Professor Elam
Accounting & Investing Info for San Antonio A & M
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Category: Financial Acct
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Thursday April 1 2010 Janet calls for a ban on Credit Default Swaps by all countries. As she says, if traders do not believe the US is going to default, why are they trading CDS on US Debt? The answer is that this is just another form of gambling in the derivative market. Read more…
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Wed March 31, 2010 Mish (see link at left) reports the following on state pension plans. His point is that these defaults will be deflationary, expectations of future income will not be met. This means less money to spend in the future on everything from eating out to vacation cruises. And it means a lot…
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Tuesday March 30 2010 Last night in class I mentioned pensions woes in various states were causing problems. Here is the extent of the problem and it is serious. In addition to overly generous pension promises, property and sales tax revenues have fallen as the states continue to spend more money. The November elections should…
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Monday March 29 2010 My classes are no doubt weary of hearing me say that they must immerse themselves in the study of accounting. My parallel is the example of Mike Phelps, Olympic swim champ, practicing every day. Here is the same idea expressed by no less than Michael Jordan. Or the race is not…
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Monday March 29, 0210 We are studying the calculation of pension costs. Vallejo, as Mish says, was the first city to take bankruptcy, in the latest financial crisis. But BK is all about a fresh start, that is hardly the case here. Too many places have off balance sheet liabilities far exceeding their ability to…
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Monday March 29, 2010 Trump Soho is a multi story hotel condo in NYC, but the rooms did not sell. Now the lenders are selling their mortgages on the property, cheap. The Donald of course was smart enough to talk the lenders into going it alone, no capital from him, note to lenders, watch The…
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Sunday March 28 2010 Camera, Gustavson, Todd,ISBN 978 1 4027 5656 6,2009 This is a ‘coffee table book’ large, heavy, and replete with interesting photographs of people and the cameras that took the photos. Gustavson is the curator of the Eastman Camera collection. Naturally the book had the ‘kodak’ point of view. A few observations…
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Friday March 26 2010 Bill Gross runs the largest bond funds on the planet at PIMCO. Yesterday he said the three decade bond party, lower yields, higher prices, had finally ended. PIMCO that has only offered bond funds is now offering stock funds, so investor sentiment is completely opposite what it was a year ago. …
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Wed March 24 2010 This articles tracks the cost of Credit Default Swaps on state debt. A CDS is a bet that the bond may default. When the premium exceeds 3% of the underlying value of the bond, this is apparently a trigger point of no return, or as Gladwell would say, a tipping point.…
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Wed Mar 24 2010 Here is an explanation of how the govt lets banks borrow for next to nothing to buy low yielding securities bringing the money right back to the govt, good game while it lasts. But no real value is being created as the govt uses this for transfer payments to the unemployed…
Professor Elam 