Professor Elam

Accounting & Investing Info for San Antonio A & M

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  • Professor Elam

    MCD Complicates Menu

    Thursday May 1 2014

    MCD has too many menu items. This complication has slowed service and lowered the already too low opinion of management by franchise owners.  Screenshot 2014-05-01 06.26.34

    One of my examples in the cost course is the Permian Basin Hamburger Company. This is a Mom and Pop operation that as you can see is open during the noon hour 11 – 2  Monday thru Friday. 

    As you can see they keep it simple. Not obvious is that there are over a dozen different choices of what one can have on the burger, cheese, onions, peppers, you name it. But the basic chasis as they say in the car business is fixed. 

    Having one chasis with multiple options is the key to success in burgers or cars. And these guys do not pay MCD a franchise fee. Nor do they work weekends or at night, a rare combination in the food business. 

  • Professor Elam

    Frost Bank Summer Internship

    Wednesday Apri 30, 2014 posted 3 40 PM Central Time

    Students – This is a good example of why you should read this blog every day!

    Dear Professor Elam

    I manage the statewide Frost Summer Internship, and although I extended all offers by February, my Accounting intern informed me last week that she will be working elsewhere this summer!

     

    I am looking for an Accounting intern to work in our downtown San Antonio corporate office.  Attached is more information about the overall Frost Summer Internship:

     

    (See attached file: Frost Summer Internship.JPG)

     

    Here are some details:

       Must be pursuing an Accounting Major or MSA

       Must have a 3.0 or above (transcript required)

       Must graduate in either December 2014 or May 2015

       Must be able to work from Monday, June 2, through Friday, August 1, in San Antonio, 40 hours per week

       Internship is paid

       Candidate must be able to interview in San Antonio ASAP.

     

    Thank you for sharing this opportunity with any students that might be interested.  Please ask interested students to send their resume to marystephanie.peavy@frostbank.com.

  • Professor Elam

    Learning Styles

    Wed April 30 2014

    This article Wed April 30, 2014

     My Facebook play was stopped out, here is why. As Marc Faber notes on Marketwatch this morning, it is too late to buy stocks but we may be too early to short as well, welcome to summer. 

     

    " title="" target="_self">looks at the Learning Style argument. It finds some merit but also debunks the idea that learning styles are totaly exclusive. No doubt some of this is due to the fact that many students simply do not possess adequate reading comprehension to understand what the text is telling them. Hence, they want an oral explanation as they literally cannot describe what is in the book. 

  • Professor Elam

    Good Reads

    Tuesday April  29 2014

    My latest favorite gizmo is a kindle paperwhite @ $139.  This is what all so called tablets want to be when they grow up. It downloads flawlessly from amazon. I cannot say the same for my iPad with a Kindle app. For a book in color, like an art history book, I am seriously considering a kindle Fire HDX as it would work well downloading from Amazon I think.

    I read a front page WSJ story about Russell Blake a self pblished author. And yes that was published on my blog.

     

    He has several series and I have now read at least one of each Jet about a female assassin who is more comic book than reality based, Assasin Series about a guy for hire in Mexico, also more comic book than real, and Black a sort of modern day Sam Spade. The dialog between Black and his admin assist is hilarious. So I admit to reading some fiction lately thinking that with all the

     

    Stuff I write on the blog and what not

     

    Is there any way I could channel that into something creative to make a buck?

    Blake als o has a satire in getting published, how to sell a gazillion books on the net, which is really funny, and a really nice ode to his now deceased Lobo, a rescue dog, An Angel with Fur.

     

    I suggest you check out

     

    www.kindlebuffet.com

     

    It lists all sorts of dirt cheap or free books. I have downloaded both fiction and non fiction but need to move on to the non fiction.

     

    In the meantime I suggest den of Theives by James  Stewart

     

    http://www.amazon.com/Den-Thieves-James-B-Stewart-ebook/dp/B008TRU7PE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398783117&sr=8-1&keywords=den+of+theives

     

    only a penny plus shipping used in paper or hardback and I am sure the Alamo library has it. It is the non fiction story of the milken boskey insider junk bond take over scheme from the 1980s. this is the rare non fiction book that reads like fiction.  And you will learn a great deal about finance and markets. The first half is finance, the second is legal on how the govt snares all of them.

     

    If you are into biography, it is hard to beat A History of the American People by Paul Johnson.

     

    http://www.amazon.com/History-American-People-Paul-Johnson-ebook/dp/B002EBDP9G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398783313&sr=8-1&keywords=a+history+of+the+american+people

     

    again dirt cheap plus shipping.  This is the real history of the United States and should be required reading for all high school students. Especially those headed to college. Long but fascinating, try to knock off 50 pages at at a time and you will not get bored.

    And The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy is more about economy than university but I would really love to have a group read this and then conduct a saturday retreat to talk about it and the obvious ideas he brings up

     

    If you have Netflix I have found a few recent gems.  htat will be the subject of another post.

    cheers

    .

  • Professor Elam

    Hey, We Can Settle Your Tax Claim for Near Nothing!

     Tuesday April 29, 2014

    Cable tv and talk radio are chock a block full of ads claiming miracle tax solutions. Tax hucksters claim that Client X owed six figures to the IRS but we got them a settlement for oh say $4,295. Is this possible?

    This article explains the Offer in Compromise procedure.  As the author states, the ads make it sound very discretionary but that is not the case, there is a strict formula. And no surprise, most clients do not qualify for vastly reduced OICs.

    There are two things I don't understand.

    1. How does a Taxpayer Solution Firm stay in business if it promises such outlandish settlements but most clients probably just end up with a pay out schedule?

    2. If your client only has $500 a month in disposable income, how do you, the CCPA,  get paid?

  • Professor Elam

    Toyota Moves from CA to TX

    Tuesday April 29. 2014

    Toyota has moved from Torrance, CA to Plano, TX. Toyota said it was too far from manufacturing in Kentucky, and presumably Texas, and engineering in Michigan. 

    This article lists other firms which have moved. The names are impressive. CA of course  disses this with th Governor saying there are little problems in CA that smart people overcome. Years ago the Democrats in the CA state legislature said it was only the Republicans who were leaving CA, really?

     

  • Professor Elam

    Fracking What Could Go Wrong?

    Monday April 28, 2014

    A couple has been awarded $3 M for contaminated ground water from tracking.

    There are clear analogies to this case. For years the cigarette companies successfully beat back similar cases claiming health loss or death from smoking. Once the plaintiffs finally won a verdict, it was all downhill for the tobacco companies. The same thing happened with asbestos finally forcing Johns Manville into bankruptcy. 

    This may be the first, pardon the pun, fracture in the fracking story. 

  • Professor Elam

    The Effects of Leasing

    Monday April 28, 2014

    More cars than ever are coming 'off lease.' Car companies have been offering leases on their products for a much lower monthly payment than if one had bought the car. The car company sells to a lease company. Leases grew in popularity as we came out of the recession. 

    Now those cars are coming off lease. And there will be a lot of them. We study leasing in intermediate accounting. Here is an example of how expanding sales through leases can have an effect on later new car sales. 

  • Professor Elam

    Panasonic Records a Profit

    Monday April 28 2014

    Panasonic recorded a profit for the first time in three years.

    As we deal almost exclusively in US Dollars, I doubt most students appreciate the war of currencies going on around the world. An analyst would want to examine whether Panasonic made a profit on a falling yen or more profitable products. Here is why. 

    Most of Panasonic sales are outside Japan. When Pany brings the money back, harvested in other currencies, it has to convert those currencies back to yen. If the yen has been rising against other currencies, there are fewer yen represented by what were profits. Now a falling yen results in more yen per unit of foreign currency. 

    This is why currency hedges, accounted for in Other Comprehensive Income, are so important. 

  • Professor Elam

    Countries in Decline

    Monday April 28 2014

    These countries are experiencing a net outflow of population.  It seems to me that a graph of the number of people rather than the percent would have been more informative. While the percentage leaving the Cook Islands is huge, I suspect that the number of people exiting Russia is much larger than anything happening on a Pacific Island. In 2066 only 20,000 people lived in the Cook Islands.

    I read further in Business Insider and found just what I was looking for a graph in numbers rather than percentages. Countires wih aging populations but smaller replacement populations are hard pressed to maintain the promised social security safety net. There simply are not enough workers to provide the money. The truth is there are not enough workers making enough money in the US to do this either, for the promised benefits to retirees, but the politicians will not admit it.