Accounting & Investing Info for San Antonio A & M
The Third Annual Department of Business Speaker Series was held Wed Nov 18 at the Centro Med Center-Encino Ballroom. Dr. Kathleen Voges (far right) served as moderator for
From left, Tom Lozzi and Ralph Lampman from the Verano Land Group, James Pyle with NetDataPad.com and Jane Thomas with Apple Specialist Advertising.
The Speakers shared their entrepreneur experiences with Texas A & M San Antonio students.
Palo Alto Cafe catered a fine array of refreshments from 6:00-7:00 PM.
Younger readers, that would be most of you, may be surprised to learn that Sony was once the electronics giant that everyone else benchmarked. Their Trinitron TV used three instead of one electron gun to produce a superior picture in the late 1960s to early 1970s. US importers were even then so taken with Japanese quality that they feared making the popular set in the US would result in a lesser product. Their Walkman was the first portable music player featuring a casette tape in a portable battery powered unit, they followed that up with a CD portable. But, then they bought a movie studio and then Apple checked the Walkman with the iPod, and others started making flat screen tvs and well….
One of the interesting things about life and business is how leaders lose their way, and that was the case with Sony. Was it buying the movie studio? Whatever, straying from one's core business is always a mistake.
WE are discussing derivatives in Intermediate II Accounting. Please read this article on Commercial Real Estate and Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities. CMBS is a derivative. It gets value from the mortgages that it owns. If the mortgages become delinquent, the value of the CMBS will plummet. And the assets, so called, of the banks holding those CMBS will fall as will the bank stock prices. This is what worries James Stewart. THat is the same James Stewart that wrote Den of Theives about the Milken junk bond fiasco.
Here is a picture of what Stewart is writing about. KRE is an index or composite of several regional bank stocks. That composite hit its high last May, it hit it again in August and has declined since. The purple lines are now forming a triangle. The move out of that triangle is likely to be decisive regarding the new trend in price. This is why Stewart is selling, a pullback could well be on the horizon.
THe debate continues on Chinese and US Trade Policy.
Unions and manufacturers in the US dislike it charing it ships US manufacturing jobs overseas. This is in fact true. The other side argues it results in cheaper goods, yeah no kidding.
I suspect the end result in a few years will be the conclusion that only manufacturing builds wealth. Service industries, trading sub prime mortgages for example, does not produce wealth.
The overlooked component of this argument is that the US and China do many of the same things. A country like Chile with a primary agriculture economy has a positive balance of trade with China, they each need what the other produces. Meanwhile China and the US play a no win war of each trying to lower its currency to make its exports ever cheaper. No wonder gold hit a new high again yesterday.
Warren Buffet and George Soros both increased their positions in Wal Mart. Target is playing catch up to the discount retailer now that buying patterns are firmly back in discount mode.
Gary Shilling wonders ow long the China US Tango can go on? China's economy is built on exporting to the US. AS I noted in my Pay Pal post, Americans have put the brakes on spending. So, exactly who is China going to build for in the future. Add to that a race to the bottom on which country has the cheaper currency. And now as you can read, each is accusing the other of not 'properly managing the economy the way it should.'
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made a string of famous movies in the 1930s. The movies featured elaborate dance scenes amid opulent splendor of sets and costumes. The same thing is being re created again on Dancing with the Stars, a popular television program. Such fluff takes people's minds off sub prime mortgages and such.
In the same way, China and the US are still dancing except the music may have stopped, has anyone noticed?
All
I received this cheery message from my good friends at Pay Pal this morning, and it occurred to me that this short message describes the entire financial mess of the United States and how we got here. Americans have been urged to go into debt to buy lunch for goodness sakes. And to buy homes with 100% debt, no wonder banks are out of business. Anyway, does this not say it all?
But Americans are not doing going the credit loop but paying debt down now. Forget Bill Me Later and remember if you can't afford it don't buy it.
Professor Elam
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My template for the time period we are in now is 1966 -1972. The DOW Averages made a high in 1966 and then never surpassed it until well into the 1980s. In between there were huge rallies and collapses of hundreds of points.
Most of you were born after the Chicago Seven Trial of 1969, it is worth taking a look at that again.
Briefly, Viet Nam War Protestors sought to disrupt the Democrat Convention in Chicago. They succeeded.
And so they were put on trial the following year for inciting a riot. The trial became a cause celeb for the New Left as the defendants succeeded in disrupting the trial as they did the Convention. And they got off.
Note the 36% drop in the Dow from 1968 to the trial. This was a time of radical social change in America occasioned by the Chicago Seven Trial, consider some of the events that occurred in March of that year., OH and Woodstock was that summer….
Now the government has proposed trying another group of radicals, this time in New York City instead of Chicago. The parallel continues. This will certainly afford the protestors a world stage to air their grievances, and plenty of media, and blogs to follow it. We are at a higher degree of cycle turn in civilization now than then, and this trial will likely receive a lot more coverage, that is typical of higher degrees of social turn.
Remember the O J Simpson Trial, trials can take on a life of their own.
3rd Annual College of Business Speaker Series is scheduled for this Wednesday, November 18th from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm. There will be a panel presentation and reception. The event will also be a recognition of our first MBA graduating class. The event is at the Encino Ballroom at Centro Med which is on Commercial and Gillette.
There is a link on the main TAMUK San Antonio web page for more details.
Malcolm Knowles is acknowledged as the father of adult education. Pedagogy is the science of how we teach, andragogy is the experience of how adults learn.
Knowles' theory can be stated with six assumptions related to motivation of adult learning:[1][2]
The term has been used by some to allow discussion of contrast between self-directed and 'taught' education.[3]
From wikipedia
This post will hopefully kick off a discussion of what and how you would like to see online resources used to improve the education delivery system here at Tx A & M San Antonio. Some courses are clearly hybrid and others meet more often, but there is still the potential to mix in a lot more content. That content will require a lot more of your time on the net. But it will assure that there is continuous engagement occurring.
Professor Elam 