THE Dallas Art Museum had high hopes for its exhibit of King Tut, the gold statutes, et all from 1300 BC Egypt.  It planned on about one million guests based on how the exhibit did in Chicago and LA. Guess what, attendance is not as expected. If you log on to the museum site, one has to buy tickets at $56 a couple and that is M-Thursday, Fri-Sun twenty bucks higher, for half hour increments during the day. Apparently the museum assumed it would be standing in line crowds. This has my wife wondering if the exhibit tour is only a half hour long, not a bad question.

Hope fades to fear, now the museum is hoping people coming to the Cowboy game might attend, are they smoking something here or what? The exhibit runs until May and estimates are now scaled back to 800,000.  The reason all this matters is that the museum has purchased the exhibit for a fixed cost not a percent of the gate whatever that turns out to be. The slowdown in the economy is blamed for the problem.

Perhaps you thought I was kidding on my description of socionomics and the American fascination with vampires. IN the same Dallas paper, it is reported that Stephanie Meyers Twilight series has now sold over 7 million copies, and of course the movie is a smash hit, HBO has another with the Sookie series entitled True Blood. P T Barnum said one can never go wrong underestimating the taste of the public, or something like that,

If Angelina Jolie were autographing a book at the Museum would that help, of course it would.  And it may be that scheduling events like that would rescue the Tut show. It was no accident that Obama scheduled voter registration drives before and after rock concerts, you gotta go where they go.

The Black Swan book mentions the importance of the outlier, the unexpected event. While this happened to the Tut exhibit, I will bet the Cowboy playoff game, like the Twilight series, is a sellout today. Failing to anticipate a change in the economy was one problem for the Museum. The second was assuming the public would have the same yearning for culture exhibits that the Museum Board possesses.

We will be discussing Point of View in Ethics class, an all important consideration in estimating what the public is liable to do.

Pat Buchanan like Ross Perot vigorously opposed NAFTA saying it would lead to a loss of jobs here. Now he notes that countries around the world are growing more protectionist.   And that incldes the 11th hour save of GM and GMAC.  THe Smoot Hawley tariffs passed in the 1930s slowed round the world trade.  Actually the real problem now is more the distrust of the intl banking system that has commodities on ships in harbors around the world Buyers and sellers are wary of letters of credit from various banks, will they  get paid?  This hesitancy in itself has brought on a trade slow down and a commodity price collapse.

No less an observer than Ann Richards said that we would not get rich flipping one another hamburgers and washing one another's hair.  Indeed, consider the difference between say a computer game and an automobile.

Automobiles require design, huge plants to manufacture, spawn lots of sub contractors to supply parts, foster an after market of sales and service, and finally a giant re cycling market in the form of salvage and metal yards. Just this week I purchased a $185 a/c hose for my 2003 escape. My point being, no one buys a $185 hose for their computer game or five year old cell phone, the original product keeps producing economic wealth for all involved. Computer games by contrast provide or have their whole product life cycle exhausted in about a year. not much re cycling there. This is precisely why countries that move from agriculture where the product is quickly consumed to manufacturing grow wealthy. This is what lifted America our of the depression.Since America emerged from the war without invasion, it stood as a manufacturing giant in the world. That started to change in  1970. The Jpanese came to dominate electronics, motorcycles, and later autos. And that is why we study managerial accounting.

  Every top ten movie list includes Casablanca. it is on oue  list of movies with ethical themes.  Bogart, Bacall, Rains, a nightclub owner with a shadowy past, a couple encouraging the French resistance, Vichy occupied Morocco, and it all happens to night at Rich's Cafe American on Turner Classic Movies at 7 PM, trust me a best bet, no one should received a college degree that has not seen Casablanca.

Edward Owens was an 1870s pirate who turned to the trade after losing his oyster fishing business. Or so a history class at George Mason U would have us believe.  In fact there was no Edward Owens as y ou will read. The teacher had the class fabricate the story and a blog and a house where he supposedly lived. I am not sure what this is supposed to teach students, supposedly that we should be more critical of what we read. At  a time when so many are intentionally deceiving many others. like Bernie Madoff, this seems a poor idea to me.

I think the far better idea for history or perhaps our ethics class would be this. Assing each student an historic figure. The student must study what that person did, said, and lived. Then the student comes to class dressed in period costume and addresses the class as that person. Think Florence NIghingale or Ghnadi or Churchill or Sam Houston.  Steve Allen actually did a PBS series based on this idea,

Meeting of the Minds juxtaposed actors laying hyistoric figures in the same time frame to discuss contemporary issues using their historic perspective.

Hmm, good idea?  I am putting the syllaus together now!

We will be studying Accounting and Ethics this spring. ONe of the amazements is that these stories just keep on coming. Apparently people believe they will not get caught. Here is a story appearing on Yahoo.  An exec with the electronic chain Fry's demanded kickbacks from vendors. The IRS says he made $65 M in three years, but apparently gambled a lot of it away at the MGM in Vegas. Needless to say his career and probably remaining life are toast.

Tom Sowell points out that it was not the stock crash that caused unemployment, it was the Smoot Hawley tariffs. These tariffs restricted trade and literally put people out of work. Now as then the experts are saying the government has to do something. Perhaps we should let their initial forays play out before Barack jolts the economy as he says he will. All this money being spent will eventually result in massive inflation, too many dollars floating around, and eventually our financiers who buy all this debt will stop buying.

Here is an analysis of theJOLT.   It is simple actually, Barack proposes to spend one trillion dollars to 'create' 2.5 Million jobs. What is one trillion divided by 2.5 million?  $400,000 per job!  Gee just send me a check for $400,000. The better answer would be tax cuts to let folks keep their own money.

I happened to wander into a Staples yesterday and there is was, finally. Acer has delivered on the long awaited promise of a real portable laptop. Yep, it weighs a mere 2.1 lb, sports a Gig of ram and a whopping 120 gigs of hard drive so you can run the real professional version of windows, not that crummy dumbed down won't work with the school version of professional. It has a 8.9 inch screen and yes the keyboard is actually big enough for my big hands to use.  And no the transformer does not weigh as much as the computer, add a wireless mouse and you are set to go. Yes it is wireless, has a built in camera, and even a multi use slot for camera cards. And now the best part

a mere $349 bucks. IN the day of the $200+ iPod this is the answer to portable computing. And at this weight I could carry it in a book bag to the AAA meeting in Okla City. I would certainly not want to carry my 15 inch screen Del with its anchor weight transformer and I would not leave it unattended in the hotel room.  This is the way to go. Stop at a Staples and take a look, gee a computer for the price of two or three textbooks.

Socionomics suggests that popular mood finds its mate in appropriate movies and song. Hence I have pointed out that darker movies like The Dark Knight (opver $300 MN so far) have found large audiences.  Several of you have countered that you have no negative mood. Indeed, the other side of that coin is the desire to see the lighter side of life. This emotion created lots of great movies in the uplifting vein. This gave birth to the wonderful musicals with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the screwball comedies of the Marx Brothers and Cary Grant.

A case in point is You CAn't Take it With You.  Frank Capra won his third Oscar for this 1938 classic. The story has been re made numerous times.  First a stage play, the story features a wacky family with no apparent means of support. But each does what they want and invites others to follow.  The story is the perfect setting for an America weary of the Depression. A family does what it wants without having to work, much less at a dreary job.  A greedy Wall Street type tries to buy their home for a development.  The kids of the two families fall in love. Sure all ends well but there are lots of observations about life along with way including, well, you can't take it with you, why worry so much about money. This theme of course resonated perfectly with Depression Era America, indeed the film debuted after a second severe recession in 1937.

By the way next Saturday Turner Classic Movies on Sat nite features Woman of the Year with Hepburn and Tracy. THose that believe women's issues just started with generation are advised to tune in!

Thje US Constitution expressly forbids a monarchy. Yet we come pretty close at times. Ethics can also involve a concept of fairness, everyone is for fairness but everyone has a different idea of what it is.  The situation involving the Il Governonr trying to profit from his Senate appointment for Barack's vacant seat is clearly illegal. The situtaion in New York is quite different.

recall that Hillary ran for President against Barack Obama.  She thought she had it wrapped up, got 18 M votes, and lost.  Carolyn Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama. Now Hillary stands to be Barack's Secy of State.  Carolyn meanwhile, never having run for office or earned a living wage to my knowledge, has decided she wants to be the Senator.  She brings the Kennedy name and good photo opportunity looks but gee, this sounds like entitlement!  No working one's way up the political ladder here. 

So what say you?  HIllary is upset but then perhaps she needs to remember she is now a team player for the new President.  What about deserving State Senators or mayors who have labored for many years winning elections and learning the political craft.  Fairness, hmmm, Princess Carolyn of Camelot?

I look forward to discussing this in our ethics class this spring!

THis is an update of previous posts to make you aware of just how many certifications are out there.

Here is a complete list of every known as well as 'hey I didn't know that or never heard of that'

accounting certification.  I cannot vouch for just how valuable some of these are.

The short list of higher level certifications is in this article from New Accountant.