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Accounting News Roundup: Rick Perry Wants Fewer Words; Back to the Future of CPAs; Justifying Class Warfare | 10.20.11

Perry Takes Up Flat-Tax Banner [WSJ]
The Texas governor said in a speech Wednesday to the Western Republican Leadership Conference in Las Vegas that he would lay out details of a flat-tax plan that “starts with scrapping the three million words of the current tax code, and starting over with something much simpler: a flat tax.”

Protests Show Capitalism ‘Nearly Broken’ [Bloomberg]
The protesters camping in London in support of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators may be right and capitalism risks losing its “license to operate,” Generation Investment Management LLP’s David Blood said. Blood, who worked at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) for 18 years before starting fund manager Generation with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore in 2004, said the protesters’ message is that the financial system is “broken” and “unfair.”

Groupon Discounts IPO [WSJ]
The Chicago company and its bankers will begin meeting with investors in the next few days to sell them on a deal that values the daily deals pioneer at less than $12 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. While that would still mark one of the biggest Internet IPOs since Google Inc. in 2004, it is well below the valuations that were bandied about when the company filed to go public in June.

JetBlue Falls After Finance Chief Quits Week Before Earnings [BBW]
JetBlue Airways Corp. fell the most in two weeks after Chief Financial Officer Ed Barnes resigned ahead of the carrier’s earnings report. Barnes’s departure, effective immediately, was announced after the stock market closed yesterday. The resignation was a “personal decision” that had been planned for some time, said Mateo Lleras, a spokesman for New York-based JetBlue.

Certified Management Accountant Exam Offered in Chinese [AT]
“For nearly 40 years, the CMA certification program has been the globally-recognized credential for accountants and financial professionals in business, through an exam assessment, continuing education, and compliance with the highest ethical standards,” said Dennis Whitney, ICMA senior vice president, in a statement. “Following the success of the revised two-part CMA exam curriculum in English, we are pleased to offer the exam in Simplified Chinese.”

Citigroup to Pay $285 Million to Settle Fraud Charges [WSJ]
Wall Street’s total price tag on settlements with U.S. securities regulators for allegedly misleading investors about mortgage bonds churned out ahead of the financial crisis surged past $1 billion with a deal by Citigroup Inc. to pay $285 million. he New York company agreed to the payment to end civil-fraud charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission related to a 2007 deal called Class V Funding III. The SEC claimed Citigroup sold slices of the $1 billion mortgage-bond deal without disclosing to investors that the bank was shorting $500 million of the deal, or betting its assets would lose value.

CPA Horizons 2025: A Road Map for the Future [JofA]
Good news: you won’t be extinct.


Is Class Warfare Justified? [Tax.com/Martin Sullivan]
Maybe!

Grover Norquist defends no-tax pledge [Politico]
Aka: “Dog Bites Man.”

Posted in ANR