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tom.selling@accountingonion.com

Long on “The Big Short”

With the Oscars nigh upon us, I should tell you that I fell short of my goal to see The Big Short.   How did subprime mortgages morph into weapons of mass financial destruction? How did a self-anointed few amass untold obscene…

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Camfferman and Zeff on the IASB

This is my third post for today. About 20 years ago (it’s been that long already!), I had a fairly regular gig traveling to Europe and Dubai to make presentations about SEC disclosure requirements that applied to foreign private issuers,…

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“Double Entry”: A Tale of Two Books

If you are looking to buy a holiday present for an accountant, then you should consider Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance. It's a pretty fast read – both for its moderate length (256 pages) and…

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“Thinking Fast and Slow” about Auditing

My writings in this blog have focused on the absence of linkages between financial reporting and the economic concepts like wealth and value creation/destruction. But, accounting is more than applied economics. Individuals acquire accounting information before making decisions; and heuristics…

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FASB Alumnus Trashes GAAP (and IFRS)

When I started my blog almost exactly 3 years ago now, my opening strategy was to work down a rather limited personal inventory of pet peeves. I wanted to stay above the fray, but that proved impossible. I soon became hopelessly…

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Fiddling with Fair Value as Rome Burns

If you took a look at the House Bill that went down in flames today, you might have caught Congress fiddling with GAAP as Rome burned. See Section 132 of the bill proposed to empower the SEC to suspend application of FAS…

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