Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Ken Lewis Should Have Been a CPA

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez

KenLewisNOPEb.jpgWe know public accounting is hard. The unpaid overtime (*cough* perhaps PwC can tell you about that *cough*), busy season, the misconception that all CPAs are number-crunching mathletes, and, of course, the inconvenience of having to answer everyone’s obscure tax questions. “Dude, I don’t even WORK in tax, I’m an auditor.” “Yeah but I just have this quick question about a deduction…”
As bad as the CPAs may have it, they’ve got it easy compared to this guy. Poor Ken Lewis. Someone invite him to waste a few years in public accounting please, he’s getting pounded from every angle over here, poor bastard.
Let’s check the timeline – please compare to your busy season and see who has it worse if you’re still regretting your decision.
More on KL’s banner year, after the jump


Ken Lewis’ year started sucking in January after the Merrill bonus scandal erupted. This got NY State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on his back, eventually leading to the Fedgate scandal in which Lewis claimed Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson “threatened” the Bank of America CEO or kept him on a short TARP leash or some such “OMG did he really just say that?” revelation. He’d already come off a pretty rough year previous but you already know that story.
Bernanke and Paulson didn’t take getting fronted off too kindly (we can only assume) and Lewis hasn’t really gotten a break since. The guy couldn’t even sell his Porsche without feeling the heat. Now a judge is blocking the $33 million settlement he’d love to make with the SEC and some Citigroup reject is being groomed as his replacement. Burn. Oh, and then there are the JP Morgan analysts saying Bank of America will service the loans that TBW cannot since, well, it was raided by Federal agents and barred from making loans by the FHA.
So how bad do you really have it? We told you it could be worse. Next time you’re out there ticking and tying wondering how in the hell you’re going to spend the rest of your life that way, just think about Bank of America and remember you could be Ken Lewis right about now.
What we’d really like to know is: will Lewis be able to limp along for the next 3 years and make it to retirement before totally flipping out?

Related Posts

SHOCKER: Joe Francis May Have Attracted Slimy Business People

Joe-Francis.jpgJoe Francis, perhaps thinking that his strategy to deduct anything related to topless girls might not pan out, is now claiming that he was the victim of three former executives who conspired to embezzle millions of dollars.
“Using shadow companies doing business…the men allegedly filed and then approved phony invoices they wrote themselves. The lawsuit also accuses [one former executive] of filing hundreds of thousands of dollars in false expense reports, for which he reimbursed himself through the company payroll.”
Hard to believe that a pillar of wholesome entertainment like Joe Francis would have attracted people that would take advantage of his lack of knowledge about internal control structures but maybe we don’t know the whole story.
‘Girls Gone Wild’ Founder Accuses CPA of Going Wild [Web CPA]

IASB Chairman Would Like the SEC to Get With It

TOLD YOU.jpgSir David Tweedie, IASB Chairman, would sure appreciate it if the SEC would make up its damn mind about whether or not to commit to converging U.S. GAAP with IFRS. He spoke at the American Association of Accountants (AAA) annual meeting in New York yesterday and figured he might as well call out the SEC, who seems to be stonewalling him. He’s giving them until 2011 to figure it out.
Tweedie has been making like some kind of financial reporting missionary, going all around the world preaching the good word of IFRS. He’s said he’ll have 150 believers by 2011. But everywhere he goes, all anyone can talk about is whether the U.S. is converted yet.
More, after the jump

“That is a question I am asked all around the world. The convergence program is designed to reduce the cost of transition. FASB is riding two horses: US GAAP and trying to converge at the same time, but so are we.”…If you’re going to have global standards, we need the US, but it can’t go on indefinitely,” he said

We’re impressed that the knighted bean counter is putting his foot down here. We figured the SEC and the FASB could just continue doing whatever it is they do and Tweedie would just keeping asking them about it every month or so like they owed him fifty bucks.
Tweedie Warns of 2011 Deadline for IFRS Choice [Web CPA via Accountancy Age]

Footnotes: McGladrey Classic More Classic Than Ever; Your Future; Stupid Emails are the Problem | 10.22.14

Divided U.S. SEC adopts mortgage rule, decries lax lending U.S. securities regulators adopted a rule […]