Tynegwick Gawcott is a new blogger. He (for I know it is a he) will be one to watch. In his first blog he says:
John Kay, (www.johnkay.com) who was a director of Halifax at the time of privatisation, makes the astute observation that financial engineering is a zero sum game. If you added up the [...]
I’ve already mentioned the IASB conceptual framework consultation process this morning.
The submission I really like is form Mike Page, Professor of Accounting at Portsmouth University, which starts:
Get a grip guys, the financial system is falling about our ears, the myth of the mighty market has been exploded and you are trying to carry on business [...]
Time was when submissions to the International Accounting Standards Board on an exposure draft would come form accounting institues and large companies.
Not any longer. The closing date for submissions on the key first two chapters of the new conceptual framework for accounting was on 29 September. There were 112 submissions. Of course the usual suspects [...]
Accountancy Age has reported that both the Republicans in the US and the Tories here have called for a suspension of markka to market accounting.
Three things follow:
1) It is clear they wanted this in the upside to exacerbate profit reporting and another method of accounting in the downside that mitigates loss reporting. That is evidence [...]
I liked this from Gillian Tett:
In the longer term, the real lesson from these events is that policymakers should never have permitted such a yawning information gap to emerge between bankers and everyone else. For the first seven years of this decade, that situation bred excess and abuse; now it is delivering a monumental backlash. [...]
Accountancy Age has an article saying:
New PricewaterhouseCoopers UK chairman Ian Powell has used his first major speech to urge accountants to contribute to fixing the work financial system by creating an early warning system for future crises.
I can only guess he has no idea how absurd this idea is.
The current financial crisis is the result [...]
The FT has reported:
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the US mortgage financiers seized by the government, have received subpoenas from federal prosecutors for documents related to accounting and disclosure, the companies said on Monday.
Yes, I do suspect fraud.
A great deal of offshore accounting is fraud.
Many Special Purpose Vehicles are fraudulent.
I define fraud as a deception [...]
On September 23rd, the European Parliament adopted a report on the follow-up of the Monterrey conference on Financing for Development. Amongst the resolutions adopted is one saying that the Parliament:
Regrets that the Commission does not place more emphasis on the mobilisation of internal resources to finance development, as these are sources of greater autonomy for [...]
I was interviewed for this story in Accountancy Age:
Offshore tax probe hits the buffers
I’m not mentioned in the resulting piece. And I really don’t care: that’s what happens with 50% of all interviews, and it’s part of life.
I do care that the story is so very obviously wrong. I don’t for one minute believe that [...]
It strikes me that there are four key firms behind the credit crunch who have suffered nothing like the exposure they deserve. They are:
PricewaterhouseCoopers
KPMG
Deloittes
Ernst & Young.
They audited all the serious players. They have signed off the accounts of all the banks on a going concern basis that have either now gone bust or needed emergency [...]
