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”…
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…
Hewlett Packard Co. claims they were 'misled' (to put it mildly) by accounting 'misstatements' (to put it mildly) into overpaying, on the order of $8 billion, to acquire Autonomy. But, if anybody outside of HP has precise knowledge of those…
The Mary Schapiro era at the SEC is coming to an end without, despite herculean efforts, having moved the ball forward on IFRS convergence. The final denouement was the departure of Chief Accountant James Kroeker on the day before the…
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…
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,…
Ted's Accounting Question My friend, Ted (not his real name), is the ex-treasurer of a very large public company where he acquired extensive experience in solving accounting problems. He departed a few years ago to run a business that he…
If IFRS incorporation is supposed to be some fantastic opportunity for achieving one set of accounting standards worldwide, then why was no one at the SEC's Roundtable on IFRS jumping for joy at the prospect? You would think that someone, anyone,…
I recently read the transcripts of two recent speeches on the question of the future of IFRS in the US. They are as different as two speeches could be on this topic. As one might expect, the adopt-IFRS-or-the-sky-will-fall speech emanated…
After I left the SEC, Executive Enterprise Institute signed me up to produce and chair various SEC and financial reporting courses. Our collaboration is still going strong, and they have given me lots of exposure to guest speakers, many of…