If you subscribe to The Atlantic magazine, the title of this post may ring a bell — a riff on “How American Politics Went Insane: It Didn’t Start with Donald Trump...” from the July/August edition. Now that I have made that acknowledgement, I will…
The FASB’s “simplification” proposals are coming fast, and some of them are making me furious. Proposed ASU No. 2015-260, which would roll back important anti-abuse provisions in ASC Topic 805—Business Combinations, is a very nice place to start. A Perfectly…
After having just written a post on HP’s massive write-off of goodwill, I am reluctant to keep on banging the drum of how bad goodwill accounting can be. But, I can’t resist following up on Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil’s coverage of yet another…
I have written about initial recognition of goodwill on numerous occasions. I suppose it might be less bothersome if goodwill had the good grace to sit and stay like a good dog on the balance sheet at its opening 'value';…
I have already reported stumbling upon a fascinating interview of Clarence Sampson, SEC Chief Accountant for more than a decade starting in the mid-1970s. Of his many tales of peculiar interactions with special interests, this one struck me right in…