Jerome Kerviel has lost Societe Generale, the largest bank in France, about $7.2 B.  Jerome learned the audit trails for the bank in his first job, he went on to become a trader in futures, earning $145,000 a year. Described by his professors as brilliant, he covered his tracks using his knowledge of how the…

In ACCT 5130 for some reason the dicussion Tab got eliminated when the WEB CT course content was posted.  The discussion tab has now been renewed and is in place. There you will find the first topic on Regulate Stimulate.  Instructions are there, hit reply and post your paper in the comment section. There should…

Let me reassure you I am acutely aware that WEB CT is working on and off. Several of you have notified me that you cannot locate the assignment to post your paper on WEB CT. I know I put it under the Discussion Section but alas I cannot access WEB CT to verify that.  I…

You might think McGraw Hill would be happy to sell $150 textbooks, I guess not.  Seems structured finance revenue is not what M H had hoped for?  Structure finance revenue?  Apparently MH Has been playing the debt markets weary of that boring textbook market I guess.  The stock is down from the 70s to 38…

Business Week reports on withdrawals from mutual funds.  Most stock is owned by mutual funds so when investors bail, those funds sell stocks for cash.  Until those investors decide to put their money back in the market it will likely fall. Are they won over by the bail out stimulus plans yet? Students are supposedly…

Wall Street always has a darling. Right now it is Apple.  For years it was GM, then IBM, then a series of where did they go like Wang or DEC (heard of them lately) and then GE ( today a shadow of its former self in terms of stock price).  Now it is Apple. Is…

John Stossel makes the point that more economies offer more chioices, freedom, than ever. Does that freedom come with responsibility ?  I have asked you to write about regulation and stimulus.  If people and lenders make bad choices, at what point does the governmet have a responsibility to bail them out?  And as Say’s Law…

Say’s Law. states that products have to be paid for with products. Who then shall pay for the stimulus?  Hillary says no one has to, yep fire up the Govt printing press.  As Soros noted in the previous post, this is one reason the US Dollar continues to decline.  And commentators on tv are wondering…

George Soros has little use for George Bush, but Soro makes lots of money trading markets.  In this article Soros explains why this crisis could be worse than previous ones. In class yesterday I mentioned that the FED cannot lower rates a lot further without going to zero.  And, how long will foreign investors want…

The FED attempted to move decisvely this morning by cutting the Discount Rate 3/4 of a point. That is a good bit for a slow moving bunch of political appointees. With markets melting round the world 5-10% in two days, it was time to do something.  Did it work?  Well the market stopped going down,…