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Precious little prudence in Forbes

January 19th, 2010

My latest Forbes column is out. Entitled ‘Precious Little Prudence’ it asks ‘When is a debt a bad thing–do accountants really even know?’

As I conclude:

[L]et’s never forget that both the IASB and IAASB are dominated and even significantly financed by the Big 4 firms of accountants and auditors - PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young.

According to popular myth these firms have had a ‘good recession’ – little blame attaching to them for what has happened. But that’s just a myth, because the truth is they carry a great deal of responsibility for what has gone wrong – and should bear the consequences.

Which is something I firmly believe.

Richard Murphy Accounting, Auditing, Big 4

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