The Biggest [Fake] News Story

This week, a very public war of words erupted between John Stewart of The Daily Show and Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money. If it wasn't obvious to me before, but I now I realize two things: the media can be an important advocate for the public, and they failed miserably at that task.

[Unfortunately, Viacom isn't so progressive as to allow embedding of their video clip, but the full, unedited video is on their web site.]

I'm thankful that we now have so-called alternative news sources. One, unfortunately, is The Daily Show. It seems that John Stewart really cares about America. Cares in a way that allows him to ask the difficult questions and hold those responsible to account. If anything, I hope this financial crisis in the States helps people to realize the bias or poor job their news network of choice is offering, and also to take some responsibility for finding things out on their own.

I think Americans (including me) can blame their leadership for some of this blase attitude towards the truth. Its easy to blame W., who praised people like Michael Brown, head of FEMA during the Katrina fiasco. But lets not forget Clinton and Nixon.

But, of course, we need to take some responsibility ourselves. Here's a simple way to start. Before you forward an e-mail, usually one with a political agenda, but most e-mail forwards would do, double-check that it is factually accurate. I still get a bit angry every time my father forwards an e-mail that is totally inaccurate. A simple Google search, taking no more than 30 seconds of your time, can quickly debunk almost any e-mail you are about to forward. A good place to start is Snopes.

Accounting for Managers... Applied

In Melbourne Business School, one of the core MBA classes is Accounting for Managers which covers many topics in accounting that are important for managers. One cornerstone of accounting is when to treat a cost as an asset (capitalized) and when to treat it as an expense. A cost can be capitalized when:

• it is likely that future economic benefits will arise
• that amount can be reasonably estimated

Apparently George W. Bush, himself a Harvard Business School graduate, does not understand this distinction, or doesn't apply conservatism -- another key accounting principle -- when dealing with the American people. I immediately recognized this when reading this article from the New York Times:

But one reason that the agency’s deficit estimate was higher than those of outside analysts was that it added in hundreds of billions of dollars in spending tied to the government’s existing bailout programs, which the Bush administration has thus fare treated as “investments” it would recoup rather than “spending” or “costs” that are down the drain.

In other words, the bailout cannot be treated as an asset; it doesn't fit the above criteria and therefore must be expensed.

That worries me.

Our Dumb Planet: Summary of the Israel-Arab Conflict

From the Onion's atlas:

The area that makes up Israel was promised to the Jews by both the UN and God, but because the legitimacy and power of both entities is only recognized by a handful of people, the land remains contested.

Another Clever Person

I'm loving this whole World Wide Internets thing, as there is no shortage of smart people who are writing things that I can read any time I like. Apparently, blogging is really hip with the kids these days, just like the MTV and the YouTube.

My mom suggested a couple of years ago to read The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Friedman which was a good call. I've since lent this book to a number of my friends.

Today I read his really satirical account of America as seen through and Iranian intelligence estimate. Simply brilliant. Here's an excerpt:

Our fears that the U.S. was engaged in a covert “Manhattan Project” to achieve energy independence have been “assuaged.” America’s Manhattan Project turns out to be largely confined to the production of corn ethanol in Iowa, which, our analysts have confirmed from cellphone intercepts between lobbyists and Congressmen, is nothing more than a multibillion-dollar payoff to big Iowa farmers and agro-businesses.

This is exactly what we need. Just like we "needed" the atomic bomb and we "needed" to land on the moon. Except this time it's not just the free world at stake; it's the whole world. At least Australia, my adopted country, has started to take this issue seriously lately.