses for working full time ABD become reasons for never finishing the dissertation. This happens time and time again. The spouse of a new professor at Trinity University in 2000 was herself ABD in microbiology at the University of Illinois. She was ever so close to finishing but decided to move with her husband to San Antonio and have two new babies after moving. Her husband doubts that she will ever finish her PhD degree since it’s especially difficult in science to take up where she left off years ago. How many times have we heard similar stories about ABD full-time teachers and ABD spouses who become full time parents?

Bob Jensen

You can read more about the accountics revolution that shrank the accountancy doctoral programs at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm

You can read more about trends in accountancy doctoral programs at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

"Test Preparation May Help High Scorers Most, Report Says," by Eric Hoover, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 20, 2009 --- Click Here

Students with above-average scores on standardized admissions tests are likely to get the greatest benefit from commercial test preparation, according to a new report from the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

Yet those benefits may not outweigh the costs for many families, says the report's author, Derek C. Briggs, associate professor of education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "If there are effects to be gained through preparation," Mr. Briggs said, "can you get the same effect without spending the money? That's a pertinent question in this economy."

Existing research suggests that coaching tends to raise students' SAT scores by up to 30 points. Yet students cannot necessarily attribute gains they might see to coaching alone, Mr. Briggs says.

After all, students who take the test more than once tend to see their scores increase anyway. So, Mr. Briggs suggests, some students may raise their scores just as much by doing what he once did: taking a series of practice tests in a relatively inexpensive book.

But even if test takers raise their scores by 30 points, would that make a difference in admissions? It may depend on the scores they start with and the selectiveness of the colleges to which they apply.

In his report, "Preparation for College Admission Exams," Mr. Briggs examined to what extent such increases influence admissions decisions. One third of colleges he surveyed agreed that in some cases an increase of 20 points on the SAT's math section, or an increase of 10 points on the critical-reading section, would "significantly improve" an applicant's chances.

The proportion of colleges that agreed with that statement rose as the base SAT scores (the scores earned before the gains) increased. That was especially true of more-selective colleges, where applicants' scores fall in a relatively narrow range.

"If you come from a wealthy family and have high scores to begin with and can spend $1,000, then test prep might be worth it for those 30 points," Mr. Briggs said. "What's unfortunate is if middle-class or poorer families think test prep is going to raise their scores by 300 points. If you're a kid with scores between 400 to 500, I'm not sure it's going to make any difference."

Seppy Basili, a vice president at Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, was concerned about what that conclusion might say to test takers, particularly black and Hispanic students who, on average, do not score as high as their white peers on the SAT. "I wouldn't want the message to minority students to be that you can't benefit by preparing," said Mr. Basili, who had not seen the report but was familiar with its findings.

Mr. Basili agreed that practice alone can help students improve their scores, but he described effective test preparation as something that also helps students analyze the mistakes they make on exams and develop strategies for correcting them.

Yet Mr. Basili agreed with at least one of Mr. Briggs's observations: the quality of test coaching, like anything else, varies. "I would be the first to tell you that not all test prep is great," Mr. Basili said.

Also see http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/05/20/testprep

Bob Jensen's threads on affirmative action controversies in admissions can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#AcademicStandards

Credit Derivative Swap Fraud
"SEC Charges Pair with Insider Trading in Swaps," SmartPros, May 5, 2009 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x66466.xml

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday charged a securities salesman and a portfolio manager with insider trading in the first such case involving credit default swaps.

The SEC alleges that Jon-Paul Rorech, a salesman at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., tipped off Renato Negrin, a former portfolio manager at hedge fund investment adviser Millennium Partners LP, about a possible change in terms of a bond being issued by VNU NV, a Dutch publishing company that owns Nielsen Media and other media businesses, in 2006. Deutsche Bank was acting as the lead underwriter of the VNU bond issuance.

With knowledge of the potential change in bond terms, Negrin purchased credit default swaps on VNU for a Millennium hedge fund, according to the SEC complaint. After news of the bond terms was released, Negrin sold the swaps at a profit of $1.2 million, according to the SEC.

Credit default swaps are an insurance-like contract that protects a buyer from potential losses that might be incurred on an underlying financial investment, such as a corporate bond or mortgage-backed security. Many of those types of underlying investments have lost much of their value or increasingly defaulted amid the credit crisis.

If the underlying financial investment is not repaid, the buyer of the swap is covered in full for the losses through the swap.

Credit default swaps have been widely seen as one of the major factors in the credit crisis. The trading of swaps helped push Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. into bankruptcy protection and American International Group Inc. the to brink of failure before being bailed out by the government.

Richard Strassberg, a lawyer representing Rorech, said in a statement that his client acted "consistently with the accepted practice in the industry." Strassberg said Rorech did not violate any securities laws tied to the sale of the VNU bonds.

A lawyer for Negrin was not immediately available to comment on the case.

The SEC is asking for the judge to force the two to repay the money gained from the transaction, plus penalties and back interest on the allegedly ill-gotten gains.

The SEC's hedge fund working group handled the investigation. The group has brought more than 100 cases alleging fraud and manipulation by hedge funds over the past five years, including more than 20 in 2009.

Bob Jensen's threads on bank fraud are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#InvestmentBanking

Bob Jensen's threads on derivative financial instruments fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds

"Insider Trading Inside the SEC," by Joe Weisenthal, Business Insider, May 15, 2009 --- http://www.businessinsider.com/insider-trading-at-the-sec-2009-5

Kotz, who told Congress last year he was examining whether frequent trades by the pair broke agency rules, referred the case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington after finding evidence the bets might amount to insider trading, he wrote in the March 3 report released by Senator Charles Grassley. Both lawyers still work for the agency and denied improper conduct.

The report faults the agency for inadequately monitoring trades by employees and relying on an “honor system.” The lawyers frequently discussed stocks at work, traded in at least one company under investigation and didn’t properly disclose some transactions, it says. One lawyer made 247 trades in the two years ending January 2008, and the other made 14.
ead the whole thing >

Bob Jensen's Rotten to the Core threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm

A Raft of Universities Contemplating Suspension of TIAA-CREF and Other Retirement Fund Contributions

"Brandeis Halts Retirement Payments," by Tamar Lewin, New York Times, May 21, 2009 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/education/22college.html?_r=1&hpw

Buffeted earlier this year by the outcry over its plans to raise money by closing its art museum and selling the collection, Brandeis University said this week that it would suspend payments to the retirement accounts of faculty and staff members starting in July.

While universities across the country have taken a wide range of actions to confront their financial problems, including layoffs and the suspension of capital projects, freezing contributions to retirement accounts is rare. Financially troubled corporations have been taking such action, but faculty and staff members at colleges and universities have traditionally enjoyed stable, and generous, benefits — and expect no less.

“There is this perception that the nonprofit world is maybe a gentler, kinder world than corporate,” said Roland King, vice president for public affairs at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. “So some people seem to perceive this as a breach of faith, especially since many people go into nonprofit work at less salary, because the benefits are so good. But we are absolutely at a point in this economy where these sort of things have to be on the table.”

Suspending Brandeis’s contribution to retirement plans from July 1, 2009, through June 30, 2010, will cover $7.4 million of its projected $8.9 million deficit, the university’s president, Jehuda Reinharz, said in an e-mail message to the faculty and staff. In the message, Mr. Reinharz said he had planned to share the news of the suspension at the end of the week, but was pre-empted when it was announced in the May 19 edition of the student newspaper, The Justice.

Peter B. French, the executive vice president and chief operating officer at Brandeis, called the decision “the most equitable and least bad of the options” the university had been considering, adding, “I am quite confident that you will soon see more universities take the same action.”

So far, though, there are only scattered reports of colleges’ freezing retirement contributions — though accompanied by rumors that some of the nation’s largest and most prestigious universities are considering the same move.

“It’s showing up first at smaller institutions that are more financially vulnerable, tuition driven, and maybe have less fiscal options to fill the gap,” Mr. King said.

Brandeis officials said they had concluded that a temporary freeze on retirement contributions would be fairer, and do less harm to the university’s mission and future, than layoffs or across-the-board pay cuts, which some other colleges have undertaken.

Brandeis’s staff and faculty members will still be able to contribute to their retirement accounts, but for the next year, those contributions will not be matched by the university.

Among the other colleges that have frozen retirement contributions in this recession are Cornerstone University, a Christian institution in Grand Rapids, Mich.; Dana College, a 550-student college in Blair, Neb.; and Stephens College,a women’s college in Columbia, Mo.

At Dana, which two years earlier cut some programs and laid off tenured faculty members, the retirement contribution freeze was accepted quietly, said Nikki Kinsey, the director of marketing. “People are happy to still have their jobs, and understand why we had to do it, and that it’s the lesser of two evils,” Ms. Kinsey said.

In Boston, Simmons College suspended its retirement contributions for four months, from March to June, effectively lowering its 9 percent matching of employee contributions to 6 percent for the year.

Chad W. Peterson, a spokesman for TIAA-CREF, the largest retirement fund manager for college employees, said that so far this year 15 higher education institutions and other nonprofits had suspended their employer retirement plan contributions.

The University of Miami said earlier this year that it was considering suspending retirement contributions as part of its strategy for dealing with the economic crisis, but then decided not to do so, at least in the coming fiscal year.

And a number of colleges and universities have trimmed the percentage of retirement contributions they would match; Ithaca College, for example, reduced the percentage to 8 percent, from 8.75 percent.

Brandeis, founded in 1948 in Waltham, Mass., has had a tough year.

In January, the art world was rocked by news that the trustees had authorized the closing of the Rose Art Museum and the sale of its well-regarded collection, which includes works by Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Ellsworth Kelly. That plan is now under review. The museum’s curated exhibitions ended last weekend, but some of the permanent collection will be exhibited starting in July.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Legendary Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff made off with most of the $530 million endowment fund losses at Brandeis University which a year ago had $712 million a year ago before dropping to less than $200 million.

Bob Jensen's thread on the economic crisis --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm

Helpful Calculators free from the Florida Institute of CPAs --- http://www.ficpa.org/ficpa/ResourceCenter/Calculators

Home Financing Should I refinance? How much will my fixed rate mortgage payment be? How much will my adjustable rate mortgage payments be? How much will my payments be for a balloon mortgage? Should I rent or buy? Which mortgage is better for me? How much will I save by increasing my mortgage payment? How much mortgage might I qualify for? Should I consolidate my loans? How much home can I afford? Personal Financing How much car can I afford? Is an Auto Loan or Home Equity Loan best for purchasing a car? How long will it take to pay off my credit card? How much do I need to save for college? How much will I need to save for a major purchase? How much can I afford to borrow? What is my loan rate? How long will it take to pay off my loan? How much will my loan payments be? Should I consolidate my loans? Investment What is the yield on my portfolio? How can I save a million dollars? What is my investment yield? What is my future value worth today? What will my investment be worth in the future? How much could I save over time? What rate would I need to earn on my savings? What savings amount should I start with? How much should I save each month? Retirement Which is better for me, a Traditional IRA or a Roth IRA? How much will my Traditional IRA be worth at retirement? How much will my Roth IRA be worth at retirement? How long will my retirement savings last? What rate do I need to support my retirement? How much do I need to fund my retirement? How much can I spend each month in retirement? Lease How much can I afford to lease? What will my lease residual be? How much will my lease payments be? What is my lease rate? Calculator disclaimer The information provided by these calculators is for illustrative purposes only. The default figures shown are hypothetical and may not be applicable to your individual situation. Be sure to consult a financial professional prior to relying on the results. The calculated results are intended for illustrative purposes only and accuracy is not guaranteed. Presented by TimeValue Software ©2009

Financial literacy quiz --- http://www.app.com/article/20090517/BUSINESS/905170301/1003
Now's the time to really make sure you understand the basics of personal finance.

Bob Jensen's threads on helpful calculators ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#080512Calculators

Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers

Drunken judge drowns in 4 inches of water after slipping into stream walking home from the pub.
Daily Mail (U.K.), May 15, 2009 ---
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1182091/Drunken-judge-drowns-4ins-water-slipping-stream-walking-home-pub.html

"JPMorgan (read that Chase Bank) faces SEC lawsuit," by Aline van Duyn and Francesco Guerrera, Financial Times, May 8, 2009 ---

JPMorgan Chase may be sued by US regulators for violating securities laws and market rules related to the sale of bonds and interest-rate swaps to Jefferson County, Alabama.

The potential Securities and Exchange Commission action is the latest twist in a complex debt financing saga which has already led to charges against Jefferson County officials and which has left the municipality struggling to avoid default on over $3bn of debt, much of it taken on to improve its sewage system.

JPMorgan said in a regulatory filing, made late on Thursday just as the results of bank stress tests were being released, that it had been told about the SEC action on April 21. It said it “has been engaged in discussions with the SEC staff in an attempt to resolve the matter prior to litigation”. The bank had no further comment on Friday.

Jefferson County is one of the most indebted municipalities in the US due to its expensive overhaul of its sewage system. JPMorgan is one of the lenders which has repeatedly extended the deadline on payments due by Jefferson County on its debt and derivatives.

A law is currently being considered that would create a new tax which would provide revenues to pay the sewer debt. If Jefferson County defaults, it would be the biggest by a US municipality, dwarfing the problems faced by California’s Orange County in the 1990s.

The mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, and two of his friends were last year charged by US regulators in connection with an undisclosed payment scheme related to municipal bond and swap deals.

The SEC alleged that Larry Langford, the mayor, received more than $156,000 in cash and benefits from a broker hired to arrange bond offerings and swap agreements on behalf of Jefferson County, where Birmingham is located.

Although the details of the SEC investigation are not known, it is likely to be related to the payment scheme through which banks like JPMorgan paid fees to local brokers at the request of Jefferson County.

The credit crisis has brought to light numerous problems in the municipal bond markets. Many borrowers relied on bond insurance to sell their deals, and the collapse in the credit ratings of bond insurers has made it difficult for many to raise funds or to do so at low interest rates.

Bob Jensen's banking fraud threads are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#InvestmentBanking

Book Readers versus Hard Copy Textbooks
Especially note the two messages from Cheryl Dunn Below
We're glad she was not further harmed after being carjacked at gun point

The $359 Kindle --- Click Here

Much still depends upon the textbook publishers.

The ideal for Kindle is where virtually all textbook publishers have Kindle versions. Then for every semester all the required textbooks in all courses can loaded onto Kindle. Gone are the heavy backpacks. The savings to students across the years will depend upon how much discount is obtained on Kindle versions relative to used hard copy prices.

It’s inevitable that the day will come when hard copy will no longer be an option because of hard copy printing costs, inventory carrying costs, logistical costs of shipping to stores or retail customers, and the costs of buying back unsold copies from the stores. The question is when this day will arrive. My guess is that we are at least ten years or more away from that point in time. Between now and 2020, book readers will improve greatly just like laptop computers improved greatly between 1995 and 2009.

Students gain the immense advantage of Kindle’s word search. Students lose all the comfort and other traditional benefits of curling up in bed or chair with a book.

There is much more risk with a Kindle. If a student loses a book or has a book stolen it’s one book. If a Kindle is stolen it can be the loss of all of a semester’s textbooks. There’s also the risk that Kindle needs to be repaired. I might say Kindle becomes kindle that goes up in smoke, but that’s probably going a bit too far. Eventually there might be local repair/replacement shops for Kindles, but that day is way off into the future.

In ideal circumstances, students should be able to submit police reports to publishers or Amazon for free replacement downloads in a replacement Kindle. Perhaps the Kindle licensed repair shops of the future will be able to download free replacement books. [This is not necessary --- See Cheryl Dunn's reply below]

Can you imagine 12 students coming ten days before the final exam and reporting that their Kindles were stolen? In the past I’ve carried a few extra textbooks for the occasional circumstance where a student needs to borrow a book for a few days. Textbook reps usually supplied me with a few copies for such purposes, but with Kindle the textbook rep will eventually be out of the picture, especially when publishers cease to publish hard copy textbooks.

I personally think the risk of dependency on a Kindle is too high until publishers and/or Amazon take away the worst risks. One possibility would be to sell a backup hard drive that will only work with a given Kindle or replacement Kindle. Then a student who must replace a Kindle could get the secret password to download from the hard drive into the replacement Kindle.

I’ve not yet purchased a Kindle and am waiting for some improvements like multimedia and computing capabilities. But if I were a student today given a choice between hard copy and a Kindle version, I would go for the hard copy every time in spite of putting my spine at risk with a heavy backpack. I guess only nerds/faculty carry brief cases.

Eventually a book reader will not contain downloaded books. It will only access student-rented books from one or two sources. One source might be an on-campus library server. Backup servers might be available from publishers or from distributors like Amazon. That eliminates much of the risk of loss of purchased books stored on a Kindle. A book reader might have computing and note storage drives.

Along fraternity/sorority row back at Iowa State University years ago, the only accepted way to go to class was for fraternity men to carry a book and clipboard on the opposite side from where a slide rule dangled from a belt. Sorority women carried the clip board, book, and slide rule pressed to their chests. Eventually students will be able to carry a Kindle that replaces all this on their hips or chests. They won’t have to rush back to the fraternities and sororities between classes just to change books.

Of course students today use back packs. I’m so old that I don’t recall seeing a single fellow student at Iowa State University wearing a back pack. In the rain, students usually wrapped their book and clipboard in plastic. If you had two classes in a row, it was acceptable to carry two books and a clipboard. More than two books turned you into a nerd.

May 11, 2009 reply from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

Great analysis of the issues, Bob. As for me, I can hardly wait to hold that lovely Kindle DX in my hands. I look forward to waking up on Sunday morning and reading my downloaded NY Times in bed. I will have no trouble cuddling up with a Kindle.

As for risk, back up your books! I am much more at risk with my laptop that contains my whole life. I have hard drive backups at school and home.

Amy Dunbar
UConn

Cheryl Dun is an accounting professor specializing in Accounting Information Systems
She corrects some misleading comments above by Bob Jensen
May 11, 2009 reply from Cheryl Dunn [justcheryl.dunn@GMAIL.COM]

If you purchase and download the books from Amazon, the book is not only downloaded onto your Kindle but is also stored on your "electronic bookshelf" where you can re-download it any time onto a kindle that is registered to you. My brother gave me a Kindle in November for my birthday. I had purchased and downloaded several books in the six weeks I had it. A few days before Christmas

I was carjacked at gunpoint and my laptop, backup hard drive, kindle, purse, and several other precious personal possessions that were in the backseat of my vehicle were stolen. The police recovered the vehicle, albeit with a blown engine. Insurance paid to fix that. Insurance also replaced my Kindle, and it was very easy to download my previously purchased books onto my replacement Kindle (which was actually the kindle 2 since that had come out in the time I was dealing with all the messy paperwork from the theft). Insurance replaced my laptop and backup hard drive, but of course couldn't replace the lost data. Beware of carrying around your backup hard drive with you -- although you are protecting yourself from a crashed hard drive, an armed robbery will devastate you. Online backup is a much safer way to go.

Cheryl Dunn
Grand Valley State University

May 11, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen

I’m glad it wasn’t worse for you Cheryl --- such as taking you with them.

Thanks for information about the “electronic bookshelf.”

I was an early adopter of Rocket eBook where most downloaded books were free. New books tended not to be available for download. I found myself using the Rocket eBook on long flights such as to Asia, Europe, and Down Under. But it sat unused on my shelf except when I was on a long flight --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
I don’t even know where to find it after our move to the mountains.

Pricing will probably be greatly reduced when serious competition emerges. Also there might be special offers such as pre-packaged offers of several books for first-time buyers. Students might also get special offers, perhaps through their college bookstores. I don’t think the cost of a Kindle DX will be the main issue by any means.

Competitors may have more innovative ideas, especially online book rentals. But there are other possibilities such as a Kindle-like device that’s internal or external to a laptop computer where books can be downloaded to suit publisher security requirements for books that can be read on computer screens, thereby avoiding the main cost of a Kindle --- the cost of having its own reader screen.

Bob Jensen

May 11, 2009 reply from Cheryl Dunn [justcheryl.dunn@GMAIL.COM]

Thanks Bob.

Yes, it could have been much worse. I am grateful to be alive after believing for those few terrifying minutes that those would be my last few minutes on earth. Most of the aftermath has subsided and life is back to mostly normal.

I should also point out that if you download books without purchasing them from Amazon, for example, if you download free books from gutenberg.org then you may either keep your own backup copies or you could just re-download them if anything happens. Keeping your own backup copies would prevent you having to re-do any search(es) you did to find the books you wanted.

Another benefit to having the kindle is the free cellular connection to Amazon's whispernet. Although its primary purpose is for you to use it to purchase books with immediate downloads, there is also an experimental feature for basic web browsing. It can't handle very complicated websites, but it still comes in handy especially when I am in locations that don't have a wireless computer network available but do get cellular signals (I have not yet invested in a cellular modem). And you can highlight text passages, look up definitions, make notes, search for a word in a book, and set bookmarks. And if you have vision difficulties you can enlarge the font size several times. The battery life is amazing, especially if you keep the wireless turned off when you are not using it. My only complaint regarding my kindle is that I have to wait until the airline personnel approve the use of electronic devices to use it on an airplane. And I am a bit concerned about the pricing because the last couple of books I purchased had price tags that were higher than the supposed $9.99 standard.

My son who will be starting at Michigan State University as a physics major this fall is very excited about the kindle dx and hopes the textbook publishers hurry to make textbooks available in kindle format. He is willing to spend his own hard-earned money on it. And, yes, he does curl up in bed with his current kindle to read, just as he would with a novel.

Sincerely,
Cheryl

May 11, 2009 reply from Jim McKinney [jim@MCKINNEYCPA.COM]

Built-In PDF Reader Unload the loose documents from your briefcase or backpack, and put them all on Kindle DX. From neighborhood newsletters to financial statements to case studies and product manuals--you can take them all with you on Kindle DX. Native PDF support allows you to carry and read all of your personal and professional documents on the go. With Amazon's Whispernet service, you can send your documents directly to your Kindle DX and read them anytime, anywhere.  

Jim McKinney, Ph.D., C.P.A.
Tyser Teaching Fellow Accounting and Information Assurance
Robert H. Smith School of Business
4333G Van Munching Hall
University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742-1815
http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu

Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm

PDF to MS Word

Turn PDFs Into Word Documents:  The aptly named PDF to Word service extracts the text from PDFs for easy editing in Word. And it's free!" by Rick Broida, PC World via The Washington Post, May 15, 2009 --- Click Here

Ever wish you could edit a PDF file in Microsoft Word? Seems like that should be easy enough, especially when you're dealing with a document that's mostly text. Alas, a PDF is really just a collection of images, meaning you can't edit the contents in their native format.

Of course, there are pricey software utilities that will convert a PDF into Word-friendly text. But there's also PDF to Word, a Web service that accomplishes the same thing absolutely free.

All you do is upload your PDF and choose your desired output format: Word or Rich Text Format. Then you sit tight while the service works its magic, eventually sending you an e-mail with a link to download the converted document.

Best bet: Choose Word over RTF. Word conversions end up looking remarkably similar to your original PDFs. Ultimately, the quality varies from one document to another depending on its content, layout, etc.

Jensen Comment
It is also possible to scan hard copy pages and convert the scanned text into computer text. This is not so simple when using electronic book readers like Kindle, which is why they are the most secure form of publishing for authors who do not want their works copied. Of course no form of publishing is completely secure since cameras may take pictures of text pages.

"Blog vs. Peer Review Final Report: Lessons Learned," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 15, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3773&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Last year Noah Wardrip-Fruin, an assistant professor of communication at the University of California at San Diego, ran an experiment with his latest academic book: He let readers of a popular blog to which he contributes peer review the book in public. This week he shared his final conclusions about the strengths and weaknesses of his unusual approach.

The book’s publisher, MIT Press, administered a traditional peer review of the book, and Mr. Wardrip-Fruin was able to compare the two approaches. One major difference: Blog commenters tended to focus on discrete paragraphs and points, and rarely compared ideas in one chapter to those later in the work. But the blog readers offered more detailed input than the anonymous reviewers solicited by the press.

Mr. Wardrip-Fruin argues that blog reviewing works and that it should be tried again in the future. “Of course, widely read blogs won’t want to be completely taken over by manuscript review,” he writes. “But I can imagine them hosting two or three a year, selected for their level of interest or because they are written by one of the blog’s authors.”

Bob Jensen's threads on peer review are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#PeerReview

Interchangeable Files on a Mac versus a PC
Mac Version of Quicken is Inferior and Incompatible

From Walter S. Mossberg's Mailbox on May 7, 2009 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124164628523093263.html

Q: I switched from PC to Mac a year ago, but now I am thinking of adding a Windows laptop. If I do, what kind of compatibility problem would I have? I would be using the laptop mostly to write, to send/receive email and to Web browse.

A: In the old days, there were compatibility problems, but most of those have gone away. Based on your simple predicted usage, I'd say that you should be fine. For instance, both Macs and PCs can interchangeably open and edit all of the major file types -- JPG pictures, MP3 music, Microsoft Office documents, Adobe PDF files, etc. Email and instant messages can, of course, be exchanged between the two platforms, even if you are using different programs. And Macs understand Windows file extensions. Also, you can use both platforms simultaneously on the same home network to access the Internet.

In some cases, you might need different programs to open the same files on the two platforms. But even that obstacle has greatly diminished. For instance, programs like the Firefox and Safari Web browsers, Adobe Reader, iTunes, Microsoft Office, Google Earth, Picasa, Photoshop and many others come in native versions for both platforms that can handle the same files. And, of course, Web-based programs like Gmail and Yahoo Mail work on both. Sometimes, the same programs have different features and user interfaces on Windows and Macs, but I haven't found these differences hard to master.

The biggest problems for average users are Quicken, whose Mac version is inferior and incompatible; Internet Explorer, which is no longer made for the Mac; and Microsoft Outlook, which is replaced on the Mac by a program called Entourage that is similar but uses a different file format. And networking can be tricky. In general, the Mac does a better job of seeing Windows PCs on a network than Windows does of seeing Macs.

May 12,m 2009 reply from Richard C. Sansing [Richard.C.Sansing@TUCK.DARTMOUTH.EDU]

An alternative is to use a Mac program such as "Parallels Desktop 4 Mac", which emulates a Windows environment on a Macintosh computer. I use it to run software such as Scientific Workplace, which is available for Windows but not for the Mac.

Richard Sansing

 

Bob Jensen's bookmarks on technology are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm

Before reading this it is advisable to read about the Efficient Market Hypothesis --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_Market_Hypothesis
For decades Fama and French have been the leading scholars on this hypothesis

Are mutual fund managers with "superior skills" earning their keep?

For 1984-2006...mutual funds on average and the average dollar invested in funds underperform three-factor and four-factor benchmarks by about the amount of costs (fees and expenses). Thus, if there are fund managers with skill that enhances expected returns relative to passive benchmarks, they are offset by managers whose stock picks lower expected returns. We attempt to identify the presence of skill via bootstrap simulations. The tests for net returns say that even in the extreme right tails of the cross-sections of three-factor and four-factor t(α) estimates, there is no evidence of fund managers with skill sufficient to cover costs.
Eugene F. Fama and Kenneth R. French, "Luck versus Skill in the Cross Section of Mutual Fund Alpha Estimates," SSRN, March 9, 2009 --- http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1356021

Abstract:
The aggregate portfolio of U.S. equity mutual funds is close to the market portfolio, but the high costs of active management show up intact as lower returns to investors. Bootstrap simulations produce no evidence that any managers have enough skill to cover the costs they impose on investors. If we add back costs, there is some evidence of inferior and superior performance (non-zero true alpha) in the extreme tails of the cross section of mutual fund alpha estimates. The evidence for performance is, however, weak, especially for successful funds, and we cannot reject the hypothesis that no fund managers have skill that enhances expected returns.

Bob Jensen's threads on the EMH are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#EMH

"Out of Work in Finance, They Turn to Teaching," by Mary Jo Patterson, The New York Times, May 10, 2009 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/nyregion/new-jersey/10tradersnj.html?_r=1&hpw

In March, the State Legislature approved a pilot program that seemed tailor made for her situation. Called Traders to Teachers, it is designed to turn unemployed finance professionals into math teachers in three months. Successful candidates, who are not required to have been math majors, will attend classes free at Montclair State University.

The response to the program has been overwhelming. Within 48 hours of its unveiling, 200 people called or e-mailed; at least 100 are expected to apply for the first class of 25, according to university administrators. Besides Mrs. Marshall, those who responded include Pedro Ramirez, 48, of Cranford, a Goldman Sachs executive let go in February 2008; Robert Stanley, 50, of Basking Ridge, a 26-year Wall Street veteran out of work since October; and Tony Malanga, 46, of Verona, a mortgage banker who lost his job in March.

“Things collapsed to such an extent in financial services, it’s going to take years to get back to normalcy,” said Mr. Malanga, a father of six. “It’s a good point for me to transition into a new career. Teaching was always something I wanted. In your late 40s, after coming through this, you care more about stability than building wealth.”

Since December 2007, New Jersey’s financial services sector has shed 16,000 jobs, said David J. Socolow, state commissioner of labor and workforce development. Thousands of other residents lost similar jobs in New York.

Traders to Teachers, financed by a federal grant, will do more than retrain dislocated workers, Mr. Socolow said, it will also ease the state’s shortage of math teachers.

Ada Beth Cutler, dean of the College of Education and Human Services at Montclair State, said the idea came to her and Lucille E. Davy, New Jersey’s education commissioner, last fall.

“She called me and said she was hearing about all the people being laid off from financial services,” Dr. Cutler recalled. “She said, ‘Don’t you think these people would make great math teachers?’ I said, ‘That’s funny you should ask, because we’ve been getting calls from them about this.’ ”

Most of the callers had majored in finance or accounting. When they learned they needed 30 college credits in mathematics, she said, they were dismayed.

Special legislation was introduced to ease that rule and fast-track certification.

“That does not mean we will compromise our standards,” Dr. Cutler said. “We will take very bright people and, through a very intensive program, teach them the mathematics they need to know and how to teach it.”

The first 25 of the newly trained teachers are expected to be placed in teaching positions in January. Three more groups are expected to be trained within a year, Montclair State administrators said.

Continued in article

Even the Top Ranked Business Schools are in a Crisis in 2009 (including a slide show) --- http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/08_47/B4109best_business_schools.htm
Applications for MBA programs are up, but job opportunities for second-year students in finance or consulting have turned wretched.
The scary part is that it will be a long, long time before finance and economics students will have rising opportunities.

Bob Jensen's threads on career alternatives --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers

Computing a College's Cost of Each Degree Awarded: 
This illustrates problems managerial accountants face when estimating various types of costs in industry

"What Does a Degree Cost?" by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, May 19, 2009 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/05/19/degree

College tuition prices keep rising. State budgets are stagnant or shrinking. And policy makers, from President Obama on down, are increasingly calling for increases in the number of Americans who get some higher education or training.

Those factors have led more state legislators, trustees and others to argue that, to accomplish the latter goal given the former circumstances, colleges are going to have to lower what they spend to produce the average credential they award. But any discussion of lowering the "cost per degree" must start with a more fundamental question: What does a degree cost to produce now?

That question may be basic, but it is not simple, as a new report from the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability makes clear. The paper, prepared by Nate Johnson, associate director of institutional planning and research at the University of Florida, lays out a range of possible approaches to calculating the cost of a college degree and then calculates them using a rich set of data from the State University System of Florida, where Johnson formerly worked.

The paper shows that it is distinctly possible to come up with such a figure, but the wide variation in the numbers -- based on institution type, program, degree level, and other factors -- suggests that the answer will depend in large part on how the question is framed. And that decision is a surprisingly value-laden one, says Johnson. "You frame the question one way if you are only interested in students who graduate, and another way if you want to know the cost for people who go to college and don't complete," he says. "The point is, this is not just a data question. It's a question of what it is that we want from our colleges and universities."

The broad work of the Delta Project and its founder, Jane Wellman, is to analyze the "spending side" of the higher education cost and price picture; the group has released a series of reports that try to document the interplay of colleges' revenues and expenditures, and how those trends affect what they charge to students. The new study, which grew out of Johnson's work in Florida, he says, aims to develop a "common language," if not a common format, for focusing the discussion about how one might measure the cost of a degree in a particular institution, system or state. Toward that end, Johnson proposes several possible ways of calculating the average cost of a degree.

The analyses are based on data showing that the Florida university system incurred an average of $288 in direct and indirect instructional expenditures per credit hour, with wide variation by level ($188 for lower division undergraduate, $537 for master's, etc.), institution ($240 for an upper level undergraduate credit at the massive University of Central Florida, $677 for the same credit at the 700-student New College), and field of study ($159 in family/consumer sciences, $509 for natural resources/conservation). The analysis counts only those expenditures derived from state appropriations and student tuition, excluding endowment and other funds.

The first estimate, which Johnson calls the "catalog cost," calculates what a college would spend to educate a student who fulfills the "catalog requirements" of the average degree to the letter -- no more, no less. (The equation: cost per credit hour x instructional expenditures/credit hours.) The average cost is $26,485, with institutions within the Florida system ranging from $22,440 to nearly double that. Johnson also found significant variation by field because of vastly different requirements and program length, with mechanical engineering averaging $37,870 vs. $27,159 for elementary education.

The catalog method is easily understood, but it "does not reflect actual student behavior," Johnson notes. More accurate in gauging how students actually maneuver through institutions, he writes, is the "transcript method" of cost analysis, in which the total number of credit hours students take are multiplied by the cost per credit hour, and then divided by the number of degrees awarded. The average freshman who entered a Florida system university and graduated in 2003-4 "attempted" 131 credits, including failed or withdrawn courses and subtracting for any AP or dual enrollment courses that reduced their course requirements.

The average "transcript cost," then, was $31,763; converting to 2006 dollars, to make parallel to the figures from the "catalog cost" analysis, Johnson writes, the average figure is $33,672. (The 2003-4 figure for mechanical engineering was $47,257.)

Both the catalog and transcript cost methods factor into the calculation only those costs incurred by students who actually graduate. The third major analysis, "full cost attribution," examines the entire amount that an institution or system spent on instructional purposes to achieve an "aggregate level of degree completion." The equation looks like this: all credits taken at an institution over three years x the three-year average cost per credit hour/three years of degrees.

Not surprisingly, because all courses taken by all students would be allocated to the smaller proportion who actually earned degrees, this produces the highest cost per degree number; $37,757 in 2002-3 dollars, equivalent to $40,645 in 2005-6, Johnson writes. This analysis grows less predictable and valid the more narrowly it is drawn, he adds, because programs with high attrition, or into which many students transfer late in the game, can have their figures drastically altered. The overall high and low for the Florida university system, for example, were $170,831 for "multidisciplinary studies" and $21,473 for parks and recreation, and the variation by degree level was enormous: $33,425 for a law degree, $259,781 for an M.D., and $121,725 for a doctorate.

So which is the most accurate assessment of what a university spends to educate a graduate? The catalog cost of $26,485, the transcript cost of $33,672, or the "full cost" $40,645? The last is "probably closer to an answer" to the question that policy makers are increasingly asking now, about "what would we have to spend to get more graduates," though that assumes that colleges maintained their current enrollment and expenditure levels, he notes.

But the other key point, Johnson says, is that the choice of how you measure cost depends, to an extent, on how you perceive the role of colleges. Using the "full cost" measure, he asserts, more or less says that most of what a university does is designed to educate students, and that "all of those costs could be attributed to the cost of producing college graduates," as overhead, he says.

"If you highly value research or public service," though, "you could almost say that the graduates are free -- a byproduct" of what you spend on those other purposes.

Jensen Comment
See Bob Jensen's threads on "Systemic" problems of accountancy --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
Especially note the problems of joint costing that plague college cost accounting.

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

The Media's Broken Business Model
The common thread in all of this is that traditional distribution models don’t work anymore. In the past, it was difficult and expensive to move information from producer to consumer. Ever since the middle ages, this has enabled a business model which was all about controlling not content, but how content got to consumers. Newspapers are printed and distributed locally using an expensive and heavily unionized industrial process of the kind that moved offshore decades ago in every other industry. Film, video and music are distributed on plastic discs and reels of film, which someone has to manufacture, ship, and retail. Television requires a special viewer with chips in it that distribution companies have some control over.
Francis Cianfrocca, "The Media's Broken Business Model," Real Clear Markets, May 19, 2009 --- http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/05/the_medias_broken_business_mod.html
Jensen Comment
A problem with information as a product is that once a piece of information is broadcast or leaked to the public, millions of free riders redistribute this information. It is very difficult for the investor (e.g., a newspaper that paid a reporter) to earn a return on the cost of its network of reporters and commentators in this era of free-riding bloggers.

Research that has zero surprises

"No Kidding," by David Shieh, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 22, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i37/37a00602.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

An occasional look at research results that didn't surprise us

SINK OR SWIM: Young children who take swimming lessons are less likely to die of drowning than those who don't take lessons, found a study published in the March issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Researchers, who interviewed the families of 88 drowning victims in six states, conceded that their study did not explain why the correlation exists, but noted that "it seems reasonable to assume that at least part of the protective effect is through increased swimming skills."

BOREDOM EVERLASTING: Bored after seven years of marriage? Little will change after nine more, says a study published last month in Psychological Science. In a study of 123 married couples, researchers reported that boredom in the seventh year of marriage "strongly and significantly predicted less satisfaction" in the 16th year. Luckily, researchers also found a way to save marriages from being eroded by boredom: adding "excitement" to the relationship.

SWEDE TOOTH: Those who wake up in the middle of the night to head for the refrigerator are more likely to be obese, reports a study in this month's issue of the journal Obesity. Researchers, who teamed up with the Swedish Twin Registry in Stockholm to survey more than 20,000 Swedish twins for the study, found that "night eating" was also correlated with binge eating, disrupted sleep patterns, and insomnia.

IS THAT A BENTLEY IN YOUR POCKET? Men who drive luxury cars are found to be more attractive than those who drive subcompacts, says a study published online in March in the British Journal of Psychology. Study participants were shown pictures of a model of the opposite sex in two different cars: a silver Bentley Continental and a red Ford Fiesta. While men found the model equally attractive in both settings, women rated the model as "significantly more attractive" when sitting in the Bentley. Noted the study: "It would appear that despite a noticeable increase in female ownership of prestige/luxury cars over recent years, males, unlike females, remain oblivious to such cues."

Send ideas to short.subjects@chronicle.com

Jensen Comment
This bring backs those chuckling "Golden Fleece Awards" that were given annually out by Senator William P:roxmire (D, Wisconsin) when he was in office. The Golden Fleece Awards had the added distinction of having government funding for the research.

Research in the leading "accountics" academic accounting journals has the lowest citation rate among all the business research disciplines. Virtually none of it is ever replicated. I think one of the main reason is that there are no surprises to a point where many of the published academic research studies in accounting are candidates for Shieh's "No Kidding" acknowledgements and often a "Golden Fleece Award" (GFA) when university funds contributed to the research efforts.

Academic accounting research has the added distinction of having some GFA candidates that also won top awards such as Notable Contributions to Accounting Awards issued by the American Accounting Association --- http://aaahq.org/awards.cfm
Most of these awards have questionable value since nobody ever found them worthy of replication.

Bob Jensen's threads on the lack of replication in empirical accounting research --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#Replication

Bob Jensen's threads on accountics research ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/03MainDocumentMar2007.htm

Professor Ketz Asserts Other Comprehensive Income (OCI from FAS 130)
may be More Important to Study Than Reported Income

"Citigroup Remains in Critical Condition," by: J. Edward Ketz , SmartPros, May 2009 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x66534.xml
Note that all Citigroup dollar amounts are in millions of dollars such that  $(27,684) is really a $27,684,000,000 billion loss.

The stress tests conducted by the Fed are a farce inasmuch as the stress isn't too strenuous. That the Fed ascertained additional capital requirements for several banks merely points out the obvious - the banking sector remains in serious trouble.

That the financial industry was and remains in trouble is not revelatory to those who pay attention to fair value measurements. Take Citigroup for instance. This firm, once a giant among banks, now gasps for its existence.

Citi’s reported net income was $(27,684) for 2008 (all accounting numbers in millions of dollars). While this is a smelly number, the odor grows worse when one adjusts it for various items that bypass the income statement.

Ever since the FASB invented the comprehensive income statement in a political move to get business enterprises to do some accounting for items they didn’t want to disclose, I have advocated that investors use comprehensive income instead of net income. Comprehensive income includes relevant items that have had a real economic impact on the business entity; therefore, investors will find these items informative.

For fiscal 2008, Citi shows unrealized losses on its available-for-sale securities of $(10,118). It also shows a loss on the foreign currency translation adjustment of $(6,972), a loss on its cash flow hedges of $(2,026), and a loss for additional pension liability adjustment of $(1,419). This makes Citi’s comprehensive income $(48,219).

But the bad news doesn’t end there. The pension footnote (footnote 9) shows the expected rate of return is 7.75%. While this is what is required per FAS 87, it is nonsense. Did anybody know the 2008 rate of return in (say) 2005? The FASB should get rid of such fantasyland assumptions and require business enterprises to employ the actual rate of return. If Citi had done so on its pension assets, it would have had an actual return of (5.42)%, so we shall adjust downward the 2008 income by another $1,370.

The most interesting item is Citi’s move with respect to its investments. It reports debt securities in its 2007 held-to-maturity portfolio of only $1. By year end 2008, however, this amount mushroomed to $64,459. Clearly, Citi is shielding these debt instruments from fair value accounting and the reporting of additional losses. Footnote 16 indicates that these losses for 2008 amounted to $(4,082).

Another item concerns the firm’s deferred income tax assets. For 2008, Citi discloses $52,079 in deferred income tax assets and a valuation allowance of zero. Given that Citi paid no federal income taxes in 2007 or 2008 and likely will pay no federal income taxes in the near future, if ever, how can the company justify a valuation allowance of zero? Whatever amount it should be would further reduce the profits of the firm. Since we don’t know how to estimate this valuation allowance correctly, we shall continue to hold its balance at zero, even though this is clearly wrong.

Putting these considerations together, Citigroup has an adjusted income in 2008 of $(53,671). This is still an estimate but clearly it is more nearly accurate than the reported number. And it reveals that Citi lost twice as much as it reported.

Recently, we have been hearing how Citi has turned things around and that the first quarter in 2009 returns Citi to the black column with a profit of $1,593. Don’t believe a word of it!

Items in comprehensive income shows a modest gain in the available-for-sale portfolio of $20, gains on cash flow hedges of $1,483, and a gain because of the pension liability adjustment of $66. Unfortunately, these gains are wiped out by a loss in the foreign currency translation adjustment of $(2,974). Comprehensive remains ugly at $(225).

We don’t have any disclosure in the quarterly report about actual versus expected returns on pension assets, so we cannot adjust them to show the truth.

But, the strategy to move debt securities from available-to-sale to held-to-maturity paid off significantly. First quarter results show a staggering loss on these securities of $(7,772).

So far, the adjusted earnings for Citigroup for the first quarter of 2009 is $(7,584). Don’t tell me that Citi has improved its operations.

Further, these numbers have been improved by an eccentricity in FAS 157. For some silly reason, the board allows entities to show a gain on their liabilities if the firm’s own credit risk has increased. This takes a perfectly good notion of fair value of liabilities to an absurd result. Failing companies might be able to make liabilities disappear by claiming a sufficiently high increase in their own credit ratings! Utter rubbish—and the FASB should amend its statement.

Citi disclosed in a conference call that the first quarter results include a gain of $2,700 because of this increase in its own nonperformance risk. This gain is total nonsense, so I would adjust quarterly income further, giving Citi adjusted earnings of $(10,284).

Citigroup suffered a cardiac arrest in 2008, and it remains in critical condition. Any other conclusion is propaganda or self deception. And forget the stress tests; they are so flawed that Lehman Brothers might pass them. The Fed says that Citi needs another $5,500 in capital to weather any additional economic crises it might face. It isn’t true. Citi needs a lot more capital than that just to weather current conditions. If a real crisis occurs, Citi will become a flat-liner; it might die anyway.

If you want to protect your portfolio, don’t listen to the optimistic forecasts coming from Washington and don’t stop at the reported income number. Look at the fair value disclosures within SEC filings, adjust reported earnings for these fair value gains and losses, and then you will obtain the truth.

Bob Jensen's threads on the banking bailout are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm

"U. of Colorado Makes It Official: Ward Churchill Is Not Welcome Back," by Peter Schmidt, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 21, 2009 --- Click Here
 

The University of Colorado has filed a court brief formally responding to Ward Churchill’s bid for court-ordered reinstatement to the faculty. As university officials had suggested would be the case, their stand on his reinstatement is a very emphatic no.

In the brief, filed yesterday in state court, the university’s lawyers note that the jury that found last month that Mr. Churchill had been fired unjustly, in violation of his free-speech rights, also determined that he was due only $1 in damages. The jury’s decision to award Mr. Churchill such a nominal sum “can be seen only as a complete repudiation of Professor Churchill’s scholarship and the jury’s ultimate conclusion that he destroyed his own reputation.”

The brief also seizes upon remarks by Mr. Churchill’s lawyer, David A. Lane, as reason to deny the professor’s reinstatement. In an interview with The Denver Post following the jury’s verdict, Mr. Lane said university officials would face another lawsuit by Mr. Churchill if they so much as “look at him cross-eyed” after his reinstatement. Likewise, Mr. Lane told the Colorado Daily that Mr. Churchill would sue if the university put him in a basement office or stripped him of class time.

The brief argues that such threats place the university in an untenable position, where it faces the threat of litigation over routine academic decisions and must effectively immunize Mr. Churchill from complying with professional scholarly standards if it does not want to be sued for investigating any new complaints of misconduct brought against him.

If the court decides to award Mr. Churchill anything, the brief says, it should only be compensation for the pay he would be earning if he had kept his job. The brief argues, however, that he should not even be given that.

Bob Jensen's threads on Ward Churchill are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HypocrisyChurchill.htm

From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on May 7, 2009

Firms Face New Tax Curbs
by John D. McKinnon and Jesse Drucker
The Wall Street Journal
May 04, 2009
Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com

TOPICS: Corporate Tax, International Taxation, Tax Accounting, Tax Deferrals

SUMMARY: The White House is unveiling a tax plan that will crack down on corporate offshore tax avoidance. The plan also will seek to tighten rules that have encouraged thousands of American individuals to open offshore accounts. Opponents say the new rules will hamper U.S. companies in competing with foreign competitors not subject to the U.S. tax.

CLASSROOM APPLICATION: President Obama is proposing changes to many of the corporate tax laws. Our students should know that the tax code is constantly changing, and major changes can and do happen. This should further inspire them as future business managers to monitor tax law that could impact their business or industry, even if they are not accountants. The article also discusses many of the tax deductions, credits, and deferrals that could change in the near future. It could also be used for class discussion regarding the influence tax law has on U.S. businesses with foreign competition.

QUESTIONS: 
1. (Advanced) What proposals is the Obama administration making regarding corporate taxation? What reasons has the administration given for the changes?

2. (Advanced) What is the position of those who are opposed to the changes? Why is there a competition issue?

3. (Introductory) What changes are proposed for individuals? How would these changes be implemented and enforced?

4. (Introductory) What amount of money is projected to be raised by each of these changes? Who ultimately pays for these additional taxes?

5. (Advanced) How is job creation related to the tax incentives? The parties differ on the impact the changes would have on the creation of jobs. How could jobs created by the proposed changes in tax law? How could jobs be lost if the changes were made? Thinking through the ripple effects of the tax changes, which do you think would happen - more U.S. jobs or fewer? Why?

6. (Advanced) How is deferral used to benefit companies? How are the "check-the-box" rules used? Are these improper rules or is the usage of the rules sometimes abusive? Please offer reasons for your answer.

Reviewed By: Linda Christiansen, Indiana University Southeast

RELATED ARTICLES: 
President's Tax Proposal Riles Business
by John D. McKinnon
May 05, 2009
Page: A3

"Firms Face New Tax Curbs," by John D. McKinnon and Jesse Drucker, The Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124140022601982149.html?mod=djem_jiewr_AC

The Obama administration will roll out details Monday of what aides are calling a far-reaching crackdown on offshore tax avoidance, targeting many U.S.-based multinational corporations and wealthy individuals.

President Barack Obama will flesh out a proposal included in his February budget blueprint seeking to curb the practice of parking foreign earnings in offshore tax havens indefinitely. By some estimates, $700 billion or more in U.S. corporate earnings have accumulated in overseas accounts in recent years.

The plan to be announced Monday will go further. It aims to change the legal treatment of offshore subsidiaries and structures that companies have used to avoid not only U.S. taxes, but taxes in other developed countries as well.

In addition, the administration will strive to tighten rules that have encouraged thousands of Americans to open offshore bank accounts in an effort to duck U.S. taxes. The plan would increase information reporting and tax withholding as well as penalties, and make it harder for foreign account-holders to win cases in court. The administration promised new enforcement tools to crack down on tax-haven abuse.

"What we really have is a system that is in many ways broken," a senior administration official said Sunday, one that "allows people to play games...to almost completely avoid paying taxes on active foreign earnings."

The sweep of the administration's plan took some tax experts by surprise, and foreshadows potential fights with big businesses later this year over some of their most cherished breaks, particularly as Congress looks for revenue to pay for new initiatives.

"There absolutely will be" opposition from business, particularly if the administration doesn't allow a suitable adjustment period, said Phil West, a lawyer with Steptoe & Johnson LLP, who was international tax counsel for the Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton.

The president's announcement comes as he prepares to release a more detailed budget blueprint later this week. And the high-level attacks on big business follow a series of White House broadsides on corporate practices. Mr. Obama riled Wall Street last week by crafting a bankruptcy deal for Chrysler LLC that favored the United Auto Workers union over a series of lenders.

White House officials said the latest proposals simply follow through on Mr. Obama's frequent criticism that current U.S. tax rules encourage multinationals to move jobs overseas. The new tax plan also aims to increase incentives for job creation in the U.S., they said, noting that some of the money raised would be used to cover the cost of extending a soon-to-expire federal tax credit for research costs.

Many of Mr. Obama's proposals will require congressional approval. And while Democrats control both houses of Congress, many members of his own party have expressed reluctance about raising taxes, so prospects for the proposals are uncertain, even though none would take effect until 2011.

A senior Republican aide termed the proposals a "revenue grab," predicting they could end up driving more corporate operations overseas. Some or all of the changes could become fodder for broader tax reform next year.

"If rules are changed on tax deferral and we are taxed in the U.S. on non-U.S. profit, this significant additional U.S. tax cost would adversely impact our ability to invest and grow our business in the U.S....and to compete against our foreign competitors who are not subject to this U.S. tax," said John Earnhardt, a Cisco Systems Inc. spokesman.

The president's tax announcement, to be made with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, is part of an administration plan to raise as much as $210 billion in extra tax revenue over the next decade, in an effort to trim budget deficits and pay for job-creation incentives and other programs.

The plan takes aim at a range of financial practices that have combined to erode the U.S. tax base in recent decades. As money has become more readily transferable -- and aggressive tax planning more widespread -- it has become easier for companies and individuals to take advantage of low taxes as well as lack of transparency in many offshore havens.

In one big change, the administration is aiming to curb a practice commonly known as "deferral," which U.S. multinationals use to shave their tax bills on their overseas operations.

Under current law, U.S. companies can defer taxes indefinitely on the many of the profits they say they have earned overseas until they "repatriate" that money back to the U.S. The administration seeks to sharply limit the tax deductions that companies taking advantage of deferral can take.

Still, the proposal is far less dramatic than what many companies had feared: a complete repeal of the deferral regime.

The proposal to be announced Monday also would clamp down on some other overseas tax-avoidance techniques that are widely used by U.S. multinationals.

The Obama administration wants to overhaul what it describes as a much-abused set of regulations known as the "check-the-box" rules. These give companies great latitude in deciding where exactly their subsidiaries should be taxed. Those rules have encouraged companies to take further advantage of low-tax haven countries with their offshore subsidiaries.

The administration also wants to toughen rules governing the tax credits that the U.S. grants companies to offset taxes they pay to foreign governments. That system has become the subject of elaborate gaming, U.S. tax officials say.

Overall, the deferral proposal would raise about $60.1 billion through 2019, according to the administration's estimates. Unlike a similar proposal in the House, it wouldn't affect research deductions, a likely victory for some industries such as pharmaceuticals. The reform of check-the-box rules would raise about $86.5 billion through the same period. The changes in foreign-tax-credit rules would raise about $43 billion. The changes to crack down on individual bank accounts would raise $9 billion.

The current U.S. rules for corporations carry enormous benefits for companies. Unlike most deferred taxes, those stemming from foreign earnings don't cut into a company's bottom line as long as they are considered "permanently reinvested" overseas.

The result can have a huge impact on a company's bottom line. The pharmaceutical and technology industries are particular beneficiaries.

From the Scout Report on May 8, 2009

Ubuntu 9.04 --- http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download 

The word "ubuntu" is an African word that means "Humanity to others". It seems like an appropriate name for a free operating system that contains a slew of applications such as a web browser, document and spreadsheet software, and instant messaging. This particular version is compatible with all operating systems running Linux.

---

Moo0 System Monitor --- 1.4.0 http://www.moo0.com/ 

With the Moo0 system Monitor, visitors can keep a close eye on how their operating system is utilizing different resources. From the left hand side of the homepage find the "System" heading, then click on System Monitor. Once downloaded, the resource monitor appears as a long vertical bar that provides basic data on CPU, network, and memory utilization. Additionally, the bar can be shrunk so it is a bit less intrusive. This version is compatible with computers running Windows XP and newer.

---

With an urban renaissance underway, Hartford begins to think about their hockey heritage In Hartford, Fans Still Harbor Hope For N.H.L. Team [Free registration may be required]
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/sports/hockey/26cheer.html?em 

The Blowhole! Hartford Whalers http://www.hartfordwhalers.org/ 

Brass Bonanza http://www.brassbonanza.com/hcc/ 

The Sports Economist http://www.thesportseconomist.com/ 

Grateful Dead Live at Hartford Civic Center on October 10, 1984
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1984-10-14.fob.beyerm88.suraci.77990.sbeok.flac16 

Mark Twain House http://www.marktwainhouse.org/

 

Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance, economics, and statistics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

Education Tutorials

Academic Service [iTunes] http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/academic-service/ 

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

Physics for Humanists --- http://ocw.tufts.edu/Course/30

Physics History Videos:  Physclips --- http://www.physclips.unsw.edu.au/

Physics Education Technology --- http://phet-web.colorado.edu/new/index.php

Virtual Microbiology --- http://inst.bact.wisc.edu/inst/index.php?module=Book&func=toc&book_id=3 

Supercourse:  Epidemiology, the Internet and Global Health http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/index.htm

Images from the History of Medicine --- http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/ihm/ 

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

PBS Television will now answer your personal finance questions ---
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/insider/business/jan-june09/pocketchange_05-05.html

Jewish American Heritage Month --- http://www.jewishheritage.gov/index.html

ShortEnd Magazine: Thoughts on Independent Film [iTunes] --- http://shortendmagazine.com/

The Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings --- http://frontera.library.ucla.edu/

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

Primary Sources on Copyright, 1450-1900 --- http://www.copyrighthistory.org/

Ebony --- http://books.google.com/books?id=r9QDAAAAMBAJ

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

Oregon Maps --- http://boundless.uoregon.edu/digcol/ormaps/index.php 

The Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings --- http://frontera.library.ucla.edu/

Fashioning Felt --- http://exhibitions.cooperhewitt.org/Fashioning-Felt/

African tribe colonized world 70,000 years ago
Research by geneticists and archaeologists has allowed them to trace the origins of modern homo sapiens back to a single group of people who managed to cross from the Horn of Africa and into Arabia. From there they went on to colonise the rest of the world. While there are 14 ancestral populations in Africa itself, just one seems to have survived outside of the continent, the Daily Telegraph reported.
The Times of India, May 11, 2009 --- Click Here
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Health--Science/African-tribe-colonized-world-Research/articleshow/4507306.cms

A single tribe of around 200 people which crossed the Red Sea 70,000 years ago is responsible for the existence of the entire human race outside Africa, a new study has found. Research by geneticists and archaeologists has allowed them to trace the origins of modern homo sapiens back to a single group of people who managed to cross from the Horn of Africa and into Arabia. From there they went on to colonise the rest of the world. While there are 14 ancestral populations in
 

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

The Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings --- 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/

May 9, 2009

• Swine Flu: Fall Flu Season Looms
• Treat Psoriasis at Home
• Low BP Risky for Heart Patients?
• Cancer: Minorities in More Pain
• U.S. Face Transplant Revealed

May 11, 2009

• Genes Linked to High BP
• Walk Backward, Sharpen Thinking
• Low Folate Linked to Allergies
• Job Loss? Watch Your Health
• Learning From Pandemics Past

May 15, 2009

• 100,000+ in U.S. Have Flu
• Chewable Aspirin Best for Heart
• Kava for Anxiety: Is It Safe?
• Ginger May Root Out Nausea
• Cheerios Warned on Health Claims

May 19, 2009

• Sleep More, Weigh Less?
• Green Tea Molecule Blocks HIV
• Obese Heart Patients Live Longer
• Chewable Aspirin Best for Heart
• Farrah Fawcett's Cancer Care

May 21, 2009

• Physically Fit Live Longer
• Down Syndrome Yields Cancer Clue
• Brains + Beauty = Higher Salary
• Medical Errors Still Plague U.S.
• Flomax Linked to Surgery Risks

May 22, 2009

• Natalie Cole's Kidney Transplant
• Sunscreen Label Changes Coming
• Comfrey Root Eases Back Pain
• Vitamin D for Quicker Thinking?
• Swine Flu Immunity For Some?

May 22, 2009

• Highest Life Expectancy: Where?
• Recession Is Bad for Health
• Natalie Cole's Kidney Transplant
• Sunscreen Label Changes Coming
• Comfrey Root Eases Back Pain

Features

• 10 Secrets to Whiter Teeth
• Why Some Get Summer Depression
• Truth About Antibacterial Soap
• 6 Daily Habits Making You Sick
• Teen Drug Abuse Warning Signs

 

 "How Down Syndrome Stops Cancer:  Customized Down syndrome stem cells reveal a way to starve tumors," by Jocelyn Rice, MIT's Technology Review, May 21, 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22681/?nlid=2046

For decades scientists have known that people with Down syndrome, who have an extra copy of chromosome 21, get certain types of cancer at dramatically lower rates than normal. Now, partly by using stem cells derived from the skin of an individual with Down syndrome, researchers at Children's Hospital Boston have pinpointed the gene that appears to underlie the cancer-protective effect.

The researchers say the results of their study, which were published today in Nature, may point to a promising new target for future cancer treatments. And according to stem-cell biologists, the work also highlights a growing trend in the field: harnessing disease-specific stem cells not as therapies but rather as models for understanding particular genetic disorders.

Stem cells "can be useful not simply because you take them and transplant them," says Evan Snyder, director of the stem cells and regenerative medicine program at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in San Diego. "They are useful as models of disease that reveal other kinds of therapies." Snyder was not involved in the new study.

The late Judah Folkman, a cancer researcher renowned for pioneering the notion that blocking angiogenesis--the growth of new blood vessels--can prevent tumors from thriving, hypothesized that the lower cancer rates associated with Down syndrome might be traced to anti-angiogenesis genes on the 21st chromosome. So Sandra Ryeom, a member of the Folkman Laboratory in the Vascular Biology Program at Children's Hospital, zeroed in on a region on chromosome 21 known to encode a regulator of blood vessel growth called DSCR1.

In chromosomally normal mice, the standard two copies of the Dscr1 gene produce just enough protein to help reign in normal blood-vessel growth, but not enough to stem the angiogenesis overload triggered by a developing tumor. But in mice with an artificial version of Down syndrome (and thus a third copy of the Dscr1gene), Ryeom found that the surplus of DSCR1 protein kept abnormal angiogenesis--and the resulting tumor proliferation--in check.

While Ryeom and her colleagues suspect that DSCR1 works in concert with a handful of other chromosome 21 genes, they confirmed that the protein plays a central role in tumor suppression. A third copy of the Dscr1 gene alone was enough to stifle cancer formation in otherwise normal mice, though not to the same degree as in the Down syndrome mice.

To confirm that the gene is relevant in human cancers, Ryeom and her colleagues created a custom line of stem cells from skin cells taken from an individual with Down syndrome. Using a relatively new technique called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell reprogramming, researchers can express specific genes in differentiated adult cells and revert them to an earlier developmental state, where they are capable of giving rise to many different cell types.

Continued in article

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

Punning in a Foreign Language
These are from a New York magazine competition where they asked competitors to change one letter in a familiar non-English phrase and redefine it
 

• Harlez-vous francais? -- Can you drive a French motorcycle?
• Ex post fucto. -- Lost in the mail.
• Idios amigos. -- Wild and crazy friends!
• Veni, vipi, vici. -- I came; I'm a very important person; I conquered.
• Veni vidi Velcro  --  I came, I saw, I stuck around.
• J'y suis, j'y pestes. -- I can stay for the weekend.
• Cogito eggo sum. -- I think; therefore, I am a waffle.
• Rigor morris. -- The cat is dead.
• Repondez s'il vous plaid. -- Honk if you're Scots.
• Que sera serf. -- Life is feudal.
• Le roi est mort. Jive le roi. -- The king is dead. No kidding.
• Posh mortem. -- Death styles of the rich and famous.
• Pro bozo publico. -- Support your local clown.
• Monage a trois. -- I am three years old.
• Pardonnez-mot. -- That wasn't funny. Sorry.
• Felix navidad. -- Our cat has a boat.
• Haste cuisine. -- Fast French food.
• Veni, vidi, vice. -- I came, I saw, I partied.
• Quip pro quo. -- A fast retort.
• Aloha oy. -- Love; greetings; farewell; from such a pain you should never know.
• Mazel ton. -- Lots of luck.
• Apres Moe le deluge. -- Larry and Curly get wet.
• Porte-kochere -- Sacramental wine.
• Ich liebe rich -- I'm really crazy about having dough.
• Fui generis -- What's mine is mine.
• Visa la france -- Don't leave chateau without it.
• Ca va sans dirt -- And that's not gossip.
• Merci rien -- Thanks for nothin'.
• Amicus puriae. -- Platonic friend.
• L'etat, c'est moo. -- I'm bossy around here.
• L'etat, c'est Moe. -- All the world's a stooge.

A friend said this recession is worse than divorce.
He lost half his money and is still stuck with his wife.

Forwarded by Paula

The Darwin Awards --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards

The Darwin Awards It's that time again... The Darwin Awards are finally out, the annual honor given to the persons who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way.

Last year's winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out.

This year's winner was a real rocket scientist.... HONEST!

Read on...And remember that each and every one of these is a TRUE STORY.

* * * * * * * * * * * And the nominees were:

Semifinalist #1

A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply, because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he rushed to vomit into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire burned his house down, killing both him and his unfortunate sister.

Semifinalist #2

Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude when another plane approached. It appears that they decided to moon the occupants of the other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants around their ankles (HARD to control light airplanes when everyone moves to one side).

Semifinalist #3

A 22-year-old Reston , VA man was found dead after he tried to use octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot rail road trestle. Fairfax County police said Eric Barcia, a fast food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby.. 'The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground,' Carmichaelsaid. Police say the apparent cause of death was 'Major trauma.'

Semifinalist #4

A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a friend were playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball. The friend -- no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate -- was hospitalized.

Semifinalist #5

Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated the building extinguishing all potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc.

After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked. Witnesses later described the sight of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a cigarette lighter. Upon operation of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician suspected of causing the blast had never been thought of as ''bright'' by his peers.

Now, to the winner of this year's Darwin Award

(awarded, as always, posthumously):

The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. Police investigators finally pieced together the mystery. An amateur rocket scientist ... had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off, actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy military transport planes an extra 'push' for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road.. He attached the JATO unit to the car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO. The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3..0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the scorched and melted asphalt at that location.

The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20-25 seconds.

The driver, and soon to be pilot, would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, causing him to become irrelevant for the remainder of the event. However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock. Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable. However, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.

Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron attained a ground speed of approximately 420-mph, though much of his voyage was not actually on the ground.

Forwarded by Gene and Joan

I've often been asked, “What do you old folks do now that you're retired?”

I'm fortunate to have a chemical engineering background, and one of the things I enjoy most is turning beer, wine, Scotch, and margaritas into urine.

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

The Master List of Free Online College Courses --- http://universitiesandcolleges.org/

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

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