Maybe it’s because everyone is still working like crazy and couldn’t get away for a TV appearance. Maybe Jim Turley couldn’t find decent footwear but how CNBC managed to get only ONE accounting expert in on this panel to talk about the Ernst & Young, Dick Fuld, et al. Sarbanes-Oxley and the Repo 105 is beyond our comprehension. Throw in four journalists and a “fellow” and you’ve got yourself quite the free-wheeling discussion on the double-entry system.
Personally, “[N]ot technically violating the rules, that’s why the auditors could kind of sign off on it even though it was incredibly misleading and deceptive,” was our favorite line.
But the poor accounting expert seemed to be a nervous wreck. Aren’t wet bars standard?
In a November 15 letter to the SEC, FAF chairman John J. Brennan wrote that reducing FASB’s role in setting U.S. financial reporting standards “may weaken the positive leverage that U.S. GAAP and U.S. standard setting have provided to improving accounting standards for investors in the world’s most robust and transparent capital markets.” The FAF also disputed the SEC staff’s proposed goal of achieving one set of global accounting standards. Instead, the organization feels that “a more practical goal for the foreseeable future is to achieve highly comparable (but not necessarily identical) financial reporting standards among the most developed capital markets that are based on a common set of international standards.” [