Professor Elam

Feb 19 Intermed ACCT 3312 / 11 Review

friday Feb 18

 

I believe we will have room 241 in the admin building at gillette blvd at 9 AM Sat Morning Feb 19.

See you there!

Meet Sergio Marchionne

Thursday Feb 17 2011

Sergio Marchionne is a Chartered Accountant in Canada and began his career with Deloitte. He is now head of FIAT and Chrysler.No doubt his understanding of accounting helped him quickly identify how FIAT makes money. He is now applying that knowledge to Chrysler which frankly needs all the help it can get. 

Recall that Bruce Howard mentioned the importance of branding. I recently read that Sergio says he adopted the black sweater and slacks look, stocking closets on both continents with the same clothes, He says it saves lots of time, just wear the same thing every day. Bruce would point out it also brand him, Steve Jobs and decades ago, Gary Player the pro golfer adopted the same get up. 

Bruce Howard Speaks to Intermed II

Thursday Feb 17 2011

Hmm, Apple needs to work on the white balance under fluorescent lights on the next iPhone!

 

Anyway Bruce Howard visits with students after his talk Wednesday evening Feb 16, 2011. 

Bruce's Remarks about Ten Things to Increase Your Personal Brand appear below. 

thanks Bruce!

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Me, Inc.—Ten Ways to Increase Your Personal Brand Value”

 

1) Develop Your Story

Me, Inc.

Sell yourself                        All the time

Marketing plan for Brand YOU

 

2) Package Yourself

How do you look to others?            Are you consistent?                        Image?

Here’s what you get with me

 

3) Build Your Resume

Build It—not print it

What did you do?

What have you done?

 

4) Connecting

Cool people

New places

Ask/Inquire           

Collaborate with others

 

5) Rolodex Mania

Build it

Keep it current

Maintain it

Use it every week

 

6) Lunch anyone?

Ask someone you think may say no!

They may say yes!

 

7) Renew and Refresh

Explore

Invest in YOU

Read new magazines            Papers            Web sites

Obsess about what you don’t know!

 

8) Get Involved

Get outside of your bubble!

Focus on the Opportunities!

 

9) Small is BIG!

Take the jobs no one wants!

Make it cool!           

 

10) Board of Directors

Use them!                        Generate ideas!

Cultivate the relationships!

 

So what will you do today?

Here’s a start!

 

Who are you?

List 3 behaviors that identify you-your brand

 

What are you?

Identify 3 ways to enhance your knowledge

 

Where are you?

List all the different ways to be “seen”—be heard—be known

 

Why you?

Build your USP—write it out—know it!

 

So get in the game!

 

Do it!  Now!

 

Brand You!

 

 

 

 

For more information about how to develop your Brand contact:

Bruce Howard, Director, Operations & Development

Fisher, Herbst & Kemble, P.C.

Certified Public Accountants

210-477-2725

[email protected]

 

Is Your Job and Endangered Species?

Thursday Feb 17 2011

Is Your Job Endangered is certainly a must read for all those in college at this point. 

Last night Bruce Howard talked about the accounting profession. This article refers to professional licenses as sponges. I would reply that what has happened is the union mentality mind set of excluding people from jobs thru license requirement. There is certainly a reason to license doctors lawyers cpas engineers architect, but now all want on the 'professional bandwagon.'

My take is that we do not study accounting to that you can make journal entries, though sadly that is the way a lot of the study is portrayed. One studies accounting and finance to understand the big picture and analyze what is going on, make recommendations, and such. 

I also believve there is good reason to pursue CMA and CIA, most of you will not be working for a cpa firm. 

As Bruce Said, it pays to be well read. 

The Asylum

Thursday Feb 17 2011

A new book THe Asylum examines oil trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The Merc originally began by trading potatoes. The move to oil trading of has resulted in more oil traded on paper than in the real world. Prices reached a staggering $145 in 2008. As I observed this past weekend, now the energy service stock prices are still ahead of the oil price. And the Dow Transportation Index is trying to move higher. 

Oil was the last market to peak in 2008. We are watching various support levels below the mid $80s where oil has been trading. 

This author suggests there should at least be high margins to trade the contracts. 

In the video clip Rick Santelli defends commodity trading pointing out that all contracts expire against physical delivery, so there has to be some economic substance. Yes but it you think about it , this is the same economic substance we saw in housing in 2007. It was in the best interest of everyone in housing to get prices higher. The appraisers were paid by the mortgage companies, the mortgage companies made a percent of the dollar value of the loans, the realtors made more money as their fixed percent of the commission moved higher, the builders made more money as the price of the houses increased, the cities made more property tax revenue as the purported value of the homes increased, and so, the price spiral was to eeveryone's advantage. 

The same is true for oil. High prices were the justification for the XOM CEO to retire with a fat $400 M retirement package.  Even as XOM admits it is not finding oil, the price of its stock has risen from 62 to 82, perhaps all the oil being found is on the NYMEX, eh?

We will study derivatives in Intermediate II, I suggest you pay more attention to these developments. 

 

5,100 New IRS Agents

The proposed budget includes 5100 new IRS Agents.

Is the the Change the voters wanted?  A simplified tax system would go a long way towards eliminating the needless waste of paperwork preparation. CPAs might actually start helping clients make money as opposed to engaging in various tax schemes. 

The WSJ notes this is the next idea after the  proposal to require all of us to file 1099s was repealed. 

 

Bruce Howard to Speak Wed Feb 16

Monday Feb 14, 2011

Bruce Howard is seen here with ethics students last April 8, 2010. From left that is Harrison Belt, Bruce, Jamie Rapp, and John Dunn. By the way Harrison is with KPMG in LA, Jamie is finishing her grad degree, and John is with Ridout Barrett here in San Antonio.

Bruce is the Pesonnel Manager and Ombudsman for Fisher Herbst and Kemble CPAs here in  San Antonio.  Bruce is a popular speaker at Central Texas universities and I am sincerely grateful for his coming to our campus. He will be presenting on ten ways to get your career in gear. He will speak to our intermediate class at 5:30 this Wed, we will be joined by Ms. Chapman's audit class. See us in Room 201 at St Joe's.

Blockbuster on the Block

Friday Feb 11 2011

ONe thing about tech, it changes the marketplace, just ask Kodak, Polaroid, Smith Corona, Wang, DEC, 

Iomega, remember zip disks?, and now blockbuster

Its for sale Netflix is going gangbusters, how long before the studios bypass nteflix and sell their own product direct>

AOL Huffington Post

Wed February 9 2011

Can Arianna and AOL play well together? This is an interesting column posing interesting questions. It is easy to see why Arianna sold, reportedly she personally made $100 M, and I read the HP just now started turning a profit. 

But from a socionomic perspective, mergers happen in bull markets and she has sold at or near the top. Think FED EX Kinko or Time Warner AOL for that matter or Daimler Chrysler or Burroughs Sperry to create Unisys. 

The cultures usually clash and the deal fails, or the acquired firm disappears in the corporate morass, just ask UNOCAL or Gulf employees at Chevron if you can find one. AOL is viewed as an also ran; so how does she come out on top?  

Actually this reminds me of Martha Stewart and K Mart, how are they doing these days?

 

E book Instructions

Tuesday Feb 8 2011

Students This is the latest notice I have received, apparently this trumps the earlier notice I posted about using vital source

I am simply reprinting what I have been sent, I am not the author of anything that follows

Dennis Elam

E-book Faculty and Help Desk,

 

It turns out that the download licenses are currently not being renewed correctly. What this means is that students will be still be able to access their e-books through Blackboard, but until this is resolved, they will not be able to download their e-books to the VitalSource desktop software or to their mobile devices. We have urgent tickets in with VitalSource regarding this and hope it is resolved ASAP. I don’t believe the process/instructions for downloading the e-books will change, so my previous announcement should be good once the issue is resolved. I’ll let you know otherwise. Again, this only affects the downloaded e-books, not access through Blackboard.

 

Please encourage your students to access their e-books through Blackboard for the time being.

 

We will let you know when this all resolved.

 

Thank you for your patience.

 

E-book Students:

 

If you are receiving a message that your e-books have expired or they are missing from your VitalSource desktop software or your mobile devices, all you need to do is access each of your e-books in Blackboard again, at least once, and once you do that, you can then go into the VitalSource software, click the Account menu, then “Update Book List”. This should re-download your books and you they will be good for the remainder of the semester. If you need more details, we have included further instructions below.

 

1.       Please make sure you are able to access all your e-books through Blackboard first before attempting to download them to the VitalSource desktop software or to a supported mobile device, such as an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch.

 

2.       When you first attempt to access an e-book in Blackboard, you will be asked to either “Create New Account“ or “Reference Existing Account.” If you have already done this for the semester, please skip to step 6.

 

3.       If this is your first semester using e-books here at TAMU-SA, you will click “Create New Account.” This sets you up with a new VitalSource account that can be used throughout your time here at TAMU-SA. Take note of what e-mail address you used for the username as well as the password, as you will be asked to use this account again in future semesters, and when you download e-books to a personal computer or mobile devices.

 

4.       If you have used e-books here in the past, you will click “Reference Existing Account.” Enter the VitalSource username and password that you used to redeem e-books in the previous semester. If you don’t remember your password, click the “Forgot my password” link and follow the steps from there to reset your password.

 

5.       Once you have successfully created a new account or referenced an existing one, you will no longer be asked to enter a VitalSource username and password from within Blackboard.

 

6.       IMPORTANT: If you are in multiple e-book courses, you will need to go into each course in Blackboard and click on the e-book link at least one time before you are able to download it to VitalSource. You will need to know the VitalSource login information you either just set up or the existing account you referenced when you go to download the e-books in the VitalSource desktop software or to a supported mobile device.

 

7.       After you have accessed each of your e-books at least once in Blackboard, you are ready to download the books. If you have not done so yet, download the software athttp://www.vitalsource.com . Whenever you open or log in to the VitalSource desktop software, click the “Account” menu and then “Update Book List” to start the download(s).

 

8.       If not all of your e-books are appearing or downloading, first make sure you are using the correct VitalSource login and password. If they are still not appearing for you, you will need to call the VitalSource support line to see if you need to merge accounts or other assistance. The number is below.

 

9.       Remember, you are only able to download the VitalSource desktop software and e-books to your own personal computers and supported devices – NOT to university lab or library computers.

 

10.   If you are a DSS student and need a special version of your e-book(s) to use in screen readers, please contact the DSS office and they will be happy to provide you alternate forms of your e-books.

 

If you are experiencing issues with e-books, you may e-mail[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> . Additionally, VitalSource has a toll-free help line at 1-800-610-5382, and a support website at http://support.vitalsource.com .

 

We hope this information helps, and we wish you a wonderful Spring semester!

 

Thank you,

TAMU-SA E-book Administration