The congressional hearings on "market-to-market accounting" are scheduled to begin in a few hours. I shudder at the prospect of financially-illiterate congressmen becoming putty in the hands of savvy lobbyists bearing gifts. My concern was piqued by Steve Forbes' latest…
As I was researching a question for a client a couple of weeks ago, I happened upon a love child of two of my pet peeve accounting standards: FAS 115 (marketable securities) – especially the part permitting available-for-sale (AFS) classification; FAS…
Since my previous post on the FASB's 3 - 2 vote to finalize the investor-indifferent FSP EITF 99-20-1, I have received a number of comments regarding the extent to which board size and composition have affected financial reporting standards. Alpha…
Do you think that stable funding could allow the IASB to divorce itself from the influence of the EU? If so, consider the example the FASB is setting under similar circumstances, and think again. The U.S. standard setter was granted…
Following my most recent post on financial statement presentation, Eddie Thomas, a frequent commenter of this blog, wrote: "Wouldn't investors be better off pushing for a more robust XBRL so that they can make their own decisions about what is…
"The London Symphony played Beethoven last evening, and Beethoven lost." That quotation, which my father attributed to George Bernard Shaw, leapt into my mind as I read Marie Leone's CFO.com report of remarks made by Thomas Jones, vice chairman of…
The trustees of the IASC Foundation (the oversight body of the IASB) have continued to blithely plug IFRS as if it were just an innocent bystander in the global financial crisis. Just days before the G-20 economic conference, the IASC…
Last Thursday, a new reader (who prefers to remain anonymous) wrote: "Have you considered addressing the hotly debated issue of how assets sold into the TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Program] will be accounted for by banks, and whether the prices…
While most politicians in Washington were trying to figure out how to solve the current financial crisis with real cash, my congressman*, John Shadegg (Rep. - Arizona), and a few of his colleagues have been fiddling with accounting rules while Rome burns.…
A member of the AECM listserv reported that today's episode of "60 Minutes" explained that a credit default swap (CDS) "was actually an insurance instrument, and perhaps fraudulently sold as [a] financial instrument to avoid insurance regulations and insurance regulators."…