Lots going on this summer.

Greetings everyone:

Sorry about the lack of posts, but there's been a good bit going on this summer. As you may know, Dr. Williams and I are putting our courses on line next year (3333 Intermediate Finance in the fall, for her; 4331 Banking in the spring, for me). It's a lot of work, and tough to maintain the same quality from one modality to the other.

I hope everyone's summer has been fun. We're getting things ready for the fall. It should be exciting.

Thoughts on online teaching

We've been going back and forth here about our online development. Dr. Williams is right now devp for the fall (Intermediate) and I'm going to do Banking in the Spring of '10. A recent decision of the Deans' Council requires that all online courses have online testing and no proctoring of any kind, so we're working around that stuff right now. Some of my colleagues in other areas (not finance) are struggling with that one -- they're concerned that it is impossible to maintain the same standards in online and F2F classes, and it's impossible to verify student identities. I'm not sure how we're going to fix it, but some fix has to be found.

It's an ongoing struggle to make our classes as complete as we can, and do all this other stuff too. Meanwhile, for those students who think online is going to be somehow easier than face-to-face, look out!

Comprehensive Financial Regulation Reform

Here's the latest from 1600 Penn. Ave. regarding reform of the evil and seditious financial system in this country.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124524649229423271.html

The actual proposal is here:

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/finregfinal06172009.pdf

(or online at the White House I guess).

I just cruised through it quickly, and I could only find the word "subprime" used to connect to the weathered accusations that "predatory lenders" caused the recent housing problem. No mention of Freddie or Fannie activities promoting securitization of subprime to the detriment of portfolio risk, or the expansion of the housing market in response to political initiatives.

In fact, the proposal includes a couple of paragraphs (no sources cited) that tell us how CRA can't be blamed for subprime, etc. I guess if a lie is repeated often enough, it becomes truth. (And yes, I've looked into who REALLY said that, and I'm not sure I believe the IntraWeb, so I won't cite anyone here.)

Unfortunately, the thrust of this effort is to reign in 25 years of helpful broadening of the banking system by folks who don't really understand how things work. Diversification, geographic and otherwise, is necessary for financial stability. What ISN'T necessary is a Congress and/or administration trying to hand out money based on demographics and not repayment ability.

That's just one person's opinion, of course.

From Dick and Betty Ward (my uncle and aunt), some insight on the current Wall Street & banking mess:


A young boy enters a barber shop and the barber whispers to his customer,
'This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you.'
The barber put a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other, then called the boy over and asked,

'Which do you want, son? ' The boy took the quarters and left the dollar.

'What did I tell you?' said the barber. 'That kid never learns!'

Later, when the customer leaves, he sees the same young boy coming out of the ice cream store & says

'Hey, son! May I ask you a question? Why did you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?'

The boy licked his cone and replied, 'Because the day I take the dollar, the game's over!'

From @ RISK, and Palisade, FREE SEMINARS!!!!!!

Got this email today from Jaime (Johnson) Weisberg at Palisade:


I’d like to remind you about Palisade’s upcoming DecisionTools Energy Risk Forum and complimentary Academic Symposium in Houston May 21-22.

The Energy Risk Forum will be held at the Hyatt Regency on May 21. The one-day event features customer case studies and specialized software training to demonstrate how @RISK and DecisionTools risk analysis software are being used to solve real-world problems faced by the oil, gas, and energy industry.

The Academic Symposium is a free one-day event at the University of Houston on May 22nd. The symposium will demonstrate how the DecisionTools Suite can easily enable quantitative risk and decision analysis to be added into academic syllabi.

WHAT’S COVERED

Topics at the Energy Risk Forum will include:

· Hands-on software training on @RISK, PrecisionTree, and RISKOptimizer

· Cross-border pipelines and political risk

· Construction and project risk analysis

· Environmental liability estimation

· Natural gas market optimization

· Subsea oil and gas field optimization

· And more


View the full schedule and register: http://www.palisade.com/2009Conf/energy/schedule.asp


Topics at the Academic Symposium will include:



· Overview of the DecisionTools Suite 5.0

· Teaching business leaders how to make good decisions

· Selecting the right distribution for modeling

· Capital budgeting

· Capital inequities and sports wagering

· And more



View the full schedule: http://www.palisade.com/2009conf/academic/schedule.asp

There is no charge for this event. To register, please contact Jaime Weisberg: mailto: jweisberg@palisade.com or call 800-432-RISK x 311.

Job search resource from Dr. Kevin Wooten, UHCL prof

Found on the web. Lengthy, but mostly free-standing and hugely entertaining. Enjoy!!!!!


Uploaded on authorSTREAM by aSGuest8501

FMA Finance Networking Night

Financial Management Association (FMA) and Career Services held their first Finance Networking Reception in the SSCB Atrium on Thursday 4/23. There were several faculty in attendance, and 76 students participated. We had several employers on the panel, and about ten tables for leaving resumes and finding out about careers.

The employers in attendance were:

Direct Energy (Bobby Miller)*
Dynegy (Tiffany McCaa)*
Belt Harris (Mark Rubio)*
Assoc. Credit Union of Texas (Amanda Loy and April Howe)*
Lockheed Martin
First Investors*
State Farm*
JSC Federal Credit Union
INEOS
NASA Co-op and Internships in procurement

* alums



Chuck Crocker of Career Services, and Jeremy Adams, Shine Lin, Charlie Roeder & Jeff Lee of FMA worked very hard to get this organized. The idea came from Chuck, and simultaneously from Ed Waller (Finance prof and department chair for the finance folks).

Everyone is to be congratulated on such a successful turnout, and we should look forward to doing this again next year.