Managers, markets, and the many players who must contract with a firm: all three groups need credible information about companies. The financial statement — which includes the income statement, balance sheet and statement of cash flows — tells a compelling story when read as a whole.

"In real estate, if you keep yourself in front of long-term demographic trends, you will prosper," observes Christopher Cole, founder and chief executive of the Cole Companies, who received the Distinguished Achievement Award at the W. P. Carey undergraduate convocation recently.

CEOs' home purchases, stock sales and subsequent company performance management

Tortillas, and the corn used to make them, have been a Mexican staple for thousands of years. So it's no surprise that tens of thousands packed into Mexico City's central Zocalo plaza to protest a spike in the price of tortillas and other staple goods.

Phoenix, now the fifth largest city in the United States, could be the poster child for metropolitan areas where a bursting residential housing bubble has created economic discord.

The attitudes judges hold toward auditors have eroded since the accounting debacles of Enron, WorldCom and others earlier in the decade. Not only do judges have lesser views of auditors, they also have conflicting views with auditors.

Too often, Chinese customers buy wealth management products without a real understanding of what they're getting into, according to Xiaoling Wu, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China.

Paralleling the boom in private equity deals in recent years has been a growing sense of alarm about these multibillion dollar transactions.

The collapse of the subprime market has hit hedge funds hard. According to Anthony Sanders, professor of finance and real estate at the W. P. Carey School of Business, many hedge funds forgot due diligence when the real estate market was hottest, and are now stuck with bad paper.

If a million dollars sounds like a lot of money to you … if you think "household manager" is a synonym for Mom … if your idea of a cool set of wheels is a Mercedes-Benz convertible … then you probably don't live in Richistan.