Has the FASB Approached Lease Accounting as an “Independent” Standard Setter?
The FASB is now 40 years old, and its lease accounting standards are about the same age. Some would say that SFAS 13 was obsolete when issued, but it only became a front-burner topic for the FASB about a decade…
The Financial Accounting Foundation Has Outlived Its Usefulness (As if it Ever Was)
Let's pretend that we could decide anew how accounting standards for U.S public companies should be promulgated. Who would want the operations to be run by the Financial Accounting Foundation? Are there other options? When it was established in 1972,…
Stock Compensation Accounting: A Drop in the Ocean Against a Tide of Management Greed
When FAS 123R came into effect in 2005, it had been finally ordained that stock option grants must be accompanied by some modicum of expense recognition. The FASB had fought the good fight and had won — sort of. A…
The IASB’s Quixotic Attack on Disclosure “Boilerplate”
If the FASB and IASB are doing such a good job mucking up financial statements by working together on convergence projects, why have they decided to go their separate ways in their quests to seek a cure for disclosure dysfunction? Based…
The FRF for SMEs is a “Sack of Mush” — According to Walter Schuetze
Shortly after my most recent post on the AICPA's new FRF for SMEs, NASBA issued a press release that was clearly intended to keep the public spat between the two national organizations from escalating: "The AICPA and NASBA are committed…
A Promised SEC Disclosure Roundtable that Won’t Happen
(Note to readers — I have deleted the reference to Worldcom in a previous version of this post. A dialogue with one reader caused me to re-consider my statement that account roll forwards could have saved an audit process that…
The AICPA’s Financial Reporting Framework: How Low Should a Professional Go?
The AICPA, in its spat with NASBA over its recently released Financial Reporting Framework for SMEs (my very own critique is here), has loudly and often declaimed that the purveyors of GAAP are supportive of their new non-GAAP option. That is,…
Disclosure Framework Dysfunction
It recently occurred to me that the ongoing Disclosure Framework project and the comatose Financial Statement Presentation project have three things in common: Neither current disclosure nor presentation standards promote high quality financial reporting (perhaps one of the few things…