Merrill 'bullish on America' Lynch has agreed to buy back $7 B in bonds. Okay let's try to connect the dots here.  MER gets involved in subprime mortgages. MER sells these as solid investments to their clients. Clients hit the roof and courtroom when they discover their investments are not paying off. MER suffers massive write downs…

Did you know the auto industry wants $50  billion in 'loans?'  Did you realize that Congress approved $25 B in last years' energy bill?  WE continually examine the deteriorating condition of the domestic auto companies here on the blog. I and others have suggested that Ford and GM have no net worth. This request would…

HEB  operates itw own leadership and trianing academy to develop leaders.  Click to read DAve Hendricks' article on how it works. The article features 's youngest store manager, age 34.  He started as a bagger and worked his way up.  I do not see any mention of college, hmmmm.  And HEB picks ab out 35%…

Maria Bartiromo interviewed the CFO of Lehman Brothers this spring in Business week, it was on the blog at that time. Back then I stated that I doubted the CFO knew what was in the billions of dollars of so called assets. Since then Lehman fired her for not 'increasing confidence' among investors in their…

Market Watch linked to a story about the sharp fall in the price of gold, silver, and other commodities.  One 'analyst' stated that metals had 'risen beyond the scope of their fundamentals' implicitly suggesting that after the fact it was obvious that prices were too high.  Well……. Gee everything is obvious after the fact. Is the…

Business Week reports that bad economic news drove down stock prices today.   Really?  Ok, Lehman may write off another $4 B, FNM and FRE are in trouble, but where is the new news in any of that, that news has been in the markets for months!  Last week the markets peaked over the S P 1300…

I have held three symposiums for Community College Accounting Teachers here at the UNT Dallas Campus. This resulted in Wiley holding an education forum and the Executive Council of the Texas Management Accountants holding meetings. Saturday August 9, 2008 Professor Barbara Scoefield, University of Dallas, and yours truly, Dennis Elam, delivered two hours each of…

Theaters in Great Britain are becoming popcorn free zones.  Seems theater owners are tired of the mess but gee the markup on a 2.50 box of popcorn is ho say 2.35  I would guess.  My take is that someone needs to apply the southwest Airlines business model to theaters. Why on earth are tickets and…

On July 2, 2008 GM Throws in the Towel, I wrote a post suggesting that GM would leave North America, it loses money here and makes money abroad.  Now Jerry Flint suggests that is actually happening.  Gee am I prescient or what about this stuff?  As Flint says, Buick is about done, as is Lincoln…

Harold Maas does a goog job of summing up the weekly news.  You might bookmark his site. He reports that Nissan will make smaller cars for Chrysler and Chrysler will make big pickups for Nissan. Well neither does the other well, and frankly this is not a departure from the Chrysler model, Chrysler has always depended…