Yesterday was a very good day for investors! The SEC finally approved PCAOB rules that will make a lot more information public about what actually went down during the audit. It is certainly fair to say that the new model…
There is more to the securities laws and their administration by the SEC than just the ’33 and ’34 Acts. The Investment Company Act of 1940 focuses on disclosures by mutual funds and similar entities; and the Investment Advisers Act…
Two recent news items have made this an opportune time for a post — actually, two posts — about the accounting for the “impairment” of an asset. The SEC is considering whether Exxon violated the securities laws by failing to record an…
The question occurred to me after reading Francine McKenna’s coverage of Senate hearing testimony by Wells Fargo’s CEO about the nearly 2 million unauthorized credit card and savings account openings. I don’t know if the SEC is building an enforcement action against…
I hoped that my previous post would make a compelling argument for why a more focused objective for the FASB could lead to standards that would better serve the public interest. Some readers liked it; however, two former policy makers were…
The FASB has been prolific by any measure. The codification of authoritative GAAP alone is almost 8,000 pages for goodness sake. Believe it or not, that’s about twice as wordy as the U.S. Tax Code. “Financial Accounting” versus “Financial Reporting”…
U.S. Representative Scott Garrett (Republican, New Jersey) was first elected to Congress in 2002, months after the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. A couple of weeks ago, he introduced legislation that would amend S-OX to require that PCAOB* enforcement actions…
Yesterday was a big day for the capital markets. For the first time, startups can raise (relatively small amounts of) capital from the public without registering with the SEC and by offering its securities over the internet. It’s called “crowdfunding.” Some…
With the Oscars nigh upon us, I should tell you that I fell short of my goal to see The Big Short. How did subprime mortgages morph into weapons of mass financial destruction? How did a self-anointed few amass untold obscene…
While on the cusp of one more financial crisis, the time has come to ask yet again: What is the FASB accomplishing that will fix the deeply flawed accounting by banks for loan losses? Answer: nada, nichts, bupkis, absolutely nothing. Instead, the FASB has been wallowing…