Bert Prelutsky reviews the Academy Award Nominees. He comes close to asking what if none of these are worth an Academy Award?  Indeed there is an ethical question worth posing. No question about it, some years we have a great crop of movies, 1939 comes to mind when the Wizard of "Oz competed with Gone with the Wind. Other movies quickly come to mind like Patton. But, what if we have a crop of mediocrity?  The last few years movies have won that not only I but no one else bothered to see. does anyone ever say, na, this stuff just does not measure up.

Libertarians have proposed that voters be given an additional choice on the ballot, none of the above. If the voters reject everyone running and None wins, we start over and the previous candidates are excluded.  Gee sounds gtood to me. We are starting to look like a French Monarchy on the national ballot in this country, what with Clinton, Bush, Dole always on the ballot, apparently in 2010 we get to pick from Hutchison and Perry for governonr, each has been there long enough to accumulate cowebs around them,  what say you, shouldn't we be allowed to

Just say No!

Pat BUchanan points out that Gov Blago

used foul language

talked about selling the Il Senate seat but so far no one says they were solicited

has not been convicted of anything

has done his job of appointing a successor

So why does Harry Reid refuse to seat Burris?  Buchanan goes on to ask some affirmative action questions, gee this is getting to be a ethically sticky wicket…

The State of Andrews’  Mind

Andrews Texas, indeed the Permian Basin, does not change very much.  The same street map that worked when I was in high school will basically get you around even Midland or Odessa today. The social mood of  the Andrews population or the collective state of mind however changes drastically, and in short periods of time.

Consider the real estate expansion in Andrews. Northwest 12-14^th streets were built in the relative boom of the 1960s. Indeed the fall of 1965 saw the Billionth Barrel celebration in Andrews, The Oak Ridge Boys  appeared in person at the football stadium gala. Confidence was high and money was spent on what was then  more luxurious homes. Things started downhill by the end of the 1960s but an oil embargo considerably improved the collective state of mind.  Houses were in short supply.  The price of my modest home on NW 11^th doubled in three short years. We tend to apply Newton’s Theory of motion to social trends. In short we assume that an economic boom will stay in place and continue. And as Newton observed, it does until it meets that equal force in the opposite direction. The Second Oil Embargo in 1979 really improved the state of mind. That is when the subdivision north of Mustang Drive, separated by a brick wall no less, got going. Significantly, many of those homes were built after the price of oil peaked in 1981. While folks may wax nostalgic about that time, the truth is that the price of oil never went double digit until after the second embargo. It then soared from $10 to $36 in two short years! 

The resulting crash in oil prices saw a derivative collapse in housing prices by the late 1980s.

Well here we go again. Some 12,000 people left the Permian Basin in a three month period in 1998.  Oil plummeted to $12.   Oil rose to $80 by 2006 and fell to just $50 by January or 2007, just two years ago!  (Yes it did, I just looked it up).  Readers may find that hard to believe. But history repeats itself.  Oil then soared form $50 to $150 in eighteen short months.  That is when this column began to warn of an oil price bubble.  Not surprisingly  no one sent me an e mail nor did I get any invitations to speak on the topic last summer.  Ahem.

Now oil is a mere ten dollars less at around $40 than it was in January of 2007!  Yet the collective conscious of Andrews and indeed America has proclaimed how can this be?  Indeed, even the  media seems to be linking cheap oil with reduced demand, and a therefore very weak economy.

 

Can all the King’s horses and all the King’s men put Humpty Dumpty back together again?  There is no record of government ever doing such a thing. Instead the collective mood of the public, whether in  Andrews or America or indeed the world has to improve. 

Will the same houses be around in Andrews in another ten years or even ten months? Will there still be Devonian reserves below the ground? Yes to all the above.  Now the collective mind set is to watch daily prices. This is the difference between a daily look in the mirror and a glance at your high school yearbook, whoops. Step back from the daily prices, and the yearbook for that matter.

The trick to being a successful investor/trader is to go against the collective mind set at market tops and bottoms.  There is no money to be made fighting the tape while the trend is up or down, instead, enjoy the ride.  If your time frame is that Billionth Barrel Celebration in 1965, we are just minutes from some sort of meaningful bottom in prices. But if your time frame is merely day to day, this can be a scary time.

January and February oil futures have traded in the mid $30 range, not for long however. And that may be the case for the next couple of months. After all, that was the price Andrews ‘enjoyed’ in 2003, you know, when the collective conscious and expectations were still on the way up.

Dennis Elam teaches at Texas A & M San Antonio and can be reached at dennis.elam@att.net.

 

It is impossible to post articles about wannabe or real politicians without having some with obvious opinion. The current Illinois Senator versus NY Senator controversy is such an issue but I think will make for an interesting discussion. Here Brent Bozell compares things said about Caroline Kennedy versus things said about Sarah Palin. THis raises the ethical issues of bias and point of view.

ONe of my favorite cut thru the clutter commentators is John Stossel.  John points out that Caroline is as qualified as anyone else, maybe more so in that Senators usually comment on things they have no expertise at, spend other people's money, and have to look good on tv.  

Walter Williams and Tom Sowell are two fo my favories. IN this columnh Prof Williams lays out his rules for running an effective class. He also mentions several fallacies that foks can engage in, such as assuming if this then that. For example, every day we hear the media assume some outside factor acted upon the collective conscious causing markets to move one way or the other.  For example, investors snapped up stock bargains…while just yesterday those same investors were selling them as fast as they could. We will be discussing multiple points of view in the Ethics class, reading this column is a good start on keeping our perspective.

Sure enough I found a great, as usual, Tom Sowell column and linked it too, read what he says about politicians promising the impossible. 

Tom Sowell reviews the new book Outliers, calling it one of the best of 2008. That alone qualifies it for our consideration.  The book examines how individuals achieve outstanding success. Some are the result of a particular selection process. But others are a result of commitment.

I have watched students, both when I was there as a student, across years of CPA practice, and now that I am on the other side of the desk so to speak. I recall one of my friends who 'said' he wanted to become a CPA, I replied he needed to study the Gleim review book and pointed to mine. He grabbed it assuming I would loan it to him. No way I replied, it was too important to me even after I had passed the exam. I noted that it only cost $15 and if he was not even $15 interested, he would not pass anyway. I doubt he bought the book and I know he never passed. He did have a littany of excuses after taking the Becker review course as to why he did not pass.

My point here is that you are at a crossroads in your academic career. To succeed, attain a professional designation, you will need to commit to a goal. Commitment means that you must align your life to a pattern for success. This means your whole family has to commit. You will need much more time to study than anyone in your family realizes. You will need a quiet organized place to do so. You will need multiple hours per day of study. In short you need to make a short term sacrifice to reach a long term goal.

Michael Phelps practiced swimming every day for years and years.  He won a race at the Olympics because he did not look up at the end, his opponent did.  such is the difference betweeen number one and number two.

You will only be with us for four semesters and that is what I mean by making a short term sacrifice to achieve a long term goal. For example, I am not sure how the Dallas Cowboys managed to play so badly against the Philly Eagles this past sunday, losing 44-6. The actual game was worse than the score suggests. Half of the Eagles scores were due to Dallas fumbles errors and turnovers. My point being Philly did not make those kinds of mistakes when it mattered.

Plan on making a short term commitment to attain a long term goal, now.

Igor Panarin predicts the US will collapse within two years and break into six regions.  China will be come the new finance superpower and Russia will rule Eurasia.

No kidding, click and read the article, better yet, Google Panarin

I think we have a bit longer than this but I do not know how much longer, the US Dollar is a fiat currency and we are printing bonds and dollars like crazy, the first sign will be when the US has to start paying more to borrow money.

There is no shortage of ethical failures as I put the ethics syllabus together.

One Herman Rosenblat concocted Angel at the Fence, supposedly a story of how he met his wife at a concentration camp. Oprah hailed it as a great love story, only problem it is not true.  Herman says he just wanted to write a great story, well Herman file it under fiction.

James Frey managed to do the same thing with A Million Little Pieces. DIfferent story but his suposed story of drug addiciton and redemption was not true either. Another Oprah Book of the Month Hoax. BUt Opray is not alone in being short of fact checkers.

Lena Guerrero claimed to have been the daughter of migrant workers, a Phi Beta Kappa UT grad which led then Gov Anne Richards to appoint her to the Tx RR Commission. But alas she was none of those things. SHe resigned after it came to public notice.  HOw did such an incident pass the governor's fact checking group?

Alex Haley became quite the cause celeb with his supposed historic novel, Roots. Made into a television mini series it was watched by millions of people. But it turns out that Alex simply turned the facts to fiction to fit a great story and copied the plot of another novel.

This is why professional auditors are cautioned to use professional skepticism. This does not mean about meaningless detail but about the big picture which is how the Bernie Madoff's manage to fool everyone. THey get the details right, and then seemingly no one asks the question, but does the king have new clothes?

We have a class in business communications, thanks for Helen King for that!  Read this excerpt from Caroline Kennedy to grasp why this is so important.  Her speech is punctuated with uhs and ya knows. ONe reporter yesterday on television observed that Caroline would never have gotten into Harvard if she had not been a Kennedy, ouch! Our aim is to prepare you for interviews and appearances so this does not happen to you.