Matsushita aka Panasonic is a gigantic electronics manufacturer.  One of my interests is digital photography, note the photo albums on the blog.  I am using Olympus digital cameras.  Panasonic has decided to actively pursue this market and has adopted the same 4/3 digital tnadard as Olympus. 

Now click  to read about the manufacturing process. Leica is a famous German manufacturer of cameras and lenses.  But porduction in Germany is painfully slow. Panasonic has automated the process while maintaining the Leica quality.  In this way Panasonic expects to greatly expand the production of previously near  unavailable lenses at now affordable prices.

This is what Total Quality Manufacturing is all about. We study this in cost accounting. AS your read about Dr. Deming, learn how coupling statistical quality control with high standards results in improved productivity. That is what this article spotlights.

  Notice how much this looks like HOnda's first hybrid design, turns out the aerodynamic shape looks like an egg.

Click here to read the FNM annual report.  Please read the letters from the Chairman and the CEO. Then read the finanical highlights. Clealry all the hot air is not coming from the politicians running for office. 

If you are reading the blog you are aware the Feds just 'bailed out FNM and FRE. Having read their recent messages, here are some questions.

Should the Fedeara Govt have bailed them out?

What will that cost?  hould the government lend the money and expect to be repaid ala Chrysler? Or is the government going to buy stock essentially giving FNM the money?

The muckety mucks at FNM, FRE, BSC Bear Stearns all paid them selves handsome bonuses the last few years for the great jobs they did. As Jim rogers said, apparently they get to keep the Maseratis they bought with the bonuses. Should the govenrment require those bonuses be repaid?  Yes that is a small amount compared to the bailout but wouldn't that show at least some accountability and contrition on the part of the bandits that paid themselves now that you adn I are paying for their mistakes, hey, where is my Maserati?

At least the top guys got fired. As Jeff Skilling of Enron sits in jail appearling his sentence over Enron, what should happen to these guys?  I am sure Jeff is wondering why they are not joining him in colorful oreange jump suits in the exercise yard so to speak…indeed, what say you?

why is this farce allowed to continue, why not get the government out of the guarantee business?  think about it, this is the perfect storm for a fiasco. The govt guarantees all the mortgage payments. so, why not jiggle the books to make things look good, everyone comes out a winner?  Why not take som erisk to make the returns look better, Uncle Sam is guaranteeing our mistakes anyway?

Why not break this up into smaller comapanies that would be expeected to exercise sound practices without govt guarantees, then perhaps we would not have had this happen.

What say you?

The Econetic  by Ford apaprently gets 65 mpg, at least this article says so.  I tned to be suspicious of such claims but I can believe well over 40, read the article. This car uses the new diesel using the European diesel formula fue. Why not here, this demonstrates what we are studying in cost and other classes. The US dollar is too low, the engine is made in England where the pound is high, too high to import it here. So why not build in Mexico?  that would take  anew plant and Ford does not believe enough Americans would buy this new generation diesel. We like the hybrid prisu. This makes no sense as the prius uses the terribly expensive batteries, also  difficult to build and dispose of.

So currency strength matters. Another globalizaiton lesson.

More on the Econetic

Latest information on this car here

WE are all having diffficulty with various internet online issues. I extended timelines for Homework Manager this morn, at least I think I did. Let me explain aquirk of HM.

If a student is on HM, the system is locked. Which is to say the instructor cannot change the assgnments as the assumptiont is that the assignment should not be changed until the student has finished wokring on it. With a couple of dozen students randomly working on whichever problem at whatever time, you would be amazed to learn that this happens A LOT!!!!!

The rationale makes sense but makes it no easier to instantly make changes. So be patient, change despite what McCain and Obama tell you, does not happen instantly, HIllary got that one right in her comment about just proclaimg ou are going to change something and voters believing you can make it happen. Sicne I arrived a couple of weeks ago

Human resources enrollment took two weks by computer even though the person came up form Kingsville, she did not take care of it when she was here tgelling us to go on line, well we

uld not get on the system, and I listened to voice mail eveyr time I called Kingsville. So it took two weeks to ge me signed up in what used to be a paper and pencil event.

You will notice you have my personal e mail address, this is because Kingsville has still not gotten my tamuk address working.

WEB  CT has the students in my and Ms. Chapman's class reversed.  And there is much more but why go into all that here.

I spent most of a day trying to get my pay pal account operative, I finally gave up and wired the guy the money thru my bank.

My point is that i realize there are problems, we will work through them.

And so it goes, I too have difficulties. I realize you do too and you will not be penalized at this point, this of course assumes I can get all this working before the end of the semester….

Gee we never had these problems when high tech consisted of a Big Chief Tablet and a pencil.

DLE

I susually don't discuss mechanical details of class here but as we are getting reports of problems with WEB CT, I understand that some of you had problems wiht Homework Manager. I will be more than glad to extend deadlines, explain and determine how problems need to be answered regarding number entry, etc

This will after all be our first complete week. WE are still getting things sorted out.

It is not my intention to penalize anyone the deadlines are just to keep us moving along

I expect that we will be moving deadlines for these first chapters back a bit.

Thanks forletting me know via e mail and thanks for the good efforts on the part of those reporting in.

DLE

Last year's Academy Award Winner No Country for Old Men was released November 21, 2007. This was about two months after the top of the SPX but well after the municipal bond market had turned south.  IT was the story of a brutal killer attempting to recover money from a drug deal gone bad. Subsequently the S & P dropped 20%, EMerging countries like BRIC dropped 30%, oil peaked and then plummeted $45 sugggesting a much weaker economy ahead.  The social mood had aligned with the bad news.

burn After Reading   will be released Sept 12, 2008. THis one is a comedy but as always with the Coens, nothign is as it seems. Seasonally financial markets tend to bottom in October. Will this turn to a lighter side although with darker tones, fortell a market recovery?  Are people ready to laugh after so much bad news, housing, high gas prices, etc?

Meanwile I will be watching True Blood tonite to see just how mainstream HBO;s vampoiers really are. Socionomics certainly has its twists and turns  regarding social mood this fall.   

Learn more about socionomics at this link.

I find that most students do not even scan the weekend papers, friday thru saturday.  Yet lots of news happens then. The reason is that newsmakers do not want to announce changes in the middle of market trading. Reagan foolishly announced that Greenspan would replace Folcker during bond market trading hours. Bond prices immeditaely dropped three hundred basis points, which is three percetage points of price.  This weekend the US Government announced that it would bail out or rescue Fannie Mae FNM and Freddie Mac FRE. This should actually rally markets on Monday, why?  Because marekts hate uncertainty, this removes the uncertainty surrounding the government guarantee of mortgage repayment. It also spells more long term trouble for the US Dollar, why?  Because lots of dollars must be printed to cover the bad paper.

David Hedricks, business solumnist forhte SA EXpressdescribes VAlero's presentatino at the Lehman Energy Conference. They point out taht several refineries have been shut in due to Gustav. VLO is down abou 50%. I smell a bottom. Do not expect gasoline to go below $3.

SA did everything it cold to lure Toyota here. Toyota has even kept the 2,000 workers on during its shutdown. So fo course eight 'workers' are sueing cliaming they did not get paid for overtime. There are no automated time clocks in the plant. So I don't kow about the validity of the claim. But now that there is no going back for Toyota on their billion dolalr investment, it is not surprising that the sparring has begun.

I decided to make a longer post about labor management after a student comment on my previous post. I compared strikes to war. The commecnt was that I was a bit overboard, really?

Read about the Battle of the Overpass on how Ford 'security guards' treated Union Organizers.

Read how many people including women and children were killed in early efforts to organize the

United Mine Workers.

Apparently students are not aware that early efforts were indeed a matter of life and death. Such incidents are still prominent on union web sites. Memories die hard, just like those early strikers.

One recalls that our consitution forbids a monarchy of any kind in the USA.  If you think about it, being a subject of a King or Queen was indeed forced servictude. Consider the plight of those affected in the movie Braveheart. This is why William Wallace led a revolt by the Scotch against the King at that time, 800 yeras ago.

Six hundred years later, the Scotch were still not doing much better. Ken Follett details their plight in his historical novel A Place Called Freedom.  It may surprise you to learn that the Scotch were in servitude working in mines in England and hijacked on slave ships to do the same thing here.  This is a shocking story of brutality of man to man.

charles Dickens describes the horrors of being born into a 'workhouse' in Oliver Twist.

And so the pendulum has swung the other way in a short time from a historic standpoint.    But reading of past horors will quickly make one glad to have been born here and now.

Other important events were not only the creation of the National Labor Relations Board and the Taft Hartley Act regarding union organizaing.

Now the gains of unions are being challenged by the right to work laws of non union shop states like Alabama and Mississippi.  Alabama has snagged the Hyundai and the new Airbus plants.  The entire auto industry has moved south out of union shop states, places where workers must join a union to work. This is why Ohio and Michigan are battleground states in this election. The unions would like to turn the clock back to 1965 when they ruled the auto manufacturers. but as Nissan honda, toyota have gained power and GM Ford Chrysler have lost market share, the fortunes of the UAW have sunk also.

Actually this is a reflection of what the unions wanted, more consideration of the workers. That modern companies have recognized this necessityis actually a triumph but a biter one as companies will no longer readily locate in michigan. 

Machinists at Boeing approved a strike but did not initiate it yet.  This is the last thing that Boeing needs as they try to get the Dreamliner 787 completed. 

Strikes are a negative manifestation of human emotion as are wars between nations.  A strike might be viewed as a sort of war between workers and management. This is the second strike called at Boeing  just since 9/11. Workers want the defined benefit plan with every imaginable perk attached. Boeing like other big employers is trying to move to defined contribution plans. These are topics we study in Intermed II Accounting  as well as in Dr. Sosa Fey's labor relations courses. 

From  a socionomic standpoint, this is another clue that negative human emotion is taking center stage.  Clearly the longer term view is away from such confining agreements but unions have not been forward looking the last few decades which has brought them less and less membership. A similar effort at GM resulted in a 'strike' lasting less than a week. Here the Boeing employees have the competition with Airbus to hold up as a bargaining chip.  

Part of your studies should be an understanding of how the 

National Labor Relations Board has to approve a union certification election

National Mediation and Reconciliation Board attempts to bring the parties to the table and avoid a strike

Will they strike, costing Boeing and themselves potential earnings from which such benefits would be paid? We will be watching. 

I have mentioned in class the importance of measuring market captilaizaiton. You will recall this is the price per share times the number of shares outstanding.  Right now that is $11.6 B  for Lehman.  Lehman was asking $6B for a 25% share from the Korean Group. But wait, 25% of $11.69 B is about $3B, whoops, they are paying twice too much.  Cli  ck and read that negotiations are hled up, seems price is a problem. The market share price of Lehman is dropping so fast that Lehman is having a hard time staying with a price. And so Lehman is being priced down as its 'asset' values fall.