I am proud to announce that I did my civic duty yesterday. I turned off all of my electronic devices for the entire day and actually read the entire final SEC Staff report on its IFRS Work Plan. After finishing,…
This post could turn out to be a little dry. So, to whet your curiosity, I'll start with the payoff: First, contrary to the conclusions of the FASB and IASB, level periodic lease expense does not reflect the unerlying economics of…
As I was sitting down today to write the second and final installment on periodic lease expense, I received this email from a friend [bold italics supplied by yours truly]: I was at the IMA annual conference …. Leslie [Seidman,…
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…
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…
Dear Reader, This essay is far too long for one blog post. For that reason, I have chopped it into three pieces, with links at the end of each one to take you to the next. I apologize for any…
Below is an email I received from Lynn Turner. My several comments are in brackets, and the italics/bolding are all supplied by yours truly (I also took the liberty of fixing a couple of minor typos): "One of the interesting…
The Jumpstart Our Business Act (H.R. 3606) was recently passed by the House of Representatives and sent to the Senate. Without meaning to put words into anyone's mouth, the JOBS Act appears to be based on three highly uncertain premises:…