Time management

Academic and professional success is greatly aided by time management. Time management is a disciplined use of the only finite resource each of us have: time. Before the semester hits us fully, I list a few sites that offer some insight to successful time management. Even if you have excellent time management skills, reading through their suggestions adds value.

• A good, but somewhat dated, introductory treatment of time management gives the bare basics.
• Steve Pavlina has a personal development blog. Steve has an interesting writing style. He focuses on personal development and brings up examples from his own life to underline the point. This open perspective helps in explaining his view on personal development: you can change. Yet his writings are lengthy and sometimes he takes time to arrive to the point we know he tries to make. Nevertheless, his personal development web-log is an entertaining read and he often deals with the three interrelated areas of time management, productivity and goal setting.
• Merlin Mann – 43 folders – offers low tech solutions to time management problems. He and D*I*Y planner have thrown out their PDAs, Treos, and other electronic time manager gimmicks. Now, they either use 43 folders or paper based time management systems, such as the hipsterPDA and Moleskines.
• Other time management tools and ideas come from two similar sounding websites lifehack.org and lifehacker. Both sites focus on life quality improvement using small improvements in the daily grind (argh). Insert your favorite pirate joke here, because there argh. Both sites have a high geek quota, so non-geeks beware.

Enjoy!

Hezbollah vs. the world

From teaching and Wall Street, I do another exucrsion to politics, not primaries or realpolitik or academic politics.  We all know that academic politics is as nasty and possibly more callous than real life politics where the stakes are considerably higher than in the Ivory Towers.  But the Ivory Towers pursue politics with the same pathological ruthlessness as politicians. 

EconoPundit refers to a blog dedicated to revisit the UK’s position in Europe by calling membership referendum, EU Referendum. There Richard North assembles a series of Reuters, EPA, and AP photos credited to various photographers.  In itself this is hardly different from other websites that collect evidence of military atrocities against civilians.  This is different.  North astutely examines the sequence, timing, and clothing worn by those in the photos.  North arrives to the not very surprising conclusion that he rescue workers are highly likely Hezbollah soldiers.  That is a fine and commendable action. However, North argues that these rescue workers stage “rescue photos” using dead children repeatedly as props. 

A finance blog for class use

Finance class blog by Jim Mahar or FinanceProfessor.com focuses on class information for finance courses at St. Bonaventure. Interesting site with a lot of great ideas.

Bernie Ebbers

With all the news, we seem to have forgotten that one of the greatest newsmakers of the late 1990s, Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom fame, has come closer to serve his 25 years sentece for securities fraud, conspiracy and false filings with securities regulators. [Wall Street Journal, New York Times]

Friday his conviction was upheld on appeal.

Ebbers is the former chairman and CEO of WorldCom. He became very wealthy from the rising price of his holdings in WorldCom’s stock. By late 2000, WorldCom’s stock was declining and Ebbers came under increasing pressure from banks to cover margin calls on his WorldCom stock that was used to finance his other businesses (timber and yachting, among others). During 2001, Ebbers persuaded WorldCom’s board of directors to provide him corporate loans and guarantees in excess of $400 million to cover his margin calls, but this strategy ultimately failed and Ebbers was ousted as CEO in April 2002.

After the ouster of Ebbers, WorldCom’s internal audit department uncovered approximately $3.8 billion of the accounting fraud during a routine examination of capital expenditures and alerted the company’s new auditors, KPMG (who had replaced Arthur Andersen, WorldCom’s external auditors during the fraud). Shortly thereafter in June 2002 , the company’s audit committee and board of directors were notified of the fraud and acted swiftly: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched an investigation into these matters on June 26, 2002 . By the end of 2003, it was estimated that the company’s total assets had been inflated by around $11 billion. The company went from being one of the biggest stock-market stars of the 1990s to being the largest case of accounting fraud in U.S. history. The collapse wiped out shares with a market capitalization of $115 billion.

On March 15, 2005 Bernard Ebbers was convicted on fraud, conspiracy and filing false documents with regulators. All these are related to the $11 billion accounting scandal at WorldCom. His defense was called the “Aw Shucks” defense. Ebbers relied on a defense of ignorance of the financial crimes committed at WorldCom, the telecommunications company he had built up. It failed miserably. On July 13, 2005 Bernard Ebbers received a sentence that would keep him in prison (potentially Yazoo City in Mississippi) for 25 years. At the time of the sentence Ebbers was 63 years old. He may potentially be let out of prison at the age of 83 on terms of good behavior.

While I was surfing for material for this post, I was somewhat surprised to find that many of the websites that emerged in the wake of the corporate scandals in 2001 – 2002, have been discontinued. Things do change …

Joementum

The Daily Kos is on the ball, again. NYT endoreses Ned Lamont in the CT democratic primary and not the incumbent, Joe Liberman (the guy who was Al Gore’s vp candidate back in 2000). The story offers a new twist in the bizarre saga that is the 2006 CT democratic primary.  Joementum seems to flounder.  There are substantiated rumors (whatever that means) that Joementum is seriously considering an independent run if he loses the primary.  Looking at the pools, it seems to become a three-way race. 

For those who have forgotten it, back in 2000, when Liberman was the vp-candidate, he was also running for reelection to the US Senate.  He lost the general election, but got re-elected to the Senate.  From a signalling perspective, I always found it puzzling that he did not throw his entire energy into becoming vp.  Did he know that CT voters would re-elect him even if he did not campaign seriously for re-election?  Was he expecting a pull from Al Gore’s presidential ambition?  Or did he not expect to win the presidental election, but wanted to keep his cushy Congressional gig?  Or he was not thinking or he did not care? And what would have happened if Al Gore wins and Liberman becomes the vp and is also re-elected to the Senate.  That would have been a fun constitutional nut to crack, so to speak.  As a vp, he’d be chairing the senate, and CT vote get a new senator to replace him.. Somehow, I do not know what he was thinking.  He may not be thinking at all. He has known for a long time that he has lost touch with his core Democratic voter base.  Did he chose to ignore them?

We may wonder how far do the mighty fall, but we sure can see why they fall …

Weekend …

This morning’s email with a welcoming message from FinancialRounds has a couple of ideas for other finance blogs out there. Read the comment under my earlier post on Edublogging. Thanks, unknown colleague, for the friendly welcome!

Reading the blogoshpere, I came across one heckuva funny article today. Over at EconLog, there is a blog on the international marriage market and the price and equilibrium of legal “human” trafficking. This is another nail in the coffin for RussianBrides.com and its likes, but still does not explain the lack of YYYStuds.com. Oh, well. There is an untapped business opportunity for the entrepreneur in you.

The economics of drug-dealing and narcotrafficing is explored in GoingPrivate. But the funny story is about the “customer service experience” travellers receive at the airlines. Ok, EWR is notorious … Reminds me of an experience in Cleveland a good while back where the customer service representative belittled a passenger, who had a legit complaint and then called security on the person. I was witness to the whole episode and as many others there argue that the airlines have really lost touch with their customers and reality.

I spoke about RateMyStudents.com yesterday. As we all know from experiences our colleagues have had, course and teaching evaluations have evolved into an insidious weapon tenure committees abuse with pleasure. I know of at least several colleagues who have contemplated (not faced) the problem discussed in an article from the Onion. Remember the difference between contemplated and faced.

An a ranking of finance department’s teaching quality reveals surprising results. Way to go Jaime!

Edublogging

Blogging is a practical tool for direct communication, be it gossip, analysis, ideology, or just news. Blogs are also networking and communication tools, where feedback and discussions are valuable.  That is why their use in teaching and classroom management could be invaluable.

So this afternoon, I was thinking about the possible use of blogs in education and decided to look around for blogs and sites in the blogoshpere only to find zilch, nada, nothing. No blogs about the use of blogs in college business education, except for Financial Rounds. This is somewhat surprising; if businesses are successful in blogging and blogs have a financial value, why don’t academics do that?

My primary objective is the disseminate information about the class in a way that allows the students to have a comprehensive view of what the course is all about. Of course that helps me as well. The secondary is to share my ideas about teaching, which may or may not be different from other profs. Also, I could rate my students.

GDP 2006q2

The data is in.  The economy grew at a slower pace in the 2nd quarter this year.  Energy costs are clearly blamed.  In the Commerce Department report, there was an interesting piece of information about the state of the real estate market in the US. Real residential investment decreased by 6.3%. Ouch.  I do not want to sit on an unsold, flip-ready, condo in Miami or Lost Wages for that matter.

Treasuries rally and S&P500 is up.  Life is grand …

Dear Wonkette …

This PM Wonkette has two good posts.

The first is a poll, Who’s running the worst campaign in America?  My guess is Santorum. Running on illegal aliens in PA?  Come’n … Of course, I am also partial to Cathrine Harris.

And of course, there is Ann Coulter-bashing.  The new sport in the liberal blogosphere.

Oil company profits are up

Yep, they are. I wonder why.

BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips and all the other major players have reported impressive profits with gas prices well above $3.00. A few weeks ago, I was in Berkeley and I was surprised to find gas being cheaper in the Bay Area than in Lycoming or Union county in central PA.

Econobrower blog had a pretty good review of the economics of oil companies last year. A post really worth reading.

Exxon Mobil said its earnings surged 36% during the second quarter to a whopping $10.36 billion or $1.72 a share. This is the second largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company (Exxon also owns the top spot for the $10.71 billion it raked in during last year’s fourth quarter). Exxon’s sales were nothing to sneeze at, either, totaling $99.03 billion, well up from the $88.57 billion at the same time a year ago. The company chalked up its impressive gain in per-share profit to its stock-buyback push, higher refining margins and higher realized prices for crude oil and natural gas.

Royal Dutch Shell reported a 40% profit surge as the benefits of high oil prices dwarfed production headaches in Nigeria and legal costs.

Luckily for oil companies and unfortunately for consumers and energy-thirsty businesses, energy prices have showed no hint of settling down. Crude-oil futures have been trading well north of $70 a barrel for several weeks now on the New York Mercantile Exchange — today, crude was moving higher again, pushing above $74 a barrel near midday — and the national average retail price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline is hovering near $3 a gallon.

Over at the Capital Spectator, the analysis of the fundamental pricing relationships in the commodity markets reflects the commonly and widely held belief that this is not a blip on a radar screen.  High prices are here to stay and it is time to act accordingly. Econbrowser looks at the impact of $80 barrel price.

Nobody is bearish on the oil price; this is a bubble. Again.

Textbook selection

The textbook I use this year, as in previous years, is Rocky Higgins‘ Analysis for Financial Management. The book is in iths 8th edition, which serves as evidence to the quality of the material. In less than 400 pages, the book provides an excellent background to financial management, the interpretation of financial statements and valuation of financial assets.

A reviewer on Amazon writes. “Analysis for Financial Management” is an excellent text that covers the major topics of financial management: how to evaluate and interpret financial statements, the tools a manager should use to forecast future earnings and manage growth, how to properly valuate businesses and investment opportunities, and so forth. This book is ideal if you are familiar with basic accounting and finance concepts but want a deeper understanding of finance in a corporate setting. Each chapter contains a recommended reading list for those who want a more thorough explanation and analysis of the topics covered. There is a website the author has put together that provides more examples and tools. Unlike other textbooks, this book actually has all the answers for exercises at the end of the chapters! Lastly, Higgins provides a number of examples and explains all the major concepts with a touch of humor. This is definitely one of the best books I’ve seen out there.”

For the best price, consult www.isbn.nu.

Hello ?!? “World” ????

Can I get rid of my website and use a blog to communicate with students, colleagues, and others who might be interested in financial education and scholarship?

I want to know. This might be a more efficient and considerably more user-friendly approach that is superior to blackboard and other educationally oriented websites. To find the answer, the best way is to experiment with a blog-based communication interface for a year or so.

While I want to focus on the bare bones of effective dissemination of educational information, I am likely to share some ideas on finance, teaching, scholarship, and life in general. I might even have some original ideas …

Being a finance prof

Over at Financial Rounds, the unknown financial academic at an East Coast institution, has written extensively about being a finance professor, teaching, research, using financial information, and the rough road to get a PhD in finance. He makes several excellent points about teaching; it is worth reading.

Productivity

There are a number of sites dedicated to productivity, GTD, and lifehacks. Over at 43folders, Merlin Mann has a good review of GTD and the approach to get into GTD. I like Merlin and lot of his reviews and ideas are very useful and creative. For those in the no-know, GTD stands for Getting Things Done, an approach that focuses on work ethic and professional discipline. While nobody really needs either of these two to succeed, there are certainly some suggestions there that anyone could benefit.

Gotta add a brief note about other GTD hacks that I have been reading about, including software and implementation ideas.

Moleskinistas unite!