[This is my fourth consecutive post on loan accounting. Here are the first, second and third.] I love finding accounting lessons buried in stories that on their surface seem to have little to do with accounting. See, for example, my…
This is my third consecutive post on the perils of loan loss reserves (first here; second here); and a fourth is going to follow very soon. My fourthcoming (I couldn't resist the pun J) post will be based on recent…
Less than a day after posting my critique of the FASB and IASB loan loss allowance proposal, I happily learned that the FASB may be backtracking. According to a PwC In Brief: "After considering the results of outreach efforts and…
Once one chooses to ignore market values and to account for loans on the basis of "amortized cost" – as the IASB has "tentatively" concluded and the FASB may now be starting to question once again – the inevitable and…
This may be a little hard to explain, but my thoughts went to lease accounting after reading Jonathan Weil's Bloomberg piece about the JPMorgan derivatives debacle. And, it happened again after I read Floyd Norris's piece in NYT about the…
Many books and articles have been written to describe the mishaps that led to the Great Recession of 2008, but few have done so while putting the role of accounting standards and auditing in context. I reported back in January…
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…
Last January, as the FASB proposed closing that 'Lehman loophole' in repo accounting while leaving three other loopy conditions to be met for "sale accounting" intact, I predicted that it would just be a matter of time for history to repeat…
Two of my favorite columnists, Floyd Norris and Jonathan Weil have put in their two cents worth on the implications of the Greek bond accounting issues brought to the fore by the IASB's letter to the European Securities and Markets…
Yesterday, Han Hoogervorst, the IASB chair, sent a letter to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), in which he expressed concern for the pie-in-the-sky numbers produced by EU banks on their Greek bonds classified as 'available for sale' (AFS).…