Professor Elam

Record Number of Accounting Grads

From the Texas Society CPA Update

Accounting Degrees Continue Historic Upward Trend
According to a recently released report from the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) titled 2009 Trends in the Supply of Accounting Graduates and the Demand for Public Accounting Recruits, the number of students who graduated with accounting degrees in the 2007-2008 school year surpassed the previous year’s record level. The more than 66,000 bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting marks a 3.5 percent increase from 2006-2007 and is the largest number of graduates since 1972, the year AICPA began tracking the data.

Scary Movie - I've Lost Count

Alert Student Rose spotted this article about Johnny Depp and Tim Burton teaming up to do a movie version of Dark Shadows.   

burton  specializes in the dark side. Gee did anyone else see Mars Attacks, now there is a weird piece for you. Anyway....But wait what's this?  Burton is doing 1984, the Orwell classic, to be released next year. 

1984 was written in the early 1960s. It projected an all powerful government capable of controlling individual thought. Recall that the White House is now producing its own 'news' excluding the media from shots of the President doing this and that, clearly trying to shape the news, this is a trend not a new development.  the President is really upset that the country is not embracing his legislation. Gee this release is perfect for the mood. 

Dark Shadows ran from 1966 to 1971. This makes sense as the Dow had topped in 1966 and went sideways to another top in 1972 before tanking 50%. A vampire named Barnabas stalked Maine looking for his 'true love. Again the show was the right match for the social mood at the time, would investors find their true love in an up market and indeed what may have been the zenith of American society in the 1960s. It ceratianly was for GM...

I found the last paragraph of this story most interesting. I points out the last Twilight movie will debut in 2011 and then wonders if our lust for vampires will be satiated by then. Well if the markets exhaust, we would be ready for another Rocky, not another Twilight....

Accounting Careers

Global Systems Audit Manager

Our client is a Fortune 100 company and they are seeking an IT Audit Manager. They are requiring 10+ years of experience in IT with direct hands on experience managing application development within an IT organization. 
- Strong SAP experience 
- At least one audit certification: CISA, CISSP, CCSA, CIA, CPE 

I spotted this ad via one of the e mail notices I get. I would draw your attention to it for several reasons.

• Auditing is in a transition stage. We have moved in my lifetime from a pencil and paper system to a computerized paperless system.  The problem is that audit systems lag that change. The perspective of most audit textbooks and courses is still grounded in the pen and pencil era. no wonder, the bicycle was invented when people rode horses. Hence the position of a person on a bicycle mimics the position on a horse. Modern recumbent designs are more efficient but we still cling to the original design based on another mode. 
• Note the world global, IBM has had more business overseas than in the US since the 70s yet we have yet to adopt intl accounting standards.  
• I posted yet another fraud at Baylor hospital on this blog last weekend, the thief worked in IT, he was not an accountant, hello! 
• Only one chapter of the audit text is devoted to auditing computer systems, no wonder the guy managed to steal the money, we of course never hear of the successful thieves that slip away or hte companies too embarassed to admit it.  
•   Take another look at the certifications desired, do you notice anything? Yep CPA is not one of htem!  The first three all have to do with computer systems not accounting systems, but wait, is there a difference?j
•  Gee Bob Dylan got it right, the times they are a changin
• See my post for July 25 about the theft at Baylor Hospital 

The Next Five Years

Here si a good article on where we are going. 

Minimum Wage, Minimum Opportunity

John Stossel cuts thru the clutter with this article on the minimum wage. AS he says the idea of an all knowing govt saying by fiat that everyone must make so much money is nonsense, Instead jobs are simply not created.

the entire country of France tried this on a national scale. the thinking was, are you ready, employers will have to hire more people if they are forbidden to work more than what was it, 37 hours a week?

the predictable result of course was near double digit unemployment in Western Europe and that was before the meltdown.

Nos the govt is subsidizing new home sales, to the detriment of older home sales.

And there are bi weekly promsises of lower mortgage rates. The result is that buyers decided to wait for better deals, instead of moving on the deal they are offered. This is always the result of govt interference in the markets.

Only goverments can create a shortage, markets left to their own devices solve shortages.

Kindle Prices Coming Down

Kidnle Prices are coming down, not enough to appeal to students yet.  I have thought Amazon would ned to bundle this with some books, but the textbook companies tell me that AMazon will not come off its price. While the product down loads books from the net, it seems to me it would need to be able to access the internet to have real appeal. After all most of the fancier cell phones do that now. 

I finally held one of these and it is a nice design and replicates the look of a book. but this concept has still not taken on iPod like status. 

Hoboken New Jersey

The docks of Hoboken New Jersey were the scene of the Academy Award winning On the Waterfront in 1955. Gee nothing has changed.  I commented on this last semester  to my Wiley rep who is in Hoboken. She said it had changed, apparently not. 

FBI arrested local officials and yes rabbis in a scheme involving money laundering through Israeli charities. 

Frankly the story is a bit hard to follow, but no indictments yet just arrests so it may take a bit for the story to come out. 

Fraud, despite SARBOX et al, still with us. No wonder HBO put The Sopranos in Jersey....

The New Normal

I was going to link but oddly the Dallas paper cannot find its own article under the search for 

Home Funerals, but of course can display ads for patio furniture, oh well, 

Families are now using simply constructed wooden caskets at low cost to bury their relatives. 

Seems the $6,000 funeral is coming under serious scrutiny. 

My Dad has the opinion that all caskets should be rented. Once everyone leaves the cemetery, the body drops into the grave and the casket goes back to the funeral home to be rented again, looks like Dad was ahead of his time. My wife reports reading of caskets made of banana leaves, the idea being that we recycle everything. 

Meanwhile SW Airline stock is in the doldrums, no wonder. An article relates that Cisco

is embracing its own video conferencing systems. I posted an article some months back that

Alexander Grant was using video conferencing, to the delight of its employees. Now the gosh awful trip to the airport can be avoided. Capitalism is amazing, what hath the shoe bomber wrought?  I did not like going to the airport before the shoe bomber, I certainly do not like it now. 

Has anyone used Skype?  wow, use the web cam on your lap top to go there, much better. I will be investigating gotomeeting.com for our school.

bottom line, expect a decrease in travel as video conferencing becomes the literal extension of

reach out and touch someone. 

Mother and Son Steal; $1.4 M from Baylor Hospital

Here we go again! 

Gary Stephens worked in the IT dept at Baylor Hospital in Dallas. This is a huge medical complex.

No doubt the budget runs to the hundreds of millions each year. Click for the story, it is a good one.

Gary created a fake company, submitted fake invoices, got the checks printed, picked them up and had his 59 yr old mother deposit them. So far so good. Take a relatively small amount over time, less than material in each billing, and perhaps you will not be noticed. 

So how did he get caught?  You gotta love it. Seems a Dallas County Commissioner  bought a Bentley Continental GT trading in his Aston Martin (hey this is Dallas). Seems there were problems with the title, and Gary had traded or sold the Bentley to the dealership. Whoops, someone got to checking and gee what is an IT employee at Baylor doing with a Bentley.  

A classic problem in any movie dealing with theft, is that some foolish crook wants to spend the money now. This of course is always a mistake and leads to suspicions. Had Gary and Mom quietly left for another country, preferably one without an extradition agreement, this might have worked. Although these days that is not enough money to live forever somewhere else.....

But would your audit program or internal controls have detected that invoice among the thousands that Baylor receives?  Clearly Internal Controls were at fault as one person was able to submit, get approval, and a signature on the check, and picked up the check, all violations of a proper IC procedure. 

The point is that inside crime is always perpetrated by someone who knows the system.  The fact that all the work is on the computer will make discovering such stunts more difficult in the future. 

Twilight Moves Mainstream

The first pop mania I remember was the Disney induced Davy Crockett craze of the mid to late 1950s. No dobut Disney regretted the fact that Crockett died at the Alamo, who knows how long it might have lasted otherwise? But my point is that Davy Crockett faux coonskin caps et al were the craze at the time.

We have mentioned the public fascination with the dark side of the force, ie, vampires. And so
I was greeted this morn by Amazon hawking Twilight tote bags, key chains et al. Yesterday a student was sporting a Wicked T Shirt.See our May 10 post about Wicked. 

Classes have scoffed at our continual presentation with this fascination with the dark side of the force. Really, pop culture reflects reality. As an elementary school kid I had a Roy Rogers lunch box Indeed Roy and wife Dale were the American symbols of upright virtue, even in real life.  Roy and Dale led the current trend by adopting Korean orphans after that conflict.  Today young ladies carry Twilight tote bags. This is not about adopting Korean orphans... see the difference?