Professor Elam

Accounting & Investing Info for San Antonio A & M

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  • Professor Elam

    Picking Your College

    Friday March 14 2014

    Here is an article on your choice of college. The head of  a public company puts a lot of stock in going to THE right school. The author notes that first time familty graduates are more likely to pick a regional school. Who is right?

    I taught an Intro to College class at Texas State for a few semesters. Some of the students lamented that they tried to get into College Station A & M or UT Austin but had to 'settle for Tx State.' Considering the gorgeous campus and 50,000 graduates since the late 1980s I found that a bit silly. 

    Ivy League schools like Brown and Princeton sell themselves as special. But what they are really selling is a limited membership in a fraternity. That fraternity would be the graduates of Ivy League Schools. If you are applying to a place where such folks are the majority, you probably have a better chance of being hired. 

    The Ivy League in Texas is probably UT Austin and College Station. I witnessed that the big adccounting firms in Houston and Dallas were loaded with such grads. And they definitely showed  preference to their own. 

    Frankly I have not met anyone at TAMUSA that has any interest in working in downtown Houston or Dallas, smart students indeed. I would say that one of my benchmarks is this. If you were out of state and said I went to ______ College, would anyone recognize the school?  As a future grad of an A & M System School the answer is yes. 

    For accounting graduates the real answer is even easier. Just this week I received an e mail from a student wanting the specifics on her grade. Well, you have been conditioned through years of school to believe your grade is important, and yes, you want to land in the A or B category. But for accounting grads, there is another dimension.

    The grades you make or the degrees you hold are secondary as I say to achieving the real brass ring, and that is certification. One student came by last week asking about the Certified Internal Auditor exam. Many students mistakenly believe that the experience requirement, work as an internal auditor, is a barrier to passing. This is exactly reverse of the case. As I pointed out to my student, pass the CIA the first time you take it and you will likely get hired at an Internal Audit shop pretty fast. Then you will earn the necessary experience. 

    And if that is the case it won't matter where you went to college, just that you did. 

    Passing such exams is far more important than most college students realize. Set your goals on certification now. Buy the review books and start studying while in those classes in college. You will never regret your decision to stand out in your interview by saying

     

    Oh sure, I passed that exam the first time I took it. 

  • Professor Elam

    Statistical Sampling

    Thursday March  13 2014

    Here is a good article on statistical sampling.  This is a topic whcih gs little attention in accounting clases as frankly I suspect most accounting professors don't remember much about statistics. 

    As the author says it is used quite a bit in political sampling. 

  • Professor Elam

    TAMUSA Accounting Students Attend March SA IIA Meeting

    Wednesday March 12, 2014

    Pauline Perry, Eric Watkins,  and Beatrice Therwhanger attended the March 12 meeting of San Antonio Institute of Internal Auditors.  We sat with the HEB group and had a nice discussion of their backgrounds and what it was like to be at HEB. The program focused on Service Organization Control Reports presented by Brian /Thomas. Brian is a Partner with Weaver LLC in the Houston Office.  P1010210

    Interestingly Brian is NOT a CPA but is a CISA. He has to get one of the CPAs in the firm to sign his reports. This is an example of how important Information Technology is becoming in the accounting World. 

    Learn more on this topic, at this link.

  • Professor Elam

    An Interview with the EY CEO

    Wed March 12,. 2014

    Page B9 of today's WSJ features excerpts from an interview with Mark Weinberger Ernst Young CEO. Mark arrived in the CEO spot after heading the tax group for four years. 

    Interestingly EY is now headquartered in London, another sign of globalization. EY just paid a $99 M fine to settle claims it turned a blind eye to the problems at Lehman before that collapse in 2008.  An exec at Dewey and Leboeuf, a former law firm, described EY as 'a clueless auditor' EY claims the firm cooked the books and lied, the lawyers deny wrong doing. 

    After that, amazingly at least in my opinion, Pope Francis has hired EY to help increase efficiency and transparency at the Vatican. I wonder if Lehman and the law firm figured in that decision?

    As we have seen in our study of ethics in ACCT 5308.,there is no end to these kinds of failures. If indeed EY is the expert it claims to be, why did it not catch the lies at the law firm at the time, isn't taht what an audit is all about?

    And so the Big Four continue paying multi million dollar fines while scoring $25.8 Billion in annual revenue. And bingo, they are growing their consulting business saying they follow SARBOX very closely. I am guessing the consulting business gows better outside the purview of SARBOX which is why EY is in London and not New York. Employment is up from 167,000 to 175,000. 

  • Professor Elam

    SA CPA Scholarship Deadline March 31 02014

    Tuesday March 11 2014

    First off, you must be a memeber of TSCPA San Antonio Chapter.

    That costs $35 a year.

    Then you can apply for one of five scholarships rangingfrom $1500 to $2500. 

    You must be a junior or senior.

    Involvement in the Chapter and an essay on why you want to be a CPA is required.

    By trhe way this is another example of why it pays to read ProfessorElam.typepad.com!!

     

  • Professor Elam

    Is It Worth Being an American?

    Tuesday March 11 2014

    More Americans are renouncing their citizen ship, or thinking about it.  Here are stories of five fairly ordinary people who are in that category. 

    The reason, the long reach of the IRS. If you do on tlive in the US, why reveal everything about yourself and your foreign born partner to the IRS. 

    The tax system in the US is broken. I do not understand why no one runs for office on that platform.

  • Professor Elam

    The Whole World is Watching

    Monday March 10 2014

    I have uged students to spend the mere $1 a wekk to subscribe to the WSJ. With the Ukraine situation heating up, there has never been a better time to enjoy the benefits of such a subscription. 

    On page A 15 today Gordon Crovitz comments on social media as a government watchdog. Decades ago Marshal McLuhan referred to the world as a Global Village. He meant that modern communication and satellites had shrunk the time it took to get information. Now social media means everything is happening in real time around the world. 

    Consider these photos of Russian Troops sans insignia up close and personal with Ukriane troops. Now, if you subscribed to the WSJ, log on and read 

    Dear Vladimir Congratulations You Read My Book This is a wonderfully done piece by Josef Joffe. He takes the mantle of Niccolo Machiavelli,k the author of The Prince, and writes a letter to Vlad. The Prince was the original book on how to occupy another country with minimum stress on yourself. He particularly compliments Vlad on the economy of violence. Which is to say, Vlad pulled the whole thing off without any violence, got the Crimean Leg to vote for him and now occupies the Ukraine. Sure Poland can fly F 16s around as another article above this one suggests but so what, what would they bomb?

    Gary Kasparov wrote a fine article last week on how squeezing the Oligarchs who have investments all over the world in property would put the real hurt on Vlad, but reading this piece, I doubt the US has the courage for such action. 

    Saturday I asked the graudate class if anyone could stand and deliver a talk on the facts of the Ukraine situation and the strategy of each side. Only one hand went up. 

    Semper paratus. 

  • Professor Elam

    On Literacy

    Weekend March 9 2014

    I just finished reading Russell Blake's Zero Sum novel. Blake is a self published author with two no make that three series going on and several stand alone boks. He comments on a Kansas School Teacher's lament here.

    The English teacher wishes here male charges would read. Her idea is Steinbeck and Hemingway,k I guess because they were both guys but that is about all one could say for the idea. Blake suggests his JET series about a female assassin who originally worked for the Mossad and then faked her own death. See, you are interested already. 

    English teachers also think reading Bill Shakespeare is a great idea. But stroll through an airport and how many people are reading King Lear? If you can find a film with Richard Burton doing the lead you migfht just might understand enough of the dialog to get  through the movie.

    In college I became hooked on Tom Wolfe, that would be the Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby1 Wolfe. His gongzo whatshappeningright now style and descriptions  of the pop culture were right on. He rose to fame with an article on Las Vegas for Esquire. Hard pressed to describe his experience there

    he wrote stream of conscious james Joyce style  beginning with the radio in the rent car that refused to turn off. Las Vegas was like that he wrote, it's on 24 hours a day like it or not. Back then Vegas was the only place with 24 hour grocery stores, open to cater to show girls when they got off work at 2 AM. Now 24 hour joints of all kinds are common place. 

    Wolfe wrote more non fiction like Radical Chic and then had a mega hit made into a movie, The Right Stuff. Then he went fiction and frankly I lost him. 

    And so I turned to Dan Jenkins who wrote Semi Tough, Dead Solid Perfect, and Limo, among others. Jenkins is a long time observer of pro golf and an all around expert about writing on life at the top particularly viewed from Fort Worth Texas. If that makes no sense, well pick any of the three above and see what I meann. 

    Like a lot of parents at the time, this would be the late 1950s early 1960s, my Mother thought I would make a great piano player. Oh I learned to pay the notes but clearly I would never become a musician, it was that talent thing. But her idea was to put me with an elderly lady piano teacher who adored Beethoven. How  about a hip guy who adored Jerry Lee Lewis, now that might have gotten my attention. 

    At any rate, I think I learned more about great writing from Jenkins and Wolfe than I ever did from Bill S. The same sort of prescription could be applied to other fields of study. If you want someone to like something, give them something like able about it to study. 

    The tv series Numb3rs did a fine job of this.  The heroes used math to solve crimes, now how cool is that?   Answer a lot more cool than factoring polynomials. Never once in my life did anyone ask me to factor a polynomial, even though I spent three years studying how to do it. And that boys and girls is what is wrong with math education. 

    At any rate, I am thinking of my first non fiction work of pride, and will spend this week outlining just that. If you want your teen agers reading point them in a direction they woud like. 

     

  • Professor Elam

    Chicago, Say Hello to Detroit

    Friday March 7 2014

    Moody's downgraded Chicago's huge debt load to three notches above junk status.

    We are studying bonds in ACCT 3312. Moody's Fitch and S & P all rate bonds. What does this mean for Chicago?  Why is there a parallel to Detroit, now in bankruptcy?  Chicago has over $18,000 in pension liablity for every citizen of Chicago. I suspect this rating of Baa1 is wildly optimisitc, assuming someone would bail Chicago out of its ditch.

    My newspaper column this week is on the next looming domsday crisis, the inability of the vast majority to retire. Between ultra low interest rates, little to no savings, 47 M on food stamps, a shaky SS system being ever extended, millennial living at hom with a triilion plus debt over their heads, and now cities with underfunded pensions, well better plan to keep working.

  • Professor Elam

    SA Lawyer Pleads Guilty District Judge Resigns

    Thursday March 6 2014

    Al Acevedo Jr plead guilty to bribery. He has had more than 1700 cases in state nad county courst in
    Bexar Conty. He has $4.2 million in bond liabilities, what he owes for abil postd on clients. 

    Where were the county auditors on this one, how could someone run up such an  unpaid baill for bonds?

    District Judge Angus McGinty resigned Feb 14 amid allegations that he manipulated cases to benefit clients of Acevedo in exchange for, are you ready

    repair work on McGinty's personal vehicles. 

    I understand that District Judges in Texas make about $100 grand. Why on earth would one put the prestige of being a Judge on the line for car repair. 

    Remember a good auditor maintains professional skepticism.