A Sherlock Holmes novel graces this post for out theme of Professional Skepticism. This is the mindset of the successful auditor, and investor.  And so the DMN Page 1D details how the SEC has frozen Amerifirst assets.    Click and read the article.  This appears to be another Ponzi Scheme.    Succintly a ponzi scheme…

Impressionists or impersonators used to be a staple of tv variety shows, well, back when we had big time tv variety shows. Rich Little  and Frank Gorshin were two of the best  Rich is still around but I have not seen him in on tv in some time.  But wait, now we have The Next…

Amid reports that parts were getting to Iran,  the Pentagon has simply decided to shred all remaining F 14s. what we have here isa  failure of internal control.  Apparenlty the Pentagon cannot control who is working as a contractor or spare parts junkie, so to speak, so parts were getting to Iran. Yep we sold…

Frank Abagnale gained fame in the movie Catch Me if you Can. Now he has written a book on identity theft. Frank now runs a consulting firm advising banks on security systems, the rare example of thief turned crime fighter. Our topic for the Fall CcATS is Forensic Accounting . Click on Frank’s name for…

Click on the graph at left to see the latest on The Donald.  A couple of seasons back on The Apprentice, he featured these New Jersey casions on the show.  Then they went into bankruptcy. This is the bankruptcy Rosie was referring to that angered the Donald so much, it was his casinos, not him,…

Ok so I am in a Paul Simon mood today.  This article on SARBOX  suggests that 22 companies mainly from China and Israel have raised some $4.4 B this year on the US Exchanges. So everyone is not running from SARBOX.  Yet major law firms say SARBOX onerous requirements are stil an issue and the…

B/W reports that Toyota  is retinking it self in terms of EM 2 which stand for Everythign Matters Exponentially.  The entire company, manufacturing, servicing, etc is being re examine. Seems TMC has fallne down the quality list.  And TCM is very aware that only  a few years back, Ford was looking good, and now is…

I thought I had mentioned the Bear Stearns fiasco on the blog but  in looking back i don’t see it in the last month.  Okay, it seems Bear Stearns has tripled their loss estimates  for their, are you ready?,High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund.  Well actually anyone who swallowed the name of that…

I have not discussed taxation much on the blog, so here goes.  Rich Kalgaard, Forbes Editor, has a good short history  on the topic here.  The question is, what shold be the tax rate on capital gains?  A captial gain is not the result of work for pay which is ordinary income.  A captial gain…

Shermichael Singleton is spending time with us here at UNT Dallas this summer.  We picked Shermichael as one of our two reps to Rotary Youth Leadership Camp.  He stopped by my office yesterday and we discussed his desire to study law and political science.  I asked if he read Tom Sowell; indeed he was not…