When accounting goes unaccounted for
Apparently this happened:
One of a national series of rallies for health-care reform took a violent turn Wednesday night when, according to authorities in Thousand Oaks, Calif., an unidentified man bit off the tip of another man’s pinky finger.
That is all.
I would apologize for the delay in getting Open Items going this morning but Colin […]
Last week we told you about Bank of America doing California a solid by taking the busted state’s IOU’s. Well, the banks had the holiday weekend to think about it and after some barbecue, beers, and shooting roman candles at Ken Lewis, they pretty much decided that they weren’t so cool with the idea.
“A group of the biggest U.S. banks said they would stop accepting California’s IOUs on Friday, adding pressure on the state to close its $26.3 billion annual budget gap.”
Included in “biggest U.S. Banks” just happened to be BofA.
Turns out Bank of America had their fingers crossed all along because 1) There must have been talk about Cali’s so called “good word” over the grill; and 2) Ken Lewis was completely serious about getting the interest paid back in bourbon.
Big Banks Don’t Want California’s IOUs [WSJ]
The PCAOB is considering telling auditors how to do their jobs issuing guidance on communication with audit committees and a new auditing standard on related parties, according to Compliance Week. Not to worry though, they’re going to ask the bigwigs on the Standing Advisory Group for their $0.02:
The PCAOB also plans to bounce some ideas off the advisory group for a new standard to govern how auditor should communicate with audit committees, in part to establish some new guidance regarding communication about management judgments and estimates. According to a briefing paper provided to SAG members, PCAOB is looking for ideas on how to get past boilerplate dialogue to achieve more effective, robust communications between auditors and audit committees.
Auditors? Boilerplate dialogue? Is the PCAOB questioning your ability to ask substantive questions? For shame. Obviously Peekatboobs will be able to develop much better, non-boilerplate questions than you and then you’ll be required to ask those questions of the audit committee. That’ll get the job done.
Likewise, auditors, you’ve simply dropped the ball on related parties since, “financial relationships with related parties have proved important in recent corporate scandals, and the board’s inspection and enforcement actions suggest some auditors aren’t skeptical enough when evaluating such relationships and transactions.”
The infinite wisdom of the PCAOB is clearly on display here. Auditors, it’s going to become necessary that your skepticism is going to reach a physical level or at least the threat of such. Your skepticism in words and on paper is simply not getting the job done.
You’ll have to get Chuck Liddell to beat some people down or simply laying heat out on the conference table during discussions to get your point across, otherwise, clients are going to just keep taking advantage of you.
This will be the plan until the next financial crisis of course when the PCAOB will assess that the questions and methods developed now turn out to be boilerplate and ineffective and it’ll be back to the drawing board again. Don’t get too comfortable.
PCAOB Considers Rules on Communication, Related Parties [Compliance Week]