Professor Elam

Accounting & Investing Info for San Antonio A & M

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  • Professor Elam

    7,000 New Rooms and Counting…

    It's not just the city, it's the state.

    That quote sums up the prospects for Las Vegas with City Center and the State of Nevada and more new rooms opening Dec 16. 

    Dubai, Macau, and Las Vegas have all made gigantic bets on tourism, the latter two depending on gambling. Dubai and Vegas are playing pretend it seems to me, they have built 'downtowns but there is no real business to occupy the buildings, no on produces anything, it just 'feels like a city.'

    An amazing evaluation of our times. The Cowboys football stadium is in the same league, but at least it is surrounded by an economy that does produce something. Can all these destinations continue to draw in visitors until the economy improves and pay on their notes? 

  • Professor Elam

    I am Going to Make Point Here, Stand By

    The hot wide angle lens on the market right now is the Nikon 14-24 mm 2.8 zoom. And it's a technological tour de force. Exotic lens elements. Nano coating. Hyper Drive focusing (I made that up). And the consensus is that, wide open, it trounces all the lenses in the focal range. By a long shot. It's currently around $1,800 US. If you shoot fast and wide you'll want one whether or not you are a Nikon shooter. Very cool.

    But….what if you're a different kind of shooter? What if your wide angle work is outside in the middle of the day? What if you had the good sense to use some of your money to buy a great tripod? What if you'd rather spend your money on food and shelter?

    Here's the secret that drives lens junkies crazy: All good lenses are great two stops down from wide open. Almost without exception. Take a 14-24 Nikon and compare it to an Sigma 10-20mm lens and at f5.6 or f8 you'll probably be amazed to find that they are pretty darn close.

    This is something I learned a long time ago in two different ways from two different people. Charlie Guerrero (Master Photographer par excellence) showed me on an old Leica that the 35 mm f2.8 Elmarit was actually much sharper than the Summicron 35mm f2 inspite of the fact that, at the time the Sumi was four times the price of the Elmarit. Stopped down to f4 they were pretty even but at 5.6 and 8 the Elmarit walked away with it. Same thing with 50 mm lenses. If you test them at f4, f5.6 and f8 the 50mm f2 lenses absolutely school the 50 1.4 lenses. In fact Charlie used to take cheap lenses and expensive lenses and do a test for our students. He'd have them shoot the pricey lens handheld in regular daylight while shooting the cheaper lenses on a tripod. Same aperture, same shutter speed (well about the "one over the focal length" rule…) and whatever lens was on the tripod was clearly better.

    Kirk Tuck, The Visual Science Lab

  • Professor Elam

    Parade Goes to a Cowboy Game

    We have discussed the cost of the new Cowboy Stadium and whether this will weather the economic Cowboy Stadium storm, see previous post on food stamps.Parade dispatched a reporter to give us the up close and personal experience. She encoutered a fellow who had paid $24,000 for the rights to two seats, the actual tickets are another $2500 a season,l no word on whether that price is subject to escalation, but I would imagine it is. $758 for a family of four to go to the game. Send me the photos…

  • Professor Elam

    Food Stamp Reliance at Record High

    It's not just for the homeless any more, yep Food Stamps now help 36 million people

    The numbers were growing even at the stock market and economy were in good shape. Will these new additions ever go off the program?  See the previous post about the trillions in deficit spending….

  • Professor Elam

    TigerGate

    My wife is after me to write more on forensic accounting. And she is hot on the trail of what promises to be the latest in breaking news at shall we say the financial top. Yep, it's Tigergate. Here is what we know.

    • Tiger Woods has earned over $100 M each year the last two years just in playing winnings, never mind the endorsements from Accenture, Nike, etc.
    • He smashed his Cadillac SUV ( I thought he endorsed buicks???) at 2:25 AM outside his own house ($2.5 M not your or my house). Seems he hit a fire hydrant and then a tree.
    • His wife said 'she used a golf club tosmash out a back window and help Woods from teh car.
    • IN fact both rear passenger windows were broken out.
    • Front page today, authorities to grill Tiger Woods today, inside, Troopers may question Woods and wife today, the last two days they were not available for comment

    Now mix that with

    • our forensic friends at the National Enquirer whoops 'was planning a piece that would have said  prior to the accident that Wools had  been seeing Rachel Uchitel, a New York nightclub hostess (hey that's what the SA paper says but it gets better)
    • Rachel denies this and resents her reputation getting completely blasted in the media  Rachel was in Melbourne with clients

    Car windows are tempered and layered with goop so that they do not shatter in a collision. This makes them, as my wife points out, near impossible to break out, but Woods wife managed it no matter how many golf clubs were destroyed, the latter another unknown

    So inquiriing minds

    Where was Woods headed at 2:25 AM?

    Was his wife determined to get Woods out of the car or let herself in?

    How did he hit so many things on his own lawn, could he have been dodging a pedestrian, who might that have been?

    Will GM have Woods in a commercial extolling he crash protection features of the Escalade?

  • Professor Elam

    http://www.bigredcalculator.com/

    I admit to be fascinated by as Jimmy Buffet says, the Bamboo Steamer. He wrote that song as tribute to all the cable tv junk that gets sold on the weekends. Surely we could think of the next great  Billy Mays or Ron Popeii

    cut the wine bottle to make a glass

    pasta maker

    or my personal favorite, spray on hair

    Anyway here it is the latest sure to be a hit order by internet gadget. Someone creatd the  sixteen digit calculator now that we have debt in the trillions. When ordinary just won't do I guess.

    Big Red Calculator Needless to say the official color is red. The fact that our debt is now the subject of such derision suggests that the editorial in today's San Antonio paper supporting a bi partisan commission to bring deficits under control is long overdue.

  • Professor Elam

    Dubai Lays an Egg

    Picture 5  Dubai World said Uncle on  Nov 25 asking for an extension on debt payments totaling some $80 B. Dubai does not have any oil in particular, the oil is in the neighboring countries. So who's in charge now. We have followed Dubai's failure to follow through on a similar project in Las Vegas, City Center. By the way Dubai hosts the world's tallest building, the fountains cost $250 M.

    Robert Prechter at Elliott Wave has noted that building skyscrapers is usually conincident with stock market tops. Optimism fuels such projects, the latest being the tallest building ever at the top of the highest stock market ever. That such a project could be built in a country with no real economy says volumes about just how optimsisic everyone got. 

    Japan stock exchange closed down over 3%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng closed down 4.8%. 

    Meanwhile, hotels in the US  are behind on their debt payments. 

    Luxury may be fundamental to the human experience as one hotel analyst says but then so is going broke…

  • Professor Elam

    Maria Interviews Jim Rogers

    For whatever reason, Bloomberg, the new owner of Business Week is apparently discontinuing Maria 

    Bartiromo's inerviews each week. Oh well, who better to end with than one of my favorites, Jim Rogers. 

    The author of Hot Commodities, Rogers is bullish on well you guessed it commodities. He likes palladium an silver in particular. 

  • Professor Elam

    You Are What you Wear

    I took photos at the COBA Speaker Series the other night, I can only post the guests though one of was particularly photogenic (well Donna and Maria and Cynthia are ALWAYS photogenic but) anyway

    I was reading another blog by a professional photographer. He was assigned to cover a seminar featuring numerous VIPs from the company. Most of the comments were about he mechanics of shooting the event, the cameras, the lenses, the ISO factor and such but then he made this comment about the three day affair, understand most of these sites are in vigorous debate about whether a nikon, a canon, an olympus or some such is the best choice, his comment on best gear below, 'nuff said. This can also apply every day right here at school, you never know who you will run into . Admittedly I am not clothes horse but at least presentable. You never know who you will run into…

    Most important gear? According to the client, who expected that the images would be good, the three nice suits were the standout accessory. She mentioned that in the early days of these conferences they often wound up with photographers who showed up dress in battered khakies and a "ratty fishing vest". According to her they stood out like a pig at a horse race.


  • Professor Elam

    Derivatives Again, Read about Mark Pittman

    I was going to start with Mark Pittman the financial journalist who called the sub prime mortgage crisis what it was, American Casino. Please read about Mark and then the next article caught me eye with this comment.

    This is still a derivatively challenged system, oversexed, overlevered, and unfortunately over here.


    If it turns out that AIG is a counterparty on the wrong side of the banks again, it really would be a bit much, and Timmy should be fired the following day if he dares to utter the "B word."

    Darned but Jesse's Cafe does have a way with words. What he means is, do the holders of the Dubai Debt believe they are secure with AIG Credit Default Swaps, see I told you learning this derivative stuff would be important! If they debt holders believe that, well, is AIG good for $60 Billion in CDS?  I doubt it, and so will Timmy Geithner rush to bail out AIG, again, to really bail out the banks that made the bad loans?

    Read Well of Emptiness