Accounting & Investing Info for San Antonio A & M
Wed Jan 12 2010
These four states are the US equivalent of the European PIGS Portugal Ireland Greece Spain.
The IL Senate wants to raise taxes 66%. Other governors are making fun of this disaster. Neighboring Indiana says this is a good idea, for Indiana!
How bad is it, check out this blog
http://www.illinoisisbroke.com/
Meanwhile Texas struggles with its own budget imbalances.
Wed Jan 12 2010
Here is a short article on tax reform. Steve Forbes suggests that you should be able to do your tax return on the back of a post card, the original 1913 form was that way, and then Congress got involved.
Tuesday Jan 11 2011
This author makes that case that this could well be the top for Facebook. The insiders are selling the company, to well who else, Goldman clients Like spacebook and AOL, this could be the top rather than the start of something big.
Monday Jan 10 2010
This article on Bill Daley makes the point that the banks have now taken over the White House. The size of six big banks has risen from 17% to 64% of the GDP, indeed way too big to fail. Clearly the Frank Doddd bill did nothing to stop the growth of these behemoths. As the article says, they want to be left alone in good times and bailed out in bad.
A must read.
Sunday Jan 9 2010
Facebook apparently wants to raise money by going private. But is it worth 25x revenues?
Yes Google and Apple are big successes, but such stories are the exception. Read the story to get an idea of how fast Facebook would need to continue to grow to be worth this kind of valuation.
Sunday Jan 9 2010
Do you know Lynn Tilton?
After leaving Wall Street, she began buying distressed debt. She realized she would need to run the companies herself to really gain anything. I can testify to that having been a bankruptcy trustee, the debt is distressed because the owners do not know what to do. She now runs multiple firms in a rather distinctive manner.
My point is that Ms. Tilton learned how to analyze companies in college and on Wall Street. The best use of accounting knowledge is not just making journal entries but learning how to analyze firms and picking the best of the bunch.
You will see Ms. Tilton on the various business news channels commenting on current events.
Wed Jan 5 2011
Congress has created a real headache.
When the Nancy Pelosi Congress was running amok passing every regulation they could imagine, one slipped under the radar. There is a provision that everyone paying someone else more than $600 must issue a 1099 to the recipient and send the 1099s to the irs by Jan 30 2012 for Calendar Year 2011. Attempts to eliminate this odious provision in the lame duck session failed. Read the link about what an owner of multiple rental properties thinks of this. Expect the Republicans to really make an issue of this in the new Congress.
The Dean of the Arizona State Business School makes some excellent points here. Note his observation that we have way more government than the reduced manufacturing sector can support.
We will be discussing your future in class this semester, this wold be a good article to print and re read during the semester. l
Monday Dec 27 2010
We last visited HR Block on Dec 8 of this year. We noted HRB had adopted a strategy of lending Tax Anticipation Loans to customers. Now the government has struck down some of that
business. Desperate, HRB even sued their ultimate lender, HSBC, which does not sound like a particularly good idea to me. Our point is that one should not stray too far from the basic business, preparing tax returns. The money lending business was one of the causes of the problems at GM and Ford, they made more money lending money than making cars.
Wednesday Dec 22 2010
Fast Company profiles the latest thinking about Twitter. At first it seemed just a sort of self indulgent look at me and what I am doing site. But it turns out that Twitter is an instant messaging medium that provides instant feedback.
Frank Lutz does this sort of instant polling with political focus groups. He tracks their reactions while the politician is speaking. This feedback is invaluable to the person attempting to perfect the perfect thirty second sound bite. It is also apparently of value to the lost sought after two way tv feedback loop. This after all is what Nielsen and others claim to sell, at high prices, actual listener or viewer feedback. But set up a site, tell the viewers and bada bing, all the viewers can tweet away with their immediate impressions. Consider
285,800 Tweets about Glee the day Britney Spears appeared on the show
3,085 Tweets per second at eh end of the 2010 NBA championship game
Twitter is now setting up sites so that one can see the specific tweets for specific events, bingo instant feedback.
This could be of value in education as well, though I am not sure administrators and professors are ready for such instant feedback. Assuming the identity of the sender was secret, one could get the instant response of the crowd to anyone speaking at any time. Hmm, what about that lecture on Milton…
Check out the link above, Bill Clinton spent more on polling than any other President before him, now everyone is doing it.
Professor Elam 