Tidbits Quotations on June 17, 2010
To Accompany the June 17, 2010 edition of Tidbits
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2010/tidbits061710.htm                        
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

 

Video on IOUSA Bipartisan Solutions to Saving the USA

If you missed Sunday afternoon CNN’s two-hour IOUSA Solutions broadcast, you can watch a 30-minute version at
http://www.pgpf.org/newsroom/press/IOUSA-Solutions-Premiers-on-CNN/   (Scroll Down a bit)
Note that great efforts were made to keep this a bipartisan panel along with the occasional video clips of President Obama discussing the debt crisis. The problem is a build up over spending for most of our nation’s history, It landed at the feet of President Obama, but he’s certainly not the cause nor is his the recent expansion of health care coverage the real cause.

One take home from the CNN show was that over 60% of the booked National Debt increases are funded off shore (largely in Asia and the Middle East).
This going to greatly constrain the global influence and economic choices of the United States.

By 2016 the interest payments on the National Debt will be the biggest single item in the Federal Budget, more than national defense or social security. And an enormous portion of this interest cash flow will be flowing to foreign nations that may begin to put all sorts of strings on their decisions  to roll over funding our National Debt.

The unbooked entitlement obligations that are not part of the National Debt are over $60 trillion and exploding exponentially. The Medicare D entitlements to retirees like me added over $8 trillion of entitlements under the Bush Presidency.

Most of the problems are solvable except for the Number 1 entitlements problem --- Medicare.
Drastic measures must be taken to keep Medicare sustainable.

 

I thought the show was pretty balanced from a bipartisan standpoint and from the standpoint of possible solutions.

Many of the possible “solutions” are really too small to really make a dent in the problem. For example, medical costs can be reduced by one of my favorite solutions of limiting (like they do in Texas) punitive damage recoveries in malpractice lawsuits. However, the cost savings are a mere drop in the bucket. Another drop in the bucket will be the achievable increased savings from decreasing medical and disability-claim frauds. These are important solutions, but they are not solutions that will save the USA.

The big possible solutions to save the USA are as follows (you and I won’t particularly like these solutions):

 

 

Watch for the other possible solutions in the 30-minute summary video ---
http://www.pgpf.org/newsroom/press/IOUSA-Solutions-Premiers-on-CNN/
(Scroll Down a bit)

  

Here is the original (and somewhat dated video that does not delve into solutions very much)
IOUSA (the most frightening movie in American history) ---
(see a 30-minute version of the documentary at www.iousathemovie.com )

If you missed Sunday afternoon CNN’s two-hour IOUSA Solutions broadcast, you can watch a 30-minute version at
http://www.pgpf.org/newsroom/press/IOUSA-Solutions-Premiers-on-CNN/   (Scroll Down a bit)
Note that great efforts were made to keep this a bipartisan panel along with the occasional video clips of President Obama discussing the debt crisis. The problem is a build up over spending for most of our nation’s history, It landed at the feet of President Obama, but he’s certainly not the cause nor is his the recent expansion of health care coverage the real cause.

Watch the World Premiere of I.O.U.S.A.: Solutions on CNN
Saturday, April 10, 1:00-3:00 p.m. EST or Sunday, April 11, 3:00-5:00 p.m. EST

Featured Panelists Include:

  • Peter G. Peterson, Founder and Chairman, Peter G. Peterson Foundation
  • David Walker, President & CEO, Peter G. Peterson Foundation
  • Sen. Bill Bradley
  • Maya MacGuineas, President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
  • Amy Holmes, political contributor for CNN
  • Joe Johns, CNN Congressional Correspondent
  • Diane Lim Rodgers, Chief Economist, Concord Coalition
  • Jeanne Sahadi, senior writer and columnist for CNNMoney.com

Watch for the other possible solutions in the 30-minute summary video ---
http://www.pgpf.org/newsroom/press/IOUSA-Solutions-Premiers-on-CNN/
(Scroll Down a bit)

 

CBS Sixty minutes has a great video on the enormous cost of keeping dying people artificially alive:
High Cost of Dying --- http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5737437n&tag=mncol;lst;3
(wait for the commercials to play out)

U.S. Debt/Deficit Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/

"The Looming Entitlement Fiscal Burden," by Gary Becker, The Becker-Posner Blog, April 11, 2010 ---
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/beckerposner/2010/04/the-looming-entitlement-fiscal-burdenbecker.html

"The Entitlement Quandary," by Richard Posner, The Becker-Posner Blog, April 11, 2010 ---
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/beckerposner/2010/04/the-entitlement-quandaryposner.html

David Walker --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Walker_(U.S._Comptroller_General)

Niall Ferguson --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson

Call it the fatal arithmetic of imperial decline. Without radical fiscal reform, it could apply to America next.
Niall Ferguson, "An Empire at Risk:  How Great Powers Fail," Newsweek Magazine Cover Story, November 26, 2009 --- http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694/page/1
Please note that this is NBC’s liberal Newsweek Magazine and not Fox News or The Wall Street Journal.

. . .

In other words, there is no end in sight to the borrowing binge. Unless entitlements are cut or taxes are raised, there will never be another balanced budget. Let's assume I live another 30 years and follow my grandfathers to the grave at about 75. By 2039, when I shuffle off this mortal coil, the federal debt held by the public will have reached 91 percent of GDP, according to the CBO's extended baseline projections. Nothing to worry about, retort -deficit-loving economists like Paul Krugman.

. . .

Another way of doing this kind of exercise is to calculate the net present value of the unfunded liabilities of the Social Security and Medicare systems. One recent estimate puts them at about $104 trillion, 10 times the stated federal debt.

Continued in article --- http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694/page/1

 

Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch professor of history at Harvard University and the author of The Ascent of Money. In late 2009 he puts forth an unbooked discounted present value liability of $104 trillion for Social Security plus Medicare. In late 2008, the former Chief Accountant of the United States Government, placed this estimate at$43 trillion. We can hardly attribute the $104-$43=$61 trillion difference to President Obama's first year in office. We must accordingly attribute the $61 trillion to margin of error and most economists would probably put a present value of unbooked (off-balance-sheet) present value of Social Security and Medicare debt to be somewhere between $43 trillion and $107 trillion To this we must add other unbooked present value of entitlement debt estimates which range from $13 trillion to $40 trillion. If Obamacare passes it will add untold trillions to trillions more because our legislators are not looking at entitlements beyond 2019.

 

The Meaning of "Unbooked" versus "Booked" National Debt
By "unbooked" we mean that the debt is not included in the current "booked" National Debt of $12 trillion. The booked debt is debt of the United States for which interest is now being paid daily at slightly under a million dollars a minute. Cash must be raised daily for interest payments. Cash is raised from taxes, borrowing, and/or (shudder) the current Fed approach to simply printing money. Interest is not yet being paid on the unbooked debt for which retirement and medical bills have not yet arrived in Washington DC for payment. The unbooked debt is by far the most frightening because our leaders keep adding to this debt without realizing how it may bring down the entire American Dream to say nothing of reducing the U.S. Military to almost nothing.


Niall Ferguson, "An Empire at Risk:  How Great Powers Fail," Newsweek Magazine Cover Story, November 26, 2009 --- http://www.newsweek.com/id/224694/page/1

This matters more for a superpower than for a small Atlantic island for one very simple reason. As interest payments eat into the budget, something has to give—and that something is nearly always defense expenditure. According to the CBO, a significant decline in the relative share of national security in the federal budget is already baked into the cake. On the Pentagon's present plan, defense spending is set to fall from above 4 percent now to 3.2 percent of GDP in 2015 and to 2.6 percent of GDP by 2028.

Over the longer run, to my own estimated departure date of 2039, spending on health care rises from 16 percent to 33 percent of GDP (some of the money presumably is going to keep me from expiring even sooner). But spending on everything other than health, Social Security, and interest payments drops from 12 percent to 8.4 percent.

This is how empires decline. It begins with a debt explosion. It ends with an inexorable reduction in the resources available for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Which is why voters are right to worry about America's debt crisis. According to a recent Rasmussen report, 42 percent of Americans now say that cutting the deficit in half by the end of the president's first term should be the administration's most important task—significantly more than the 24 percent who see health-care reform as the No. 1 priority. But cutting the deficit in half is simply not enough. If the United States doesn't come up soon with a credible plan to restore the federal budget to balance over the next five to 10 years, the danger is very real that a debt crisis could lead to a major weakening of American power.

Comedy Video on Financial Crises
I'm beginning to think these are not perfect storms. I'm beginning to think these are regular storms and we just have a sh**ty boat.
Jon Stewart --- http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/jon-stewart-takes-on-perfect-storms.html

Groups of free riders on the Paris Metro have created informal insurance pools that pay the fine when riders get caught. The groups call themselves mutuelles des fraudeurs -- fraudster mutuals.
NPR --- http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/05/dont_pay_your_fare_on_the_subw.html
Jensen Comment
One issue not considered in the above article is how many misdemeanors it takes for the sum to become a felony.

Also could these frauds affect credit scores?

"Video: Ted Talk – Sweat The Small Stuff: Hilarious examples of Behavioral Economics," Simoleon Sense, June 9, 2010 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-ted-talk-sweat-the-small-stuff-hilarious-examples-of-behavioral-economics/

 

 

Ten Highest and Ten Lowest States in Terms of Taxpayer Liability
A Lot of Taxpayers in the South Pay Zero Taxes (Non-Payers)  Due to Credits, Deductions, and Poverty

Source:  Scott A. Hodge, Tax Foundation, May 24, 2010 ---
http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/26336.html
According to the latest IRS figures for 2008, a record 52 million filers—36 percent of the 143 million who filed a
tax return—had no tax liability because their credits and deductions reduced their liability to zero.
Indeed, tax credits such as the child tax credit and earned income tax credit have become so generous
that a family of four earning up to about $52,000 can expect to have their income tax liability erased entirely.

 

Role Model for Congressional Rip Offs of Taxpayers:  Remember When Her First Air Force-Supplied Jet Just Wasn't Big Enough
"Pelosi's plush new (San Francisco) office courtesy of taxpayers," by Laura Ingraham, June 14, 2010 ---
http://www.lauraingraham.com/b/Pelosis-plush-new-office-courtesy-of-taxpayers/810851607831862855.html

Last fall, Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved her district office into the new federal building in San Francisco. The move quadrupled the rent she pays, and her new $18,736 monthly bill is almost double the next-highest rental paid by a Member of the House.

Details of her plush office
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2010/jun/pelosi-s-office-costs-taxpayers-18k-monthly

House Speaker Pelosi demands her private 757 200-seat airliner with lavish perks ---
http://www.gunslot.com/forum/madame-pelosis-757-jet-cost-us-tax-payers-year

"Four Reasons There Shouldn't Be a Mosque at Ground Zero," by John Hawkins, The Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2010 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2010/06/15/four_reasons_there_shouldnt_be_a_mosque_at_ground_zero
Jensen Comment
These reasons might apply for Russia, China, or the Sudan, but precisely this is America is reason enough to encourage with great joy the building of a Mosque on Ground Zero. We are not and never should be the enemies of over one billion deeply moral and deeply religious people of the world. We should be grateful they want their mosque on near Ground Zero.

"Residents get 6 votes each in suburban NY election," by Jim Fitzgerald, Yahoo News, June 15, 2010 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100615/ap_on_el_st_lo/us_voting_rights_election

Arthur Furano voted early — five days before Election Day. And he voted often, flipping the lever six times for his favorite candidate. Furano cast multiple votes on the instructions of a federal judge and the U.S. Department of Justice as part of a new election system crafted to help boost Hispanic representation. Voters in Port Chester, 25 miles northeast of New York City, are electing village trustees for the first time since the federal government alleged in 2006 that the existing election system was unfair. The election ends Tuesday and results are expected late Tuesday. Although the village of...

Jensen Comment
I lived 24 years in Texas where there was much more voting integrity. Each living or dead person only gets one vote in Texas.

No sugar coating from this Wharton professor
"National Retirement Expert: 75 needs to be the new 62," by Carla Fried, CBS Moneywatch, June 2010 ---
http://moneywatch.bnet.com/retirement-planning/blog/retirement-beat/national-retirement-expert-75-needs-to-be-the-new-62/644/

Olivia Mitchell is one of the nation’s foremost retirement experts, having spent an impressive career studying the evolving nature of retirement planning issues for individuals, corporations and government. The short version of Mitchell’s resume is that she is a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and executive director of the Pension Research Council. I’ll let you peruse Mitchell’s full 23-page CV at your own leisure.

So I was interested to read a recent PRC paper Mitchell penned that digs into some of the most pressing retirement security issues in the wake of the financial crisis.

Sugarcoating is not her way.

My message is straightforward and, I fear, not particularly upbeat: current and future generations of managers and employees will not be able to use the ‘old fashioned’ model of provisioning for retirement. Instead, the 21st century economy will require an entirely new perspective on retirement risk management.

From there Mitchell ticks off the big risks weighing on the current model: We’re not saving enough, we don’t have a clue how to deal with longevity risk — in fact, we don’t have a clue about basic financial concepts — traditional pensions are in major trouble, the PBGC is not exactly rock solid, and then there’s the little issue of Social Security, a topic near and dear to her heart, having served on the 2001 bipartisan presidential Commission to Strengthen Social Security

The Retirement Fix

Mitchell concludes the report with a perfectly serviceable call to action:

Part of the task is to enhance financial literacy and political responsibility.  We will also need to save more, invest smarter, and insure better against longevity. Another task will be to develop new products which can be used to hedge longevity and better protect against very long term risks including inflation.

What struck me in her report was this final thought:

But when all is said and done, most of us will simply have to work longer to preserve some flexibility against shocks in the long run.

And there it is: one of the nation’s foremost retirement thinkers concludes that at the end of the day, it’s working longer that is going to be our ticket out of any shortfalls and “shocks.”

Retire Early….at 75

Mitchell points out that working two to four more years can go a long way to closing a retirement funding gap. But that’s directed at Baby Boomers. Given ever-expanding longevity forecasts for younger generations she has this bit of advice for Gen X and Gen Y:

For the younger generation, age 75 might be a good target for early retirement, and later if possible!

Confirmation, from one of the country’s leading retirement thinkers, that 75 may indeed be the new 55.

Jensen Comment
At the moment we're between a rock and a hard place apart from each person's private problem concerning retirement. The global problem is that extending retirement age to 75 contributes significantly to decline of employment opportunities for younger people versus the need to extend retirement age to 75 to save the U.S. Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs.

Video on IOUSA Bipartisan Solutions to Saving the USA

If you missed Sunday afternoon CNN’s two-hour IOUSA Solutions broadcast, you can watch a 30-minute version at
http://www.pgpf.org/newsroom/press/IOUSA-Solutions-Premiers-on-CNN/   (Scroll Down a bit)
Note that great efforts were made to keep this a bipartisan panel along with the occasional video clips of President Obama discussing the debt crisis. The problem is a build up over spending for most of our nation’s history, It landed at the feet of President Obama, but he’s certainly not the cause nor is his the recent expansion of health care coverage the real cause.

One take home from the CNN show was that over 60% of the booked National Debt increases are funded off shore (largely in Asia and the Middle East).
This going to greatly constrain the global influence and economic choices of the United States.

By 2016 the interest payments on the National Debt will be the biggest single item in the Federal Budget, more than national defense or social security. And an enormous portion of this interest cash flow will be flowing to foreign nations that may begin to put all sorts of strings on their decisions  to roll over funding our National Debt.

The unbooked entitlement obligations that are not part of the National Debt are over $60 trillion and exploding exponentially. The Medicare D entitlements to retirees like me added over $8 trillion of entitlements under the Bush Presidency.

Most of the problems are solvable except for the Number 1 entitlements problem --- Medicare.
Drastic measures must be taken to keep Medicare sustainable.

 

I thought the show was pretty balanced from a bipartisan standpoint and from the standpoint of possible solutions.

Many of the possible “solutions” are really too small to really make a dent in the problem. For example, medical costs can be reduced by one of my favorite solutions of limiting (like they do in Texas) punitive damage recoveries in malpractice lawsuits. However, the cost savings are a mere drop in the bucket. Another drop in the bucket will be the achievable increased savings from decreasing medical and disability-claim frauds. These are important solutions, but they are not solutions that will save the USA.

The big possible solutions to save the USA are as follows (you and I won’t particularly like these solutions):

 

 

Watch for the other possible solutions in the 30-minute summary video ---
http://www.pgpf.org/newsroom/press/IOUSA-Solutions-Premiers-on-CNN/
(Scroll Down a bit)

"Senators Get Donor $8 Million Earmark," Judicial Watch, June 8, 2010 ---
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2010/jun/senators-get-donor-8-million-earmark

In yet another example of lawmakers unscrupulously funneling tax dollars to their political supporters, New Jersey’s two U.S. Senators steered a multi million-dollar earmark to enhance a campaign donor’s luxury condominium development.

Democrats Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez allocated $8 million for a public walkway and park space adjacent to upscale, waterfront condos built by a developer whose executives have donated generously to their political campaigns. The veteran legislators have received about $100,000 in contributions from the developer, according to federal election records cited in a news report this week.

Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

The Most Criminal Class Writes the Laws ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#Lawmakers

"America's Municipal Debt Racket:  State and local borrowing as a percentage of U.S. GDP has risen to an all-time high of 22% in 2010," by Steven Malanga, The Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704269204575270802154485456.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t

New Jersey officials recently celebrated the selection of the new stadium in the Meadowlands sports complex as the site of the 2014 Super Bowl. Absent from the festivities was any sense of the burden the complex has become for taxpayers.

Nearly 40 years ago the Garden State borrowed $302 million to begin constructing the Meadowlands. The goal was to pay off the bonds in 25 years. Although the project initially went according to plan, politicians couldn't resist continually refinancing the bonds, siphoning revenues from the complex into the state budget, and using the good credit rating of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition authority to borrow for other, unsuccessful building schemes.

Today, the authority that runs the Meadowlands is in hock for $830 million, which it can't pay back. The state, facing its own cavernous budget deficits, has had to assume interest payments—about $100 million this year on bonds that still stretch for decades.

This tale of woe has become familiar in the world of municipal finance. Governments have loaded up on debt, stretched out repayment times, and used slick maneuvers to avoid constitutional borrowing limits. While the country's economic troubles have helped expose some of these practices, a sharp decline in tax revenues has prompted more abuse as politicians use long-term debt to kick short-term fiscal problems down the road.

It hasn't always been this way. Government debt has long fostered the expansion of the American republic, helping to build roads, bridges and water works to serve a growing population. But there have also been spectacular failures. In the mid-1970s, New York City almost defaulted on its debt after it used borrowing to fund an aggressive and ultimately unaffordable expansion of services (like the nation's most generous Medicaid program) inaugurated by Mayor John Lindsay. Gotham was bailed out by New York State and the federal government. But Cleveland, whose spending outpaced tax revenues thanks to borrowing, did default on $14 million in bonds in 1978.

The 1970s debt crises woke politicians up. Over the next 20 years the municipal fiscal picture improved, with debt rising only slightly. But memories of past busts have since faded, and outstanding debt has soared to $2.2 trillion today from $1.4 trillion in 2000. State and local borrowing as a percentage of the country's GDP has risen to an all-time high of 22% in 2010 from 15%, with projections that it will reach 24% by 2012.

Even more disconcerting is what the borrowing now often finances. One favorite scheme for muni debt is giant and risky development projects.

California's redevelopment regime is an object lesson. Starting in the 1950s, the state gave localities the right to create public agencies, funded by increases in property taxes, which can issue debt to finance redevelopment. A whopping 380 such entities now exist. They collect 10% of all property taxes—nearly $6 billion annually—and they have amassed $29 billion in debt never approved by voters for projects ranging from sports facilities to concert venues to retail malls, museums and convention centers.

More Investors Looking Past Red Flags in Muni Market WSJ.com/Sports | WSJ.com/NY Critics, including taxpayer groups, say most such agency projects add little economic value. Sometimes the outcome is much worse. In 1999, Fresno conceived plans to revive its downtown area with various projects, including a baseball stadium for the minor-league Grizzlies, which it had lured from Phoenix. The city's redevelopment agency floated some $46 million in bonds to build the stadium. But the Grizzlies fizzled in their new home, demanded a break on rent, threatening to skip town and stick taxpayers with the entire $3.4 million annual bond payment on the facility. The team is now receiving $700,000 in annual subsidies to stay in the city.

Adding to the city's woes: Last June, another development project, the Fresno Metropolitan Museum, went bust, leaving the city's taxpayers on the hook for three-quarters of a million dollars in annual debt payments.

Cities now also use taxpayer-financed debt to engage in fierce bidding wars that benefit private enterprises. Charlotte, N.C., for instance, won the bidding for the new Nascar all of Fame with a $154 million offer, funded by a new hotel tax dedicated to servicing bonds for constructing the hall. But the venue employs only about 115 people—and an economic development study estimated the increased annual tourism from the venture won't even equal what a single Nascar race generates.

Why did politicians offer the deal? For the dubious and hard-to-quantify purpose of "branding" the city with a major attraction, according to the Charlotte Observer.

Voters have wised up to the failings of many grand, politically inspired projects, and when given the chance they've defeated new taxes and borrowing for them. But much state and local debt now exists in independent authorities whose borrowings are not subject to voter approvals. Some of these agencies have operated recklessly.

In 2000, Massachusetts moved to make the entity that runs Boston area mass transit, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, financially independent. As part of the plan the authority was supposed to gradually pay down some $5.6 billion in debt and use cash from operations to finance capital projects.

Instead, the agency deferred payments on its debt, put off capital projects, and borrowed more money, so that it now owes $8.5 billion. Today, the authority is paying a staggering $500 million yearly in debt service, forcing it to neglect maintenance, shelve expansion plans, and cut service. Even so, last year the agency needed a $160 million bailout from taxpayers to close a budget deficit.

Another weapon in the debt arsenal is the so-called pension-obligation bond. For two decades, governments have played a risky arbitrage game in which they issue bonds and then deposit the money in their pension funds to be invested in the stock market with the hope that the money will outperform the interest rate on the bonds. In a stock market that's been stagnant for years, pension bonds have become fiscally toxic. As the Center for State and Local Government Excellence noted in a report earlier this year, most pension bonds issued since 1992 have been money losers for states and cities, exacerbating severe underfunding of pension systems in places like New Jersey.

These abuses came to a head in the second half of 2008, when spooked investors were unwilling to bet on more municipal debt after several insurers who typically back these bonds exited the market. Then Washington stepped in with a new Build America Bond (BAB), allowing states and municipalities to issue them. Thanks to a federal subsidy, they carry attractive interest rates. Last year municipalities used BABs to rack up another $58 billion in debt.

Taxpayers are only slowly realizing that their states and municipalities face long-term obligations that will be increasingly hard to meet. Rick Bookstaber, a senior policy adviser to the Securities and Exchange Commission, recently warned that the muni market has all the characteristics of a crisis that might unfold with "a widespread cascade in defaults." If that painful scenario materializes, it will be because we have too long ignored how some politicians have become addicted to debt.

Mr. Malanga is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of "Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy Against the American Taxpayer," forthcoming from Ivan R. Dee. This op-ed is adapted from the forthcoming issue of City Journal.

 

 

 

 

Bob Jensen's universal health care messaging --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm

Return to the Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbitsdirectory.htm 

 

Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave  --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
By Bob Jensen

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

Bob Jensen's economic crisis messaging http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm

Bob Jensen's threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/