The Blackstone Group co-founder, chairman and CEO is in Seoul hobnobbing with various other titans of industry, finance and politics for the G-20 Business Summit and as you might expect, things can get a little drab.
Dark suits, heavy lunches, important people trying to one-up each other’s stories and so on and so forth can really get tiresome so in order to “keep people awake,” SS brought up a topic near and dear to his heart:
[I]n the United States, we eliminated mark-to-market accounting in 1937, and why did we do that? We completely bankrupted our system before, and for some reason, somebody who liked something called transparency decided to have mark-to-market accounting come back, around the turn of the last century. So it in no way surprises me that we had a catastrophic collapse as a result of implementing mark-to-market accounting.
Not exactly sure who “somebody” is but one guy has retired and another is on his way out, so this could be Schwarzman’s reminder to the outgoing MTM cheerleaders that he hasn’t changed his stance that the whole thing just sucks.
If you’ve been paying attention, you’re familiar with the lamest Internet meme since last year’s bros icing bros – planking.
Planking is a “game” that involves people laying face down in normal to not-so-normal places and then having a friend take their picture while the planking is occurring. It’s been going on for a couple of months now but right out of the gate it was abundantly clear that planking was STUPID. Not stupid in the sense that “you can die while doing it” stupid but more so, “you and your friends are idiots” stupid. Despite this, people are “crazed” with it because, obviously, they are losers. And maybe racist.
ANYWAY, I bring this up A) it’s a fairly slow news day and B) a friend of a friend of GC emailed us the following query:
This is kind of a random idea but when watching this video, http://youtu.be/vQNTN8Z8AJY, I was wondering if accountants are planking at work, especially at Big 4/Big Regional firms like on copiers, partners’ desks, etc and have captured them in a video or in pictures. Even though I think the concept is kind of lame, I think about doing it every day including planking inside of one of the partner’s convertible which he leaves the top down all day. I would love to see if anyone has any great planking poses at work.
Yes, I am really bored at work and my mind tends to wander (a lot).
No problem friend of a friend, it’s summer and you’re a CPA, so boredom happens. Here’s the video in question:
Quite the montage of planktitude, isn’t it? Someone even took the opportunity to plank during Carmageddon which resulted in “Plankmageddon” (obv).
But back to our reader – even though I’m against planking in a general sense, I would not oppose planking inside a partner’s convertible. Especially if you emailed the picture to us. Of course you would have to take great precaution to not be identified but it may be worth the risk. And that goes for the rest of you. If the clock seems to be moving backwards at any point this summer, you should consider planking and then sending us the pictures. I’ll put forth a few conditions for scoring:
• Planking on a manager’s desk – 100 points.
• Planking on a partner’s desk – 500 points.
• Planking on the office managing partner’s desk – 1,000 points.
• Planking on the client’s conference table – 1,000 points
• Planking in the lobby with your firm’s sign in view – 1,000 points
• Photo of the office managing partner planking on his/her desk – 5,000 points.
• Planking on a partner’s [insert luxury car here] – 5,000 points.
Of course this is not meant to discourage creativity on your part. If you have other suggestions, please offer them up below along with the points to be awarded. Happy planking.
The Blackstone Group co-founder, chairman and CEO is in Seoul hobnobbing with various other titans of industry, finance and politics for the G-20 Business Summit and as you might expect, things can get a little drab. 
If you’ve been paying attention, you’re familiar with the lamest Internet meme since last year’s bros icing bros – 