Professor Elam

Accounting & Investing Info for San Antonio A & M

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  • Professor Elam

    The Real Housewives of New Jersey Gets More Real

    Thursday March 6 2014

    Teresa and Giuseppe Joe Giudice plead guilty to well lots of things like mail fraud and false tax returns.  And he had income of $1 M between 2004 and 2008. 

    Apparently they filed a bankrutpcy in 2009 atttempting to hide income. They also admitting filing Screen Shot 2014-03-06 at 1.06.02 PMfraudulent mortgage and loan applications and fabricating tax returns and W 2 forms. 

    Sentencing is set for July 8. but the good news, in the best New Jersey tradition, is that Teresa parlayed her spot on the show into cookbooks and drink food, and hair care product lines. She will continue to work on the show untl her sentencing. 

    The better idea would have been to work harder and make more money, pay the taxes. As she notes in the article, she will now be separated from her children and become a convicted felon. I doubt they used a CPA. 

     

    Badda badda bing badda bang  as Tony Soprano would say. 

  • Professor Elam

    College Grads Taking Lower Wage Jobs

    thursday March 6, 2014

    The share of Americans ages 22 to 27 with at least a bachelor's degree in jobs that don't require that level of education was 44 percent in 2012, up from 34 percent in 2001, the study found

     

    Here is another story about  a college graduate history major orking as a bartender.  This knocks the non college grad worker down to $7.82 and hour at MCD. This articl cites a restaurant chain where 60% of the employees hold college degrees but fewer than 10 positions of 700 require a degree.

    the problem is that colleges continue to produce graduates in fields where there are too many already, like history, or there are simply no logical jobs for the graduates, think sociology or anthropolgy.

    While this is not so much the case for accounting grads, still, achieving your real goals will require more than just a degree. This is why I emphasize working on a ladder of certifications, easy to the more difficult. More employers want to see individuals with the self motivation to accomplish such things on their own.

    I recently received a nice e mail from a recent TAMUSA accounting grad. He landed a position.When asked what he planned to do for his future in the interview, he was able to speak knowledge ably about CIA and CMA and CPA. This was a result of my assiging written reports on certifications and hvaing such professionals come to class.

    Plan your successful strategy now. Plan on a ladder of certifications.

  • Professor Elam

    Radio Shack Closing Near You, 1,100 and Counting

    Tuesday March 4 2014

    Radio Shack will close 1,100 stores.

    Here is another article with a good examples of the use of accounting terms.  For example, what is negative free cash? The sescond article wonders if RSH will be the next Circuit City, another electronic retailer which went toes up.

    In reading the second article there are many signs of trouble with over 5,000 stores. Expectations seem to be they will not make it. What do you think, in accounting terms?  Here is another example of too much retail brick and mortar space in the US.

  • Professor Elam

    Recreation Fee Vote



      
      Monday March 3 2014

    Voting March 4 8 AM thru March 6 5 PM

    tamusa-community.symplicity.com

    Brooks Welcome Center

    Cost $100 per student per semester beginning Fall 2014

    or $200

    Remember we have a gym, walking track, endless sidewalks, all at Brooks already for no additional fees whatsoever, 
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
     
     
     

  • Professor Elam

    Buffett Believes Economy Slowly Growing

    Buffett believes the economy is growing slowly.   He has no plans to sell on the Ukraie situation.

    But no onder, after all, he does not just own shares, he actually owns most of his companies on a consolidated basis. And so when they make money, the money is his, no matter what the share price might do.

    He bought a railroad and now owns the profits hauling oil, handy since his President has not approved hte Keystone XL pipeline. Even if  rai pipeline is pproved, much of the oil will stil be moved by rail.

    IF one owns the shares of a company with no dividend, one is dependent on the shares advancing. If one owns the company outright, the cash flow is yours, big difference.

    We disucss this in types of ownership in intermediate accpounting in Chapter 12 INvestments.

    If one owns less than 20%, one accounts for this as an availab dowor sale or an trading security.

    The equity method is used if one owns 20-49%. But even then one does not received the income of the company owned.

    Only if one owns > 50% do we consolidate the returns when one really does have a claim on the cash flow.

  • Professor Elam

    Bet on Vlad

    Monday March 3, 2014

    I made the comment on the investment blog that the smart money would 'bet on Vlad.'  So far that prediction is working pretty well. Here is a good summary on red flags the West ignored.  AFter drawing a red line in Syria and then failing to follow through, Putin seized the initiative so keep his man Assad in Office, and his Navy Base in the med.

    In 2011 Ralph Peters correctly identified Putin as the most dangerous man in the world.  As Peters describes it, Putin wants a Russian commodity economy. He can and does control that. He could not control an economy that was consumer oriented. And so six to seven decades after the end of WW II, Russia does not produce a single consumer product other than vodka and AK 47s.

    Dictators and tyrants will always expand into weakness. Putin ahs been trying out the U S  Syria and found nothing to stop him. And so he invades the Ukraine.

    Fredrick Forsythe laid all this out in The Devil's Alternative originally published in the 1970s. Now it is coming true, the fight for the Ukraine, the bread basket for Russia.  Russia also has the ability to declare the food unsafe that is exported cutting off income for the Ukraine, and of course Russia controls its energy supplies. There is a parallel, Stalin tried to choke off Berlin after WW II. THe US responded with

    teh Berlin Airlift.   I don't see anything like that as possible now. Berlin was a small city, the Ukraine if an entire country.

    The markets are overbought this is the opportunity to claim this incident is taking them down,

  • Professor Elam

    Predicting Success

    Weekend March 2 2014

     

    Here is a link to Tom Friedman's How to Get A Job at Google. It also includes a link to an earlier interview with Google and how theyuse Big Data. The upshot is that Google has decided test scores and GPAs mean little in terms of predicting success at Google. The CPA test for exampe is a test or your memorization of various rules and problem solving techniques. It is not a test of how you would solve a problem. Google has concluded this is far more important. 

    This weekend I am reading The Smartest Kids in the World and How they Got that Way. 

    Amanda Ripley examines the experiences of American students who live for a year in South Korea, Finland, and Poland. She also explains the Program for nInternational Student Assessment PISA. This test was concerived as a way to test advanced communication and thinking skills. After administering the test around the world the conclusion was that Finland had the best and the brightest. 

    The author outlines what each country did to revamp its education system. Most did this in the span of a few years. Finland made it much more difficult to become a teacher, requiring a mastery of the subject top be taught. Attend out graduation and you will see that most teachers decider rather to major in educaiton. 

    I will have more on this as I finish the book. But I was struck by the Google conclusionand the PISA difference in testing. One has to have a college education to sit for most certified exams. a result more of the college lobby than any correlation between a college education and becoming say a forensic auditor. 

     

     

  • Professor Elam

    USA 1930s -1950s in Neon

    Weekend March 1, 2014

    Here is an interesting  video on Fords and the Neon Signs that promoted them.  As the collector notes as people drove West from the 19360s on they needed food and a place to sleep. Restaurants and what became known as motels, a short for motor hotel, advertised with neon signs. This collection was sold which seems a shame, what a slice of Americana, ala Route 66. 

  • Professor Elam

    Phone Interviews

    Wed Feb 26 2014

    Here are some tips for conducting phone interviews. I was thinking that reading about the view point of the interviewer might help  you the interviewee, know what to expect. 

  • Professor Elam

    Aply for Scholarships

    Tuesday Feb 25 2014

    A member of the Scholarship Committee reminded me that students must first apply for a scholarship available at TAMUSA. If you do not apply you cannot be considered.

    Use the link above to access the application. One requirement is to complete an essay on your thoughts on education.   Many business students are missing the boat so to speak on this one.

    An essay is just that. It is more, much more than a sentence or two. It is a coherent exposition of one's thoughts on a subject. It contains a topic sentence. The essay expounds on that topic sentence offering support and conclusions.

    Consider these lines from Emerson's Eulogy on Thoreau published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862.

    He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and supplying them himself. In his travels, he used the railroad only to get over so much country as was unimportant to the present purpose, walking hundreds of miles, avoiding taverns, buying a lodging in farmers and fishermen's houses, as cheaper, and more agreeable to him, and because there he could better find the men and the information he wanted.

    Indeed make your wants few and supply them yourself. Now there is an origianl thought.

    Those of you who have been in my classes have I think benefitted from reading Emerson.

    At any rate, we should have more business students applying for scholarships, and writing vigorous essays to support their being chosen.