Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company
FRIDAY REPORT OF 11/03/06
The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy
MANAGEMENT OF FOREST ASSETS
One important principle in managing all assets appears in “The Dating Game” by James Surowiecki in the 06/11/06 issue of THE NEW YORKER:
“…As the investment strategist Michael Mauboussin puts it, ‘The market follows cash flows,’ not earnings. As long as revenues and expenditures are reported honestly, accounting legerdemain doesn’t fool the market. A study of two ways of accounting for acquisitions – one that reduces earnings and one that boosts them – found no difference in the way the market evaluated them. Likewise, when companies changed the way they accounted for their inventories, adopting a new method that increased their cash flow but reduced their reported earnings, their stock price went up, not down…
Another important principle appears in “Has the Myth of the Omnipotent Forester Become the Reality of the Impotent Forester?: Do Not Manage for ‘the Good of the Land’ by Martin K. (Marty) Luckert in the September issue of Journal of FORESTRY:
“Do not manage for ‘the Good of the Land.’ Historically, and even at times today, foresters and other scientists have tried to simplify the difficult questions facing the profession by claiming to manage forests for ‘the good of the land.’ However, Behan (1966) recognized that ‘ …the good of the land must always defer to human welfare as a basis for judging ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’.” More recently, Chase (1997) expressed the same sentiment this way: ‘If you recognize that there is no health of nature what do we have? What we have are a lot of competing interests.’
“The idea that particular natural states of forests may not be inherently good is difficult for many people to accept. For decades, normal forests, presumably achievable through sustained yield, were thought, by large portions of foresters and society, to represent a desirable state. However, one only need examine the current paradigm shifts toward sustainable forest management to realize that what is good for forests is subjectively determined by society. This means that foresters can not be guardians of forests according to some universal management principal, but instead must respond to changing social forces. However, foresters may take solace in a quote by Behan (1966): ‘There will be few, if any, real cases of human welfare requiring what’s bad for the land: a comforting thought.’”
“DECONSTRUCTED
Housebuilding activity tumbles again, pulling down America’s growth rate”
Our quotes are from THE ECONOMIST on 10/27/06::
“Among all the questions pinging around the world’s financial markets, one stands out: how much and how abruptly is America’s economy slowing? On Friday October 27th, the markets got a partial answer: more abruptly than they thought. First estimates of GDP said that in the third quarter the economy grew by only 1.6% at an annualized rate, much less than expected and a full percentage point less than in the previous three months.
“The most eye-catching component of the data was a dramatic tumble in housebuilding. Pessimists, who fear that the country’s housing bust will prompt a recession by causing Americans to slash their spending, will take this as evidence to support their case. However, optimists, who expect a soft landing, can find succour in the numbers too.
“Builders are clearly suffering: residential construction fell by more than 17%, at an annual rate, in the third quarter, after sliding by 11% in the second. By itself, the further decline in housebuilding accounted for two-fifths of the quarterly fall in GDP growth…
“…Figures this week showed that the prices of both new and existing homes are lower than a year ago. The median price of an existing house is down 2.2% from September 2005. The typical new house is now almost 10% cheaper…”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.economist.com/agenda/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=8099087
“SLEEP DEFICIT: THE PERFORMANCE KILLER”
by Bronwyn Fryer in the Harvard Business Review, October 2006 as reported in The Economist on 11/02/06:
“The macho business executive who rises in the small hours and toils late into the night gets short shrift from Charles Czeisler, a specialist in sleep and sleep deprivation at Harvard Medical School. Dr Czeisler forcefully argues that going without sleep can impair judgment: four hours of sleep for four or five days in a row, or staying awake for 24 hours straight, creates a state akin to drunkenness. Moreover, like drunks, the sleep-deprived do not realize that their decisions are being made at below-optimum mental strength. ‘With too little sleep,’ Dr. Czeisler says, ‘people do things that no CEO in his or her right mind would allow.’ A sidebar to the interview with Dr. Czeisler highlights new advances in sleep technology, including car alarms that sound when the driver becomes drowsy.”
Visit our partner Wiley.com to save 15% on How
to Make Money Growing Trees and their entire selection of Forestry and Agricultural titles. Your discount will be applied automatically
upon checkout. If you do you not see the discount being applied, please enter
code aff15 in the Promotion Code field and click the Apply Discount button.
|
