Scott Burns has a good article about the popularity of the Kindle, Amazon's e book reader. 

You can log on to amazon.com and see the Kindle.  The second version has a larger more readable screen. I suspect it needs to be able to connect to the internet ala the iPhone and Blackberry to REALLY catch on but it is happening.

Here t TAUMSA we are moving to hybrid courses. Homework Manager Plus from McGraw Hill features a much less expensive e book than the print version, Wiley and Cengage and Pearson are going in the same direction.  The pricing structure forces one to the e book.

Professors voges, Hewitt and I were in a meeting recently where a Kindle was passed around, so it is catching on. What's your thought on e books?  I suspect that a company needs to 'bundle' four textbooks with an e book to get students to really buy into it so to speak, but so far Amazon will not come down on the kindle price, it sells in thousands and we need millions, like laptops for the price to really drop.

Come to think of it, now that lap top prices are down, that tablet idea never realy caught on, perhaps the next iteration will be a tablet pc that is an electronic book, yeah that makes sense.

Okay sound off, what is your opinion on the  e book? Have you bought one, have you bought an e textbook, did you like it?

The Rolling Stone loooks at Goldman Sachs. Goldman is the ultimate insider causing and then saving us from numerous calamities. But there is never a clamaity for Golodman who always comes out on top.

A front page article in the Dallas Morning News announces that most high school gradsare lucky to have a C average the first semester in college.   That would be what one would expect from a normal distribution but apparently that is not a topic covered in journalism school. Not surprisingly students do better at community colleges. Alarmingly one dim bulb administrator remarks that high school which gives students a pass on final exams does not prepare them to cram for finals. Good grief, no one ever learned anything cramming for finals.  NO wonder we are in trouble.

Still this is a topic among accounting teachers at every meeting I attend. How bad is it?  UT Arlington and UTSA now require all students including their own grads to take an exam to enter intermediate accounting I.

There is really nothing new in all this, indeed it was this way when I entered UT Austin way back in 1966.  Two years later it was revealed that one half  the entire college of business was on scholastic probation. This means they had less than a C average, well duh. I am still grappling with the realization that then and now students will not read their textbooks, well what outcome would one expect?  A gifted student may not be, they just read the book.

The article goes on to point out that many students are in remedial writing and math. They five paragraph essay in high school is not adequate for college. The reality I suspect is that the student never wrote a good five paragraph essay in high school, and cannot write one in college.

We will be discussing success strategies the first day of class…..

Here is the latest on tax revenues for the Federal Govt as the FEDS spend more money than ever.

Lately in class I have offered the opinion that
CPAs will come closer and closer to  govt employess, why?

CPAs prepare audited statements, pro formas for bank loans and tax returns. In all three instances the govt can make the case it is the ultimate risk taker. It has taken over failed business, insures banks, and now is 18% down on tax revenue.  the inevitable reaction, now that cpas do not regulate themsevles but answer to the pcaob, will be to demand 'accountability from cpas to government. Alerady the Feds aredemanding that tax preparers answer questionaires looking for more requirements for preparer registration.

You heard it here first. The new requirement will simply be for tax preparers to become tax collectors. I suspect the govt will take the position that if the return had been properly done, a tax audit would not be necessary. THere will be in their view, only one correct answer.

Inquiring minds note Federal Tax Revenues Plummet Most Since 1932.
The
recession is starving the government of tax revenue, just as the
president and Congress are piling a major expansion of health care and
other programs on the nation's plate and struggling to find money to
pay the tab.

The numbers could hardly be more stark: Tax
receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest
single-year decline since the Great Depression, while the federal
deficit balloons to a record $1.8 trillion.

Other figures in an
Associated Press analysis underscore the recession's impact: Individual
income tax receipts are down 22 percent from a year ago. Corporate
income taxes are down 57 percent. Social Security tax receipts could
drop for only the second time since 1940, and Medicare taxes are on
pace to drop for only the third time ever.

The last time the government's revenues were this bleak, the year was 1932 in the midst of the Depression.

In
May the government's best estimate was that Social Security would start
to pay out more money than it receives in taxes in 2016, and that the
fund would be depleted in 2037 unless changes are enacted.

Some experts think the sour economy has made those numbers outdated.

"You
could easily move that number up three or four years, then you're
talking about 2013, and that's not very far off," said Kent Smetters,
associate professor of insurance and risk management at the University
of Pennsylvania.

Terry Box wrote a farewell to Pontiac and its GXP.