There are some definite signs that Mary Schapiro is getting closer to naming her Chief Accountant. For example, I received an email from Denny Beresford, former FASB chair, who was left with the impression from a reporter that an announcement would be…
I received an email from the source I previously dubbed Debit Throat, providing some interesting reactions to my previous post on handicapping the chief accountant 'contest.' "I agree [with your odds] – I don't think that Neimeier is [no longer]…
A BNA news article [available by subscription only] reported last week that anonymous sources say that Mary Schapiro has narrowed the candidates for SEC Chief Accountant to five finalists: "Jane Adams, a former deputy chief accountant of the SEC and…
From a MoneyNews.com story published this Wednesday headlined "Banks Stand to Reap Billions from Purchased Bad Loans," came an account of a jaw-dropping transaction. It was spawned by FAS 141(R), the latest and greatest standard on accounting for business combinations:…
The European Commission sponsored a two-day conference last week entitled "Financial Reporting in a Changing World." I was not invited to speak (J), but if I had been, this is what I would have said: Let's not use this 'changing…
The New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants (Society) seems to have become the first group of professional accountants to break with the AICPA's big push to get the SEC to throw out U.S. GAAP and adopt IFRS. The…
I recently found this quote from H. G. Wells, the English novelist and historian, in the introduction to the "Mike Gravel edition" of the Pentagon Papers: "The true strength of rules and empires lies not in armies or emotion, but…
Ever since I read Malcom Gladwell's acclaimed new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, I have been thinking about its many policy implications. The main message of the book is that highly successful people owe much more than one would…
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.…
In the current environment, I am an ardent supporter of those who would resist calls to suspend fair value accounting rules. But, when I was at the SEC, I had a front-row seat on what was perhaps one of the…