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...OK, now I get it – we’re playing by government rules. It’s like Chicago rules only better. Here’s all you need to know: if generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) were good enough for government work, we wouldn’t have had to invent generally accepted government accounting principles (GAGAP). But you already knew that your government operates by it’s own rules, didn’t you? Anyway, in case you were wondering why you’re just now hearing that the national deficit is actually 6 times higher than previously reported, it’s because of the golden rule. Using these special government rules, we don’t have to count...

I use Quickbooks (Intuit) in my business. After learning about their decision to cut ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, I must change my software provider and was looking for some recommendations from the smartest people in the world. Thanks in advance.

Accountant has embezzled Dh656, 854 by forging chequesA Tunisian accountant is facing 27 charges all related to embezzlement of approximately Dh656, 854 from her employer from 2009 to 2011, the Dubai Criminal Court heard. In addition to embezzlement, MBS, 33, is accused of forging cheques and bonds. Her employer, Ehab Ahmad Fathi, 44, businessman, Emirati, testified that he recruited MBS in his engineering office as accountant at the end of 2009. “Due to work-related problems occurred between her and another accountant in the office, the later was terminated in February 2010. I retained MBS as she holds a higher degree...

y DAVID M. WALKER, The Fiscal Times December 30, 2011 In Washington, if you want to make something public while minimizing press attention, you should release it on a Friday. The current Administration topped that by issuing the consolidated financial statements of the U.S. Government, which included the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) related independent audit report on the Friday before Christmas when the public was focused on the holiday season and key policymakers were either headed out of town or already gone. The report was simply posted on the Internet and provided to the press on request and without any...

Imagine that Uncle Sam suddenly morphed into Samuel Smith, CEO of Federal Enterprises, Inc., a conglomerate with 2.8 million employees in 2009, $2.2 trillion in revenues in 2010, and a proposed budget of $3.7 trillion for 2012. If this private company were run the way Washington works, newspaper headlines soon would scream: “MR. SMITH GOES TO ATTICA.” Washington’s routine accounting methods would trigger indictments against similarly behaved business executives. In fact, people have been convicted for operating as Washington has for decades. • Consider the Obama administration and the previous Democratic Congress’s mishandling of $500 billion in Medicare funds. If...

Professional choices for Black, Latino and American Indian college students can seem limited; the students are often more interested in popular or high-status occupations or professions they know well through their parents, family and friends. Accounting continues to lack significant racial/ethnic diversity, which is a real challenge for accounting firms as they try to relate to increasingly diverse clients. Latinos comprise only 3 percent of the CPA profession and Blacks account for only 1 percent, according to the American Institute of CPAs. Data about new hires that were CPAs shows 4 percent were Latino, 4 percent were Black, and just...

Or the Kylnvelds, Ernsts, Coopers (aka “c�). Take your pick.From the mailbag: All staff just received a voicemail from the firm stating that they will be performing a salary adjustment for all staff 2nd year through manager as they have realized the marketplace is providing different salaries than expected and would like to stay competitive. No word on amounts, one on one meetings with partners are occurring in the next week. This little Friday Surprise was brought to you by Carlos Sabater (listen to the full message below) and the salary adjustment will be for audit professionals only. We’ll definitely...

When it comes to accounting, the devil is in the details. A new Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) rule taking effect in December requires greater transparency for union pension plans and threatens to bankrupt organized labor. In order to survive, unions need a bailout and fast. This presents a political problem -- if unions go bankrupt, so do Democrats. Eleven of the top 20 largest political contributors are labor unions, and nearly all of that money is spent campaigning against Republicans. By bailing out unions, Democrats are bailing out themselves. Unions have known for years that their multiemployer pension plans...

Signing a deal that makes anyone a net profit participant in a Hollywood movie deal has always been a sucker’s bet. In an era where studios have all but eliminated first dollar gross and invited talent to share the risk and potential rewards, guess what? Net profit deals are still a sucker's bet. I was slipped a net profit statement (below) for Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, the 2007 Warner Bros sequel. Though the film grossed $938.2 million worldwide, the accounting statement below conveys that the film is still over $167 million in the red.

Accounting basics: when a company experiences what accountants call "a material adverse impact" on its expected future earnings, and those changes affect an item that is already on the balance sheet, the company is required to record the negative impact--"to take the charge against earnings"--as soon as it knows that the change is reasonably likely to occur. This makes good accounting sense. The asset on the balance sheet is now less valuable, so you should record a charge. Otherwise, you'd be misleading investors. The Democrats, however, seem to believe that Generally Accepted Accounting Principles are some sort of conspiracy against...

* 3/17/10 at 10:58 AM Former Lehman Executives ‘Giggle’ at ‘Nonprofessionals’ Who Think Losing Billions of Dollars Is a Big Deal How do you think former Lehman Brothers executives felt about the recently released report on the firm's failure that reveals, among other things, the firm used a weird accounting practice known as "Repo 105" to move $50 billion of toxic mortgage assets off its books in order to make its balance sheet look healthier? Embarrassed? Regretful? Are they thinking to themselves Wow, in retrospect, that does look pretty bad. What were we thinking? Not really, no. This morning's Post...

One of Britain’s biggest companies could face legal action over the $700 billion collapse of Lehman Brothers, a scathing report revealed today. Accountancy giant Ernst & Young failed to challenge the book-keeping 'gimmicks' the American investment bank was using to stay afloat, according to report author Anton Velukas. He concludes that the British firm been 'negligent' and that Lehman could pursue claims against the firm for 'professional malpractice'. It is also revealed that one of the UK's leading law firms gave Lehman the green light to use the accountancy gimmick - known as 'Repo 105' - in the first place....

Next Tuesday is James Madison's birthday and National Freedom of Information Act Day, the high point of Sunshine Week celebrations of the public's right to know. Madison enshrined that right with the First Amendment's guarantee of an independent press. President Obama could use the occasion to strike a major blow for transparency with one simple directive: He could tell the Federal Housing Finance Agency to drop its nonsensical claim that it doesn't have to make public Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac documents, especially those concerning federal campaign contributions made on behalf of the two agencies in the years leading to...

Hello fellow DBA and other small business owners, I'm seeking advice about accounting software for small business operations. I've used Quickbooks for decades and I'm looking for a new application since my business has upgraded to Win-7, which is WOW btw. QB has become a tiresome and time consuming ordeal since the old school support has become a memory of the past. What app do you use and how long? Does it fare well with small DBA’? And any other input would be gratefully appreciated.

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) says the Obama administration is using an accounting “gimmick” in its budget by not including the debt owed by mortgage firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “The accounting gimmicks that are used today would make an Enron and WorldCom accountant blush,” Hensarling told reporters. “The American people know that under the policies of this administration—under the policies of this Congress—we are drowning in a sea of red i

Have not done this in a while and I know we all love it lol. I have been posting this every now and again, but don't believe I have seen one this year. :) Let's just have a fun post today.

Secretary Kathleen Sebelius discusses abortion coverage in the Senate health bill with a representative from BlogHer on December 21, 2009

... recent study, "Minorities in Tax 2010," conducted by TaxDiversity, a web site dedicated solely to issues of diversity in the accounting profession. Although some noticeable progress has been made between 2002 and 2008, "the accounting profession has made very limited strides in both attracting and advancing minorities within the field," the study finds. Among the study's key findings: * Overall, white people are exiting the tax profession at a faster rate than many other professions. * Even though the number of Blacks in the public accounting profession has increased by 25 percent between 2002 and 2008, they still only...

It took just five weeks after the WorldCom accounting scandal erupted in 2002 for Congress to pass, and President George W. Bush to sign, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. That... --snip-- The House Financial Services Committee this week approved an amendment to the Investor Protection Act of 2009 — a name George Orwell would appreciate — to allow most companies to never comply with the law, and mandating a study to see whether it would be a good idea to exempt additional ones as well. Some veterans of past reform efforts were left sputtering with rage. “That the Democratic Party is the...

Four thousand years ago, a government bureaucrat in Mesopotamia jotted down a tally of slave laborers on a clay tablet. The bureaucrat left behind the count in wedge-shaped symbols that proved hard to fully decipher with the naked eye. Until now. Researchers at the University of Southern California's West Semitic Research Project have helped uncover its hidden narrative with the aid of lighting and imaging techniques that are credited with revolutionizing the study of ancient texts. Over the last three decades, the USC project has produced thousands of crisp images of inscriptions and other artifacts from biblical Israel and other...

Vast Cache of Financial Papers Is Rich in Details One day in 1791, President George Washington received a bill for 60 pounds, 1 shilling and 7 pence from his physician friend James Craik, who regularly made the rounds at Mount Vernon. The invoice ran two pages: "Anodyne Pills for Breachy . . . Laxative Pills for Ruth . . . syphilic Pills for Maria . . . oz 1 Antiphlogistie Anodyne Tincture . . . Bleeding Charlotte . . . oz 4 Powdered Rhubarb . . . Extracting one of your Negroes tooth . . . a Mercurial Purge for...

The bankruptcy of Colonial Bank (CNB) was the largest bank-bankruptcy in the U.S. since several large, U.S. financial institutions collapsed last year – with the most recent being Washington Mutual, last fall. However, there is one huge difference between the mega-bankruptcies of last year and the collapse of Colonial Bank a week ago. During the large bank-failures of 2008, the acquiring institutions wrote-down the “assets” on the books of these banks by an average of 18% - according to a Bloomberg article. However, when BB&T Corp purchased Colonial, it immediately wrote-down Colonial's assets by 37%, double the amount of discounting...

Even beleaguered Ford Motors has found it easy to "make" money once again. It reported a $2.3 billion second-quarter profit...

If the government wants to spend money on a program — presuming it’s unwilling to simply roll the printing presses — it must choose between two ways of acquiring the needed funds. It can borrow the money, or it can raise it through taxation. Neither source is ideal. The disadvantage of raising taxes is obvious. The disadvantage of borrowing stems from markets taking notice, and — if you do it often and irresponsibly enough — punishing you for it.

The board that sets U.S. accounting standards on Thursday gave companies more leeway when valuing assets, providing a potential boost to battered banks' balance sheets. The independent Financial Accounting Standards Board voted to adopt new guidelines under the so-called mark-to-market accounting rules, which require companies to value assets at prices reflecting current market conditions. The board was meeting at its headquarters in Norwalk, Conn. The changes will allow the assets to be valued at what they would go for in an "orderly" sale, as opposed to a forced or distressed sale. The new guidelines will apply to the second quarter...

Accounting: a Narrative Art? If U.S. GAAP becomes principles-based, financial executives would do well to become students of Mother Goose. David M. Katz - CFO.com | US March 13, 2009 The move to a principles-based accounting system is likely to demand that corporate finance executives be good yarn-spinners, speakers at the annual CFO Rising conference said. A system less like the rules-based U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and more like the judgment-focused international financial reporting standards (IFRS) would draw more heavily on the narrative skills of finance executives, according to David Sherman, a professor of accounting at Northeastern University....

Top US lawmakers said Thursday that Congress would take action if accounting regulators and rulemakers failed to quickly improve the mark-to-market accounting standard that has forced banks to record billions of dollars in asset writedowns. "If the regulators and standard setters do not act now to improve the standards, then the Congress will have no other option than to act itself," Paul Kanjorski, the chairman of the US House capital markets subcommittee, told a hearing he called to examine the accounting standard. The Financial Accounting Standards Board is working on new guidance to help banks determine whether a market is...

We have been accused of beating a dead horse when it comes to our support for either suspension of, or targeted relief from, market-to-market accounting. And we suppose after writing thousands of words, producing videos and giving speeches about the issue, some might be tempted to let it go. But we can't do that, especially when the government continues to spend trillions of dollars and is coming very close to bank nationalization. Article Controls email print reprint newsletter comments (59) share del.icio.us Digg It! yahoo Facebook rss Yahoo! BuzzThis is a real shame. Suspending mark-to-market accounting could fix major problems...

China's Accounting: The Next Debacle? Speaking of China, I’m going to tell you now, long before all the media experts tell you that - THEY – “told you so first”. China is a ticking ACCOUNTING time bomb. You think we’ve had accounting scandals, wait till you get a load of China. Within the next few months to a year, sagacious media “experts” will be telling you

The odds 10,000 to 1 are not good for the public's financial health. Every one of the well-known debacle companies had CPA auditors who said the financial statements were just fine. For AIG it was PricewaterhouseCoopers. Lehman Brothers (the largest bankruptcy in American history) had Ernst & Young. Fannie Mae's fiascos were OK'd by Deloitte & Touche. KPMG was responsible for Countrywide. The $50 billion Madoff Ponzi scheme somehow could not be detected by numerous CPA auditors for its investors. Is the loss to the investing public $1 trillion, $2 trillion, or more? How many life savings are destroyed? How...

Bankers who've been seeking Congress’ help to suspend "mark to market" accounting rules lost a battle today: The staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission recommended in a report that mark-to-market rules should be maintained, although "improved." The report had been ordered up by Congress in October as part of the financial-system bailout. The banking industry asserts that mark-to-market, or fair-value, accounting worsened the financial crisis. The rules require require financial institutions to value securities on their books at current market prices, even if the securities don't mature for many years.

Why are the Pharisees of Accounting in the U.S. trying so hard to destroy American business? Having crippled high tech entrepreneurship and made it nearly impossible for any U.S. company to ‘go public’, the people who set the rules of financial disclosure are now making corporate financials so obscure that investors literally have no way of knowing the financial condition of their companies.

To a supporter of capitalism and free markets, the current debate over a Treasury Department proposal for a $700 billion fund to purchase illiquid assets, is troubling on many fronts. First, a temporary and targeted change in mark-tomarket accounting rules could help solve the current financial market problems at much lower cost. But this alternative has been dismissed with very little in the way of debate. Second, when the public hears that the government must save the economy from capitalism run amok, it loses faith in our free market system. In other words, the huge Treasury proposal has accelerated the...

The credit meltdown has spawned a few false villains, and one is “mark-to-market” accounting. Too many observers—including Congress’s Republican Study Committee—think that if we just suspend the accounting rule that requires financial firms to report certain investments at fair market value, then the crisis will go away. But accounting isn’t the culprit here.

Economist Wesbury is saying that if we change that one rule and don't force them to mark down to market value and just let them hold on to all the stuff, and say just on sub-primes for this period of time you can change that rule -- a temporary change -- that'll free the market up. It's seized right now; it's frozen. This will thaw it out and get it going again. He says that'll solve 60% of the problem ... and I think he's right.

FASB Votes To Remove QSPE Concept From FAS 140, FIN 46R Yesterday (April 2, 2008), FASB voted to remove the Qualified Special Purpose Entity (QSPE) concept (used for some securitizations) from FAS 140, Accounting for Transfers and Servicing of Financial Assets and Extinguishments of Liabilities, and to remove the related scope exception from FIN 46R, Consolidation of Variable Interest Entities (VIEs). In addition to removing the QSPE concept, the board also approved amendments to the derecognition criteria in paragraph 9 of FAS 140 (changes shown in redline form on pages 1-2 of the board handout), and agreed to provide guidance...

Senior executives of the Texas Department of Transportation can expect some heavy grilling from state legislators when the state Legislature convenes next January, state Rep. Jim McReynolds said Friday. Speaking to the monthly First Friday luncheon of The Chamber, Lufkin-Angelina County, McReynolds said many legislators, especially those from rural East Texas, are unhappy with TxDOT leaders over the Trans- Texas Corridor project and how it has incorporated plans for an Interstate 69 through the region. McReynolds said he attended all four of the TxDOT hearings on the TTC held in his district, which included one in Diboll, and "never heard...

ALGORITHMS sound scary, of interest only to dome-headed mathematicians. In fact they have become the instruction manuals for a host of routine consumer transactions. Browse for a book on Amazon.com and algorithms generate recommendations for other titles to buy. Buy a copy and they help a logistics firm to decide on the best delivery route. Ring to check your order's progress and more algorithms spring into action to determine the quickest connection to and through a call-centre. From analysing credit-card transactions to deciding how to stack supermarket shelves, algorithms now underpin a large amount of everyday life. Their pervasiveness reflects...

But complaints fell on deaf ears, ex-employee says. Michelle Cawthra, the state tax department supervisor accused of stealing $10 million of public funds, was abusive and demeaning to subordinates for years, according to a worker who quit over what he called her "dysfunctional management." But despite employees' repeated complaints to top management, Cawthra seemed untouchable, James McClarnon said. "The management of Michelle Cawthra and (her boss) Janet Swaney has made Income Tax Accounting into the most dysfunctional section I have ever worked in," McClarnon, 49, wrote in an exit interview. McClarnon, a tax supervisor who reported to Cawthra, quit March...

The company said after U.S. markets closed that an audit panel had found accounting errors and evidence of misconduct. Dell also said it will delay filing its Form 10-K until it has completed an internal investigation.

According to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's financial condition is "fantastic." Spending has been brought under control, the budget has been balanced, and our debt is being paid down. ... --snip-- ... In fact, spending is growing faster than it did under his recalled predecessor, Gray Davis. The state is now running the biggest deficit in its history, and the only way it can pay its bills is because of massive borrowing carried over from 2004, ... --snip-- The governor justifies his claim that the budget is balanced by concocting a new accounting concept he calls the "net operating deficit." Here's...

Like many other baseball fans, Joe Kosa, 28, is spending his Sunday glued to a TV. But relaxed he's not. Instead, the ESPN (NYSE:DIS - News) production assistant is stationed in front of dozens of flat-screen TVs tuned to global sporting events at the headquarters of the Disney-owned network. He's furiously jotting down notes to weave into a storyline that will be read in 60 seconds flat on tonight's 6 p.m. SportsCenter broadcast. With the San Diego Padres leading the Chicago Cubs 9-0, the outcome is hardly in doubt, and writing the highlights should be easy. Then, Clay Hensley, who...

Budget analysts changed employee time cards to allow the San Diego City Attorney's Office to funnel extra money from lucrative special city accounts, according to results of an internal investigation released yesterday. City Attorney Michael Aguirre said the improper accounting, which took place from 1997 to 2004, included time cards being altered to reflect work for the wrong department, and part-time work billed as full-time. Questionable billing of other city departments continued in his office through this week, Aguirre acknowledged, even though he said he put new policies in place to stop the activities within a month after he took...

Senator's Lieberman's troubled campaign and recent steps to possibly run as an independent have frequently been topics of discussion lately. I don't care which Democrat win the primary in CT in large part because I don't live there. For years liberals blamed Enron, Worldcom and other business scandals on President Bush. People neglected years ago and even more recently during the race in CT the fact that Lieberman led the charge to fight attemps to bar the controversial practice of barring auditing firms from billing corporations for high priced consulting which in many cases translated to the auditing firms turning...

Blaming every other company in the U.S. for the Enron and WorldCom scandals has been a bonanza for accountants and a killer for small companies especially. Congress need to correct a very bad law. To address reform of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (Sarb-Ox), recall that it was passed in the political furor following the Enron and WorldCom scandals to try to prevent future accounting frauds. Let's start with its most obvious, largely unintended, consequences. Sarb-Ox, with its notorious Section 404 requiring internal control certifications in particular, has created a tremendously expensive amount of paperwork and bureaucracy. In the Sarb-Ox...

Startling facts from the recent Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances indicate that the typical American family has about $3,800 in the bank, no retirement account, no mutual funds and no stocks or bonds. Financial planners suggest families do the following to avoid financial ... http://www.financialfitnessohio.com/Main.aspx?MenuItem=580 http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2006/financesurvey.pdf

For at least the past 30 years protectionists have warned that the trade deficit will lead to ruin, but . . . Since the mid-1980s the trade deficit has risen when the economy has grown and receded when the economy has faltered . . . . . . In the national income accounts, the mirror image of a merchandise trade deficit is a capital import surplus. When the U.S. investment climate improves - through such policies as reducing the tax rate on capital gains - global investment dollars flow into the U.S. Foreigners in turn earn the dollars to pay...

Motley Fool A Dubious Sign of the Times Tuesday March 7, 3:17 pm ET By Tim Beyers I've long wanted to own stock in New York Times (NYSE: NYT - News) for several reasons. I love the paper. I'm a big fan of About.com. And then there's sentimental angle: I'm a New York native. But there's one big reason why I'm not buying the stock. A check of the proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday reveals that chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and CEO Janet Robinson both received hefty bonuses despite meeting less than 60%...

Exclusive Ernst and Young should go ahead and pony up for its own suite of transparency services. The accounting firm has failed to disclose a high profile loss of customer data after being confronted by The Register. Ernst and Young has lost a laptop containing data such as the social security numbers of its customers. One of the people affected by the data loss appears to be Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, who was notified that his social security number and personal information have been compromised. While pushing all out transparency for its customers, Ernst and Young failed to...

WASHINGTON — An extensive investigation of embattled Fannie Mae (FNM) points to its former finance chief and controller as mainly responsible for the accounting failures at the mortgage giant now struggling to emerge from an $11 billion scandal, said a report released Thursday. The report by a team of investigators led by former Sen. Warren Rudman also found that former chairman and CEO Franklin Raines, while not sharing direct responsibility, contributed to a culture of arrogance at the government-sponsored company. The report comes about 17 months after the revelation that federal regulators had discovered violations of accounting rules and earnings...