I have no idea what took us so long but effective today, we're going to run a weekly Busy Season Zen moment for you to forget about your troubles and gently fade into a moment outside of yourself where there is no work, no annoying guy loudly yapping a few cubes down, no PCAOB inspectors, no comment section trolls spouting off their opinions.
Close your eyes for a moment (after you finish reading this, obvs) and get centered. Picture yourself at your desk, then floating above your desk, and now you are floating above your building. Zoom out, you're floating above your city now, then your state, then the entire country. Suddenly you realize just how insignificant your misery is, watching the clouds swirl around Earth from the nothing of space…
…found your happy place now? Good. Now watch this baby sea otter having a little snack.
If you have a suggestion for a future Busy Season Zen moment, send it over!
But what we’d really like to see him have a conversation with Barry Minkow about how that Barry thinks the Congressman’s report on Goldline International is unmitigated bullshit:
Friend of GC, Tracy Coenen participated in the Minkow’s investigation and she presents the findings over at Fraud Files Blog. Here’s a sample:
• Allegation: Weiner criticizes Goldline because of complaints on the website Ripoff Report lodged by consumers who say Goldline representatives improperly hold themselves out as investment advisors.
• What Weiner didn’t tell you: Ripoff Report says (in response to the consumer complaints) that you can feel completely confident doing business with Goldline. Weiner gave us only half of the story in his report.
Allegation: Goldline grossly overcharges for its products
What Weiner didn’t tell you: Our sampling of coins listed in the Weiner report showed that Goldline’s prices were very comparable to those of six competitors. He also forgot to mention that companies are free to set whatever prices they like for their products.
Allegation: Goldline says they’ll buy back your gold and silver, but doesn’t “guarantee” that
What Weiner didn’t tell you: It is against the law for Goldline to offer a buyback guarantee. If they offered such a guarantee, they would be in violation of securities laws because their salespeople are not licensed broker dealers.
Regardless of how you feel about Glenn Beck, gold coins, or Anthony Weiner’s Fox News-esque ability for interrupting, it kinda sorta sounds like the Congressman’s investigators don’t know a non-fraud when they see one. Besides, we’ll take the word of a convicted-felon-turned-fraud-buster over any report that comes out of Congress. Especially in an election year.
A message left with Congressman Weiner’s spokesperson was not immediately returned.
The Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs is tired of everyone thinking that accountants are humorless, soulless, number crunching (did we mention green eyeshade wearing?) nerds, so they decided do something about it.
The PICPA has developed two videos to show everyone that not only are CPAs important business advisors, they can be creative and yes, funny. Despite where you fall on the comedic spectrum (Brian Regan, Chris Rock, Lewis Black, Larry the Cable Guy, Seinfeld, whatevs) you’ve got to admit that this is by far the best attempt at plugging the services that CPAs can provide out there. It doesn’t go the emotional route like Grant Thornton’s campaign or just miss the mark completely like BDO. This is purely for comedic value and it’s refreshing.
Granted, the PICPA is a professional association and not a firm so we aren’t expecting any firm to go with a Big Foot parody or 80s drug ads but let’s keep this angle fresh in our minds, shall we, accounting firms?
