Okay here are  a few reading assignments.  Next semester in Inter II we will be studying liabilities. Students typically do not have a good background on the equity / liab side of the balance sheet.  So I am spotlighting a few resources for you.  You may want to bookmark some of these for future reference.

The biggest bond management firm in the US is PIMCO.  So Managing Director Bill Gross column is a popular read.  He brings us up to date on the sub prime mess. He makes the case for FED Funds falling to  3.5%.

Bookmark this site PIMCO Bond Resources

The first entry entitled Everything You Need to Know about Bonds is very well done. This is not like reading sports scores so n doubt you will need to go over it several times.  The following sections give much better detail than the finance.yahoo.com site as it is rather brief.  Brevity may appeal to you but the explanations are better at PIMCO.  For example the section on Mortgage backed securities is very well done. I don’t expect you to grasp Credit Default Swaps at this point so stick with the first few sections.

The bond center at yahoo is here. Current rates and  market report are on this page.  Today’s report is that ‘bonds were hit like they were attacked by Chuck Norris!’  What does that mean?  It means prices fell as investors sold bonds.  Rates rose. In the left hand column you will see Bond Education.  You can click on the various links to go thru Yahoo’s bond primer. Shorter, accurate but maybe too brief in spots but still I am trying to highlight different resources for you.

If you want the Reader’s Digest version of all this try Franklin Templeton.  This is by far the shortest explanation of the three. It goes more into mutual funds since that is what Franklin is selling. This is about as deep as most ‘investors’ go with their understanding, if in fact they even read this much. Now look at the Franklin page and then contrast it with the PIMCO page.  The difference is what you as a financial professional a CPA, CFA Certified Financial Analyst, CTA Certified Technical Analyst or
CFP (a real lightweight compared to the foregoing three in my opinion) are supposed to understand. 

I want to increase your understanding of capital markets.  Here is an article that illustrates why you need to read and understand such material.  FNM slashes dividend and sells preferred stock.   Well if they cannot pay the dividend on the common, how are they going to pay it on the preferred?  And look at that whopping yield-8.25%, gee why are they having to pay such  a high rate?  The answer is that they do not have the cash to pay the common dividend (look up FNM stock price on the charts).  And they need more capital. To attract it they are having to offer a high yield, and guarantee those buyers they stand before the common holders as to dividend preference.

I am certainly available over the holidays to answer questions and post comments on the blog.  WEB CT will go away so you will have to post on the blog itself.  This is a great chance to get ready for the semester. Let’s get a head start. 

The post about Apple has drawn the most comments. SO I direct you attention to

Open Season on Apple.  Hey it is tough staying at the top and everyone has their sites set of Jobs and company.  There are several articles at this link, are you reading Fast Company, I am!  This is an innovative magazine which stays on top of current and about to be trends.  Check out the site, I will be reading the latest copy tomorrow during the Intermed I exam.

Since making this post I read the article,  this is a must read. Top notch analysis, this is what accounting strategy and management are all about.

The one worthwhile thing that MSFT did was to force a standard on everyone.  It was not always that way.  Here is a site that offers you a window into the past, take a look. Interesting photo of the actual garage in which Woz built the original apple.

Jerry Flint  suggests that once a customer is lost, it is very difficult to get he or she back.  Indeed, he suggests that most customers don’t care what Detroit is building. Getting those folks back into the showrooms will be very difficult. So not only do dissatisfied customers switch, they may not come back.

This has is roots in Dr. Deming’s message in Total Quality Management. The end result is that GM and Ford are probably stuck with a 25  and 18 percent market share that won’t budge. 

Nowhere is there a better example of a company in need of a strategic plan than Chrysler. Can this company be saved, I wonder?

Here are multiple examples of strategic mistakes.   You tell me, are these marketing or management or accounting mistakes?  What i know is that when mistakes are made, no one wants to take responsibility in any department.

I am intrigued by Flint’s obervation that it is not possible to sell multiple brands under one roof.  Invariably the sales folks cannot know everything about all the products and the customers are confused.  I think this is why Olympus is trailing Nikon and Canon in the camera business.   Olympus has  a great product. But walk in a camera store selling multiple brands and the sales folk usually recommend Nikon or Canon.  Pentax, Olympus, Sony, Fuji all get lost in the shuffle.  I suspect these smaller brands need to work much harder on the internet with more innovative campaigns like folks on You Tube showing satisfaction with those brands.  They are never going to get their ‘time in the sun’ in showrooms the way it is now.

We marked another milestone for UNT Dallas Campus and the accounting program in particular this evening.  UNT Dallas Campus graduated its first accounting major! At left April Young is feted by Dr. Price at the graduation ceremony.

Dr. Price always does things right!  After the ceremony, April, her Mom, Damon and Katrina Cornish enjoy a visit and some fine appetizers!  Check out more photos on the albums on the left side of the blog!

Okay just one more, this is an available light shot, click and enlarge to see just how happy these grads are!

Has anyone seen one of the ASUS UMPCs?  Two pounds, 500 bucks or less, a battery that lasts for 3 hours, this might work?  If you have a laptop you know that by the time you carry the power cord and converter, and yeah you had better, the whole thing is not near as portable as you thought.  This however could be a different cup of tea.  I don’t think it is for sale in the US yet, but looks like a winner to me.

Whoops the Cerebus HR Block deal is off.   Gee how the mortgage business has changed in a few months.  No way to structuer the deal to make it work, so  HRB will be taking a restructuring charge and an impairment loss.  HRB thought they could unload their mortgage business on private equity, but the market meltdown overcame that idea.  Check out the stock price on HRB and see what happened.  We study accounting to understand what those terms mean.  Hmm, this would be a great final exam question ……

Robert Frost became the first poet to read a poem at a Presidential Inauguration in 1961, he was 87.

In managerial class today we discussed opportunity costs, sunk costs, and relevant costs.  At that point I asked how many had read ‘The Road not Take’ though I referred to it as two paths led into the woods, that is a line not the title of the poem.  Only one has done so , hre is a link to Frost and to this particular poem as you read down.   Opportunity costs, choices, Robert Frost  nature, gee this blog gets around.  If you have not read the poem, as Mac Davis says, stop to smell the roses with this one.

Now let me get this straight, according to Congress, it is definitely not OK for Abhu Dabi to run out ports, absolutely no way, uh uh, nosiree by golly.  But on the other hand, when those geniuses at Citicorp C manage to lose their collective shirts, it if just fine for the same folks to pony up $7.5 Billion bucks. Does anyone see an inconsistency in all this?  Is owner ship of  major US Money Center, okay lately losing money center, Bank any different from operating a port?  Only in the mind of Congress eh?

Maria Bravo got the conversation going with her review of a book about women in business.  I was amazed that no one knew Maria Bartiromo. I also noted that the Presidents of UNT and SWT as well as the recent Deans of the College of Business are female, as well as the Accounting Dept Chairs at both schools.   Well here ia an article about how different these two apporaches can be –  Oprah for Obama adn Barbara for Hillary.

Indeed i don’t see Barbara Striesand as someone exciting voters.  The interesting thing about Oprah is that in the past she has not been political, hardly the case for Ms Streisand.  Whatever I think,  Oprah is a media juggernaut, a sort of one woman media empire in her own right. Barbara has many friends in Hollywood. And now Obama has apparently pullled up even or ahead in iowa.  All of a sudden this long drawn out Hillary is a slam dunk campaign, may just be a horse race.

PS The references in the article are to a movie and the theme song The Way We Were starring Redford and Striesand.  No doubt this wil be the way Obama will try to cast Hillary, as were not now.