We just received word that Pandora is blocked for Uncle Ernie's troops. We're thinking if BW had got ahold of this news, E&Y would have dropped out of at least the top five. We think this is a strange way to wish everyone a nice holiday weekend but we understand that everyone shows love differently. Anyone else out there now working in eerie 2001-esque silence? Confirm for us or discuss in the comments.
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Chicago Learns the Importance of Public Comment
We haven’t seen outrage like this since FASB bent over and rewrote mark to market!
Denver is now considering taking a cue from a Chicago plan that basically pimped out the city’s parking meters for a lump-sum lease payment instead of relying on a constant stream of unknown revenue in quarters. Genius… sort of.
More, after the jump
Councilman Doug Linkhart would like to solve the city’s $120 million budget shortfall with quarters. But instead of fixing the deficit one quarter at a time — about $9 million in revenue from parking meters per year — the councilman would like to sell the city’s parking meter revenue stream to a private firm for one lump sum — as much as $430 million — and then use some of the money to close the budget gap. “It’s got some potential,” Linkhart told the Denver Daily News on Friday. “It sounds like a good idea … by no means is it perfect, and by no means is it exactly what I would do … but the concept is certainly worth looking into.”
That’s all well and good and on the surface it appears as though this plan cannot possibly go wrong, right? I hope Denver is watching how this unravels before jumping prematurely on the parking meter pawn shop bandwagon.
Hmm:
Clint Krislov, a Chicago attorney for a group of taxpayers, said on Thursday that a Cook County Circuit Court judge on August 28 will hear their petition to allow the lawsuit challenging the deal to proceed. “The contract is illegal so we’re asking (the court) to block spending tax dollars on it,” Krislov said. “After the transaction closed, the city continued to expend public funds to maintain and repair CPM’s privately controlled meters based on complaints that a number of CPM’s parking meters were disabled, would not take coins, did not properly recognize the coins placed in the meters, and displayed inaccurate parking rates and times of enforcement,” the lawsuit stated.
Chicago taxpayers have a point. You cannot use city streets as a private pawn shop and then apply taxpayer money to pay interest on your pawned items. Perhaps someone can point to the FASB that says as much?
IASB, FASB Are Really, Really Getting Serious About Convergence
Do you have doubts about the IASB and FASB’s commitment to accounting rule convergence? What? The name change idea didn’t convince you?
Well, David Tweedie and Bob Herz both addressed doubters attendees at a joint conference of the American Institute of CPAs and the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation in New York to let them know that they are redoubling and in some cases, retripling their efforts to get this done.
The boards intend to hold more joint face-to-face meetings, in some cases by video conference, in order to make faster progress.
“We’re going to work on these issues together every month,” said Tweedie. “That’s why we think we’ll make our June 2011 target date.”
Monthly meetings. Some will be face-to-face. When they can’t do that, there will be video conferencing. Is there any doubt how serious they are taking this? This should be a piece of cake now. Oh sure, maybe they’re going to agree to disagree on the fair value thing but who said that’s important?
Wait a minute. Sir David Tweedie’s confidence seems shaky:
The approach may or may not work, and Tweedie acknowledged that some of the standards may take several years to be finalized. In many cases, they will be moving targets. But the goal of achieving a June 2011 convergence of the two sets of standards still seems doable, he insisted, and it would be a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
Good lord. Which is it people? Let’s just agree that accounting standards will be kinda-sorta converged by June 2011 and the rest of them will be converged “at a date yet to be determined”. We understand that the pressure is tough. No need to commit to anything.
IASB and FASB to Meet Monthly on Standards Overhaul [Web CPA]
Accounting Standard-Setters Will Get Much Chummier [Web CPA Debits & Credits]
Earlier: IASB: You Want a New Fair Value Rule? You Got It. Just Don’t Ask Us About Convergence