Tidbits on March 18, 2010
Bob Jensen
A glorious sunrise (the photo has not been
retouched in any way)
We have a wild cranberry bush on each corner
of the front of our cottage.
I look at wild cranberries most of the year because of where my desk is located.
They begin in July as tiny beads on blossoms
By late summer they are red as shown below
This is how the cranberries looked in the
middle of summer
Morning dew clings to the bottom of each
wild cranberry
Wearing Caps of Snow
The birds really don't care for wild
cranberries most of the year
Although birds dart about these bushes in all seasons
They end up leaving most of the cranberries until early spring (which is really
still winter up here)
By March the birds are so hungry they will even eat the wild cranberries
This is a dreary time of year in these
mountains
Wind and rain took away most of our beautiful snow
And the nights are too cold to bring on tree buds and spring blossoms
Nature seems to know that we can have another six feet of snow up to the end of
May
I never plant anything until June 10
But things grow fast up here in the long summer daylight
In the late June we will once again have lupine in our south field
Last summer I mostly planted snap dragons,
verbena, alyssum, and bordering yellow-bidens
I prefer the alyssum and bidens because of the way they spread
And crowd out most of the weeds
Erika on the other hand insists on planting
roses
I think roses are a dumb thing to plant
All summer long she then has to fight WW II all over again
Against the thousands upon thousands of invading Japanese beetles
In winter, WW II is happily paused. Erika
can't even find her rose bushes that I cover with burlap
But in July and August her roses are
beautiful
Pictures Below Were Sent Mostly by Auntie Bev and Paula
Which one is the blind date?
Dream The Impossible Dream
This
is my reply to somebody on the AECM who is becoming increasingly
cynical about our profession in the wake of the Lehman Report.
Hi
XXXXX
As
with most things in life, especially in accounting, law, medicine,
politics, and war, it’s easily to get discouraged and even cynical
because of all the bad things that are in the media.
However, all of our academic background has convinced us to balance
everything. In virtually every instance we must balance the bad
things with the countless good things that counterbalance the bad.
For example, Sarbox has failed us in the publicized articles, but
the countless successes of Sarbox just don’t get balanced in the
media. The bad is seldom counterbalanced by the good in the media,
including our listserv messaging.
The
thing to pass on to students is to build on the bad and not get
buried under it.
There is one writer in accounting and finance, Prem Sikka, that
particularly gets my goat in his published Guardian articles,
because he is always one-sided. I often learn things from his
articles and sometimes pass them along in my tidbits, but just once
I would like to hear him say one thing positive about the auditing
profession, banking, business, capitalism, and politics.
I
write a lot of negative things, but if you carefully examine all of
my writings you will find what I hope is more academic
counterbalancing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
I even, with great effort and a clothes pin on my nose, write some
positive tidbits about accountics.
We
must agree to disagree but not always disagree in the academy.
If
we become too one-sided in the academy, it’s a big turn off for
students and colleagues.
I once had a colleague in the political science department who was
known for constantly bashing multinational corporations. My students
who took his courses hammered him in course evaluations for
preaching rather than teaching. The university tired of his rants
and persuaded him to retire early.
I cling to a belief that
one-sided professors eventually lose their credibility in the
academy, because they become virtually blind to contradictory
evidence and argument. We expect this in politics, but we do not
respect it in the academy (at least not me). There students want to
learn both sides of every controversial topic in a course. |
Counterblancing
Success in marriage and academe lies in first agreeing to disagree and
second in not taking disagreements personally
A Belated
Irish Blessing ---
http://www.andiesisle.com/ThisBlessingIsForYou.html
God
Bless America (history from Kate Smith) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnQDW-NMaRs
Snow Pictures
of of Lessons in Life (Slide Show) ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/SnowPicturesLessonsOfLife.pps
Ode to Forgetfulness ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=7lSliucgygc
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on March 18,
2010
To Accompany the March 18, 2010 edition of Tidbits
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations031810.htm
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Tidbits on March 18, 2010
Bob Jensen
Video: Saturday Night Live Takes
on "Extremely Unpopular" Healthcare Plan ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/07/snl-takes-on-deeply-unpop_n_489002.html
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
Cool Search Engines That Are Not
Google ---
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
World Clock and World Facts ---
http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf
U.S. Debt/Deficit Clock ---
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Free Residential and Business Telephone Directory (you must listen to an
opening advertisement) --- dial 800-FREE411 or 800-373-3411
Free Online Telephone Directory ---
http://snipurl.com/411directory [www_public-records-now_com]
Free online 800 telephone numbers ---
http://www.tollfree.att.net/tf.html
Google Free Business Phone Directory --- 800-goog411
To find names addresses from listed phone numbers, go to
www.google.com and read in the phone number without spaces, dashes, or
parens
Daily News Sites for Accountancy, Tax, Fraud, IFRS, XBRL, Accounting
History, and More ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Cool Search Engines That Are Not
Google ---
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
Bob Jensen's search helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
Education Technology Search ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Distance Education Search ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Search for Listservs, Blogs, and Social Networks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
Bob Jensen's essay on the financial crisis bailout's aftermath and an alphabet soup of
appendices can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
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/
-
- I see from my house by the side of the road
- By the side of the highway of life,
- The men who press with the ardor of hope,
- The men who are faint with the strife,
- But I turn not away from their smiles and tears,
- Both parts of an infinite plan-
- Let me live in a house by the side of the road
- And be a friend to man.
Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911)
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
On May 14, 2006 I retired from Trinity University after a long
and wonderful career as an accounting professor in four universities. I was
generously granted "Emeritus" status by the Trustees of Trinity University. My
wife and I now live in a cottage in the White Mountains of New Hampshire ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm
Bob Jensen's blogs and various threads on many topics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
(Also scroll down to the table at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ )
Global Incident Map ---
http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php
If you want to help our badly injured troops, please check out
Valour-IT: Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops ---
http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
574 Shields Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
- With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting
Review (TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
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
"Financial Reform Bill Comedy Video," by Jon Stewart,
The Daily Show, Comedy Central, March 16, 2010 ---
http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/tue-march-16-2010-jude-law
The Ohio Channel: Remarkable Ohio: Marking Ohio's History
[video]
http://www.ohiochannel.org/your_state/remarkable_ohio/index.cfm?mh=ohs
South Asian Oral History Project ---
http://content.lib.washington.edu/saohcweb/index.html
Voices from Afghanistan ---
http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/voicesfromafghanistan/Pages/default.aspx
Forwarded by a friend
This video was on CNBC about 4 months ago (re: Israel ) Better review it shortly
- don't know how long CNBC archives their videos. Refreshing to hear a positive
piece on Israel . Very interesting points on the difference between Israeli and
American young people. (business leadership, and innovation)
www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1311023934&play=1
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
God Bless America (history from Kate Smith) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnQDW-NMaRs
Duo Siqueira Lima - one guitar, two guitarists
---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFmLGVG2fY
Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection ---
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/dcmhtml/dmhome.html
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
Nickel Weeklies (American History) ---
http://drc.library.bgsu.edu/handle/2374.BGSU/744
Many Pen and Ink Sketches
New Mexico Museum of Art [Flash Player, pdf]
http://www.nmartmuseum.org/
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American
History: Digital Collections ---
http://chwmaah-archive.com/?page_id=18
Hogenberg: Franz and Abraham Hogenberg Engravings
---
http://diglib.princeton.edu/xquery?_xq=getCollection&_xsl=collection&_pid=pudl0051
The Reverend Claude L. Pickens, Jr. Collection on Muslims in
China and Tibet (over 1,000 photographs) ---
http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/harvard-yenching/collections/pickens/
African American History (photographs)
Documenting Our Past: The Teenie Harris Archive Project ---
http://www.cmoa.org/teenie/intro.asp
MoMa: William Kentridge [Flash Player Art]
http://moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/williamkentridge/
Teaching Images Digital Experiences ---
http://tides.sfasu.edu/index.html
Southern California Butterflies ---
http://socalbutterflies.com/
The Frank M. Hohenberger Photograph Collection
(Brown County, Indiana) ---
http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/lilly/hohenberger/
British Museum: A catalogue of the Russian icons
in the British Museum
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/online_research_catalogues/russian_icons/catalogue_of_russian_icons.aspx
Museum of Contemporary Art: Podcasts [iTunes] ---
http://www.mcachicago.org/interactive/podcasts.php?page=podcast
NYPL Digital Gallery: Turn of the Century Posters
---
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=printing&col_id=212
Family Learning Forum ---
http://familylearningforum.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
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
Fascinating Statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FascinatingStatistics/Statistics.htm
United Nations World Digital Library ---
http://www.wdl.org/en/
BBC: Learning English ---
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/
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
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on March 18,
2010
To Accompany the March 18, 2010 edition of Tidbits
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/TidbitsQuotations031810.htm
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Roger Collins shows why accountants may maybe would prefer
to become a rocket scientist---
http://www.sos.ca.gov/business/corp/pdf/mergers/corp-mergerintr.pdf
"Are we over estimating remembering and underestimating learning?"
by Joe Proctor, Williams College
Memory And Learning: Recent Research
Main Category: Psychology /
Psychiatry Also Included In: Neurology /
Neuroscience Article Date: 08 Mar 2010 - 2:00 PST
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/181496.php
Are we over estimating remembering and
underestimating learning?
Current research by Nate Kornell, an assistant
professor of psychology at Williams College, and Robert A. Bjork of the
University of California, Los Angeles address this question and was recently
published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
In their paper titled A Stability Bias in Human
Memory: Overestimating Remembering and Underestimating Learning, Kornell and
Bjork write: "To manage one's own conditions of learning effectively
requires gaining an understanding of the activities and processes that do
and do not support learning."
In psychology, experts use the term metacognition
to talk about how people think about their own cognitive processes - in
essence, thinking about thinking.
To probe the way people think about their capacity
for remembering, Kornell and Bjork asked people to look at a list of words
and predict how well they would be able to remember the words after
subsequent periods of study and testing.
Their results led the researchers to the suggestion
that people are under confident in their learning abilities and
overconfident in their memories. That is, people failed to predict that they
would be able to remember more words after studying more - although in
reality, they learned far more -- instead basing their predictions on
current memory. Kornell and Bjork call this a "stability bias" in memory.
Kornell's work also has been published in
Scientific American, Psychological Science, Current Directions in
Psychological Science, and Applied Cognitive Psychology, among other
journals.
Robert Bjork is a leader in the impact of metacognition in learning.
Bob Jensen's threads on metacognition (including references to Robert Bjork) are
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
March 11, 2010 reply from Fordham, David
[fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
Bob, this bring up a related question:
Are we over-valuing remembering and undervaluing
learning?
Given the nature of today's emphasis on "assurance
of learning", "standards of learning", etc., I would say we probably are.
This kind of "misguided inadvertant malfeasance" is infiltrating up from
K-12 and can now be found contaminating higher ed to a greater degree day by
day.
Most of the standards of learning, assessment
strategies, and other fads that education management seems to be
pre-occupied with these days concentrate on remembering, and ignore true
learning -- understanding, cognition, innovative application, contextual
interpretation -- probably because remembering is so much easier to evaluate
and numerically asess than are the higher-level elements of true learning.
The type of learning that I personally feel is most
valuable is next to impossible to assess while the student is still in the
classroom. But accreditation teams don't want to wait five to ten years to
see whether the education was successful, they want evidence here and now,
and thus we gather evidence on remembering rather than learning.... because
it can be done.
Astute educators know that you never get what
expect, you only get what inspect, and since we are now concentrating our
inspections on remembering, well, that is where all the effort is going to
be concentrated.
Of course, students have been doing this for
generations, and professors have always lamented the fact that students
study for the tests rather than studying to learn. And today's educational
environment seems conducive to making the professors accomplices in that
crime if we aren't very careful.
David R. Fordham
James Madison University
March 11, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi David,
I think we must distinguish education on the basis of foundations for
learning versus superstructures built on foundations. But I think we can use
competency-based grading at all levels of education. The key to
competency-based testing is not to have the teachers grading their own
students.
Foundations include reading, writing, and arithmetic, and I’m all for
standardized testing (competency-based learning) when teachers cannot be
trusted. I skimmed the March 15, 2010 cover story in Newsweek (“We must fire
bad teachers”) that claims teachers tend to come from the bottom 25% of
their graduating class and are given lifetime job tenure irrespective of how
bad they really are performing their jobs. At the same time they are faced
with increasing problems of overly large classes and a cultural decline in
obedience and learning motivation in classrooms. If competency-based testing
help improve the foundation thresholds then I’m all for standardized testing
to drill the basics into students who are not likely to get those basics in
their home lives. It’s hard to become a scholar if you cannot read properly.
At the same time, I think competency-based testing may lower creative
scholarship in advanced collegiate courses and should be avoided in many of
those courses where we trust the scholarship and standards of their
professors.
I fully support the NETP report and think it is sad that only Texas and
Alaska chose to go their own route. NETP report is
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/index.html
As to higher education, I might agree with you more, David, if I was not
so discouraged with the nationwide explosion in grade inflation (the number
one disgrace in higher education) and the watering down of standards in fear
of bad teaching evaluations --- http://www.gradeinflation.com/ Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor
In spite of the drawbacks, this leads me to favor competency-based
assessments such as the assessment methods used in Canada’s Chartered
Accountancy School of Business (CASB) --- http://www.casb.com/
Having said this, however, I think that experiential learning such as the
BAM metacognitive model may improve competency-based learning much like it
improved CPA examination performance at the University of Virginia ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm The problem with the BAM model is
that students tend to hate having to learn things on their own. They want to
sit in nests like baby birds and have teachers fly in and stuff the testing
answers down their throats like semi-digested worms of knowledge.
Competency-Based Grading May Have Varying Degrees of Standardization An
advantage of competency-based learning is that it usually is much more
difficult for teachers to buy higher teaching evaluations with easier
courses and grading. A drawback is that it tends to make teachers teach to
the testing content. The challenge is to be creative in the testing content.
At the advanced levels of higher education, compentency-based tests need not
be standardized. This is what we strive for in doctoral program
“comprehensive tests.” This could also apply to lower level masters and
maybe even senior level testing.
The key to competency-based testing is not to have the teachers grading
their own students.
Bob Jensen
March 11, 2010 reply from AMY HAAS
[haasfive@MSN.COM]
Interesting article in last Sunday's N.Y.Times on
teaching, Building a Better Teacher by ELIZABETH GREEN. The writer suggests
that often the difference between good and bad teaching comes down to
learning the tools of good classroom management.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?hpw
It's
now possible to make multimedia pdf “portfolios” and do other things with Adobe
Acrobat Version 9-Extended
Here’s a video
describing what can be done with Acrobat 9-Extended (not free):
Video:
http://lifehacker.com/5396112/make-professional-multimedia-pdf-portfolios-with-adobe-acrobat-9
Also see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI1bt2cf-8w
It is my
understanding that these portfolios work a lot like multimedia MS Office files
but have certain advantages to authors such as customized levels of security
(for example not being able to select text as text or not being able to select
or copy multimedia files in a pdf portfolio).
To the user, a
huge advantage of pdf files over MS Office files is that pdf users do not have
to worry about macro viruses or other malware infections that are always worries
with MS Office files.
However, I
occasionally get security patches from Adobe signalling that Acrobat Readers are
not immune from security risks ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Acrobat#Version_9.0
Acrobat 9
options are linked at
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/
These must be
purchased from Adobe online “stores” linked under “buy now” at
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/
U.S. buyers must
pay $699 for an individual, single license or $299 for an upgrade.
There are some offers to download free or at huge discounts, but I frankly do
not trust these sources.
Academic pricing is about $250.
Acrobat provides
many advantages, not the least of which is the ease of capturing and printing
Web pages in WYSIWYG as was pointed out to us on the AECM by Shari Thompson ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI1bt2cf-8w
There is an
optical character recognition utility that will convert pictures of text into
searchable text.
This may well be
the format of the future for some large publishing companies.
Google Voice (via telephone) ---
http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html
Video Summary of Google Voice ---
http://www.youtube.com/googlevoice
"Google Voice Helps Students Learn Spanish," by Tanya Roscorla,
Converge Magazine, March 1, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/edtech/Google-Voice-Helps-Students-Learn-Spanish.html
At Holmdel High School in New Jersey, students
speak Spanish in front of their class, but they also practice their language
skills on the phone.
This year, Spanish 2 teacher Katy Taylor wanted to
find a different way to assess their progress in addition to listening to
oral presentations in class. So, she asked them to call her Google Voice
number and leave a message.
On their own time, the students read something in
Spanish or create a dialogue, which could take up to 1 1/2 minute. Google
Voice captures the audio and sends her an e-mail with the recording
attached. Then she listens to their recordings and e-mails them feedback —
and it's all free.
Google Voice, a telecommunications service by
Google launched in March 2009, provides a U.S. phone number, chosen by the
user from available numbers in selected area codes, free of charge to each
user account.
“It was kind of just fun to experiment and see how
it works in the classroom," Taylor said, "and the kids respond really well
to it.”
Instead of taking up clas time, they dial in to her
phone number, and then she can go online that evening to hear what they've
done.
Many students are afraid to make mistakes in front
of their peers, so when they do receive a recording assignment, they're more
apt to take risks because they have some privacy.
“I’m hoping that the end result will be that
students are speaking more and getting feedback," Taylor said. "Every time I
think it gets a little better.”
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
"Catalyst: Women MBAs Lag Behind Men in Jobs, Pay, Promotions," by
Luis Lavelle, Business Week, March 3, 2010 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/blogs/mba_admissions/archives/2010/03/tktktk_1.html?link_position=link5
There’s a really interesting, albeit not all that
surprising,
report from Catalyst, the group working to expand
opportunities for women in business.
In 2007 and 2008, Catalyst surveyed 9,927 alumni
who graduated from 26 leading business schools in Asia, Canada, Europe, and
the United States. Less than half, 4,143, were men and women who graduated
from full-time MBA programs and were working full-time at the time of the
survey. The goal was to find how women with MBAs fared (relative to men) in
terms of pay and career trajectory after receiving their degrees.
The answer: not well. Even after correcting for
years of experience, industry, and global region, Catalyst found that women
were more likely than men to start their first post-MBA job at a lower
level. That basic finding held even when considering only men and women who
aspired to senior executive level positions, and even among survey
respondents who did not have children. Overall, 60% of women started on the
post-MBA career ladder at the lowest of rungs, entry-level positions. For
men, that number was 46%.
Men also had higher starting salaries than
women—even after taking all the same factors into account. Overall, men had
a pay premium in their first post-MBA jobs of $4,600.
It would be nice to think that once hired women
eventually catch up to men on the career ladder, but you'd be wrong.
Catalyst also found that at the time of the survey men were twice as likely
to have reached the CEO/senior executive level, and had higher salary
growth. Even among men and women who started in entry-level positions and
were otherwise identical in all ways that matter (received their MBAs in the
same year, had the same amount of experience), men still outpaced women in
terms of promotions and pay.
The numbers are depressing, and the authors of the
report, Nancy M. Carter and Christine Silva, were as depressed as anyone by
the findings. They wrote:
Companies pinned hopes on these on these highly
trained graduates from elite MBA programs to help navigate through the
white-water of the global economy. With the same prestigious
credentials, one would expect these women and men to be on equal footing
in the pipeline and their career trajectories gender-blind. What
emerged, however, is evidence that the pipeline is in peril--one that,
for women, is not as promising as expected. While the overall results of
the study are not all that surprising (who hasn't heard the statistic
that women earn only 75 cents for every dollar men earn?), what is
surprising, at least to me, is that this pay gap doesn't disappear when
examining groups of "high potentials" who are virtually identical except
for gender. After all, the typical rationales for the pay gap are things
like career choices, interrupted work histories caused by motherhood,
and other factors specific to women. Correct for them, and at least
theoretically, you should get perfect parity. But you don't. So
something else must be at work--either something nefarious, like
discrimination against women, or something we haven't thought of yet.
I also find this interesting in connection with the
statistics about the number of women pursuing MBAs, which now hovers
somewhere around 30% at top full-time MBA programs. The usual explanation
for this has always been that women are reluctant to enroll in full-time
programs in their late 20s because they're busy starting families. But maybe
something else is at work. If you take the Catalyst research at face value,
then maybe some women already knew what Catalyst is just now discovering and
are making a rational economic choice instead. If pay and career
trajectories for women really are not all they're cracked up to be, then
maybe forking over $300 grand for a top-tier MBA just isn't worth it.
Food for thought. Are there any female MBAs who
feel that they've been passed over for raises or promotions in favor of men,
or who feel the game is somehow rigged in men's favor? Please tell us your
stories.
Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#careers
March 11, 2010 message from XXXXX
Bob,
I am wondering if you know of any websites where I
can gain access to watch camtasia-style (or narrated powerpoints)
videos/lectures of upper level accounting instruction?
My Dean asked me to look into creating an
asynchronous, distance/hybrid accounting program. I want to get an idea of
what is out there. I think the classes I need are:
AIS Cost Intermediate 1 and 2 Tax Auditing Advanced
GNP or NFP Any other advanced accounting, like advanced cost.
Thank you,
XXXXX
March 11, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen
Firstly, I would begin
with the asynchronous way basic accounting is taught at BYU almost entirely
with variable-speed videos even to resident students living on campus ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo
BYU sells these video CDs to the public at a reasonable price.
Next I would enter a number of search terms into YouTube ---
http://www.youtube.com/
Examples include:
Accounting Information Systems
Accounting Ethics
Intermediate accounting
Advanced accounting
Governmental accounting
Hedge accounting
Cost Accounting
Managerial Accounting
Fair Value Accounting
Auditing
SAP or ERP
XBRL
I have a few accounting
theory Camtasia videos at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5341/
Links to my other online materials (including PowerPoint presentations) are
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm
My PowerPoint
presentations and Excel workbooks are linked at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/Calgary/CD/
I suggest you contact my
good friend Amy Dunbar about how she uses Camtasia videos in her online tax
courses ---
Amy.Dunbar@business.uconn.edu
In the future U.S.
accounting programs will be building in more and more IFRS. Here there’s a
heck of a lot of free educational material available ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#IFRSlearning
There are some good cases available, especially from the Big Four.
There is also a lot of
free XBRL material, including some good videos ---
http://www.xbrl.org/Home/
Click on “Education and Training”
The AICPA has a library of
both fee and free videos ---
http://www.aicpa.org/
Enter the search term “video”
Other organizations have
some deals on videos for courses, including the IIA, Certified Fraud
Examiners, etc.
There’s a ton of free
material on ethics and fraud.
The OKI ---
http://www.okiproject.org/view/html/site/oki
MIT’s Open Courseware Links ---
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
Click on the Sloan School for accounting, finance, and other business open
courseware materials
Pete Wilson provides some great videos on how to make accounting
judgments ---
http://www.navigatingaccounting.com/
MIT’s Video Lecture Browser (better for the sciences
than business) ---
http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/
"MIT's Management School Shares Teaching Materials (Cases) Online,"
by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 27, 2009
---
Click Here
Though some business schools charge for the “case studies” they develop as
teaching aids, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced today
that it is making a set of teaching materials available free online.
MIT’s Sloan School of Management has unveiled a set of case studies, videos,
interactive teaching tools, and teacher’s notes on a new Web site called MIT
Sloan Teaching Innovation Resources ---
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/MSTIR/IndustryEvolution/Pages/default.aspx
The announcement comes eight years after MIT created its OpenCourseWare
project, which makes instructional materials for courses available online
for free.
Other open sharing materials provided by
prestigious universities can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Oh my Gosh!
I forgot to
mention the AAA Commons where there’s now a great deal of available,
including syllabi, tutorials, course materials, videos, and textbook
recommendations ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home
Soon many of the
AAA Commons pages will be available to the world in general and not just AAA
members. Among other things this makes the resources available to all of
your students
Bob Jensen
Bob Jensen's threads on distance education and training alternatives are
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Hollywood's Accounting, Ethics, and Business Movies
Professor Roselyn Morris has a listing of ethics movies and some
accounting movies---
http://ceae.aicpa.org/NR/rdonlyres/1E737CC7-562B-4660-936E-91A817EE669E/0/Morris_2006.pdf
"Perceptions of accountants' ethics: evidence from their portrayal in cinema.:
by Felton, S., Dimnik, T. and Bay, D. (2008, December). Journal
of Business Ethics, 83(2), 217-232.
Abstract: "This article examines popular
representations of accountants' ethics by studying their depiction in
cinema. As a medium that both reflects and shapes public opinion, films
provide a useful resource for exploring the portrayal of the profession's
ethics. We employ a values theoretical framework to analyze 110 movie
accountants on their basic ethical character, ethical behavior, and values."
Hollywood Accounting ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
Spout's Movies Tagged for Accounting ---
http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/accounting/MemberTagFilms.aspx
Amazon's Wall Street Movies ---
http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Movies/lm/R2Q5QMM6BWWEAL
And here are some entrepreneur movies. Of course there are
countless movies that feature business (usually in a bad light).
"Must-See Movies for Entrepreneurs," by Anthony Tjan, Harvard
Business Review Blog, March 12, 2010 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/tjan/2010/03/mustsee-movies-for-entrepreneu.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
After the Oscars last weekend, I started to think
about which movies have really inspired me as an entrepreneur. Here are
three films I believe that you should not only see, but also share with your
teams. Each ties to an important entrepreneurial and leadership lesson.
Man on Wire
A story of the fanatical pursuit of a dream. Philippe
Petit, a French tightrope walker, was consumed by the idea of walking a wire
between New York's former World Trade twin towers. To do so, he would need
years of planning and would have to do it as a covert mission. When I first
watched this film, I did not know if it was based on a true story or not.
The narrative and grainy black-and-white shots made me constantly question
whether I was wishing for this to be true or if it was just brilliant
story-telling. The fact that Petit is real and actually accomplished the
feat in August of 1974 is beyond incredible. In an
earlier post, I wrote about the thin line that
great entrepreneurs balance between what Oscar Levant described as genius
and insanity. You want someone like Petit to succeed because it seems so
improbable and outlandish that it takes a creative visionary with some
degree of craziness to pull it off. Seeing this movie is an inspiration for
those who dare to think differently and push the boundaries.
More than a Game
This is the inspiring story of a high school
basketball team and their quest for the national title. It is also happens
to be the documentary of the high school basketball team on which superstar
Lebron James played. I loved this movie for so many reasons, but the
inspiration for entrepreneurs is in the unfolding of how Lebron and four of
his closest friends from childhood pursued a dream, Starting as a team of
fifth graders playing and growing up together in some of the poorest
neighborhoods and practicing in a Salvation Army basketball court with
linoleum floors. The movie highlights how the journey is always as important
as the ultimate goal and inspires us to believe that almost anything is
possible with the right people and right dedication.
Slumdog Millionaire
A hugely successful film about how you can create your
own luck. So many successful entrepreneurs I have met talk about the role of
luck in their careers, but it is equally true that they put themselves in
the pathway of opportunity. In some ways this movie was like a modern day
Bollywood version of
Forrest Gump (we all need a little Bubba Gump
shrimp luck in our lives). Both are believable tales because of the
attitudes of the protagonists who, like great entrepreneurs, have a
boundless optimism and openness that allow luck to come to them.
That's it for my Siskel and Ebert moment. I'll see
you all at Netflix.
March 13, 2010 reply from Elliot Kamlet
[ekamlet@STNY.RR.COM]
I use Little Shop of Horrors to focus on a small
business in which all three associates of that business have fallen into a
pattern of interaction in a friendly, if not always respectful, manner. They
also were not making much money. Then, after a change to the business (a la
Enron realizing with a bit of behind the scenes trickery they could control
markets) they started making lots of money – and what happened to their
ethical behavior with the consequences that followed. We examine the
behavior in terms of various ethical attributes. When they write their
papers, they must liken the activities in the movie to real life situations
we have studied.
It also forces many of the students to do what they
normally would not – watch a musical.
Elliot Kamlet Binghamton University
P.S. Just for those who are interested in this kind
of thing, in the original stage musical there is a very different ending
that Hollywood could not accept.
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting novels, plays, and movies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNovels.htm
Absolutely Must-See CBS Sixty Minutes Videos
You, your students, and the world in general really should repeatedly study the
following videos until they become perfectly clear!
Two of them are best watched after a bit of homework.
Video 1
CBS Sixty Minutes featured how bad things became when poison was added to loan
portfolios. This older Sixty Minutes Module is entitled "House of Cards" ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3756665n&tag=contentMain;contentBody
This segment can be understood without much preparation except that it would
help for viewers to first read about Mervene and how the mortgage lenders
brokering the mortgages got their commissions for poisoned mortgages passed
along to the government (Freddie Mack and Fannie Mae) and Wall Street banks. On
some occasions the lenders like Washington Mutual also naively kept some of the
poison planted by some of their own greedy brokers.
The cause of this fraud was separating the compensation for brokering mortgages
from the responsibility for collecting the payments until the final payoff
dates.
First Read About Mervene ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Sleaze
Then Watch Video 1 at
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3756665n&tag=contentMain;contentBody
Videos 2 and 3
Inside the Wall Street Collapse (Parts 1 and 2) first shown on March 14,
2010
Video 2 (Greatest Swindle in the History of the World) ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6298154n&tag=contentMain;contentAux
Video 3 (Swindler's Compensation Scandals) ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6298084n&tag=contentMain;contentAux
My wife and I watched Videos 2 and 3 on March 14. Both videos feature one of
my favorite authors of all time, Michael Lewis, who hhs been writing (humorously
with tongue in cheek) about Wall Street scandals since he was a bond salesman on
Wall Street in the 1980s. The other person featured on in these videos is a
one-eyed physician with Asperger Syndrome who made hundreds of millions of
dollars anticipating the collapse of the CDO markets while the shareholders of
companies like Merrill Lynch, AIG, Lehman Bros., and Bear Stearns got left
holding the empty bags.
The major lessons of videos 2 and 3 went over the head of my wife. I think
that viewers need to do a bit of homework in order to fully appreciate those
videos. Here's what I recommend before viewing Videos 2 and 3 if you've not been
following details of the 2008 Wall Street collapse closely:
This
is not necessary to Videos 2 and 3, but to really appreciate what suckered
the Wall Street Banks into spreading the poison, you should read about how
they all used the same risk diversification mathematical function --- David
Li's Gaussian Copula Function:
Can the
2008 investment banking failure be traced to a math error?
Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street ---
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?currentPage=all
Link forwarded by Jim Mahar ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/recipe-for-disaster-formula-that-killed.html
Some highlights:
"For five years, Li's formula, known as a
Gaussian copula function, looked
like an unambiguously positive breakthrough, a piece of financial technology
that allowed hugely complex risks to be modeled with more ease and accuracy
than ever before. With his brilliant spark of mathematical legerdemain, Li
made it possible for traders to sell vast quantities of new securities,
expanding financial markets to unimaginable levels.
His method was adopted by everybody from bond investors and Wall Street
banks to ratings agencies and regulators. And it became so deeply
entrenched—and was making people so much money—that warnings about its
limitations were largely ignored.
Then the model fell apart." The article goes on to show that correlations
are at the heart of the problem.
"The reason that ratings agencies and investors felt so safe with the
triple-A tranches was that they believed there was no way hundreds of
homeowners would all default on their loans at the same time. One person
might lose his job, another might fall ill. But those are individual
calamities that don't affect the mortgage pool much as a whole: Everybody
else is still making their payments on time.
But not all calamities are individual, and tranching still hadn't solved all
the problems of mortgage-pool risk. Some things, like falling house prices,
affect a large number of people at once. If home values in your neighborhood
decline and you lose some of your equity, there's a good chance your
neighbors will lose theirs as well. If, as a result, you default on your
mortgage, there's a higher probability they will default, too. That's called
correlation—the degree to which one variable moves in line with another—and
measuring it is an important part of determining how risky mortgage bonds
are."
I would highly recommend reading the entire thing that gets much more
involved with the
actual formula etc.
The “math error” might truly be have been an error or it might have simply
been a gamble with what was perceived as miniscule odds of total market
failure. Something similar happened in the case of the trillion-dollar
disastrous 1993 collapse of Long Term Capital Management formed by Nobel
Prize winning economists and their doctoral students who took similar
gambles that ignored the “miniscule odds” of world market collapse -- -
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#LTCM
The rhetorical question
is whether the failure is ignorance in model building or risk taking using
the model?
- You should understand how the Wall Street Banks used the big credit
rating agencies to give AAA ratings to sell CDO bonds that should've instead
been rated as junk bonds. Michael Lewis in Video 2 seems to think the credit
rating agencies were just naive and were manipulated by the Wall Street
bankers. I'm more inclined to think the CRAs were knowingly and greedily
part of the frauds ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Sleaze
CRA ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agency
- You should also understand what a credit default swap (CDS) is and how
Video 2 above keeps calling it unregulated credit "insurance." Essentially,
this is how some banks, particularly Goldman Sachs was "insuring" against
the value collapse of the poisoned CDOs they were creating and selling. The
"insurance" company brokering the AIG credit default swaps was AIG.
CDS ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap
Here's how they worked ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Sleaze
- Understand how some Wall Street Banks were better connected in the
Treasury Department and Federal Reserve than other banks. In particular,
Goldman Sachs alumni were practically in charge while
Hank
Paulson (former Goldman Sachs CEO) was U.S. Treasury Secretary. Why did
Paulson save Goldman Sachs and let others watch their shareholders get wiped
out like Lehman Bros., Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, etc.? Understand why
saving Goldman Sachs with TARP money entailed saving AIG since saving AIG
was crucial to paying off the CDS insurance.
- For the above three videos it is not necessary to understand the lack of
professionalism (at best) among the bank auditors that never provided any
warning that thousands of banks that failed had badly underestimated bad
debts and overvalued poisoned loan portfolios. The above videos do not get
into the failings of the CPA auditors in this regard, but you can read about
these failings at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#AuditFirms
For more on the inside track of all of this I highly recommend Janet
Tavakili's great book entitled Dear Mr. Buffett (Wiley, 2009). Videos 1-3
will help you understand some of the technicalities in her fantastic and very
depressing book.
Here are some of the take-aways from the three CBS videos above:
- The root cause of the 2008 meltdown of Wall Street was really the
failings on Main Street where the poison was first added to mortgages by
Main Street brokers who were willing to broker mortgages (including
re-financings) that were bound to be defaulted. Note that the problem was
not just in brokering mortgages for poor people (Barney's Rubble). Poisoned
mortgages were also being written for higher income people who were
borrowing beyond their means for those four-car garage dream houses with
swimming pools and marble floors. In other words the root cause was the
ability to broker a poisoned mortgage and then sell it to Freddie Mack,
Fannie Mae, and the Wall Street Banks.
- The next cause of the 2008 meltdown was David Li's risk diversification
formula that all the Wall Street banks were using on the theory that default
risk of mortgage investments could be diversified by crumbling mortgage
cookies into crumbs that were reassembled into thousands of CDOs (each CDO
having only a small crumble of each mortgage's poison). With the blessings
of credit rating agencies, these CDO bonds were then sold as AAA-rated when
in fact they were worse than junk.
- Videos 2 and 3 above stress how the underlying cause of allowing a
one-eyed physician with Asperger Syndrome make hundreds of millions dollars
by detecting the collapse of the CDO values way in advance of the Wall
Street pros is that the Wall Street pros were paid not to look for the CDO
risks. And the bank CDO sellers who perhaps did understand the risks were
willing to screw their eimployers (such as Lehman, Bear Stearnes, etc.)
because it was so easy to steal hundreds of millions from these employers
who were even willing and still are willing to pay them bonuses in spite of
their thefts.
- After the government bailed them out, the Wall Street banks that
survived because of the government's bailout are still paying out billions
in bonuses. One of my favorite quotes in Video 2 goes something like:
"If Goldman does not pay its best people billions in bonuses they will quit
and go to JP Morgan, and if JP Morgan does not pay its best people billions
in bonuses they will quit and go to Goldman." Meanwhile the taxpayers got
screwed out of nearly a trillion dollars.
- Video 2 leaves us with the impression that Wall Street is no longer a
value-added part of U.S. economy. The TARP in reality is truly the
Greatest Swindle in the History of the World
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Bailout
Meanwhile the surviving swindlers and their credit rating agencies and their
auditors are still thriving as if nothing has happened. Opps! I forgot that
the credit rating agencies and auditing firms still have some multi-billion
shareholder lawsuits pending that do threaten their survival. But a lot of
big swindlers still have their yachts thanks to Hank and Ben and Tim.
I highly recommend the outstanding and often humorous books of both
Michael Lewis and Frank Partnoy.
My timeline of these books and the scandals they write about can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
Rotten to the Core ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
Related CBS Sixty Minutes videos are as follows:
I also recommend watching all the David Walker videos on YouTube.
Watch them and weep.
March 16, 2010 reply from Paul Williams
[Paul_Williams@NCSU.EDU]
Bob, I concur -- I watched 60 Minutes last night
and the interview with Michael Lewis was spellbinding. What emerges from
Lewis descriptions is just how much of the financial crisis can be laid at
the feet of modern finance theory -- that which emerged out of Chicago and
such places back in the late fifties and sixties. As Keynes remarked about
practical men (the remainder of that familiar observation is even more
prescient, "Mad men in authority who hear voices in the air distill their
particular frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.").
In modern finance theory (starting with portfolio
theory of Markowitz, then the CAPM) asset prices became simply a function of
other asset prices and financial markets were made into a closed system The
fixation on betas make asset prices a function of other asset prices within
that market and become theoretically disconnected from the real economy that
purportedly underlies the value of everything. There is a book that just
came out titled, The Quants," about the takeover of Wall Street by the math
types (PhDs in physics that could make more money as "analysts" than as
physicists).
The tragedy in every Greek tragedy has its origins
in hubris and modern finance theory has contributed more to the hubris that
Lewis decribed than anything else. Lewis observation about capitalism being
destroyed by the capitalists brings to mind Alan Wolfe's observation that
throughout history it has always been capitalism's critics that have saved
it from itself.
This time it may not happen because financial
reform seems to have no traction. Recalling an earlier photo, circulated on
AECM, taken on Wall Street, if the F... won't jump on his own, maybe he
needs a little push.
Watch the video! (a bit slow loading)
Lynn Turner is Partnoy's co-author of the white paper."Make Markets Be Markets"
"Bring Transparency to Off-Balance Sheet Accounting," by Frank Partnoy,
Roosevelt Institute, March 2010 ---
http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/policy-and-ideas/ideas-database/bring-transparency-balance-sheet-accounting
Watch the video!
Abusive off-balance sheet accounting was a major
cause of the financial crisis. These abuses triggered a daisy chain of
dysfunctional decision-making by removing transparency from investors,
markets, and regulators. Off-balance sheet accounting facilitating the
spread of the bad loans, securitizations, and derivative transactions that
brought the financial system to the brink of collapse.
As in the 1920s, the balance sheets of major
corporations recently failed to provide a clear picture of the financial
health of those entities. Banks in particular have become predisposed to
narrow the size of their balance sheets, because investors and regulators
use the balance sheet as an anchor in their assessment of risk. Banks use
financial engineering to make it appear that they are better capitalized and
less risky than they really are. Most people and businesses include all of
their assets and liabilities on their balance sheets. But large financial
institutions do not.
Click here to read the full chapter.---
http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/sites/all/files/Off-Balance Sheet
Transactions.pdf
Frank Partnoy is the George E.
Barnett Professor of Law and Finance and is the director of the Center on
Coporate and Securities Law at the University of San Diego. He worked as a
derivatives structurer at Morgan Stanley and CS First Boston during the
mid-1990s and wrote F.I.A.S.C.O.:
Blook in the Water on Wall Street, a
best-selling book about his experiences there. His other books include
Infectious Greed: How Deceit and Risk Corrupted the Financial Markets
and
The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall
Street Scandals.
Lynn Turner has the unique
perspective of having been the Chief Accountant of the Securities and
Exchange Commission, a member of boards of public companies, a trustee of a
mutual fund and a public pension fund, a professor of accounting, a partner
in one of the major international auditing firms, the managing director of a
research firm and a chief financial officers and an executive in industry.
In 2007, Treasury Secretary Paulson appointed him to the Treasury Committee
on the Auditing Profession. He currently serves as a senior advisor to LECG,
an international forensics and economic consulting firm.
The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the positions of the Roosevelt Institute, its officers,
or its directors.
Bob Jensen's threads on OBSF are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#OBSF2
For over 15 years Frank Partnoy has been appealing in vain for financial
reform. My timeline of history of the scandals, the new accounting standards,
and the new ploys at OBSF and earnings management is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
Allegory --- a
short moral story (often with animal characters)
Dan sent this to me. I cannot vouch for the claim that the monkey experiment was
ever a real scientific experiment.
It’s probably best to only consider this a fictional allegory, but it does make
a point well taken.
From:
Dan Gheorghe Somnea [mailto:dan_somnea@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 12:04 PM
To: Jensen, Robert
Subject: How is born a paradigm
How is
born a paradigm
A group of
scientists put five monkeys in a cage, and in the middle of the cage , a
ladder.
Above the ladder they put a banana cluster.
When a monkey was trying to climb the stairs for a banana,
the scientists were throwing a bucket of cold water on the others.
After some time, when a monkey tried to climb the stairs, the other ones did
not let it climb.
And thus no monkey didn't dare to climb the stairs anymore, despite the fact
that they were tempted by the bananas.
Then, scientists replaced a monkey.
The first thing that the new member made was
to climb the stairs, but it was pulled back immediately by the other monkeys
and beaten.
Then, the scientists replaced a second monkey.
It happened the same thing. All monkeys including the first replaced
participated enthusiastically
to the novice beating.
A third monkey was changed and the things were repeated.Then the fourth and
so on.
Though no
bucket with cold water was thrown over the monkeys, they continued to hit
each other
trying to reach upstairs for the bananas.
If it were
possible to ask the monkeys: "why were you fighting with each monkey that
intended to
climb up the stairs?".
A possible answer would be:
"We don't know why. Things have always been here so...!"
I think,
it sounds familiar !
"It's much
easier the atom disintegration than a prejudice elimination !"
Albert Einstein
Who are
the scientists ? The banks, I mean the Bank Executive Boards !
Who are the monkeys: all of the CEO corporations, the Governmental Agencies
etc.
Which is the ladder: the linked dirty affairs !
Which are the bananas: ... the fraud's temptation.
Who is the monkey wanting banana eagerly: less scrupulous CEO.
No one can
destroy "the obsessive greed" of unscrupulous business men.
Fortunately, they are not so clever !
Jensen Comment
Don’t forget to watch the monkeys in the cage.
Video 1
CBS Sixty Minutes featured how bad things became when poison was added to loan
portfolios. This older Sixty Minutes Module is entitled "House of Cards" ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3756665n&tag=contentMain;contentBody
Videos 2 and 3
Inside the Wall Street Collapse (Parts 1 and 2) first shown on March 14,
2010
Video 2 (Greatest Swindle in the History of the
World) ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6298154n&tag=contentMain;contentAux
Video 3 (Swindler's Compensation Scandals) ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6298084n&tag=contentMain;contentAux
It's not just financial markets that experience bubbles, society does too.
And the Human Genome Project is a perfect example, says a new study.
"The Rise and Fall of the Human Genome Project," MIT's Technology Review,
March 17, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24935/?nlid=2823
The world has become painfully familiar with the
notion of financial bubbles in the last two years. These are periods of in
which prices are temporarily raised above their fundamental value, sometimes
by orders of magnitude.
[The graph shown here is bell-shaped with some
kurtosis]
But the contention put forward by Monika Gisler and
a couple of pals at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich is
that it's not just financial markets that experience bubbles. They say there
is good evidence for the existence of social bubbles too. They point to the
great boom of railway building in Britain in the 1840s, cloning of mammals
such as Dolly the sheep, and the craze over Haute Couture, the so-called
democratisation of fashion design.
All of these were characterised not by prices
rising far above fundamental values, but by human expectations being
inflated beyond reason. "These cases were all characterized by extremely
high expectations concerning the outcome of the proposed research and/or
innovation project," say Gisler and her colleagues.
Today, they show how the Human Genome Project is a
particularly good example of a social bubble. They give a fascinating
history of the project and the expectations associated with it and focus in
particular on how it was funded. This, they say, is an objective way of
assessing the enthusiasm for it project, at the time.
The Human Genome Project generated huge
expectations that it would revolutionise the treatment of illness and
disease and huge commercial opportunities for the development of drugs . The
belief that this would dramatically change our society eventually persuaded
the US government to spend around $3billion on the project.
It also led to a fierce battle between this
government-funded project and a private company called Celera that aimed to
complete the task first using cheaper, more powerful sequencing techniques.
This battle led to a kind of virtuous circle which
reinforced investors' belief in the potential benefits and caused the
scientists themselves to redouble their efforts.
But it also deflected attention from the huge
uncertainties about the project. The fear, more or less ignored, was that
the benefits would not be as great as imagined.
These fears have more or less come to pass. "Having
the complete gene set on the table, the knowledge of the genetic map and
sequence is now considered by experts to be only a starting point for future
research in biology and medicine," says Gisler and co.
That's not to say it has been of little value. On
the contrary, they say. "While there is little to show in terms of progress
in medical diagnosis and treatment, in pharmaceutical development, in
agriculture, and in other industrial sectors, the HGP catalyzed enormous
technological progresses in DNA-based methods."
Gisler's point is that if managed correctly social
bubbles can be hugely beneficial, even if they don't produce the desired
outcome. But they require a careful hand on the tiller and that's not easy
since they require the combined forces of industry, academia and government
working towards a common goal.
There are various bubbles in the making today, such
as the UK's investment in offshore windfarms in the North Sea, a project
that will produce a quarter of the UK's electricity by 2020. This project is
huge by any standards: equivalent to building 8 channel tunnels in the next
ten years and requires the same kind of link between government, industry
and academia to make it work.
There are other efforts that have not yet achieved
the kind of terminal velocity necessary for bubble status. One of them is
the human genome project''s successor: proteomics, the characterization of
the entire array of proteins encoded by our genes, a task that is an order
of magnitude more complex than the genome project.
Gisler and co say that the lessons from the Human
Genome project could be used to create the same kind of bubble for
proteomics. For the moment, however, investors, government and perhaps even
the scientists themselves, have yet to achieve critical mass.
No National Accrediting Agencies in Canada
Simon Fraser University is currently in the process of
being reviewed for accreditation by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and
Universities, an agency for colleges in the United States. Simon Fraser was
prompted to do so because it is joining the National Collegiate Athletic
Association, but its decision also points to the lack of any national
accreditation agency in Canada,
Maclean's reported. In some cases, the magazine
reported, differing provincial requirements mean that some universities' degrees
are accepted as valid in some but not all parts of the country.
Inside Higher Ed, March 15, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/15/qt#222494
Bob Jensen's threads on accreditation issues ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#AccreditationIssues
IRS Telephone Tax Map
March 12, 2010 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@BONACKERS.COM]
http://taxmap.ntis.gov/taxmap/
About IRS Tax Map
IRS Tax Map began in 2002 as a prototype to address the business need for
improved access to tax law technical information by our telephone assistors.
Tax Map is built on two technologies: semantic integration and the Topic
Maps international standard (ISO/IEC 13250).
Background
IRS began implementing standard markup languages and creating structured
content for our tax law information in the late 1980s. XML/SGML has allowed
IRS to standardize document syntax and structure but additional standards
were needed to integrate our information sources. IRS chose the Topic Maps
international standard for IRS Tax Map.
IRS Tax Map
IRS Tax Map is a web presentation of an underlying "topic map", best
understood as a kind of subject-oriented database — a database designed to
organize information around subjects of interest to taxpayers. Each subject
has a "topic page" in Tax Map. This page provides central access to
everything that Tax Map knows about the subject. It may have links to the
topic pages of related topics, as well as to relevant forms, instructions,
and publications.
The Tax Map production process adapts to the different kinds of
information produced by the various groups at IRS, and incorporates input
and feedback from IRS Tax Specialists and Tax Map users. Adherence to the
principles of the ISO Topic Maps standard protects the value of this
knowledge, allowing it to be exploited and maintained under changing
conditions.
For more information on the Topic Maps international standard see
Cover Pages hosted by OASIS and the
ISO working group maintaining the standard. For additional information
or comments on IRS Tax Map email us at:
topicmap@irs.gov
Bob Jensen's taxation helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#010304Taxation
"National Ed Tech Plan Advocates Radical Reforms in Schools, "by David
Nagel. T.H.E. Journal, March 5, 2010 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/03/05/national-ed-tech-plan-advocates-radical-reforms-in-schools.aspx
If there were any doubts about the Obama
administration's intentions toward education technology, the
United States Department of
Education settled them Friday with the release of
the first public draft of the
National Education Technology Plan (NETP). The
114-page document reveals an intent not only to infuse technology throughout
the curriculum (and beyond), but to implement some major--sometimes
radical--changes to education itself.
The plan, titled "Transforming American Education:
Learning Powered by Technology," sets forth, in part, a manifesto for
change, questioning many of the basic structures of American education,
enumerating the principles of change that are the foundation for the plan,
and setting goals and recommendations for achieving this change.
Questioning Assumptions and Establishing
Principles
Some of the assumptions the plan questions are foundational in public
education, including age-determined grade levels, measuring achievement
through "seat time," keeping students in the same classes throughout the
year, and even keeping individual academic disciplines separate. It also,
however, seems to advocate a "more is more" approach, continuing Education
Secretary Arne Duncan's previous call for longer school days and school
weeks (spent in physical classrooms), in addition to the extension of
learning though technological means.
The draft also seems to question, at times, the
basic premise that K-12 should be limited to the confines of kindergarten
through 12th grade. The plan advocates tighter integration between K-12 and
higher education, using the phrase "K-16" on a few occasions and referencing
"K-12" generally (but not exclusively) in relation to higher education, and,
in particular, in the context of collaboration between secondary and
post-secondary institutions.
For example:
Postsecondary education institutions--community
colleges and 4-year colleges and universities--will need to partner more
closely with K-12 schools to remove barriers to postsecondary education
and put plans of their own in place to decrease dropout rates.
And elsewhere:
The Department of Education should promote
partnerships between two- and four-year postsecondary education
institutions, K-12 schools, and educational technology developers in the
private and public sectors to design programs and resources to engage
students and motivate them to graduate from high school ready for
postsecondary education. Support should start as soon as possible in
students' educational careers and intensify for students who need it.
States, districts, and schools should experiment with such resources as
online learning and online tutoring and mentoring, as well as with
participatory communities and social networks both within and across
education institutions to give students guidance and information about
their own learning progress and their opportunities for the future.
Meanwhile, the guiding principles behind NETP, as
stated in the draft, follow along these lines as well, rejecting many
current practices and favoring new approaches to everything from teaching
and assessment to the role of the federal government in education.
At the core is the principle that technology should
be the driving force behind implementation of the education plan. As stated
in the NETP draft:
The model depends on technology to provide
engaging and powerful learning content, resources, and experiences and
assessment systems that measure student achievement in more complete,
authentic and meaningful ways. Technology-based learning and assessment
systems will be pivotal in improving student learning and generating
data that can be used to continuously improve the education system at
all levels. The model depends on technology to execute collaborative
teaching strategies combined with professional learning strategies that
better prepare and enhance educators' competencies and expertise over
the course of their careers.
The model also depends on every student and
educator having Internet access devices and broadband Internet
connections and every student and educator being comfortable using them.
It depends on technology to redesign and implement processes to produce
better outcomes while achieving ever-higher levels of productivity and
efficiency across the education system.
The document also lists several other principles on
which the plan is based, including:
- The education system is failing in large part
owing to a failure to engage students.
- Learning experiences need to change with the
times.
- Assessment needs to be more formative.
- Data collected on students would be better
used if it could be shared amongst agencies.
- There should be new approaches to teaching,
including collaborative teaching teams and technology-driven distance
programs.
- Groundwork should be laid to make learning
resources available everywhere at all times to all students.
- Industry can serve as a model for leveraging
technology.
- The federal government has a larger role to
play in education than it has in the past.
Goals and Recommendations
NETP sets out goals in five broad areas: learning, assessment, teaching,
infrastructure, and productivity.And it lays out 23 recommendations to help
achieve those goals.
In the category of learning, NETP
strongly advocates a 21st century skills approach . . .
Continued in article
The link to the NETP report is
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/index.html
Bob Jensen's threads on education technology (the good and the bad) are
linked at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
"Why Women Are the Biggest Emerging Market," by Sylvia Ann Hewlett,
Harvard Business Review Blog, March 8, 2010 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hewlett/2010/03/leverage_your_female_demograph.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
What's the biggest emerging market of them all?
I'll give you a hint: The answer isn't geographic but demographic. The
answer is...women.
Women leaders are the new power behind the global
economy, proclaims
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu's announcement of its
second annual webcast celebrating
International Women's Day. In developing nations,
women's earned income is growing at 8.1 percent, compared to 5.8 percent for
men. Globally, women control nearly $12 trillion of the $18 trillion total
overall consumer spending, a figure predicted to rise to $15 trillion by
2014.
More significant,
the majority of tertiary degrees are now being awarded to women.
Highly qualified, well-educated and ambitious, these
women are taking over the talent pool from Delhi to Dubai and bringing new
urgency to the issue of managing diversity.
In a speech at the Hidden Brain Drain Summit held
in New York last November, the Right Honorable
Paul Boateng, the U.K.'s first black cabinet
minister and most recently the British High Commissioner to South Africa,
urged representatives of the 57 member organizations to overcome the
obstacles placed in the path of emerging talents. "If you're serious about
growth, if you're serious about innovation, if you're serious about getting
a global reach, then the evidence tells you that you've got to overcome
those obstacles," he said. "The imperative is to move from sentiment to
strategy, to make the leap from survival to success."
Here's how two smart companies are making that leap:
-
Goldman Sachs' ReturnshipSM program is
a novel way of recruiting candidates who, after an extended, voluntary
absence from the workforce, are seeking to re-start their careers. A
returnship serves as a preparatory program, providing "returnees" with
an opportunity to re-learn, sharpen and demonstrate the skills essential
for success in a work environment that may have changed significantly
since their most recent work experience. The eight-week U.S. 2008 pilot
program comprised 11 women. The 2009 program lasted nine weeks and
included 16 returnees chosen from more than 300 applicants.
Acknowledging the importance of Asian markets, the program was expanded
to Hong Kong in the fall of 2009, with an inaugural class of 37
returnees.
-
Google's India Women in Engineering Award Program was launched in
2008 to celebrate young women in college and graduate school who are
pursuing careers in engineering and computer science. That year, 16
women won the $2,000 award for academic excellence and demonstrated
leadership skills; 9 won in 2009, selected from among more than 250
high-caliber applicants. Google senior management and engineers serve as
judges. 2009 winner Anjali Sardana, a Ph.D. candidate at the
Indian Institute
of Technology, says that the award has inspired her to keep pursuing
her dreams: "Not only did the award encourage me to stay in my field, it
has made me confident and given me the spark to mentor other younger
women engineers."
By investing in women in emerging markets,
companies are betting on a brighter future — for a workforce just waiting to
blossom, for economies whose development depends on this new crop of talent,
and, of course, for themselves.
Bob Jensen's threads on careers, including working women opportunities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#careers
"Teaching Is Serious Business," by Joe Hoyle, Teaching Financial
Accounting Blog, March 9, 2010 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/
Jensen Comment
Joe's recommendations probably don't work for large classes where it's
impossible for an instructor to know about the special needs of each of 13 "Billys"
or "Karens" amidst a sea of faces in a huge lecture hall.
. . .
A good basketball coach adapts to the talents of
his or her players. A good teacher does the same. You cannot take an
identical approach with every student. Some love to be pushed and pushed
hard. They enjoy “in-your-face” challenges. Others are more fragile. You
have to coax and nurture them. So toughness comes into my class where
toughness is necessary. You teach each student, not each group. However,
every student needs to be willing to prepare and to think. That is not
negotiable.
One of the keys to becoming a good teacher is
learning to walk into a room of students and “see” what is happening to the
individual members: Billy needs a few extra seconds to formulate an answer,
Susan loves to be called on, Andy doesn’t know what is happening right now,
Ellen is not prepared. You have to be able to adapt to your students on the
spot every day.
Our students can do amazing things, but if we don’t
challenge them fully, they will never realize what marvelous talents they
truly possess. Signing up for demanding classes might hurt a student’s GPA,
but which is more important: developing a good mind or a good GPA?
"Big Classes Encourage Experiments in Teaching: Cal State U. at
Chico reworks courses, while instructors worry," by David Glenn, Chronicle
of Higher Education, March 7, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Bigger-Classes-Encourage/64525/
Back in 2005, officials at California State
University at Chico asked students how to improve English 130, a composition
course that almost every undergraduate there takes. One consistent response:
Class sections should be smaller.
But in the years since then, the enrollment cap on
English 130 sections has actually crept upward, from 22 to 30. That's no
great surprise. Across the country, budget-straitened colleges have been
quietly increasing the sizes of all sorts of courses. At some institutions,
introductory-level lectures are now capped at whatever the fire code will
allow, and upper-level seminars are drifting from 12 students to 20 and
beyond.
Many instructors are deeply uneasy about those
changes. With rooms bursting at the seams, they say, faculty members are
less likely to interact personally with students—and are less likely to use
essay tests or to assign serious amounts of writing.
Still, some administrators and professors say they
are trying to make the best of a bad situation by redesigning courses for a
new era of high student-faculty ratios. Chico State, for example, has rolled
out six experimental course redesigns this year. Some feel bulging class
sizes provide an overdue opportunity for faculty members to think about how
to use new learning technologies, such as online instruction.
"I want to use all the tools that are out there to
help people design a curriculum that has students fully engaged," says
Sandra M. Flake, Chico State's provost. "In the long run, I don't even
really care if it saves money, as long as it improves student learning."
But others worry that the redesigns are merely
papering over the problem of overcrowded classrooms.
"I'm afraid that we're going to dilute the product
and cheapen the value of our degrees," says Susan M. Green, an associate
professor of Chicano studies and history and president of the faculty union
at Chico. "I've heard many people here say that last semester was their
worst semester of teaching." Some of her students are first-generation
Latinos whose families work on the farms west of here. Campus officials are
kidding themselves, she says, if they think those students have easy access
to the Internet for online classes.
'Let's Blow It Up' Some of Chico State's newly
redesigned courses, rather than turning to the Internet, use classroom time
in a new way. English 130, the composition course, is one of them.
This semester three experimental sections of that
course have ballooned beyond 30 students. Far beyond—all the way to 90.
It was a deliberate change. "When the English 130
sections moved above 22 students, it really didn't seem to be working well,"
says Kim D. Jaxon, a lecturer in composition. "So I thought, Fine. Let's
blow it up. Let's try 90."
Ms. Jaxon and a colleague submitted a proposal to
Chico State's course-redesign competition last year. They suggested the
experimental sections, in which students meet for two hours a week in a
roomful of 90 students and spend another two hours meeting in small groups
of 10. When they meet in those small groups, they are supervised not by a
faculty member but by teams of undergraduate teaching assistants. (Chico
State, like most campuses in the California State University system, has few
graduate students, so it can't deploy the armies of graduate TA's that are
found at large research universities.)
Ms. Jaxon herself is not leading any of the
experimental sections this semester; instead, she supervises the
undergraduate teaching assistants, most of , whom are students in an
upper-level teacher-training course that she directs.
A crucial aspect of the experiment, Ms. Jaxon says,
is that when the students meet in their large sections of 90, they are not
passively absorbing reply lectures. Even in the large classroom meetings they are
generally broken up into small groups, working on short assignments and
reviewing drafts of one another's essays. "One of the best ways to learn
deeply," she says, "is to work with your peers and to try to explain to
others what you've done."
Ms. Green is not so sure. Her faculty union has
filed a grievance over the use of undergraduate assistants in the classroom.
"I've talked to students who have said that it just feels like babysitting,"
she says.
In one of the small English 130 sections on a
recent afternoon, the undergraduate teaching assistants seemed thoughtful
and dedicated; if they're babysitters, they're skilled ones. According to
Ms. Jaxon, of the 178 students who took the course in this experimental mode
last fall, all but five passed the course. Standard sections of the course
have an average failure rate of roughly 15 percent, according to Aiping
Zhang, chair of the English department.
But Ms. Jaxon herself doubts that her experimental
model could ever be scaled up to serve every section of English 130. (This
semester there are 28 "normal" sections with 30 students each, plus the
three experimental sections with 90 each.)
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Some nations like Germany have endured huge classes forever in higher education.
However, many of those nations, like Germany, the students are cream of
the crop students emerging from lower-level education systems that divert
lower-ranking ranking students away from universities.
In comparison, in California there are extreme pressures to admit almost any
wannabe college students. This leads to much greater variations in intellectual
ability in large classes, thereby making teaching such large classes much more
of a challenge than in Germany, Japan, China, and elsewhere. I think teachers
adapt to these variations in small classes, but in large classes it is virtually
an impossible task to provide value-added learning to all the students.
March 9, 2010 reply from Steven Hornik
[shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]
I truly do wish class sizes
weren't as big as they are in large state institutions, but I have to humbly
disagree with Bob on his comment:
"I think teachers adapt to
these variations in small classes, but in large classes it is virtually
an impossible task to provide value-added learning to all the students."
My classes regularly approach
1000 and 800 for fall/spring semester in financial accounting. Because of
that size I have introduced many tools to as best I can keep the students
engaged and giving them a sense of being part of a course vs an assembly
line. Some of the tools are by necessity using Camatasia and Jing to create
videos for mass distribution. Using a web-based, agnostic IM client to
communicate (Meebo). Using an online HW manager system for assigning and
grading HW (I use MyAccountingLab). These have all made my life easier.
But I also require rather time consuming elements and those are supported
with TA's (and my graying hair) - so I use Second Life and also use a
Concept Mapping program.
I'm working on a merit award
file for teaching that UCF supports and while I'm utterly depressed at the
GPA for this course (though I think it's badly biased by students who
receive an F but haven't completed all the course - usually taking 1 or 2
exams), so my F's are inflated and my W's deflated - of course none of which
are any good at all. But to my surprise my highest GPA for this course was
in Spring 2009 (the latest data I'm reporting), so the larger the class and
the more tools I provide the better they have done.
It's A LOT of work but I know
I'm not alone (but may be the most insane) in trying to leverage the tools
we now have available to us when teaching large classes.
Steven
_________________________
Dr. Steven Hornik
University of Central Florida
Dixon School of Accounting
407-823-5739
Second Life: Robins Hermano
http://mydebitcredit.com
yahoo ID: shornik
March 9, 2010 reply from Patricia Walters
[patricia@DISCLOSUREANALYTICS.COM]
I taught managerial accounting with class sizes of
250-300. There were 6 TAs who conducted small group problem solving
sessions. I also had what we called my "bouncer" who took attendance and
made sure nothing terrible happened in the lecture hall.
I believe one needs to be a certain type of teacher
and/or teach something other than accounting to do this effectively.
I hated teaching these classes. I had to use
powerpoint slides. I kept the room light to minimize sleeping and other
activities and walked up and down the aisles to keep people alert and call
on people. I also had those 6 TAs to manage to be sure that there was some
level of consistency in what they did in the small groups.
After exams, instead of 8 people (20% of the class)
with issues about my grading, I had 50-60 students with issues.
I even attended some sessions on teaching large
classes effectively (to little avail). I applaud anyone that can do this.
Also, learning everyone's name was next to
impossible for me.
Pat
Class Size Matters, But the Importance of This Factor is Highly Variable
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ClassSize
"Does class size matter?" PhysOrg, February 28, 2008 ---
http://physorg.com/news123418382.html
No more vexing problem in education exists today
than the achievement gap in this country. The difference between the
extremes has rightfully attracted national attention, and one of the most
popular policy proposals is to reduce class size—not surprising, since
benchmarks are easily measured.
In his provocative article for the March 2008 issue
of Elementary School Journal, “Do Small Classes Reduce the
Achievement Gap between Low and High Achievers? Evidence from Project STAR”,
Spyros Konstantopoulos (Northwestern University) explores the hard data and
finds that some of our basic assumptions about class size may be incorrect.
Konstantopoulos worked with data on mathematics and
reading achievement provided by Tennessee’s Project STAR (Student/Teacher
Achievement Ratio), an unprecedented four-year longitudinal class-size study
encompassing over 11,000 K-3 students in 79 schools.
The project found, not surprisingly, that smaller
class size is a better situation for the children at all achievement levels,
and previous analyses saw rising achievement on average. For most advocates,
parents, and policy makers, this was enough. But when Konstantopoulos dug
deeper, he found that the children who are already high achievers benefited
the most from the extra attention afforded by smaller classes.
Low achievers also benefited from being in small
classes (compared to low achievers in regular size classes), but they did
not benefit not as much as high achievers. Unfortunately, he also found that
the smaller classes produced higher variability in achievement which
indicates that the achievement gap between low and high achievers is larger
in small classes than in regular size classes, especially in kindergarten
and first grade.
Do smaller classes help students? Yes...and no.
Konstantopoulos finds that “although all types of students benefited from
being in small classes, reductions in class size did not reduce the
achievement gap between low and high achievers” He concludes by calling for
more observational studies of classrooms themselves, as we still do not know
how to address one of the most vexing problems—the achievement gap between
students—facing educators and policy-makers, today.
Source: University of Chicago
"2-Year Colleges Help Learning-Disabled Students Break Into Math and
Science," Chronicle of Higher Education, March 7, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Community-Colleges-Help/64531/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
For as long as he can remember, Robert T. Calloway
has had a fascination with engineering and all things mechanical. He wanted
to pursue an engineering career despite a diagnosis of dyslexia, which
challenged both his confidence and his ability in the classroom.
"I first learned I had dyslexia when I was in the
Army," he says. "My platoon sergeant would make us read technical manuals.
He noticed that I had a problem with loop letters, like p's, b's, d's, and
q's."
Mr. Calloway, who is 42, weighed his options as he
neared the end of his military service, in 2005. He decided that somehow,
some way, he had to pursue a higher education, to better provide financially
for his two teenagers.
That fall he enrolled in the Community College of
Allegheny County, in Pittsburgh, where professors and the college's
academic-support staff helped him work around his dyslexia.
Now, a program being developed by a two-year
college in Vermont aims to assess the successful practices of Allegheny and
other colleges to help more students, like Mr. Calloway, succeed
academically in math and the sciences.
Landmark College, in Putney, Vt., was created to
serve students with learning disabilities. It has a 25-year history of
preparing students for a range of fields, including the STEM
disciplines—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
The college won two federal grants last year and
one grant this year, totaling more than $1-million, that will be used to
help finance its STEM project. The grants, from the Department of Education
and the National Science Foundation, are a part of the government's larger
focus on producing more math-and-science graduates.
Steve Fadden, vice president for research and
institute operations at Landmark, is using the money to develop a curriculum
to teach educators how to support students in the STEM fields who have
various learning disabilities, including dyslexia, autism, Asperger's
syndrome, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Arne Duncan, U.S. secretary of education, expressed
concern in October that only 23 percent of college freshmen were declaring
STEM majors. What's more, "just 40 percent of those that elect STEM majors
freshman year receive a STEM degree within six years," he told the
President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
To develop its one-semester course for educators,
Landmark is collaborating with three other community colleges—Western Nevada
College, in Carson City; Lone Star College, in Houston; and the Community
College of Allegheny County—because students with disabilities tend to be
overrepresented in two-year institutions.
Students with learning disabilities, Mr. Fadden
says, have hidden problem-solving strengths. They live in a world that does
not often conform to their learning style, constantly presenting challenges
that require solutions. Instructors, he says, need to know how to tap into
those strengths.
Meeting Outside Class Two years after he enrolled
at Allegheny, Mr. Calloway graduated with an associate degree in precision
fabrication, another in robotics and automation technology, and a
professional certificate in computer-aided drafting and design. He has since
transferred to Point Park University, where he is a junior double-majoring
in mechanical-engineering technology and global cultural studies.
Key to his success, Mr. Calloway says, were
community-college professors who met with him before or after class to offer
extra help on assignments. They also introduced him to tools for students
with learning disabilities, including a software program that essentially
scans text to create an audio version of a book.
He now trains other students to use the same tools,
working as a technical-support specialist for students with disabilities at
Allegheny.
Mr. Fadden, of Landmark, intends to capitalize on
the role that both instructors and support-staff members can play in helping
students with learning disabilities succeed in the STEM fields. The
college's project will culminate in an interactive pilot course, which is
expected to be put into use for technology instructors and academic-support
staff members this fall at the participating community colleges.
The course will teach instructors how to help
students with learning disabilities study better, prepare for job
interviews, use assisted-learning software, and work in groups, among other
skills that Mr. Fadden says students are ordinarily expected to know
instinctively.
"You might have a professor who says, 'I want a
15-page paper that's due by a certain time on a certain topic,'" Mr. Fadden
explains. But some students "don't really know what that means, because no
one has truly sat down and told them, 'Here's what a college-level paper
looks like.'"
The results of the educator-training program could
enable community-college faculty and staff members to help not only students
with learning disabilities, Mr. Fadden says, but also a broader range of
students who might enter college in need of academic assistance—for example,
those learning English who are struggling with reading comprehension.
Sandi H. Patton, director of disability services at
Lone Star College, says the college has about 730 students with diagnosed
learning disabilities out of a total enrollment of about 62,000.
In joining with Landmark, Ms. Patton says, she
hopes to create "a culture of inclusion" by increasing awareness, among
administrators and faculty and staff members alike, of students with
learning disabilities and their needs. Another goal is to increase the
retention and graduation rates of students with learning disabilities, who
she says often have a talent for the "hands on" subjects offered in the STEM
fields.
"We want to see these students be successful," she
says. "We want to help and retain them in achieving their educational and
vocational goals."
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on technology aids for handicapped learners are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
"Distance Ed Continues Rapid Growth at Community Colleges," by Scott
Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, April 7, 2008 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/07/distance
Community colleges reported an 18 percent increase
in distance education enrollments in a 2007 survey released this weekend at
the annual meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges, in
Philadelphia.
The survey on community colleges and distance
education is an annual project of the Instructional Technology Council, an
affiliate of the AACC. The survey is based on the responses of 154 community
colleges, selected to provide a representational sample of all community
colleges. Last year’s survey found community colleges reporting an increase
in distance education enrollments of 15 percent.
This year’s survey suggests that distance education
has probably not peaked at community colleges. First there is evidence that
the colleges aren’t just offering a few courses online, but entire programs.
Sixty-four percent of institutions reported offering at least one online
degree — defined as one where at least 70 percent of the courses may be
completed online. Second, colleges reported that they aren’t yet meeting
demand. Seventy percent indicated that student demand exceeds their online
offerings.
The top challenge reported by
colleges in terms of dealing with students in distance
education was that they do not fill out course evaluations.
In previous surveys, this has not been higher than the fifth
greatest challenge. This year’s survey saw a five percentage
point increase — to 45 percent — in the share of colleges
reporting that they charge an extra fee for distance
education courses.
Training professors has
been a top issue for institutions offering distance
education. Of those in the survey of community colleges, 71
percent required participation (up from 67 percent a year
ago and 57 percent the year before). Of those requiring
training, 60 percent require more than eight hours.
Several of the written
responses some colleges submitted suggested frustration with
professors. One such comment (included anonymously in the
report) said: “Vocal conservative faculty members with
little computer experience can stymie efforts to change when
expressing a conviction that student learning outcomes can
only be achieved in a face-to-face classroom — even though
they have no idea what can be accomplished in a
well-designed distance education course.” Another response
said that: “Our biggest challenge is getting faculty to
participate in our training sessions. We understand their
time is limited, but we need to be able to show them the new
tools available....”
In last year’s survey, 84
percent of institutions said that they were customers of
either Blackboard or WebCT (now a part of Blackboard), but
31 percent reported that they were considering a shift in
course management platforms. This year’s survey suggests
that some of them did so. The percentage of colleges
reporting that they use Blackboard or WebCT fell to 77
percent. Moodle showed the largest gains in the market —
increasing from 4 to 10 percent of the market — while Angel
and Desire2Learn also showed gains.
The survey also provides
an update on the status of many technology services for
students, showing steady increases in the percentage of
community colleges with various technologies and programs.
Status of Services for
Online Students at Community Colleges
Service |
Currently Offer |
Offered a Year Ago |
Campus testing center for distance students |
73% |
69% |
Distance ed specific faculty training |
96% |
92% |
Online admissions |
84% |
77% |
Online counseling / advising |
51% |
43% |
Online library services |
96% |
96% |
Online plagiarism evaluation |
54% |
48% |
Online registration |
89% |
87% |
Online student orientation for distance classes |
75% |
66% |
Online textbook sales |
72% |
66% |
Education & Learning: Asia Society ---
http://www.asiasociety.org/education-learning Latino Distance Education
Latino Distance Education
American RadioWorks: Rising by Degrees [iTunes]
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/latino_college/index.html
Rate of Growth in Online Enrollments ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm#OnlineGrowthRates
Bob Jensen's links to online training and education programs are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
Full Disclosure to Consumers of Higher Education?
"Accountability System Launched," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher
Ed, November 12, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/12/nasulgc
A new way for students and
their families to compare colleges — and for legislators and
others to evaluate them — was unveiled Sunday with the start
of a campaign to get institutions to sign up to use it.
“College Portrait,”
as the effort is
called, is a template for information that public, four-year
institutions will provide online in an easily comparable
way. Some of the information — statistics on the student
body, figures on college costs — is fairly commonly found
(if not always in comparable ways) on colleges’ Web sites
today. But the program also includes a new method for
measuring graduation and retention rates and,
controversially, a requirement that institutions that choose
to participate conduct and release results from standardized
tests as a means of measuring the learning that goes on at
their institutions. Those tests would be administered to
small, representative cohorts of students — possibly 100 or
fewer freshmen and a similar group of seniors — and would
not be generally offered or required of all students.
College Portrait was
released at the annual meeting of the National Association
of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, whose members
– along with those of the American Association of State
Colleges and Universities — developed the system.
Association leaders have viewed the effort as a way to
respond to the
Spellings Commission
and other demands for greater accountability for higher
education, but to do so in a way that was more sophisticated
than a legislatively designed system might be. And one
emphasis of the effort has been the importance of such a
system being voluntary (College Portrait is part of what the
associations call the Voluntary System of Accountability)
and designed from within higher education, rather than
imposed by others on colleges and universities.
Peter McPherson, president of NASULGC and
the prime mover behind the effort, was blunt in an interview about why
colleges should embrace this process — or risk having federal officials come
up with another system. “If we can’t figure out how to measure ourselves,
someone else will figure out how to measure us,” he said. “It’s inevitable.”
A key part of the push for more
accountability in higher education — at least as voiced by the Bush
administration — has been on the need for comparative data and College
Portrait would provide that. But one question mark about the effort has been
whether any voluntary program would attract enough participation to enable
comparisons to be made. At the NASULGC meeting, in New York City, organizers
noted that they had pledges of participation — even before Sunday’s official
invitation for participations — from such prominent and large higher
education systems as the California State University, University of North
Carolina and University of Wisconsin systems, as well as the Universities of
Iowa and Tennessee.
But what NASULGC leaders didn’t announce
was that the University of California’s nine universities have all decided
not to participate, citing the testing requirement as something that “usurps
the role of campus and departmental faculty in assessing student learning.”
California’s decision raises the question
of whether a system that will allow for comparisons of Chapel Hill and
Madison but not Berkeley or UCLA will have the national value that its
supporters hope. McPherson said that in any voluntary effort, some colleges
would opt out, and he predicted that in the end, participation would be
“wide and deep.”
College Portrait has three parts: student
and family information, student experiences and perceptions, and student
learning outcomes.
Continued in article
November 12, 2007 reply from Peter Kenyon
[pbk1@HUMBOLDT.EDU]
I've been asked (provost through dean through
chair) to submit my senior strategic management students to the following
assessment.
http://www.cae.org/content/pro_collegiate.htm
With all the professional meetings and papers on
the subject, it was inevitable that we'd see a growth industry of assessment
tools.
Peter Kenyon |
Humboldt State (in California)
In one of the most sweeping responses to calls for
accountability in higher education yet, a public-university association has
adopted a template, called the College Portrait, that will give institutions the
ability to share with outsiders similar data about such matters as students'
academic progress. Use of the portrait will be voluntary, but its approval on
Sunday by the Board of Directors of the National Association of State
Universities and Land Grant Colleges marked the beginning of a formal effort by
the association, known as Nasulgc, to encourage institutions to use it. The
board's action came during the group's annual meeting here, and the portrait was
later discussed in a public session.
David L. Wheeler, "State-University Association Adopts a Voluntary Template for
Accountability Measures," Chronicle of Higher Education, November 12,
2007 ---
http://chronicle.com/subscribe/login?url=/daily/2007/11/662n.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on assessment are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm
Question
How is accountancy practice like mystery writing?
"Mystery Writer," by Gail Farrelly, Journal of Accountancy,
March 2010 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2010/Mar/20092392.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting novels are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNovels.htm
Collaboration Software ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_software
From Rick Lillie's on Thinking Outside the Box
Blog on March 7, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/collanos-workplace-free-collaboration-workspace/
Collanos
Workplace: Free Collaboration Workspace
March
7, 2010 — Rick Lillie
In an earlier
post, I wrote about the latest book by Curtis J. Bonk,
The World Is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education.
Bonk’s book is an excellent read. I highly recommend it to
educators at all levels.
While I am familiar with most of what Bonk
writes about, just about every chapter introduces me to something
new. For example, Chapter 8, “Collaborate or Die!” introduced me to
Collanos Workspace, a free
collaboration workspace software tool developed by
Collanos Software, AG (Zurich,
Switzerland). Collanos Workspace is a workspace tool similar in
design to
Groove workspace, originally
developed by
Ray
Ozzie. Groove is now integrated into
Microsoft Office . Ray Ozzie is the guiding light for Microsoft’s
move toward cloud computing.
"Update to Posting about Collanos Workspace — Exceptional Program," by
Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside the Box Blog, March 11, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/update-to-posting-about-collanos-workspace-exceptional-program/
Last week, I posted comments about
Collanos Workspace.
I asked several Master of Science in Accountancy (MSA) grad students that I
will direct in a self-study project during Spring Quarter 2010 to download
Collanos Workspace. They have gotten up and running very quickly. So far,
I am really impressed with the features of Collanos Workspace and how easy
it is to use.
While Collanos Workspace does not
have all the built-in bells and whistles of
Microsoft Groove,
the bells and whistles are easily replaced by Web 2.0
tools (e.g., Skype, TokBox, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets). Web 2.0
sharing/collaboration tools can be used in conjunction with the Collanos
Workspace. This is very easy to do.
This morning, one of my students called me on
Skype.
He shared his desktop with me and then opened his
Collanos Workspace. I have two monitor screens, so I opened my Collanos
Workspace on my other monitor. We talked on Skype. He added files and
posted a note to his workspace. Since we were both online, the items he
added instantly added and displayed on my workspace. Outstanding
performance!
I am working on papers with a couple of
colleagues. I am going to do my best to persuade them to download and use
Collanos Workspace. We can work together both live and offline. I cannot
say enough about the convenience that Collanos Workspace offers.
This new tool is taking me back to my “Groove”
days. I really liked Groove and hated to see it get buried as an advanced
feature of Microsoft Office.
Continued in article
Interactive Network Simulation
Inspiration: Games versus Teachers
"Creator of 'The Sims' Talks Educational Gaming," Chronicle of Higher
Education, July 14, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/media/video/v55/i41.5/wright/?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Introduction to (video) Game Design 2009 ---
http://pod.gscept.com/intro2gd2009.xml
Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment and learning games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Bob Jensen's threads on virtual worlds in education are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the
Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Should Classroom Lectures Remain Privileged and Private?
But no. "I find myself playing devil's advocate
all the time" in class, he said. "I don't want to be on the record saying
something I don't even believe" if the lectures go out on the Web. He considers
the classroom a "sacred space" that may need to stay private to preserve
academic freedom. Professors across the country are now wrestling with this
issue. More and more colleges have installed microphones or cameras in lecture
halls and bought easy-to-use software to get lecture recordings online. The
latest Campus Computing Survey, which gathers data on classroom technology
nationwide, found that 28 percent of colleges have a strategic plan to provide
coursecasting equipment, and 35 percent more are working on a plan now.
Jeffrey R. Young, "College 2.0: More Professors Could Share Lectures Online. But
Should They?" Chronicle of Higher Education, March 7, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/College-20-More-Professors/64521/?sid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en
I don’t buy into the “devil’s advocate” excuse since a good video of a
lecture has the same contextual disclosures as the live classroom event.
Jensen Comment
I think by now most everybody who knows me knows my position. I think all
knowledge and challenges to knowledge should be shared. There are some reasons
that some knowledge cannot be open source, including the invisible hand of Adam
Smith. Knowledge might also be contextual even to the point whether it is or is
not knowledge depends a lot about context such as the study of religious faith
and the history of such faith.
One advantage is that students can watch live lectures first by not being
distracted by note taking. They can take written notes from the replays.
Ideally they have a pause button on the replays to give them time to write
notes. This can be a tremendous advantage to some handicapped learners.
Private knowledge should probably not be shared in the classroom since the
classroom is at least a semi-public place. For example, if psychiatric professor
studies the private thoughts and brain scans of a serial rapist/killer who
agrees to such study provided the outcomes remain confidential for no less than
100 years. Such research outcomes can sometimes be published as coming from an
anonymous source, but if the subject's crimes are so notorious it may be
virtually impossible to share the results of this confidential research for 100
or more years. Priests, physicians, lawyers, and even accountants on occasion
face these horrible circumstances.
Another example is where a researcher discovers some event that, if shared
with the world, could trigger World War III. It is rather a fun parlor game to
speculate on what events could fall under this category.
March 7, 2010 reply from Tom Oxner [TOxner@UCA.EDU]
A number of years ago I had a student who recorded
my lectures. He went to work for a large accounting firm and did very well.
Years later, he indicated that listening to those lectures really helped him
learn financial accounting. He also added that the lectures provided a
source of entertainment. I was quite puzzled by this statement. When I asked
how that could be, he indicated that after having quite a bit to drink, he
and his friends would listen to the lectures on fast forward!
Who says accountants have no sense of humor?
Tom Oxner
March 7, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Tom,
I do get your point and your humor.
They probably like to speed you up just to get you to the main points.
On a more sobering note, I might note that almost
all BYU basic accounting classes are taught only by video. There is one
lecture a year on technical content, although the classes meet now and then
for career inspiration, visiting speakers, etc.
Related to your message below, BYU students (who
seldom if ever drink alcohol or even coffee/tea) were among the first
students to have the ability to speed up variable-rate video lectures to
their preferred rates of viewing. Experiments in BYU's accounting classes
found that students could often learn as much at higher rates of replay,
like double time, and thereby be more efficient with their learning time.
You can read about the BYU variable-speed
experiments at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo
Sadly it's not possible for our students to speed up
live lectures, although most of us would've like to be able to when we were
students years ago.
Bob Jensen
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
How to Value a Website
March 8, 2010 message from Roger Collins
[Rcollins@TRU.CA]
www.peekstats.com
I came across this site by
accident. Quite apart from the reservations/limitations concerning the
specific components of the valuation there are some interesting questions
about the relationship between the value of a Web site on a "stand alone"
basis and its contribution to the overall value of an organisation that I'm
planning to put to my Accounting Theory students.
Roger Collins
TRU School of Business & Economics
Jensen Comment
Thank you for this Roger.
I find it interesting that a featured Website valuation ($ 107,863.70) for
Cardiff University in England ---
http://www.peekstats.com/www.cardiff.ac.uk
I would've guessed Cardiff's Website to have a much higher value.
March 8, 2010 reply from James R. Martin/University of South Florida
[jmartin@MAAW.INFO]
The peekstats.com website
valuation tool is not even in the ball park on MAAW's web traffic and page
views. I think this is because it only picks up visits from those who have
the Alexa toobar installed. I noticed that several years ago. Those who want
accurate traffic statistics should look at Google Analytics. You have to add
some code to the bottom of your pages, but the information you get is really
detailed.
Bob Jensen's threads on valuation are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm
U. of Alabama's National Title Tab: $4.3 Million
The University of Alabama spent a total of $4.3 million
for its football team to participate in the Bowl Championship Series title game
in January, The Birmingham News
reported based on a review of National Collegiate
Athletic Association expense reports. Not all of that total came from the costs
of travel for its team and 83-member "official party," though those costs were
heavy: $1.2 million in airfares, $700,000 for food and lodging for the team, and
nearly $200,000 to house and feed the rest of its traveling contingent. The $4.3
million bottom line also included $1.2 million in bonuses paid to the coaches
for winning the national championship game, the newspaper reported.
Inside Higher Ed, March 16, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/16/qt#222593
"Crimson Tide's $4.3 million trip," by Jon Solomon. The Birmingham News,
March 14, 2010 ---
http://blog.al.com/solomon/2010/03/crimson_tides_43_million_footb.html
The SEC provided Alabama with a travel-expense
allowance of $505,400. But there is much more money Alabama receives from
the game not included in the NCAA report.
SEC rules stipulate that Alabama gets $1.925
million off the top of the game's $18.3 million payout. The remaining
$16.375 million from the payout gets divided into 13 equal shares ($1.26
million to each SEC member and the league office).
That puts Alabama's revenue from the national
title game at $3,690,400. However, that doesn't include an unspecified
amount each SEC school receives by sharing revenue from other bowls,
including a second Bowl Championship Series game.
Texas reported a net profit of $603,149 from its
Big 12 expense allowance of $2,962,200 to Pasadena.
The largest single-line expense for Alabama was
$1,256,631 for bonuses, which included $200,000 to Nick Saban for winning
the national championship. Texas spent $495,391 on bonuses.
Flying Alabama's team, staff, band, cheerleaders
and official party to Pasadena cost $1,219,455. Texas, which had a shorter
distance to travel, spent $590,126 on transportation.
The Longhorns' priciest single-line item was
$602,579 on meals and lodging for the team and staff. Texas counted its
official party within that figure, whereas Alabama spent $701,847 for meals
and lodging for the team and staff and $193,987 for 83 members of its
official party. The Crimson Tide spent $89,959 more than the Longhorns on
entertainment and $91,256 more on awards.
Alabama absorbed a loss of $329,250 from 1,605 game
tickets it didn't sell. Universities keep some as complimentary tickets
given to coaches, administrators, band members and cheerleaders.
The Crimson Tide purchased 19,035 tickets priced
at $200 each and another 1,820 at $275 apiece. Alabama sold a total of
19,200 tickets.
Texas absorbed a loss of $429,600 by not selling
2,148 tickets from its allotment of 19,000, all priced at $200. Ticket
allotment and credentialing were sore points for Texas Athletics Director
DeLoss Dodds in his NCAA survey of the game.
Dodds noted he was "very dissatisfied" that the
19,000-ticket requirement fell far short of the school's demand. He wants
the BCS to provide a larger allotment to participating schools in the
future.
"We have to turn thousands of potential donors
away and the limited number of tickets creates a significant public
relations and customer service issue for us in dealing with our loyal
constituencies," Dodds wrote.
Dodds also was dissatisfied with the BCS limit of
60 bench credentials and five "wildcards" on the sideline. He wrote that
severely limited Texas' ability to allow all of its working equipment and
medical, operations and coaching staff on the sideline, describing the
policy as the "single biggest headache" large schools encounter in BCS
games.
By working closely with Alabama, Dodds said that
both schools left many student workers in the locker room or in the stands
instead of providing their usual important functions on the sideline. Dodds
stressed the Rose Bowl was not at fault for the credential issue and that
bowl officials were frustrated with the policy, too.
"All aspects of participating in a Rose Bowl event
are outstanding and second to none," Dodds wrote.
The only complaint from Alabama Athletics Director
Mal Moore in his survey was the condition of the practice field. Otherwise,
Moore wrote the game was well-organized and accommodating.
Auburn expenses at Outback Bowl
Meanwhile, Auburn reported spending $1,363,096 at
the Outback Bowl in Tampa after receiving $1,212,200 from the SEC as an
expense allowance. Auburn did not lose money because a second SEC team in
the BCS provided additional revenue not reflected in the NCAA report, said
Scott Carr, Auburn senior associate athletics director.
Auburn's largest single-line expense was $427,823
on meals and lodging for the team and staff over eight days. The Tigers
absorbed a loss of $260,110 in 3,229 unsold tickets, which include
complimentary tickets.
Auburn purchased 13,000 tickets from the Outback
Bowl at $70 apiece and another 2,000 tickets at $150 each. The school sold
a total of 11,771 tickets -- 10,197 at the $70 level and 1,574 at the $150
price.
In his bowl survey, Auburn Athletics Director Jay
Jacobs noted that the lack of locker room and shower space at the practice
facility presented logistical issues. Supplies such as towels, soap and soft
drinks were available at a charge, so Auburn transported its own supplies,
he said.
Jacobs noted that VIP transportation was not
provided and would have been utilized if offered. Auburn received one
complimentary hotel suite and would have liked additional free suites for
President Jay Gogue and coach Gene Chizik rather than paying a
"reasonable" rate for them, Jacobs wrote.
Jacobs said the Outback Bowl did not provide social
events geared specifically toward children and suggested a trip to the
aquarium. He concluded there were no major issues for the bowl to address,
writing that it was "very accommodating and provided a memorable experience
for our travel party."
Jensen Comment
Accounting for athletics is a lot like accounting for a division or product
within a large corporation. First and foremost there's no accounting for the
intangibles such as future revenues arising from reputation, goodwill, loyalty,
brand recognition, esprit de corps, morale (student, employee, and alumni), etc.
Secondly, there are huge joint costing problems when a division or product is
embedded within other divisions or products. Thirdly, to be a winner in business
and athletics it often strains ethics and standards. Especially in athletics,
maintaining academic and recruiting standards is particularly dicey for Division
1 universities. In business it is most difficult to achieve global success when
having to deal in nations that are themselves highly corrupt.
And think of what it's costing the teams consistently near the bottom of the
SEC conference.
Bob Jensen's threads on athletic controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Athletics
"The Difference Between Political Journalists and
B-School Profs," by Justin Fox, Harvard Business Review Blog, March
9, 2010 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/fox/2010/03/the-difference-between-politic.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
The other night I went to see Mark Halperin and
John Heilemann talk about their 2008 campaign bestseller,
Game Change, at Harvard's Kennedy School.
They were very sharp and entertaining, and they persuaded me to buy the book
(the $8.61 Kindle price was a factor, too). They were also touchier than I
would have expected about the
criticism their book has received for its focus on
the trivial and the personal.
Their defense was that political campaigns turn on
the trivial and the personal, so if you ignore it you ignore the essence of
why one candidate prevails over another. As Heilemann put it (I wasn't
taking notes so this is a bad paraphrase, not a real quote): Voters
didn't choose based on the fact that Hillary Clinton wanted a health
insurance mandate and Barack Obama didn't.
As a defense of the book, I thought this was valid
enough. It was kind of funny when a student in the audience asked
Halperin (a former colleague of mine at Time) what lessons could be
learned from Game Change, and all he could come up with was:
Candidates whose private and public personas are more or less the same
(Barack Obama) tend to have fewer troubles than those with private doings
and attributes that they try to hide or at least play down (John Edwards,
Hillary Clinton). Gee, thanks, guys. That's really informative.
This is of course the core of a long-running and
entirely valid criticism of how the mainstream media cover politics: The
narrative is all about personal characteristics and fleeting controversies,
and leaves those who consume it intellectually undernourished. That debate
gets enough play elsewhere that I won't go into it here, other than link to
this fine
Ezra Klein post about the differing fortunes of
political and policy journalists. But what struck me while listening to
Halperin and Heilemann defend their approach were the echoes of a different
debate that runs through a book I've been reading, Walter Kiechel's
Lords of Strategy (it's an HBS Press book, so
you can discount anything I say as biased, but it really is excellent).
Kiechel tells of the rise of gurus — from the
consultants of Boston Consulting and Bain to Harvard professor Michael
Porter — who cut through the messy realities of business with strategic
abstractions that purported to explain why companies succeed and fail. By
the 1980s, critics were beginning to complain that the whole strategy
exercise was too abstract, that what mattered were people or quirks of
history. Even these critics (Tom Peters, Richard Pascale, Jeffrey Pfeffer)
were operating at level of abstraction that consumers of political
journalism would find deeply foreign. But the basic question was the same:
Are you better off learning the particulars of how a candidate won or a
corporation made money, or focusing on more universal explanations that can
presumably be applied elsewhere?
My general sense is that most of us could use more
of the latter (I like Malcolm Gladwell's
line that "People are experience-rich and
theory-poor"). But, clearly, you can overdo it with the abstraction (a case
in point that I've spent way too much time studying: the
efficient market hypothesis). The real lesson may
be that we always need to be mixing and matching the two approaches, taking
caution not to go too far in one direction or another. Which is why I'd like
to propose a job exchange: Michael Porter takes over Halperin's political
site
The
Page for six months, and Halperin comes to HBS to
teach strategy. Just think: campaign hacks poring over Porter's
Five Forces of Political Competition; MBA students
digging through Indra Nooyi's latest speech in search of gaffes. Wouldn't it
be fun?
Project for Excellence in Journalism: Analysis: Our Studies
---
http://www.journalism.org/research_and_analysis/Studies
Liberal Bias in the Media and in Academe ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#LiberalBias
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies
are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Bonuses for What?
The only guy to make almost a $100 Million dollars at GE is the CEO who
destroyed shareholder value by nearly 50% in slightly less than a decade
"GE has been an investor disaster under Jeff Immelt," MarketWatch, March
8, 2010 ---
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ge-has-been-an-investor-disaster-under-jeff-immelt-2010-03-08
When things go well,
chief executives of major companies rack up hundreds of millions of dollars,
even billions, on their stock allotments and options.
It's always justified on
the grounds that they've created lots of shareholder value. But what happens
when things go badly?
For one example, take a
look at General Electric Co. /quotes/comstock/13*!ge/quotes/nls/ge (GE 16.27,
+0.04, +0.22%) , one of America's biggest and most important companies. It just
revealed its latest annual glimpse inside the executive swag bag.
By any measure of
shareholder value, GE has been a disaster under Jeffrey Immelt. Investors
haven't made a nickel since he took the helm as chairman and chief executive
nine years ago. In fact, they've lost tens of billions of dollars.
The stock, which was $40
and change when Immelt took over, has collapsed to around $16. Even if you
include dividends, investors are still down about 40%. In real post-inflation
terms, stockholders have lost about half their money.
So it may come as a shock
to discover that during that same period, the 54-year old chief executive has
racked up around $90 million in salary, cash and pension benefits.
GE is quick to point out
that Immelt skipped his $5.8 million cash bonus in 2009 for the second year in a
row, because business did so badly. And so he did.
Yet this apparent
sacrifice has to viewed in context. Immelt still took home a "base salary" of
$3.3 million and a total compensation of $9.9 million.
His compensation in the
previous two years was $14.3 million and $9.3 million. That included everything
from salary to stock awards, pension benefits and other perks.
Too often, the media just
look at each year's pay in isolation. I decided to go back and take the longer
view.
Since succeeding Jack
Welch in 2001, Immelt has been paid a total of $28.2 million in salary and
another $28.6 million in cash bonuses, for total payments of $56.8 million.
That's over nine years, and in addition to all his stock- and option-grant
entitlements.
It doesn't end there.
Along with all his cash payments, Immelt also has accumulated a remarkable
pension fund worth $32 million. That would be enough to provide, say, a
60-year-old retiree with a lifetime income of $192,000 a month.
Yes, Jeff Immelt has been
at the company for 27 years, and some of this pension was accumulated in his
early years rising up the ladder. But this isn't just his regular company
pension. Nearly all of this is in the high-hat plan that's only available to
senior GE executives.
Immelt's personal use of
company jets -- I repeat, his personal use for vacations, weekend getaways and
so on -- cost GE stockholders another $201,335 last year. (It's something
shareholders can think about when they stand in line to take off their shoes at
JFK -- if they're not lining up at the Port Authority for a bus.)
Bob Jensen's threads on outrageous executive
compensation are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#OutrageousCompensation
My Hero Lawyer, Professor, and Wall Street Financial Expert Weighs In
Question
In the bankruptcy court examiner's report on Lehman's downfall, is Volume 3 more
or less important than Volume 2?
Answer
For Ernst & Young it is probably Volume 3, but my true hero exposing Wall Street
scandals opts for Volume 2.
My favorite Wall Street books exposing the inside greed and fraud on Wall
Street are those written by Frank Partnoy. My timeline of his exposes can be
found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds .
Professor Partnoy's Senate Testimony was among the first solid explanations
of how derivative financial instruments frauds took place at Enron. His entire
testimony can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm#FrankPartnoyTestimony
See his explanation of the infamous Footnote 16 of the Year 2000 Enron Annual
report ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm#Senator
His books are among the funniest and best books I've ever read in my life,
even better than the books of Michael Lewis.
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
They are the most dog-eared and scruffed up books in my entire library.
"Lehman Examiner Punted on Valuation,"
by Frank Partnoy, Professor of Law and Finance University of San Diego School of
Law and author of Fiasco, Infectious Greed, and
The Match King
Naked Capitalism, March 14, 2010 ---
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/03/frank-partnoy-lehman-examiner-punted-on-valuation.html
The buzz on the Lehman bankruptcy examiner’s report
has focused on Repo 105, for good reason. That scheme is one powerful
example of how the balance sheets of major Wall Street banks are fiction. It
also shows why Congress must include real accounting reform in its financial
legislation, or risk another collapse. (If you have 8 minutes to kill, here
is my
recent talk on the off-balance sheet problem, from
the Roosevelt Institute financial conference.)
But an even more
troubling section of the Lehman report is not Volume 3 on Repo 105. It is
Volume 2, on Valuation. The Valuation
section is 500 pages of utterly terrifying reading. It shows that, even
eighteen months after Lehman’s collapse, no one – not the bankruptcy
examiner, not Lehman’s internal valuation experts, not Ernst and Young, and
certainly not the regulators – could figure out what many of Lehman’s assets
and liabilities were worth. It shows Lehman was too complex to
do anything but fail.
The report cites extensive evidence of valuation
problems. Check out page 577, where the report concludes that Lehman’s high
credit default swap valuations were reasonable because Citigroup’s marks
were ONLY 8% lower than Lehman’s. 8%? And since when are Citigroup’s
valuations the objective benchmark?
Or page 547, where the report describes how
Lehman’s so-called “Product Control Group” acted like Keystone Kops: the
group used third-party prices for only 10% of Lehman’s CDO positions, and
deferred to the traders’ models, saying “We’re not quants.” Here are two
money quotes:
While the function of the Product Control Group
was to serve as a check on the
desk marks set by Lehman’s traders, the CDO product controllers were
hampered in
two respects. First, the Product Control Group did not appear to have
sufficient
resources to price test Lehman’s CDO positions comprehensively. Second,
while the
CDO product controllers were able to effectively verify the prices of
many positions
using trade data and third‐party prices, they did not have the same
level of quantitative sophistication as many of the desk personnel who
developed models to price CDOs. (page 547)
Or this one:
However, approximately a quarter of Lehman’s
CDO positions were not affirmatively priced by the Product Control
Group, but simply noted as ‘OK’ because the desk had already written
down the position significantly. (page 548)
My favorite section describes the valuation of
Ceago, Lehman’s largest CDO position. My corporate finance students at the
University of San Diego School of Law understand that you should use higher
discount rates for riskier projects. But the Valuation section of the report
found that with respect to Ceago, Lehman used LOWER discount rates for the
riskier tranches than for the safer ones:
The discount rates used by Lehman’s Product
Controllers were significantly understated. As stated, swap rates were
used for the discount rate on the Ceago subordinate tranches. However,
the resulting rates (approximately 3% to 4%) were significantly lower
than the approximately 9% discount rate used to value the more senior S
tranche. It is inappropriate to use a discount rate on a subordinate
tranche that is lower than the rate used on a senior tranche. (page 556)
It’s one thing to have product controllers who
aren’t “quants”; it’s quite another to have people in crucial risk
management roles who don’t understand present value.
When the examiner compared Lehman’s marks on these
lower tranches to more reliable valuation estimates, it found that “the
prices estimated for the C and D tranches of Ceago securities are
approximately one‐thirtieth of the price reported by Lehman. (pages 560-61)
One thirtieth? These valuations weren’t even close.
Ultimately, the examiner concluded that these
problems related to only a small portion of Lehman’s overall portfolio. But
that conclusion was due in part to the fact that the examiner did not have
the time or resources to examine many of Lehman’s positions in detail
(Lehman had 900,000 derivative positions in 2008, and the examiner did not
even try to value Lehman’s numerous corporate debt and equity holdings).
The bankruptcy examiner didn’t see enough to bring
lawsuits. But the valuation section of the report raises some hot-button
issues for private parties and prosecutors. As the report put it, there are
issues that “may warrant further review by parties in interest.”
For example, parties in interest might want to look
at the report’s section on Archstone, a publicly traded REIT Lehman acquired
in October 2007. Much ink has been spilled criticizing the valuation of
Archstone. Here is the Report’s finding (at page 361):
… there is sufficient evidence to support a
finding that Lehman’s valuations for its Archstone equity positions were
unreasonable beginning as of the end of the first quarter of 2008, and
continuing through the end of the third quarter of 2008.
And Archstone is just one of many examples.
The Repo 105 section of the Lehman report shows
that Lehman’s balance sheet was fiction. That was bad. The Valuation section
shows that Lehman’s approach to valuing assets and liabilities was seriously
flawed. That is worse. For a levered trading firm, to not understand your
economic position is to sign your own death warrant.
|
Selected works of FRANK PARTNOY
Bob Jensen at Trinity University
1. Who is Frank
Partnoy?
Cheryl Dunn
requested that I do a review of my favorites among the
“books that have influenced [my] work.” Immediately
the succession of FIASCO books by Frank Partnoy
came to mind. These particular books are not the best
among related books by Wall Street whistle blowers such
as Liar's Poker: Playing the Money Markets by
Michael Lewis in 1999 and Monkey Business: Swinging
Through the Wall Street Jungle by John Rolfe and
Peter Troob in 2002. But in1997. Frank Partnoy was the
first writer to open my eyes to the enormous gap between
our assumed efficient and fair capital markets versus
the “infectious greed” (Alan Greenspan’s term) that had
overtaken these markets.
Partnoy’s succession
of FIASCO books, like those of Lewis and Rolfe/Troob
are reality books written from the perspective of inside
whistle blowers. They are somewhat repetitive and
anecdotal mainly from the perspective of what each
author saw and interpreted.
My favorite among
the capital market fraud books is Frank Partnoy’s latest
book Infectious Greed: How Deceit and Risk Corrupted
the Financial Markets (Henry Holt & Company,
Incorporated, 2003, ISBN: 080507510-0- 477 pages). This
is the most scholarly of the books available on business
and gatekeeper degeneracy. Rather than relying mostly
upon his own experiences, this book drawn from Partnoy’s
interviews of over 150 capital markets insiders of one
type or another. It is more scholarly because it
demonstrates Partnoy’s evolution of learning about
extremely complex structured financing packages that
were the instruments of crime by banks, investment
banks, brokers, and securities dealers in the most
venerable firms in the U.S. and other parts of the
world. The book is brilliant and has a detailed and
helpful index.
What did I learn
most from Partnoy?
I learned about the
failures and complicity of what he terms “gatekeepers”
whose fiduciary responsibility was to inoculate against
“infectious greed.” These gatekeepers instead
manipulated their professions and their governments to
aid and abet the criminals. On Page 173 of
Infectious Greed, he writes the following:
Page #173
When
Republicans captured the House of Representatives in
November 1994--for the first time since the Eisenhower
era--securities-litigation reform was assured. In a
January 1995 speech, Levitt outlined the limits on
securities regulation that Congress later would support:
limiting the statute-of-limitations period for filing
lawsuits, restricting legal fees paid to lead
plaintiffs, eliminating punitive-damages provisions from
securities lawsuits, requiring plaintiffs to allege more
clearly that a defendant acted with reckless intent, and
exempting "forward
looking
statements"--essentially, projections about a company's
future--from legal liability.
The Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 passed easily,
and Congress even overrode the veto of President
Clinton, who either had a fleeting change of heart about
financial markets or decided that trial lawyers were an
even more
important
constituency than Wall Street. In any event, Clinton
and Levitt disagreed about the issue, although it wasn't
fatal to Levitt, who would remain SEC chair for another
five years.
He later introduces
Chapter 7 of Infectious Greed as follows:
Pages
187-188
The
regulatory changes of 1994-95 sent three messages to
corporate CEOs. First, you are not likely to be
punished for "massaging" your firm's accounting
numbers. Prosecutors rarely go after financial fraud
and, even when they do, the typical punishment is a
small fine; almost no one goes to prison. Moreover,
even a fraudulent scheme could be recast as mere
earnings management--the practice of smoothing a
company's earnings--which most executives did, and
regarded as perfectly legal.
Second,
you should use new financial instruments--including
options, swaps, and other derivatives--to increase your
own pay and to avoid costly regulation. If complex
derivatives are too much for you to handle--as they were
for many CEOs during the years immediately following the
1994 losses--you should at least pay yourself in stock
options, which don't need to be disclosed as an expense
and have a greater upside than cash bonuses or stock.
Third, you
don't need to worry about whether accountants or
securities analysts will tell investors about any hidden
losses or excessive options pay. Now that Congress and
the Supreme Court have insulated accounting firms and
investment banks from liability--with the Central Bank
decision and the Private Securities Litigation Reform
Act--they will be much more willing to look the other
way. If you pay them enough in fees, they might even be
willing to help.
Of course,
not every corporate executive heeded these messages.
For example, Warren Buffett argued that managers should
ensure that their companies' share prices were accurate,
not try to inflate prices artificially, and he
criticized the use of stock options as compensation.
Having been a major shareholder of Salomon Brothers,
Buffett also criticized accounting and securities firms
for conflicts of interest.
But for
every Warren Buffett, there were many less scrupulous
CEOs. This chapter considers four of them: Walter
Forbes of CUC International, Dean Buntrock of Waste
Management, Al Dunlap of Sunbeam, and Martin Grass of
Rite Aid. They are not all well-known among investors,
but their stories capture the changes in CEO behavior
during the mid-1990s. Unlike the "rocket scientists" at
Bankers Trust, First Boston, and Salomon Brothers, these
four had undistinguished backgrounds and little training
in mathematics or finance. Instead, they were
hardworking, hard-driving men who ran companies that met
basic consumer needs: they sold clothes, barbecue
grills, and prescription medicine, and cleaned up
garbage. They certainly didn't buy swaps linked to
LIBOR-squared.
The book
Infectious Greed has chapters on other capital
markets and corporate scandals. It is the best account
that I’ve ever read about Bankers Trust the Bankers
Trust scandals, including how one trader named Andy
Krieger almost destroyed the entire money supply of New
Zealand. Chapter 10 is devoted to Enron and follows up
on Frank Partnoy’s invited testimony before the United
States Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, January
24, 2002 ---
http://www.senate.gov/~gov_affairs/012402partnoy.htm
The controversial
writings of Frank Partnoy have had an enormous impact on
my teaching and my research. Although subsequent
writers wrote somewhat more entertaining exposes, he was
the one who first opened my eyes to what goes on behind
the scenes in capital markets and investment banking.
Through his early writings, I discovered that there is
an enormous gap between the efficient financial world
that we assume in agency theory worshipped in academe
versus the dark side of modern reality where you find
the cleverest crooks out to steal money from widows and
orphans in sophisticated ways where it is virtually
impossible to get caught. Because I read his 1997 book
early on, the ensuing succession of enormous scandals in
finance, accounting, and corporate governance weren’t
really much of a surprise to me.
From his insider
perspective he reveals a world where our most respected
firms in banking, market exchanges, and related
financial institutions no longer care anything about
fiduciary responsibility and professionalism in
disgusting contrast to the honorable founders of those
same firms motivated to serve rather than steal.
Young men and women
from top universities of the world abandoned almost all
ethical principles while working in investment banks and
other financial institutions in order to become not only
rich but filthy rich at the expense of countless pension
holders and small investors. Partnoy opened my eyes to
how easy it is to get around auditors and corporate
boards by creating structured financial contracts that
are incomprehensible and serve virtually no purpose
other than to steal billions upon billions of dollars.
Most importantly,
Frank Partnoy opened my eyes to the psychology of
greed. Greed is rooted in opportunity and cultural
relativism. He graduated from college with a high sense
of right and wrong. But his standards and values sank
to the criminal level of those when he entered the
criminal world of investment banking. The only
difference between him and the crooks he worked with is
that he could not quell his conscience while stealing
from widows and orphans.
Frank Partnoy has a
rare combination of scholarship and experience in law,
investment banking, and accounting. He is sometimes
criticized for not really understanding the complexities
of some of the deals he described, but he rather freely
admits that he was new to the game of complex deceptions
in international structured financing crime.
2. What really
happened at Enron? ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm#FrankPartnoyTestimony
3. What are some
of Frank Partnoy’s best-known works?
Frank Partnoy,
FIASCO: Blood in the Water on Wall Street (W. W.
Norton & Company, 1997, ISBN 0393046222, 252 pages).
This is the first of a somewhat
repetitive succession of Partnoy’s “FIASCO” books that
influenced my life. The most important revelation from
his insider’s perspective is that the most trusted firms
on Wall Street and financial centers in other major
cities in the U.S., that were once highly professional
and trustworthy, excoriated the guts of integrity
leaving a façade behind which crooks less violent than
the Mafia but far more greedy took control in the
roaring 1990s.
After selling a succession of phony
derivatives deals while at Morgan Stanley, Partnoy blew
the whistle in this book about a number of his
employer’s shady and outright fraudulent deals sold in
rigged markets using bait and switch tactics.
Customers, many of them pension fund investors for
schools and municipal employees, were duped into complex
and enormously risky deals that were billed as safe as
the U.S. Treasury.
His books have received mixed reviews,
but I question some of the integrity of the reviewers
from the investment banking industry who in some
instances tried to whitewash some of the deals described
by Partnoy. His books have received a bit less praise
than the book Liars Poker by Michael Lewis, but
critics of Partnoy fail to give credit that Partnoy’s
exposes preceded those of Lewis.
Frank Partnoy,
FIASCO: Guns, Booze and Bloodlust: the Truth About High
Finance (Profile Books, 1998, 305 Pages)
Like his earlier books, some investment
bankers and literary dilettantes who reviewed this book
were critical of Partnoy and claimed that he
misrepresented some legitimate structured financings.
However, my reading of the reviewers is that they were
trying to lend credence to highly questionable offshore
deals documented by Partnoy. Be that as it may, it
would have helped if Partnoy had been a bit more
explicit in some of his illustrations.
Frank Partnoy,
FIASCO: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader
(Penguin, 1999, ISBN 0140278796, 283 pages).
This is a
blistering indictment of the unregulated OTC market
for derivative financial instruments and the million
and billion dollar deals conceived in investment
banking. Among other things, Partnoy describes
Morgan Stanley’s annual drunken skeet-shooting
competition organized by a “gun-toting strip-joint
connoisseur” former combat officer (fanatic) who
loved the motto: “When derivatives are outlawed
only outlaws will have derivatives.” At that event,
derivatives salesmen were forced to shoot entrapped
bunnies between the eyes on the pretense that the
bunnies were just like “defenseless animals” that
were Morgan Stanley’s customers to be shot down even
if they might eventually “lose a billion dollars on
derivatives.”
This book has one of the best accounts of the
“fiasco” caused almost entirely by the duping of
Orange
County ’s Treasurer (Robert Citron)
by the unscrupulous Merrill Lynch derivatives
salesman named Michael
Stamenson. Orange
County eventually lost over a billion
dollars and was forced into bankruptcy. Much of
this was later recovered in court from Merrill
Lynch. Partnoy calls
Citron and Stamenson
“The Odd Couple,” which is also the title of Chapter
8 in the book.Frank Partnoy, Infectious Greed:
How Deceit and Risk Corrupted the Financial Markets
(Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated, 2003, ISBN:
080507510-0, 477 pages)Frank Partnoy, Infectious
Greed: How Deceit and Risk Corrupted the Financial
Markets (Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated,
2003, ISBN: 080507510-0, 477 pages)
Partnoy shows how corporations gradually
increased financial risk and lost control over overly
complex structured financing deals that obscured the
losses and disguised frauds pushed corporate officers
and their boards into successive and ingenious
deceptions." Major corporations such as Enron, Global
Crossing, and WorldCom entered into enormous illegal
corporate finance and accounting. Partnoy documents the
spread of this epidemic stage and provides some
suggestions for restraining the disease.
"The Siskel and
Ebert of Financial Matters: Two Thumbs Down for the
Credit Reporting Agencies" by Frank Partnoy,
Washington University Law Quarterly, Volume 77, No. 3,
1999 ---
http://ls.wustl.edu/WULQ/
4. What are
examples of related books that are somewhat more
entertaining than Partnoy’s early books?
Michael Lewis,
Liar's Poker: Playing the Money Markets (Coronet,
1999, ISBN 0340767006)
Lewis writes in Partnoy’s earlier
whistleblower style with somewhat more intense and comic
portrayals of the major players in describing the double
dealing and break down of integrity on the trading floor
of Salomon Brothers.
John Rolfe and Peter
Troob, Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall
Street Jungle (Warner Books, Incorporated, 2002,
ISBN: 0446676950, 288 Pages)
This is
a hilarious tongue-in-cheek account by Wharton and
Harvard MBAs who thought they were starting out as
stock brokers for $200,000 a year until they
realized that they were on the phones in a bucket
shop selling sleazy IPOs to unsuspecting
institutional investors who in turn passed them
along to widows and orphans. They write. "It took
us another six months after that to realize
that we were, in fact, selling crappy public
offerings to investors."
There are other books along a similar
vein that may be more revealing and entertaining
than the early books of Frank Partnoy, but he was
one of the first, if not the first, in the roaring
1990s to reveal the high crime taking place behind
the concrete and glass of Wall Street. He was the
first to anticipate many of the scandals that soon
followed. And his testimony before the U.S. Senate
is the best concise account of the crime that
transpired at Enron. He lays the blame clearly at
the feet of government officials (read that Wendy
Gramm) who sold the farm when they deregulated the
energy markets and opened the doors to unregulated
OTC derivatives trading in energy. That is when
Enron really began bilking the public.
Some of the many, many
lawsuits settled by auditing firms can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm
|
|
The End of Wall Street?
Liars Poker II is called "The End"
The Not-Funny Punch Line is Not Until Page 9 of This Tongue in Cheek Explanation
of the Meltdown on Wall Street!
Now I asked
Gutfreund about his biggest decision. “Yes,” he said. “They—the heads of
the other Wall Street firms—all said what an awful thing it was to go public
(beg for a government bailout)
and how could you do such a thing. But when the
temptation arose, they all gave in to it.” He agreed that the main effect of
turning a partnership into a corporation was to transfer the financial risk
to the shareholders. “When things go wrong, it’s their problem,” he said—and
obviously not theirs alone. When a Wall Street investment bank screwed up
badly enough, its risks became the problem of the U.S. government. “It’s
laissez-faire until you get in deep shit,” he said, with a half chuckle. He
was out of the game.
This is a must read to understand what went wrong on Wall Street ---
especially the punch line!
"The End," by Michael Lewis December 2008 Issue The era that defined Wall Street
is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar’s
Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong.
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom?tid=true
To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street
investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense
investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old,
with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and
bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street
is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not.
Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.
I’d never taken an accounting course, never run a
business, never even had savings of my own to manage. I stumbled into a job
at Salomon Brothers in 1985 and stumbled out much richer three years later,
and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still
strikes me as preposterous—which is one of the reasons the money was so easy
to walk away from. I figured the situation was unsustainable. Sooner rather
than later, someone was going to identify me, along with a lot of people
more or less like me, as a fraud. Sooner rather than later, there would come
a Great Reckoning when Wall Street would wake up and hundreds if not
thousands of young people like me, who had no business making huge bets with
other people’s money, would be expelled from finance.
When I sat down to write my account of the
experience in 1989—Liar’s Poker, it was called—it was in the spirit of a
young man who thought he was getting out while the getting was good. I was
merely scribbling down a message on my way out and stuffing it into a bottle
for those who would pass through these parts in the far distant future.
Unless some insider got all of this down on paper,
I figured, no future human would believe that it happened.
I thought I was writing a period piece about the
1980s in America. Not for a moment did I suspect that the financial 1980s
would last two full decades longer or that the difference in degree between
Wall Street and ordinary life would swell into a difference in kind. I
expected readers of the future to be outraged that back in 1986, the C.E.O.
of Salomon Brothers, John Gutfreund, was paid $3.1 million; I expected them
to gape in horror when I reported that one of our traders, Howie Rubin, had
moved to Merrill Lynch, where he lost $250 million; I assumed they’d be
shocked to learn that a Wall Street C.E.O. had only the vaguest idea of the
risks his traders were running. What I didn’t expect was that any future
reader would look on my experience and say, “How quaint.”
I had no great agenda, apart from telling what I
took to be a remarkable tale, but if you got a few drinks in me and then
asked what effect I thought my book would have on the world, I might have
said something like, “I hope that college students trying to figure out what
to do with their lives will read it and decide that it’s silly to phony it
up and abandon their passions to become financiers.” I hoped that some
bright kid at, say, Ohio State University who really wanted to be an
oceanographer would read my book, spurn the offer from Morgan Stanley, and
set out to sea.
Somehow that message failed to come across. Six
months after Liar’s Poker was published, I was knee-deep in letters from
students at Ohio State who wanted to know if I had any other secrets to
share about Wall Street. They’d read my book as a how-to manual.
In the two decades since then, I had been waiting
for the end of Wall Street. The outrageous bonuses, the slender returns to
shareholders, the never-ending scandals, the bursting of the internet
bubble, the crisis following the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management:
Over and over again, the big Wall Street investment banks would be, in some
narrow way, discredited. Yet they just kept on growing, along with the sums
of money that they doled out to 26-year-olds to perform tasks of no obvious
social utility. The rebellion by American youth against the money culture
never happened. Why bother to overturn your parents’ world when you can buy
it, slice it up into tranches, and sell off the pieces?
At some point, I gave up waiting for the end. There
was no scandal or reversal, I assumed, that could sink the system.
The New Order The crash did more than wipe out
money. It also reordered the power on Wall Street. What a Swell Party A
pictorial timeline of some Wall Street highs and lows from 1985 to 2007.
Worst of Times Most economists predict a recovery late next year. Don’t bet
on it. Then came Meredith Whitney with news. Whitney was an obscure analyst
of financial firms for Oppenheimer Securities who, on October 31, 2007,
ceased to be obscure. On that day, she predicted that Citigroup had so
mismanaged its affairs that it would need to slash its dividend or go bust.
It’s never entirely clear on any given day what causes what in the stock
market, but it was pretty obvious that on October 31, Meredith Whitney
caused the market in financial stocks to crash. By the end of the trading
day, a woman whom basically no one had ever heard of had shaved $369 billion
off the value of financial firms in the market. Four days later, Citigroup’s
C.E.O., Chuck Prince, resigned. In January, Citigroup slashed its dividend.
From that moment, Whitney became E.F. Hutton: When
she spoke, people listened. Her message was clear. If you want to know what
these Wall Street firms are really worth, take a hard look at the crappy
assets they bought with huge sums of borrowed money, and imagine what
they’d fetch in a fire sale. The vast assemblages of highly paid people
inside the firms were essentially worth nothing. For better than a year now,
Whitney has responded to the claims by bankers and brokers that they had put
their problems behind them with this write-down or that capital raise with a
claim of her own: You’re wrong. You’re still not facing up to how badly you
have mismanaged your business.
Rivals accused Whitney of being overrated; bloggers
accused her of being lucky. What she was, mainly, was right. But it’s true
that she was, in part, guessing. There was no way she could have known what
was going to happen to these Wall Street firms. The C.E.O.’s themselves
didn’t know.
Now, obviously, Meredith Whitney didn’t sink Wall
Street. She just expressed most clearly and loudly a view that was, in
retrospect, far more seditious to the financial order than, say, Eliot
Spitzer’s campaign against Wall Street corruption. If mere scandal could
have destroyed the big Wall Street investment banks, they’d have vanished
long ago. This woman wasn’t saying that Wall Street bankers were corrupt.
She was saying they were stupid. These people whose job it was to allocate
capital apparently didn’t even know how to manage their own.
At some point, I could no longer contain myself: I
called Whitney. This was back in March, when Wall Street’s fate still hung
in the balance. I thought, If she’s right, then this really could be the end
of Wall Street as we’ve known it. I was curious to see if she made sense but
also to know where this young woman who was crashing the stock market with
her every utterance had come from.
It turned out that she made a great deal of sense
and that she’d arrived on Wall Street in 1993, from the Brown University
history department. “I got to New York, and I didn’t even know research
existed,” she says. She’d wound up at Oppenheimer and had the most
incredible piece of luck: to be trained by a man who helped her establish
not merely a career but a worldview. His name, she says, was Steve Eisman.
Eisman had moved on, but they kept in touch. “After
I made the Citi call,” she says, “one of the best things that happened was
when Steve called and told me how proud he was of me.”
Having never heard of Eisman, I didn’t think
anything of this. But a few months later, I called Whitney again and asked
her, as I was asking others, whom she knew who had anticipated the cataclysm
and set themselves up to make a fortune from it. There’s a long list of
people who now say they saw it coming all along but a far shorter one of
people who actually did. Of those, even fewer had the nerve to bet on their
vision. It’s not easy to stand apart from mass hysteria—to believe that most
of what’s in the financial news is wrong or distorted, to believe that most
important financial people are either lying or deluded—without actually
being insane. A handful of people had been inside the black box, understood
how it worked, and bet on it blowing up. Whitney rattled off a list with a
half-dozen names on it. At the top was Steve Eisman.
Steve Eisman entered finance about the time I
exited it. He’d grown up in New York City and gone to a Jewish day school,
the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard Law School. In 1991, he was a
30-year-old corporate lawyer. “I hated it,” he says. “I hated being a
lawyer. My parents worked as brokers at Oppenheimer. They managed to finagle
me a job. It’s not pretty, but that’s what happened.”
He was hired as a junior equity analyst, a helpmate
who didn’t actually offer his opinions. That changed in December 1991, less
than a year into his new job, when a subprime mortgage lender called Ames
Financial went public and no one at Oppenheimer particularly cared to
express an opinion about it. One of Oppenheimer’s investment bankers stomped
around the research department looking for anyone who knew anything about
the mortgage business. Recalls Eisman: “I’m a junior analyst and just trying
to figure out which end is up, but I told him that as a lawyer I’d worked on
a deal for the Money Store.” He was promptly appointed the lead analyst for
Ames Financial. “What I didn’t tell him was that my job had been to
proofread the documents and that I hadn’t understood a word of the fucking
things.”
Ames Financial belonged to a category of firms
known as nonbank financial institutions. The category didn’t include J.P.
Morgan, but it did encompass many little-known companies that one way or
another were involved in the early-1990s boom in subprime mortgage
lending—the lower class of American finance.
The second company for which Eisman was given sole
responsibility was Lomas Financial, which had just emerged from bankruptcy.
“I put a sell rating on the thing because it was a piece of shit,” Eisman
says. “I didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to put a sell rating on
companies. I thought there were three boxes—buy, hold, sell—and you could
pick the one you thought you should.” He was pressured generally to be a bit
more upbeat, but upbeat wasn’t Steve Eisman’s style. Upbeat and Eisman
didn’t occupy the same planet. A hedge fund manager who counts Eisman as a
friend set out to explain him to me but quit a minute into it. After
describing how Eisman exposed various important people as either liars or
idiots, the hedge fund manager started to laugh. “He’s sort of a prick in a
way, but he’s smart and honest and fearless.”
“A lot of people don’t get Steve,” Whitney says.
“But the people who get him love him.” Eisman stuck to his sell rating on
Lomas Financial, even after the company announced that investors needn’t
worry about its financial condition, as it had hedged its market risk. “The
single greatest line I ever wrote as an analyst,” says Eisman, “was after
Lomas said they were hedged.” He recited the line from memory: “ ‘The Lomas
Financial Corp. is a perfectly hedged financial institution: It loses money
in every conceivable interest-rate environment.’ I enjoyed writing that
sentence more than any sentence I ever wrote.” A few months after he’d
delivered that line in his report, Lomas Financial returned to bankruptcy.
Continued in article
Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker: Playing the Money Markets (Coronet, 1999, ISBN
0340767006)
Lewis writes in Partnoy’s earlier whistleblower
style with somewhat more intense and comic portrayals of the major players
in describing the double dealing and break down of integrity on the trading
floor of Salomon Brothers.
Continued at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on the Lehman Examiner's Report ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#Ernst
A Rare Event: Convicted of Defrauding the Federal Government
Three individuals have pleaded guilty in a federal
court to scamming the Federal Communications Commission out of over $2.5 million
with organizations they owned that were designed to help people with hearing
impairments. The FCC has a program called Video Relay Service (VRS) for deaf
people and those with related hearing problems. It partners with local
organizations to provide interpreting services over the Internet to allow these
people to communicate with others through webcams and other video-to-video
channels. The local organizations pay their interpreters and are then reimbursed
by the FCC for providing the service, at a generous rate of $390 per hour ($6.50
per minute).
Mike Luttrell, "Three plead guilty to defrauding FCC of millions of dollars." TG
Daily, March 9, 2010 ---
http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-brief/48767-three-plead-guilty-to-defrauding-fcc-of-millions-of-dollars
Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraudUpdates.htm
Question
When can terminally ill people achieve popularity and great fortune?
Is it worth dying for?
What are the accounting issues is these unusual circumstances for both the
investors and the debtors?
"Investors Tap Into Deathbed Bond Deal," by Mark Maremont and Aparajita
Saha-Bubna, The Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704784904575112081251438468.html#mod=todays_us_page_one
Billions of dollars in corporate bonds sold to
retail investors come with an unusual provision that could be used to
generate a fast profit. There's just one catch: Investors must team up to
buy the bonds with someone who is about to die
American International Group Inc., Bank of America
Corp., Caterpillar Inc., General Electric Co.'s GE Capital unit and other
major U.S. companies often issue bonds with what is known as a survivor's
option.
In a little-known practice, investors can recruit a
terminally ill person and together they can scoop up these bonds on the open
market at a discount. When the ailing bondholder dies, the surviving
co-owner can then redeem them at face value and potentially turn a quick
profit.
Companies have typically included the macabre
provision as a way to allay fears among ordinary individual
investors—elderly couples who might worry that one spouse could die before
the bonds mature, possibly exposing the survivor to a loss.
But the market's turmoil has made this arrangement
more attractive for professional investors, since some bonds are trading at
a steep discount. Legal and financial experts say there is nothing to
prevent investors from buying the bonds with a dying relative or even a
stranger who is terminally ill.
It isn't clear how many investors have piled into
such bonds since the financial crisis hit, which initially pushed some below
50 cents on the dollar.
Prices have rebounded from their lows. But some
so-called survivor's-option corporate bonds issued by auto lender GMAC
Financial Services, AIG unit American General Financial Services and
student-loan provider SLM Corp. are still being offered at discounts of more
than 20%, according to Knight BondPoint, a unit of Knight Capital Group Inc.
Companies typically issue the bonds because they
want to tap into a regular, stable funding source through retail investors.
Such companies often sell a small amount of bonds each week, say $25
million, through retail brokers.
Usually, there are two ways an investor can cash in
a bond: by selling it to another investor on the open market, or by waiting
until the issuer redeems the bond upon its maturity.
One investor who scored big on the money-back
guarantee is Joseph A. Caramadre, an estate-planning lawyer in Cranston,
R.I. From 2006 to 2009, Mr. Caramadre recruited several dozen terminally ill
people to serve as joint brokerage-account holders. He then bought
survivor's-option bonds trading below face value for each account, according
to Mr. Caramadre's lawyer and federal court records filed in Providence,
R.I., over how to pay out proceeds from the investments.
Continued in article
"A Dangerous Pattern: Rewarding Failure," by Ron Kensas, Harvard
Business Review Blog, March 9, 2010 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/ashkenas/2010/03/a-dangerous-pattern-rewarding.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
Over the past few months there has been growing
anger and frustration about outsized Wall Street bonuses awarded by
institutions that were rescued by taxpayer funds. At the core of this anger
is the feeling that the pursuit of big payoffs caused bankers to develop
complex products and take big risks which ultimately caused the financial
system to crash — and if this dynamic is not curbed, it will happen again.
At the same time, there is also a feeling, reinforced by President Obama,
that Wall Street bankers have not really been held accountable for their
risky actions and, in fact, are being unduly rewarded while everyone else
continues to suffer.
Unfortunately, the focus on Wall Street masks a
more dangerous pattern of rewarding failure that is deeply embedded in the
highest levels of corporate and governmental culture. For example, President
Obama's point person for reforming Wall Street is Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner. But somehow Geithner himself has not been held accountable for the
financial crisis. This is despite the fact that as president of the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York Geithner was responsible for the supervision of
Wall Street banks. His reward for allowing these banks to create
unsustainable balance sheets: He was made Treasury Secretary.
Similarly Geithner's boss in the Federal Reserve,
Ben Bernanke, was not held accountable for the interest rate and regulatory
policies that some say caused the crisis. Instead, he was confirmed for a
second term by a wide margin in the Senate. And to complete the failure
trifecta, Lawrence Summers, who supported many of the policies that caused
the financial crisis and resigned from his position as President of Harvard
after making unfortunate statements about the capabilities of women, was
given a senior role as a White House economic policy advisor.
But this culture of rewarding failure is not
limited to the highest levels of government. Virtually every senior
corporate leader of a failed institution walks away with millions of
dollars. Many move on to other senior corporate jobs or board positions.
Take Robert Nardelli as an example. After not getting the top job at GE in
2001, Nardelli became the CEO of Home Depot where he made a series of
strategic missteps and displayed an arrogance that alienated employees and
customers. After being ousted from that job (with millions of dollars) he
was hired by Cerberus to turn around Chrysler — another failure which
ultimately resulted in its acquisition by Fiat. And while thousands of
Chrysler employees and dealers lost their jobs and their incomes, again
Nardelli walked away with his fortune intact and enhanced.
None of this is to blame Geithner, Bernanke,
Summers or Nardelli. The point of this argument is that at the highest
levels of government and corporations, we have accepted a culture of
rewarding failure. That is why perhaps the best job in America is to be a
failed CEO. You receive millions in severance and are once more given
opportunities to either try it again, or serve on a board of directors where
you can again escape accountability for failure. In fact, while President
Obama calls for "clawbacks" of banker's bonuses, nobody seems to be calling
for directors to return the compensation that they received for poorly
"supervising" financial institutions and other corporations that struggle or
fail.
Steve Kerr, former chief learning officer of GE and
Goldman Sachs, notes that the biggest problem with compensation is what he
calls "asking for A while rewarding B." If we are serious about asking for
excellent performance, then we have to stop rewarding failure. It's a simple
equation — and until we get it right, the President's calls for greater
accountability will have a hollow ring.
What do you think?
"Five Ways to Heal American Capitalism," by Roger Marti,
Harvard Business Review Blog, March 3, 2010 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/03/healing_american_capitalism_to.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
March 10, 2010 reply from Malcolm McLelland
[mjmclell@INDIANA.EDU]
Here's an
interesting article written by George Soros in 1997 that is (was) prescient,
I think, regarding the financial crisis and related issues:
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97feb/capital/capital.htm .
It seems to get at the core issue quite well.
Cheers,
MMc
Bob Jensen's threads on outrageous executive compensation are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#OutrageousCompensation
From the Scout Report on March 5, 2010
CrossLoop 2.71 ---
http://www.crossloop.com/mktg/screensharing_123
If you're working on a project or you need to share
timely information, you might want to check out CrossLoop 2.71. After
installing this program, visitors can share a 12-digit access code with
others to allow them to access their desktop. It's a good way to collaborate
on a group presentation, share data, and there are a myriad of other uses.
This version is compatible with computers running Mac OS X 10.4 or later and
Windows 2000 and newer.
Darq Software Transmute 2.03 ---
http://www.gettransmute.com/
If you want to move around your bookmarks to a new
and improved browser, Transmute 2.03 might be just the application for you.
The user interface is quite elegant, and visitors just need to select the
browsers they're transferring the bookmarks to and from, and the program
makes it happen. The program supports a number of browsers, including Opera,
Chrome, and Safari. This version is compatible with computers running
Windows 98 and newer.
Admiral Ackbar for Ole Miss Mascot ---
http://www.notatrap.org/
University of Mississippi Library: Digital
Collections ---
http://clio.lib.olemiss.edu/archives/
From the Scout Report on March 12, 2010
WinUtilities Free Edition 9.44 ---
http://www.ylcomputing.com/content/view/327/135/
Installing and uninstalling various programs can
leave behind annoying detritus on a computer, and WinUtilities can help out
with this predicament. The application brings together a number of tools
designed to free up disk space and improve overall system performance. The
application includes a "One-Click Maintenance" feature, and visitors can
also use the application to shred files, locate duplicate files, and
schedule various maintenance tasks. This version is compatible with
computers running Windows 2003 and newer.
Courseware 1.1.2 ---
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/scholarpress-courseware/
The Center for History and New Media at George
Mason University is always working on new projects, and their Courseware
plug-in for Word Press is worth a look. Visitors can use this latest version
of Courseware to publish class schedules, assignments, and bibliographies.
Courseware is primarily intended for use by the higher education community,
but it could easily be used in high school classrooms or other collaborative
environments. This version is compatible with all operating systems,
including Linux.
Legendary Architect Bruce J. Graham Dies
http://www.som.com/content.cfm/030810_legendary_architect_bruce_j_graham_dies
Chicago Tribune Profile: Bruce Graham [pdf]
http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/files/brucegrahamstory.pdf
Biography and oral history: Bruce Graham
http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/research/specialcollections/oralhistories/graham.html
Willis Tower ---
http://www.willistower.com/
Chicago Landmarks ---
http://egov.cityofchicago.org/Landmarks/
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Family Learning Forum ---
http://familylearningforum.org/
Education & Learning: Asia Society ---
http://www.asiasociety.org/education-learning
Portal to Asian Internet Resources --- http://webcat.library.wisc.edu:3200/PAIR/index.html
Latino Distance Education
American RadioWorks: Rising by Degrees [iTunes]
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/latino_college/index.html
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
ChemEd DL [Chemestry Education Digital Library ---
http://www.chemeddl.org/
Bringing food chemistry to life ---
http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/deliciousnessw09/
Exploratorium: Science Snacks ---
http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/index.html
Canadian Space Agency Kid Science ---
http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/eng/kidspace/kidspace.asp
Biography and oral history: Bruce Graham (architecture) ---
http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/research/specialcollections/oralhistories/graham.html
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
Department of Defense Social Media Hub ---
http://socialmedia.defense.gov/
Project for Excellence in Journalism: Analysis: Our Studies ---
http://www.journalism.org/research_and_analysis/Studies
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: Gender and Land
Rights Database ---
http://www.fao.org/gender/landrights
Education & Learning: Asia Society ---
http://www.asiasociety.org/education-learning
South Asian Oral History Project ---
http://content.lib.washington.edu/saohcweb/index.html
Measuring Underemployment Among Military Spouses ---
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2010/RAND_MG918.pdf
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe: Statistical Database ---
http://w3.unece.org/pxweb/Dialog/
United Nations World Digital Library ---
http://www.wdl.org/en/
OECD Factbook eXplorer ---
http://stats.oecd.org/oecdfactbook/
HotDocs Doc Library [Canadian Social Communities]
http://hotdocslibrary.ca/en/
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History: Digital Collections ---
http://chwmaah-archive.com/?page_id=18
Voices from Afghanistan ---
http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/voicesfromafghanistan/Pages/default.aspx
Afghanistan Analyst ---
http://afghanistan-analyst.org/default.aspx
The Reverend Claude L. Pickens, Jr. Collection on Muslims in China and Tibet
(over 1,000 photographs) ---
http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/harvard-yenching/collections/pickens/
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
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: Gender and Land
Rights Database ---
http://www.fao.org/gender/landrights
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
National American History: Museum Stories of Freedom and Justice [iTunes]
http://americanhistory.si.edu/freedomandjustice/
NYPL Digital Gallery: Turn of the Century Posters ---
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=printing&col_id=212
Nickel Weeklies (American History) ---
http://drc.library.bgsu.edu/handle/2374.BGSU/744
Many Pen and Ink Sketches
Hogenberg: Franz and Abraham Hogenberg Engravings ---
http://diglib.princeton.edu/xquery?_xq=getCollection&_xsl=collection&_pid=pudl0051
MoMa: William Kentridge [Flash Player Art]
http://moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/williamkentridge/
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History: Digital Collections ---
http://chwmaah-archive.com/?page_id=18
African American History (photographs)
Documenting Our Past: The Teenie Harris Archive Project ---
http://www.cmoa.org/teenie/intro.asp
The University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announces the availability of a newly-digitized
collection of Abraham Lincoln books accessible through the Open Content Alliance
and displayed on the University Library's own web site, as the first step of a
digitization project of Lincoln books from its collection. View the first set of
books digitized at:
http://varuna.grainger.uiuc.edu/oca/lincoln/
Abraham Lincoln Association Publications ---
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/alapubs/
Lincoln Memorial
Interactive [Flash Player]
http://www.nps.gov/featurecontent/ncr/linc/interactive/deploy/index.htm#/introduction
The Lincoln Log ---
http://www.thelincolnlog.org/view
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers ---
http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/home.html
The Ohio Channel: Remarkable Ohio: Marking Ohio's History [video]
http://www.ohiochannel.org/your_state/remarkable_ohio/index.cfm?mh=ohs
History of Central Florida
Central Florida Memory ---
http://www.cfmemory.org /
New Mexico Museum of Art [Flash Player, pdf]
http://www.nmartmuseum.org/
Museum of Contemporary Art: Podcasts [iTunes] ---
http://www.mcachicago.org/interactive/podcasts.php?page=podcast
Teaching Images Digital Experiences ---
http://tides.sfasu.edu/index.html
Florida Digital Newspaper Library ---
http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/UFDC/?c=fdnl1
British Museum: A catalogue of the Russian icons in the British Museum
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/online_research_catalogues/russian_icons/catalogue_of_russian_icons.aspx
Ordnance Survey: History of Maps [England] ---
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/aboutus/history/index.html
.The Frank M. Hohenberger Photograph Collection (Brown County, Indiana) ---
http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/lilly/hohenberger/
The Reverend Claude L. Pickens, Jr. Collection on Muslims in China and Tibet
(over 1,000 photographs) ---
http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/harvard-yenching/collections/pickens/
The History Education Network [Canada]
http://www.thenhier.ca/
Hogenberg: Franz and Abraham Hogenberg Engravings ---
http://diglib.princeton.edu/xquery?_xq=getCollection&_xsl=collection&_pid=pudl0051
South Asian Oral History Project ---
http://content.lib.washington.edu/saohcweb/index.html
HotDocs Doc Library [Canadian Social Communities]
http://hotdocslibrary.ca/en/
Voices from Afghanistan ---
http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/voicesfromafghanistan/Pages/default.aspx
Afghanistan Analyst ---
http://afghanistan-analyst.org/default.aspx
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
Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection ---
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/dcmhtml/dmhome.html
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/
March 9, 2010
March 10, 2010
March 11, 2010
March 12, 2010
March 13, 2010
March 15, 2010
March 16, 2010
Dan Ariely ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely
"The Power of Defaults in How We Eat," by Dan Ariely, MIT's
Technology Review, March 15, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/post.aspx?bid=355&bpid=24925&nlid=2820
A few months ago I attended a conference held by
the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. One of the interesting
things they noted this year was about their lunch offering.
You might be surprised to know that meat
production, between raising, processing, packaging, and preserving meat uses
a lot of energy. In fact, Michael Pollan, author of The Omivore’s Dilemma
once asserted that “A vegan in a Hummer has a lighter carbon footprint than
a beef eater in a Prius” (it turns out that this was a bit of an
exaggeration).
If you’ll note in the picture below, it seems that
in this meeting (2009) the council was able to convince attendees to switch
to a vegetarian lunch.
The trick, as I’ve blogged about before, was making
the vegetarian option the default option! For the past two years, the
council did not have any default and the vast majority of the attendants
picked the meat option. This year they set up the vegetarian option as the
default, and this yielded a more environmentally friendly results, with a
mere 20 percent insisting on having their steaks (see the column for 2009).
The other good news is that the vegetarian option
was also (in this case) more tasty and healthy.
It's not just financial markets that experience bubbles, society does too.
And the Human Genome Project is a perfect example, says a new study.
"The Rise and Fall of the Human Genome Project," MIT's Technology Review,
March 17, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24935/?nlid=2823
"Revealing the Source of Ritalin's Brain Boosting Benefits: The ADHD
drug improves attention by enhancing neural plasticity," by Emily Singer,
MIT's Technology Review, March 8, 2010 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/24902/?nlid=2802
New research in animals sheds light on how Ritalin,
the stimulant drug prescribed to millions of children each year in the
United States for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), sheds
light on how the drug works. The molecule appears to boost both attention
and enhance the speed of learning by increasing the activity of the chemical
messenger dopamine, according to new research in Nature Neuroscience.
Rats given Ritalin were able to more quickly learn
that a combination of signals--a flash of light and sound--meant they could
get a sugar water reward. But if the rats were also given a drug to block
one type of dopamine receptor, the effect was lost. Treated animals also
focused more intently on the task at hand, engaging in less unrelated
behavior. Another drug, designed to block a second type of dopamine
receptor, blocked Ritalin's ability to increase focus.
Researchers also found that drug-treated animals
had enhanced neural plasticity, or changes in strength of the connections
between nerve cells. The ability of our neural circuits to change strength
in response to new information underlies our ability to learn.
"Since we now know that Ritalin improves behavior
through two specific types of neurotransmitter receptors, the finding could
help in the development of better targeted drugs, with fewer side effects,
to increase focus and learning," said Antonello Bonci, MD, principal
investigator at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center and professor of
neurology at UCSF, in a statement from the university. The Gallo Center is
affiliated with the UCSF Department of Neurology.
While Ritalin is mostly prescribed for children
with ADHD, it also boosts cognitive function in healthy people. A number of
studies suggest that
a growing number of healthy adults and teens are taking Ritalin
and similar drugs to aid in studying or work
performance.
Forwarded by Roger Collins
Canadians Also Win Gold For Synchronized Peeing (with a great tell-tale
picture) ---
http://deadspin.com/5488435/canadians-also-win-gold-for-synchronized-peeing
"NBC's Saturday Night Live (Comedy) 'Presidents' Reunite to Promote Wall
Street Reform," SmartPros, March 8, 2010 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x68955.xml
A new online video
released from the creators and producers of Funny Or Die kicked off a week of
action to urge Congress to act and pass real financial reform.
The video, directed by
Ron Howard, brings together all the actors who portrayed “Presidents” on
“Saturday Night Live,” including Will Ferrell (George W. Bush), Fred Armisen
(Barack Obama), Darrell Hammond (Bill Clinton), Chevy Chase (Gerald Ford), Dan
Aykroyd (Jimmy Carter), and Dana Carvey (George H. W. Bush). In addition, Jim
Carrey rounds out the cast with his portrayal of Ronald Regan, and “SNL” alum
Maya Rudolph (Michelle Obama) is also featured.
The video was created in
association with Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition of more than 200
national, state and local consumer, labor, investor, civil rights, community,
small business and senior citizen organizations, to urge Congress to act now on
Financial Reform and to make sure the cornerstone or real reform, a strong and
independent consumer agency, is included in any final bill.
“To see all these fake
Presidents together at once in a fake White House Bedroom with fake wigs was
very fake inspiring,” said Adam McKay, co-founder of Funny Or Die and co-writer
of the video.
In addition to the
“Presidential Reunion” video, Funny and Die is working on additional videos to
be released soon to urge Congress to act and pass financial reform.
The videos will be on
www.funnyordie.com and link to information and
actions on
www.mainstreetbrigade.org and
www.ourfinancialsecurity.org .
Heather Booth, Executive
Director of Americans for Financial Reform: “For months, the Big Banks and their
army of high priced lobbyists have been swarming Capitol Hill looking to either
kill or weaken real reform – including a strong and independent agency focused
on standing up for consumers. We are thrilled the folks at Funny or Die, and
their friends in Hollywood, are joining this fight. The Big Banks have had their
say in Washington for long enough. It is time for Congress to listen to the
American people and pass real financial reform, including a strong and
independent CFPA, to ensure the Big Banks can not lead our economy over a cliff
again.”
Bob Jensen's more serious threads on the needs for reform are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
Here are some little known, very interesting facts about Texas:
1.....Beaumont to El Paso : 742 miles
2... Beaumont to Chicago : 770 miles
3... El Paso is closer to California than to Dallas
4... World's first rodeo was in Pecos , July 4, 1883.
5... The Flagship Hotel in Galveston is the only hotel in North America built
over water. Destroyed by Hurricane Ike -2008!
6. The Heisman Trophy was named after John William Heisman who was the first
full-time coach at Rice University in Houston .
7. Brazoria County has more species of birds than any other area in North
America
8. Aransas Wildlife Refuge is the winter home of North America 's only remaining
flock of whooping cranes.
9. Jalapeno jelly originated in Lake Jackson in 1978. 10. The worst natural
disaster in U.S.... history was in 1900, caused by a hurricane, in which over
8,000 lives were lost on Galveston Island .
11. The first word spoken from the moon, July 20,1969, was " Houston ," but the
space center was actually in Clear Lake City at the time.
12. King Ranch in South Texas is larger than Rhode Island ..
13. Tropical Storm Claudette brought a U.S. rainfall record of 43' in 24 hours
in and around Alvin in July of 1979...
14. Texas is the only state to enter the U.S. by TREATY, (known as the
Constitution of 1845 by the Republic of Texas to enter the Union ) instead of by
annexation. This allows the Texas Flag to fly at the same height as the U.S.
Flag, and may divide into 5 states.
15. A Live Oak tree near Fulton is estimated to be 1500 years old.
16. Caddo Lake is the only natural lake in the state.
17. Dr Pepper was invented in Waco in 1885. There is no period in Dr Pepper..
18. Texas has had six capital cities:
Washington -on- the Brazos, Harrisburg , Galveston ,Velasco, West Columbia and
Austin ...
19. The Capitol Dome in Austin is the only dome in the U.S. which is taller than
the Capitol Building in Washington DC (by 7 feet).
20. The San Jacinto Monument is the tallest free standing monument in the world
and it is taller than the Washington monument.
21. The name ' Texas ' comes from the Hasini Indian word 'tejas' meaning
friends. Tejas is not Spanish for Texas ..
22. The State Mascot is the Armadillo (an interesting bit of trivia about the
armadillo is they always have four babies. They have one egg, which splits into
four, and they either have four males or four females.).
23. The first domed stadium in the U.S. was the Astrodome in Houston .
Y'all git all that?
Forwarded by Paula
It takes your food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.
One human hair can support 3kg (6.6 lb).
The average man's private area is three times the length of his thumb.
Human thighbones are stronger than concrete.
A woman's heart beats faster than a man's...
There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.
Women blink twice as often as men.
The average person's skin weighs twice as much as the brain.
Your body uses 300 muscles to balance itself when you are standing still.
If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it. Women reading this
will be finished now.
Men are still busy checking their thumbs.
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/
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
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.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.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
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accountancy Discussion ListServs:
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a
ListServ (usually for free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc
Roles of a ListServ ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
|
CPAS-L (Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo
(Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation
Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
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
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.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