Professor Elam

Accounting & Investing Info for San Antonio A & M

recent posts

about

  • Professor Elam

    Arlena Sones to Speak in Class

    Monday July 13, 2009 at 12:15 Arlena Sones Internal Auditor with the City of San Antonio will speak in my Intermed II Accounting Class. 

    Familiarize yourself with San Antonio IIA 

    Internal Audit is perhaps the fastest growing segment of the accounting profession. SARBOX, accounting scandals et al have brought a demand to know what is going on. Internal audit is both quantitative and qualitative. There are some 100,000 candidates that take the CIA exam every year. 

    I believe Internal Audit is a very viable career path for our non traditional students. Please come prepared with questions for our guest. 

  • Professor Elam

    Public Accounting

    Tina C. made this post about public accounting. I would agree. I have met individuals with the 'second tier' firms that seemed to have a life. However the deadlines brought on by tax time are well laid out in the post below. 

     think it would be fair to say that the second tier firms (and so on down the line) still expect long hours and don't pay any better.

    I strongly urge students to be sure they know what they are getting into with Public Accounting – not everybody is cut out for it! and there is no shame in choosing a different path if it is more appealing to you. Anybody considering accounting as a career needs to research the various paths and choose one that matches their goals, expectations and personalities. Find out what it takes to "climb the ladder" in the areas you are interested in. Are you willing to work 60+ hour weeks? Are you willing to not have a life around deadlines? How will your kids (family) handle the schedule? (My elementary age kids know what April 15th and October 15th mean… and they know "deadline" means momma won't be home much). 

  • Professor Elam

    What Are They Thinking?

    I am watching a 'small business owner' interviewed on Fox.  The question is

    Would TARP funds for small business be a good idea?

    Incredibly she said yes……

    Now realize that no firm on the planet has more sroke, the inside track, etc with the US Govt than Goldman Sachs. And THEY could not wait to give the TARP money back. Ditto for most big banks. 
    Clearly this woman is not listening to the news. 

    The better idea, rather than spend money we do not have thru deficits, have zero income tax for a quarter, and eliminate employer matching for social security. Of course getting employers to start matching again would likely be a problem.  But my plan eliminates any new bureaucracy and it takes effect immediately and it is fair to all, the govt does not decide who gets the money, but wait, what congressman would want that?

  • Professor Elam

    Change They Don’t Believe in

    We continue to follow the travails at Alamo Community College District. 

    This is developing into a case study of how not to use Deming TQM and end up in a mess instead of a constructive transition. 

    Clearly there is no buy in by the faculty who have not doubt been moved to anger by their respective Presidents. The Presidents do not want to lose their autonomy which they would and will fight this to the point of finding folks to run against the existing Board, once a Board member is defeated, no doubt the thinking is the rest of the Board will re assess its position. 

    Clearly the Board and the Chancellor have not read Machiavelli, look him up in wiki. He had some advice several hundred years ago on how to take over a conquered country. 

  • Professor Elam

    Accounting Certifications

    Did you know there are over 40 accounting certifications?

    Traditionally it has been CPA, now there is Certified Internal Auditor, Certified Management Accountant, and several others particularly involving high tech. 

    This is a result of two things I think. First, accounting has grown to be a much larger profession, it is not just about external audit. The things one studies to become a CPA does not encompass what a management accountant does. 

    Second, the high failure rate of the cpa exam has caused candidates to seek other opportunities. 
    Understand that CPA is still the only government license one can hold. The others are bestowed so to speak by independent organizations. 

    The CPA exam now requires 150 college hours and a degree and well over 30 accounting hours. CIA can be taken with a BBA degree. Do not delay studying for and taking at least part of some certified exam. I believe that putting off the cpa exam causes students to fail to prepare. It becomes a bridge too far that defies preparation today. Pick a realizable goal and start on it now. 

  • Professor Elam

    Finally, the Other Audit Firms Pull Ahead

    Grant Thornton scored a larger dollar increase (if I read the story correctly, it is not clear) than other firms for a recent period. They note these are not clients rejected by the Big Four but clients that switched from the Big Four. Note the client that helped get them there was a Chinese firm. 

    Not  surprisingly the new CEO of GT is a Brit who has lived on three continents. 

    So what, glad you asked. When I was an undergraduate shortly after Edison switched from direct to alternating current, there were the Big 8 Audit Firms. time winnowed those to six, and then whoops Arthur Andersen was gone and well am I missing one, we now have four large firms with over 50,000 firms. SARBOX meant those firms could not do audit and consulting so you guessed it, audit fees have more than doubled since SARBOX passed, well gee cost accounting wins again. 

    The big firms work like this

    If you are a Fortune 500.1000 firm you want our name on your audit
    Guess what that costs a lot of money as our overhead is gosh awful and 
    Our partners want to make as much money as your CEO
    We pay the staff about $55K and work them so hard 90% quit in five years and we bill them out for over $200K

    Okay that boys and girls is the business model for the large firms…

    And so the day is beginning to arrive for the so called second tier firms, somewhere you might actually consider working. Take a look at the list on the link, sounds to me like there day is arriving. 

  • Professor Elam

    Gearhead Weekend

    Picture 4Terry Box

    Auto Reviewer for the dallasnews.com/autos

    Your review of the Honda Insight Hybrid

    The whole make over of the auto industry began with the Honda 750 four cyl motorcycle. Nest thing you knew all four Japanese manufacturers were making air and then water cooled fours, and that, boys and girls, is how they learned to make really reliable well performing 1.6-3.4 L auto engines. Same layout, four cylinders with dohc and four valves per cylinder. GM still has not figured out what happened. 
    Honda still makes great enthusiast bikes, why can't we say that about their cars?  Honda will not hear of a turbo or supercharger, even BMW is on that band wagon now. And so we get the  197 bhp VTEC Civic that has the automotive appeal of a dentist drill, high rpm, no torque. Let's face it, turbo fours from mazda, mitsu, VW, subaru, are all about replicating that nice smooth thrust one got from any pre air pump detroit V 8. I mean Honda has even canceled the prelude, wasn't that the name, and even that was sort of a poser to a sporty car. My Honda Valkyrie had a woderful 1500 cc flat six, with six carbs and six exhaust pipes no less. Hmmm, let's bring back an aggressive del Sol, drop in that flat six with 1800cc pop on some four valve heads, and mate it to a close ratio five speed, there's the ticket, the affodable boxster would be born.
    Honda, please, the S 2000 may be a great track car but the miata outsells it every day, there is a reason, power to the people, build the rest of us a car, now that you have an entire fleet for Al Gore.

  • Professor Elam

    Tell Fritz

    You can't make  this stuff up

    Dave Barry, Jeff foxworthy

    Tell Fritz is the new website allowing customers to 'get in touch' with Fritz, the CEO of GM. 

    but it gets better, this is  a quote

    "One of the new frontiers in the auto industry will be true customer service," Henderson said. "We're committed to responding to consumer market trends."

    Gee where have they been as the foreign makers invaded?

    We study customer relations in managerial accounting, TQM, CQM, geez, perhaps this is why GM  is in trouble, ya think?

  • Professor Elam

    Outliers and Black Swans

    I am not quite sure where Pat Buchanan stands in the politicial spectrum but he seems to stand alone. While the rest of the columnists are writing about Sotomayer, Michael Jackson, health care,and the wonder of two engined automobiles (hybrids), Buchanan at least has more of a world view.

    quick now the Turkic speaking  Ughurs are

     rebels in the Underworld of the Ring Trilogy
    the ancient people who gave rise to   Valdemort in the Harry Potter series
    an oppressed group in now Chinese dominated border territory in an oil rich region

    Indeed the last choice is why the Chinese 'president' broke off his meeting with the G 8 and returned home

    Maintaining empire since the days of Alexander the Great has been a matter of oppressing folks that did not want to be in the empire, that is the topic of Buchanan's column. Here in the US the South did not want ot overthrow Washington DC, it just wanted out, but it was not to be. We have a new Civil WAr, as the prosperous southern US will be called upon to support the failed business models of Michigan and California. How long will that last?

    Read the linked column, these are foreign, indeed, names to most US citizens. The books Outliers and Black Swan argue that seemingly unrelated, insignificant events can have great impact, indeed, put people in houses they cannot afford, guarantee their mortgages, and poof, bye bye to Merrill and Lehman. Chide Arthur Andersen, and poof, an 85,000 person cpa firm is gone overnight.

    It is important to read things you may not agree with and particularly to read from a foreign perspective. While Buchanan is located here, this column is a perspective first suggested in Nesbitt's Megatrends 2000. He said ethnic people the world over would be going back to their original languages, breaking free of their oppressors.  Sure enough look what has  happened.

    Forsythe's novel The Devil's Alternative describes an assasination in the Ukraine that leads to a near break up of the Soveit Union, it was written in the late 1970s. The Soviet Union did break up just ten years later

    WW I began just this way, as he says, Africa will offer no lack of such brushfire wars. Which could be the next Black Swan?

  • Professor Elam

    An Orderly Wind Down

    Opus West filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Nothing unusual about that these days but

    what issues does this raise for the outside auditor? What will fair value be?  What is an empty office building in a recession worth? What would you want the owners to guarantee if you were the outside auditor?

    Another dimension of the outside audit is client selection. Would you want Opus as a client?
    What is a super priority lien in bankruptcy court?  Would you know to ask for one?

    Are you familiar with the fair value rules, impairment tests?

    This auditing thing is getting a lot more difficult.