Companies depending on retail discretionary spending may not make it. Note Landry's runs the restaurant on the San Antonio Hemisfair Tower as well as various seafood restaurants around Texas like Joe's Crabshack.

I am sure Facebook has a lot of socionomic implications     I guess the obvoius one is what Dale Carnegie observed about us 70 years ago, we are the center of our own universe. While MSFT was operational software, Facebook is an extention of ourselves, our own personal coccoon on which we present ourselves…

Texas Unemployment Fund is hundreds of millions of dollars below legally required levels. Students will recall that we studied employer SUTA State Unemployement Tax  requirements in Chapter 13 on current liabilities in Intermed Accounting. Read the article to get an understanding of what is about to happen. Employers lay off more workers. Workers file for…

Is there any name more synonymous with Texas wealth than Neimans? Click on the hyperlink to learn the details of Neimans $500 M + loss. DId Neminas really lose that much money? IN one quarter?  Well not exactly, the actual loss was more like $32 M, still substantial but not half a billion.  The rest…

Ed Barnett wrote a letter to the Wichita Falls newspaper detailing the taxes he has paid. Ed says he will pay the IRS but in the meantime can he get the same treatement as a Cabinet Nominee? Ed is now a cause celebre for reflecting popular opinion on this matter. More signs of socionomic unrest…..

Politicians, when things go well, instantly link the White House to the successful implementation of their 'policies.'  In truth the economy and markets are somewhat independent of politics. The stock market peaked in Oct of 2007 at 14000. We have lost more than half that value in the Dow and many times more than that…

We recently discussed the possibility that the economic problems in the US might lead to the break up of the US. Students noted a Russian economist has written a book predicting this would happen in 2010.  The link is to a WSJ article by the way. Now that noted political scientist, Chuck Norris, is hosting a…

The one person for whom there is no compassion is the taxpayer.   Professor Tom Sowell deconstructs the nonsense going on about housing prices. Prof Elam Observation I am weary of hearing politicians bemoan people losing their houses. If those people owned their houses they would not be losing them. Buying  a house with nothing down…

Your campus Texas A & M San Antonio will sponsor the Southwest Teaching and Learning Conference here March 27-28. This will bring professors from Schools in the south Texas area as well as I understand from San Angelo, possibly El Paso, and the Houston area. I have submitted three presentations, two of which I would…

Merck MRK acqauired Schering Plough SGP over the weekend for $41 B in cash, wow. The wow is the size of the deal and the fact that acquisitions and mergers hardly ever happen at market bottoms, rather they are a market top phenomenon. Why?  Again, Socionomics tells us that positive social mood generates inclusive emotions,…