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Not Another Task Force

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez

GOVT.jpgEditor’s Note: Want more JDA? You can see all of her posts for GC here, her blog here and stalk her on Twitter.
Our dear President has created a “Task Force” to handle those tricky problems like baby Madoffs so we can sleep at night knowing we are safe from the financial crooks robbing us blind.
Or can we?


WaPo:

Top Obama administration officials on Tuesday announced a new federal task force to combat financial fraud after deciding that the number and complexity of investigations linked to the economic crisis require a more coordinated response from government agencies.
Created by executive order, the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force targets fraud related to mortgage lending and modification, securities law, stimulus spending and the government’s bailout of the financial sector.

Meanwhile, in absolutely related news, ABC News discovered this week that Recovery.gov shows stimulus funds saving or creating jobs in Congressional districts that don’t even exist. There are tons of them so no one tell me that it’s a rounding error.
Oh wait, they admitted they screwed up and are now fixing it.
Back to this “task force.” Maybe I’m confused but don’t we already have something like that and it failed to get the first Madoff?
The Department of Justice-led task force will include officials from the SEC, Treasury, and Department of Housing and Urban Development. Sounds like a winning crew.
Attorney General Eric Holder insists that one of the task force’s main targets will be “Recovery Act and rescue fraud,” insisting “we will ensure that the taxpayers’ investment in America’s economic recovery is not siphoned away by a dishonest few.”
A dishonest few?
Like the 95 completely made up people on the Recovery.gov website who worked on that sewer project in Wisconsin?
Or the Georgia Head Start administrator who was advised to claim “317” jobs where his organization had really only gotten raises for its 317 employees?
The AP has been watching the stimulus numbers closely, and they continue to check out wrong. It doesn’t take an accountant, nor a task force, to figure that out.

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Family Planning and the CPA Exam

For this particular post, as much as I would love to throw my experience with CPA exam candidates and children (sometimes interchangeable, mind you) around, I’m going to do something a little bit different. Would any of you with experience in the following care to weigh in and help?

Here’s the question via a CPA Exam Club member:

I am having a baby in 2 months and wasn’t planning on taking any parts of the exam until 2011, when I will hopefully have more rested nights and energy to study. However, after starting to do research about the CPA exam I discovered all of the changes taking place in 2011 and decided that it seemed prudent to get FAR out of the way in 201and can basically devote all of my time to studying until I have the baby and after I have the baby in order to take the exam in November. I am a pretty disciplined person with good time management. I am pretty quick at getting things done. I also got a 2nd bachelors in accounting and just completed a masters in accounting as well. Do you think I am being unrealistic in my pursuit of passing FAR in 2010?

If you think I can achieve this goal, what do you advise CPA hopefuls to do in order to pass? I am very determined to try and pass on the first try and would do whatever it takes in order to do so.

First of all, I remember what being 7 months pregnant felt like and while I loved being pregnant with my son, at that point the very last thing I would have been able to do would have been to study. So my first piece of advice not just to our little CPA exam candidate friend above but all of you with family plans on the horizon is to WAIT until you have passed the CPA exam to start cranking out the tax deductions. The exam is hard enough on its own, add a career and kids into the mix (especially for Moms) and you have a recipe for disappointment. Or at least a nervous breakdown, which you probably don’t want either.

I often tell candidates to be prepared for any and every possible thing to go wrong and mess up their perfect plans along the way. For parents, it’s almost a guarantee that even our best-laid plans will somehow be ruined, delayed or otherwise compromised.

Discipline is a requirement to get through the exam but even your best intentions can’t fight the inevitable. I could barely function once my son was born (waking up every 2 hours to feed will do that to you), let alone actually do anything productive.

So my advice to you is to wait. Wait until your child is a little older (or at a minimum sleeping through the night) and hopefully you have a supportive partner who will happily babysit while you head off to live CPA review classes. I can’t tell you how many Moms I have seen in live classes, most of whom refuse to take advantage of the convenience of online, on-demand review simply because they are desperate for a break. You know it’s bad when you’d take 8 hours of government and non-profit accounting over being at home with your brood but let’s face it, this Mom thing is the world’s roughest gig.

It sounds to me like you have a plan and that’s awesome but be sure you are being realistic. It’s already almost September, meaning the last window of 2010 is close upon us and if you haven’t already made an appointment at Prometric, you might run yourself into the ground trying to squeeze FAR in (that’s if you can even get in to schedule). And let’s just say you pass (which I’m confident you will once you get off the ground) and then have the baby. What happens when motherhood takes its toll and you aren’t able to resume studying until your child is a year old and your 18 month window is fast approaching?

Enjoy these last two months, take care of yourself and bask in your baby once he or she arrives. The exam will be here waiting patiently in the meantime and by then maybe the AICPA BoE will have ironed out all the IFRS kinks or thrown out new content altogether. Trust me, the changes next year are not that big of a deal and CBT-e will actually be easier than 2010’s exam if I’m guessing correctly (I usually do). You will put in no more effort in 2011 to pass than you would have in 2010 so better to spend the energy when you actually have it instead of running yourself into the ground at a time when you need to be in fighting shape.

Hope that helps!

If you have a CPA exam question for us, get in touch and we’ll do our best to answer.

Fed Governor Duke: Accounting Should Come With Incentives

motivation.jpgEditor’s note: Adrienne Gonzalez is founder and managing editor of Jr Deputy Accountant as well as regular contributor to leading financial/investment sites like Seeking Alpha and GoldmanSachs666. You see all of her posts for GC by going here. By day, she teaches unlicensed accountants to pass the CPA exam, though what she does in her copious amounts of freetime in the evening is really none of your business. Follow her adventures in Fedbashing and CPA-wrangling on Twitter @adrigonzo but please don’t show up unannounced at her San Francisco office as she’s got a mean streak. Her favorite FASB is 166.
What do you get when you cross a Federal Reserve governor and the AICPA? Well I wish I could say unicorns and rainbows but really all you get is Fed Governor Elizabeth Duke on, what else, regulation.
Regulatory Perspectives on the Changing Accounting Landscape doesn’t exactly sound like a party but what do you expect? Unemployment is up, revenues are down and let’s face it, things aren’t looking too good for the short term. You’ve got to give Duke some level of credit for trying.
More, after the jump


Firstly, we feel it prudent to point out that Duke is no CPA. She couldn’t tell a debit from a credit if her life depended on it, at least in j/e form, but we’re willing to bet as a banker she’s probably better at sniffing out capital requirements than, say, that brainiac Bernanke.

Given my background as a community banker, I feel it is crucial that an accounting regime directly link reported financial condition and performance with the business model and economic purpose of the firm. It is difficult for me to comprehend the value of an accounting regime that doesn’t make that link.
To be frank, it has been frustrating to try to assess that viability when the value of an asset is based on the nature of its acquisition rather than the way in which it is managed or the way in which its economic value is likely to be realized.

What’s so frustrating about assessing an asset? Either it’s worth something or it’s worthless. Any idiot can figure that out, even yours truly.
Duke implies in her speech that fair value is only useful if the instrument (read: creative and probably entirely made-up security) is being sold or desired by some third party (read: those gullible Chinese who bought all of our weak ass mortgage-backed securities back in the good old housing bubble days) and entirely useless for anything else. In other words, the proof is in the cash flows.
Leave it to a banker to assume that balance sheets are so easily manipulated by instruments passing from buyer to seller and somehow entirely irrelevant in the time in between. As a banker, we expected better from her. Surely she understands that capital requirements dictate those “useless” securities on the “assets” side of bank balance sheets count towards the bank’s overall viability? Apparently not.
In fact, Duke seems to think that fair value can backfire on smaller institutions who may not have the borrowing leverage of, say, a beast like Goldman Sachs. Or better, Lehman Brothers. Before they went bankrupt that is.
All in all, interesting thoughts from the Fed Board on this one but until they pull out someone with practical accounting experience, it might as well have come from Perez Hilton for all I care. Next!

The CPA Exam for Commitmentphobes

Editor’s note: Adrienne Gonzalez is founder and managing editor of Jr Deputy Accountant as well as regular contributor to leading financial/investment sites like Seeking Alpha and GoldmanSachs666. You see all of her posts for GC by going here. By day, she teaches unlicensed accountants to pass the CPA exam, though what she does in her copious amounts of freetime in the evening is really none of your business. Follow her adventures in Fedbashing and CPA-wrangling on Twitter @adrigonzo but please don’t show up unannounced at her San Francisco office as she’s got a mean streak. Her favorite FASB is 166.
The first time I addressed the CPA exam here on Going Concern, I may have given the firms a little too much credit. Keep in mind that I write from the perspective of a CPA Review Project Coordinator; in other words, I’ve heard every excuse in the book.
I need more time on my course. Work got really busy and…
Continued, after the jump


Listen, I understand that the CPA exam is a serious commitment. I also understand that first and second year new hires get worked like slave labor. What I do not understand is why this should be my problem 2 years after the student’s course expired with not a peep in between. Can you use this excuse in college? “Yeah, sorry I didn’t make it to my Final… um, I know it was 3 years ago but can I just take it again? I got really busy.” I dare you to try.
What I’ve learned from my time in the CPA Review trenches – something that I will take with me for the rest of my life – is quite simple. In the time it takes to come up with reasons why you don’t have the energy, time, knowledge, or ability to pass the CPA exam, you could have already passed it.
Yes, you. You could have passed this thing years ago. All of a sudden you’re staring down a promotion and realize that there’s no way you’ll be able to make the leap with that obnoxious colleague who passed the exam in 4 months. How can you possibly compare?
Well you can’t, first of all. Second of all, I’m willing to bet my entire inventory of Wiley CPA Review books that he’s full of shit. So is the guy who said he had an hour and a half left when he walked out of FAR, as is the chick who says she got a 95 on BEC (she’s our student, you know, and she got three 60s before that, not to mention cussed out by me for an hour before she finally passed). They are not you. And you, little CPA exam candidate, are the only person who matters in all of this.
Not your parents, not your boss, not your firm and not even your significant other. You. Is this what you want to do with your life or not?
If it was, you’d be at the Prometric center in full war paint ready for battle 45 minutes before they open, not calling me trying to explain how complicated your life got in the two years since I’ve heard from you. Apparently you forgot that you friended me on Facebook and I can see you filling out 79 quizzes in just three short hours.
What exactly are you waiting for? Time? Trust me, you’ll never have it.