Professor Elam

Thursday January 17 2013

I ran this comment on the investing blog, http://www.themarketperspective.com

Sociopath of the Decade

I teach the State Mandate Accounting Ethics class at our campus. Tonight and tomorrow night LanceArmstong will huddle with America's High Priestess of Social Mores, Oprah.  Oprah's OWN network is $300 M in debt , these two need one another. Accounting professionals will encounter fraud if they stay in the business long enough. There is an interesting thoughtful article on the last page of today's WSJ about Lance. As the author says, Lance is not in this mess due to one mistake but because he no longer has any way out of the long term fraud. Amazingly Lance told the head of the US Doping Agency that only he, Lance, held the key to his redemption. It is truly interesting  to be able to observe this sort of denial and self admission, at the same time. I began a list of recent convictions on my student blog which I may run here as well, just as a reminder that this business is fraught with lots of individuals quite capable of rationalizing their bad behavior. I suppose investors can be glad that Lance went into cycling and not Hedge Funds.