Thursday Nov 10, 2016 WFT CEO wishes he had resigned four years ago. He optimistically thnks WFT will make it through the debt difficulties but hMoody's disagrees.  

Wed Oct 26 2016 The cash flow statement lets us know if a company is generating sufficient cash to service its investing and financing needs. One has to wonder how this is going to work out for Exxon Mobil. The column at left is 6/30/16, then 3/31/16, then 12/31/15, 9/30/15 Now just look at the…

Wed Oct 26 2016 I have had my doubts about TESLA. But everyone assures me that a guy who can shoot rockets into space can build electric cars. Gee sounds a lot like John DeLorean to me. That operation also stayed afloat on a sea of subsidized government money, just as TESLA does. Tesla's predictions…

Wed Oct 5, 2016 It didn't work for Wal Mart, will it for Target? Target is openning smaller stores. All brick and mortar retailers are fighting move to on line.  This is a story about a smaller TGT in New York. Here is another article featuring stores as small as 12,000 sf.

Wed Oct 5, 2016 Sears downgraded to near default by major rating agencies. Edward Lampert was hailed as the next Warren Buffet when he bought K Mart out of bankruptcy. He paid less than the real estate the stores were on for the land land and stored. Then he merged Sears into the firm to…

Weekend Sept 24, 2016   We study impairment charges in Chapter 11 of the Spiceland text. A firm takes an impairment charge when the future undiscounted cash flow is less than the carrying value of the asset. But it is unusual when a movie studio does this for an unreleased movie! After spending $125 M…

Thursday Sept  22, 2016 Greenspan would repeal Dodd Frank “What Dodd-Frank has left us with is a system in which contagious default can still occur, and if that is in fact still the case, it’s done nothing,” he said. “But if you have a high enough ratio of equity to assets, there is no way…

Sept 20 2016 Carman Blough was the first Chief Accountant of the SEC. Read his interesting remarks about the accounting reports of that day. Blough was instrumental in urging the AICPA to form the Committee on Accounting Procedure. This was  the first standard setting accounting board.

Weekend Sept  17 2016 Apache has converted from full cost method to the successful efforts method for accounting for dry holes. The difference between the two methods is explained at the end of Chapter Ten in your Spiceland Intermediate text. No, I am not going to explain it here, look it up! The CEO of…

Weekend Sept 17 2016 Click the link at the bottom of this article to read the entier WSJ story. Oil and gas firms have taken $163 Billion in write downs in 2015, but not Exxon Mobil XOM. The NY Attorney General, unable to pin a ignoring climate change on XOM, is not investigating the lack…