Click here for Part One of this Three-Part Series. * * * * * False Claim # 6: Costs of conversion to IFRS can be spread out over a long transition period. All I can do here is to point out…
Click here for Part One of this Three-Part Series. * * * * * False Claim #2: A move to IFRS would restore the public trust in accounting standards. I'm going to present three examples – one from 2007 and…
Last August, I wrote a post in which I expressed my dismay that Carl Levin (D-Michigan) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) are trying to make tax law based on the premise that FASB rules for stock options are caviar -- when…
As told to me by a faculty member at Ohio State, who heard it in a presentation by Eugene Flegm, former general auditor for General Motors: Some years after the end of World War II, GM was negotiating a new…
Ted's Accounting Question My friend, Ted (not his real name), is the ex-treasurer of a very large public company where he acquired extensive experience in solving accounting problems. He departed a few years ago to run a business that he…
schI get a lot of questions – and yes, some criticism – of my support for measurement of assets and liabilities at "replacement cost" (with comparative periods adjusted for the effects of inflation). My views are derived in large part…
When I was at the SEC (1992 – 93), one of the senior staff members whom I admired greatly for his competence and integrity was Robert Bayless, the Chief Accountant for the Division of Corporation Finance. ("Corp Fin" is the…
If you were to ask a financial regulator what 'investor protection' means in the context of accounting standards, the textbook response will have something to do with ensuring that investors have enough information to make informed investment and voting decisions.*…
Last June, the IASB issued revisions to IAS 19, Employee Benefits. The accompanying press release would have us believe that the five-year project resulting in incremental changes to the accounting for pension costs are a significant improvement; unfortunately, they are…
Nothing good comes from bad accounting, and many of the bad things that happen are easy to predict: excess bonuses to management, negative NPV investments, underfunding of pension plans, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Yet, the instance I'm writing about in this…