Let’s face it, we all goof up sometimes whether by insulting a client, dropping the ball on a project, or the good ol’ engage mouth before engaging brain routine.
To repair the damage, especially in the work environment, an apology is needed.
The Journal of Accountancy on 9/25/17 offered some great suggestions on How to make a professional apology.
Here are a few of the multiple tips suggested.
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Tips on how to apologize Read More »
The sad tale of Ross Ulbricht and his on-line drug bazaar called Silk Road is a good study of the outer limits of how far rationalization can carry a person.
It is also a frightening illustration of Jeremiah 17:9. From the New International Version, ponder:
The heart is deceitful above all thing and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
Considering the tale of Silk Road is useful for accountants wanting to learn about the outer fringe of the internet and he investigative power of the federal government, believers who would like an illustration of the frightening level of deceit that lives in the human heart, and anyone else wanting to learn more about the dark worlds that normal people will never see.
My posts are gathered into two collections on my other blog, Outrun Change:
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When I look at the news about Wells Fargo over the last few months, it is amazing to see the number of individual messes the bank has and the amount of time it is taking to get past the issues. Also odd is that new issues are surfacing every month or two. Here are a few articles that I notices in the last month:
8/15/17 – Emily Glazer at Wall Street Journal – Wells Fargo Elevates Former Fed Governor Elizabeth Duke to Chairman Role – As was previously expected (and reported by Ms. Glazer), the bank will replace its current board chair with the former Federal Reserve governor. This is not as big a deal as it would otherwise seem. The current board chair would have hit the bank’s mandatory retirement age four months later anyway.
8/18 – Reuters – Wells Fargo troubles shift from phony bank accounts to real ones – The bank disclosed yet another problem in regulatory filings, explaining the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is looking at the bank improperly closing real accounts.
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Wells Fargo staying in the headlines. Read More »
The proposed new overtime rules that would have required overtime pay for anyone earning less than $47,476 a year will not go into effect. I do not know if any parties will try to file an appeal, but doesn’t seem to me that is very likely.
The federal judge who issued a temporary injunction last fall has issued a final ruling that the proposed rules violate federal law. The reasoning (if I understand a condensed explanation correctly) is federal law includes a duties test which the proposed rules would essentially make irrelevant.
For more details, check out a Wall Street Journal article on 8/31/17: Texas Judge Quashes Obama-Era Overtime-Pay Rule.
Article says the current administration is working on a new rule, which would likely set a new dollar threshold, but which would be lower than in the previously proposed rules.
(Cross-posted from my other blog, Nonprofit Update.)
Permanent injunction halts proposed overtime rule Read More »
I have accumulated a long list of articles on the mess Wells Fargo has create for itself. Here is the rest of the articles I’ve gathered in the last few months, including two new fiascos. Previous list of articles I’m catching up on are found here.
7/23/17 – Wall Street Journal – Wells Fargo Discloses Accidental Client-Data Release – Oops.
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I’ve been sitting on a string of articles describing the mess Wells Fargo has created for itself by opening accounts without customers’ permission. That issue keeps hanging around like a bad hacking cough.
At the same time some new fiascos have surfaced.
It is time to get caught up, so here are some articles I saw a few months ago:
4/4/17 – Wells Fargo advertisement in Wall Street Journal – The bank published a full-page public letter from the CEO.
He describe the steps taken by the bank to make things right. I will paraphrase or nearly quote the steps:
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Disasters can happen. Consider:
Rumbi Bwerinofa-Petrozzello ponders these questions in her 7/2/17 post If Lost…Then What?
She tells of finding a wallet on the ground, walking into the adjacent restaurant looking for the owner by glancing between the patrons and the photo on the driver’s license in the wallet. No luck.
When she got home she was able to do a bit more research. She located the woman and returned the wallet.
Life hack tip: make sure you have a business card with a current phone number and email in your wallet so that if a kind-hearted person finds your lost wallet the nice person can reach you quickly.
From there she transitions to disaster recovery. A few questions for you to ponder:
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Things really can go terribly wrong. Do your backups work? How’s your disaster planning?Read More »
Things really can go terribly wrong. Do your backups work? How’s your disaster planning? Read More »
Ancient Finances will explore finances and money during the Viking age and Roman Empire. Lots of posts on other blogs addressing those topics have been cross-posted to the new blog. This includes lots of discussion of the loot Alexander the Great lifted during his rampaging world tour.
I’ve been having loads of fun reading about the Viking age and am intrigued by finances and money during the Roman Empire.
Why a new blog?
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Announcing “Ancient Finances”, my newest blog Read More »
Adrian Goldsworthy provides a good description of a Roman shield, called a scutum, in his book The Complete Roman Army on page 129. A well-preserved shield was found at Dura Europus that dates from the 3rd century.
The shield is 3’ 3” tall by 2’ 8” wide in a curved shape.
It is two inches thick, consisting of three layers of wood glued together.
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Description of Scutum, a Roman Legionnaire’s shield.Read More »
Description of Scutum, a Roman Legionnaire’s shield. Read More »
Let’s take another look at logistics for a Viking army. In about 868, Ivar the Boneless, one of Ragnar Lothbrok’s four sons, fortified Nottingham.
A fun book, The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings by Lars Brownworth, described this campaign and its logistics.
King Burghred of Mercia combined forces with King Athelred of Wessex to deal with the Viking invasion. The allied forces advanced on Nottingham where the Vikings were patiently waiting behind their fortifications.
The Vikings tried to avoid attacking in battle. Instead, their preferred tactic was to draw an attack and then respond with a withering counterattack. They excelled at defense.
Short version of the story is Ivar was better supplied than the Saxons, whose soldiers faded away to go home and take in their harvest.
The siege ended when Ivar accepted an unspecified, though presumably really large bribe, Burghred acknowledged Ivar, and Ivar headed north to York.
The book describes the logistics of surviving a siege.
With 1,000 warriors, an army the size of Ivar’s required 4,000 pounds of flour and 1,000 gallons of water a day. That would be 4 pounds of flour and 1 gallon of water per soldier.
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Logistics for a Viking force in the field – part 2Read More »
Logistics for a Viking force in the field – part 2 Read More »
Keep in mind as a leader of Viking force in the field you really don’t want to be the boss of a lot of grumpy, starving soldiers who also happen to be armed with heavy weapons. That is not a formula for a long reign and perhaps not a great plan for a long life.
This is one is a series of posts on this blog talking about ancient finances.
Logistics
I’ve read several comments so far on the logistical needs for a force in the field.
I’ll start with Viking: The Norse Warrior’s [Unofficial] Manual by John Haywood.
The book provides a reference for the goods needed to keep warriors fed. A force of 1,000 warriors would need 2,000 pounds of bread along with 1,000 pounds of meat. For liquids, the book says add about 240 gallons of beer.
Per warrior: That would be about 2 pounds of bread, 1 pound of meat, and 1 quart of beer.
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Logistics for a Viking force in the field – part 1Read More »
Logistics for a Viking force in the field – part 1 Read More »
This is another in my series of posts on ancient finances.
Let’s ponder how much time it would take to construct a Viking longship and consider how much of an investment that would be for a community. Any way you look at this, a longship is a major capital asset.
One estimate of time to build a longship
Philip Line, in his book The Vikings and Their Enemies – Warfare in Northern Europe, 750 -1100 written in 2014, provides one framework for the investment in a longship.
I’ll quote and then expand his comment on page 51:
“Experimental archaeologists have estimated that 40,000 working hours may have been needed to produce all the components of a 30-meter longship, consuming the surplus production of 100 persons for a year.”
Surplus production in the Viking context would be the amount of time not needed for subsistence living. In other words the amount of effort a warrior would have after raising enough food to feed his family with enough left over to survive the next winter.
If 40,000 hours is enough time for 100 warriors, that would be 400 hours each. Let’s assume that would be spread over a year except for my assumption that during the worst three months of winter no construction could be done. Since we are talking rough numbers let’s spread that 400 hours over nine months, which would be 44 hours a month, which would be about 11 hours a week.
So 100 warriors working 11 hours a week for 9 months would be needed to construct a longship.
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How much labor did it take to construct a Viking longship?Read More »
How much labor did it take to construct a Viking longship? Read More »
Looks like it is time for finance and accounting people to start learning about blockchain technology. Here are a few recent articles that are helping me:
5/8/17 – Journal of Accountancy – Why finance executives should care about blockchain – Good intro. Quick read. There is a difference between blockchain and bitcoin. I like the article’s analogy: blockchain is the rail in the railroad and bitcoin is the train that travels on the rail.
Some ways to use blockchain: birth certificates, property deeds, securities trades.
2/21/17 – Foundation for Economic Education – So… What’s a Blockchain? – More detailed introduction. …
What’s all this talk about blockchain? Read More »
What did it cost to arm a Viking warrior? Without contemporary writing, it is difficult to determine. Several books and articles provide some hints.
Viking: The Norse Warrior’s [Unofficial] Manual by John Haywood provides an entertaining view of Viking life. The book is presented as an unofficial guide to young men considering their future as a raider. Sort of a training manual to get young men ready.
The book provides some approximations for the prices of different weapons, measured in ounces of silver:
Another comment says that at the nicer end, a fancy sword could take a year for a blacksmith to make. So factor in a year of skilled labor for the high-end swords. That would explain the above guess of 60 ounces of silver for the nicest swords.
The book also gives another view of the cost of armament by describing the amount of arms a warrior might carry based on the level of the warrior’s wealth:
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Indicators of prices in Viking era Read More »
The Vikings at War book by Kim Hjardar and Vegard Vike provides one general frame of reference for cost of arms. The book has several references to a 7th-century Frankish legal text, Lex Ribuaria.
Wikipedia says this document is from the Franks, located in northern Europe, more specifically it was from around what is modern Cologne, Germany. It was written about 630 A.D. It would thus provide a reference point from within Europe about 100 years before the start point of the Viking Age.
My guess is relative pricing of weapons in relation to each other would be sort of somewhat comparable to a few centuries later in the middle of the Viking Age, however, the prices in relation to animals is probably lower here than in Scandinavia because of the cost of transport.
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Cost of weapons in Northern Europe in mid 7th centuryRead More »
Cost of weapons in Northern Europe in mid 7th century Read More »