GOOGLE PI

The title "Geithner's Notes: The Key To Economic Turnaround?" caught my eye today on the Huffington Post.

In short, the post included a picture of a slip of paper held by Geithner and a humorous attempt at deciphering the scribblings on it.

Here's my attempt at playing detective using my interpretation of the first two words of that paper.

DORKEY IROW

DORKEY: 1. Charles “Trip” Dorkey, "prominent litigator in the New York office of McKenna Long & Aldridge." "...Most recently, his practice has involved disputes over financial sector acquisitions, tax shelter transactions, distributions from failed hedge funds, and insurance coverage." Source

Author of “Recent Developments Regarding the Misappropriation Theory in Securities Fraud Actions,” Journal of Financial Crime, May 1998. and co-author of “SEC and PCAOB Host Public Roundtable on Internal Control,” The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, Vol. 14, No. 7, July 2006. Source

He is also Director of the National Chamber Foundation (2000 - Present).

"The National Chamber Foundation (NCF), a non-profit affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is dedicated to identifying and fostering public debate on emerging critical issues. We provide business and government leaders with insight and resources to address tomorrow's challenges."

Our resources and programs focus on three goals:

(I) Examine emerging business issues
(II) Drive public debate
(III) Inform business and government leaders.

We offer research programs, roundtables and conferences, and leadership development initiatives."

2. There's a research paper titled "An Examination of Economic Value Added and Executive Compensation" written by John P. Evans and Robert T. Evans, which includes this passage:

"Individual share prices will fluctuate and even within the context of an
efficient market will not necessarily always reflect the true worth of a firm. (Jarrell 1993) notes that ‘positive’ accounting theory – based on the premise that accounting methods develop to provide more cost-effective measures of performance in the absence of regulation or tax effects — supports the use of accounting measures of
earnings. That is, the almost universal use of this measure in compensation contracts
suggest that it is the most efficient available. Jarrell (1993, p. 80) further argues that the use of a profit measure ‘shields executive compensation from market-wide fluctuations in equity values that are not caused by expected changes in
fundamentals’. This view is supported by Jarrell and Dorkey (1992) and Sloan (1991), who both find strong correlations between accounting returns and market-based returns. The former discovered a stronger relationship between accounting returns and market returns of individual companies than the market returns of a company and the market index over a five-year period."

3.I only had time to skim through parts of this article titled "PUBLIC ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION", but I think it is a true find. Here are some excerpts that might make you agree.

"All governance system designers face the same key choices: what, where, when, and, whom to control. The choice of what and where to control is reasonably self-evident. Management control should be primarily addressed to the behavior of service suppliers [i.e., departments and agencies, contractors, etc.], the efficiency with which they produce goods and services, and ultimately the efficiency with which they use the assets at their disposal... Combining the choice of subject with that of timing, we find that the governance system designer must choose among four distinct institutional alternatives: individual responsibility, before-the-fact or after-the-fact, and organizational responsibility, before-the-fact or after-the-fact."

And:

"Where bilateral relationships are concerned, it is usually possible to set up some kind of transactional arrangement to eliminate or internalize spillovers [Ronan, 1992; Ronan & Balachandran, 1988; Balachandran & Ronan, 1989; Dorkey & Jarrell, 1991]. In most cases, these relationships can be governed via buyer-seller arrangements and, where they occur within the organization, by appropriate transfer prices. Where monopoly supply is appropriate, two-part tariffs [e.g., hook-up plus usage charges for telephone services, see Tirole, 1988; Cohen, Loeb, Stark, 1992] or unbalanced transfer prices can be used to manage relationships and to provide the supplier with an incentive to make long term investments in plant, equipment, or know-how. [Unbalanced transfer prices are often easier to use than cost-based two-part tariffs, since the latter must be very carefully calibrated to produce an efficient solution, but accountants don't like them very much] In other cases, support units can be made to compete within the context of a quasi-market dynamic with others supplying similar services inside and outside the organization and permitted to charge whatever the market will bear.

Such an account structure would look something like the following:
1. All administrative units are be classified as either mission or support centers.
2. All costs accrued by support centers -- including charges for the use of capital assets and inventory depletion -- are charged to the mission centers they serve.
3. Mission centers are funded to cover their expected expenses -- including support center charges.
4. A working capital fund provides short-term financing for support units.
5. A capital asset fund provides long-term financing of capital assets and encourages efficient management of their acquisition, use, and disposition."

This could be a base for handling the Toxic Assets / Bad Bank, right?

Also, if interested, here's the research paper written by Dr. Gregg A. Jarrell and Frank C. Dorkey, titled: "THE LONGER-TERM RELATION BETWEEN ACCOUNTING
PERFORMANCE AND STOCK RETURNS"

IROW

1.

Department of Public Works and Highways

"Land Aquisition

Enhanced procedures for infrastructure road right of way or IROW is quickly becoming a model for other government agencies to follow. There is also an effort on-going to strengthen capacity in the areas of environmental and socio-economic activities in the Department. This includes additional training and the full implementation of the IROW procedures previously mentioned which was completed in January 2004.

A new Road Right of Way Procedures Manual has been prepared and issued that provides improvements to the IROW processes, including the subprocesses for identification, acquisition, and management of right-of-way. This Manual is for use of all offices involved in IROW acquisition within the Department, and particularly implementing offices, including: IROW Project Management Office, Regional Offices, and District Offices."

2. From WIKIPEDIA: a. Right-of-way or right of way may refer to:

"In law:

A situation in which although a parcel of land has a specific private owner, some other party or the public at large has a legal right to traverse that land in some specified manner. The term likewise refers to the land subject to such a right."

b. "Legal requirement imposed upon user to obtain permission from the property holder before access is granted (e.g. installing telecommunications cable by monopoly telephone company or cable company)."

I suspect there are more chances the note actually read "DONKEY IRON", but I do think "my" note is more interesting, even if it's not "the key to economic turnaround"...

Besides, I had fun playing detective for a day...