While it’s possible to be blindfolded without knowing, as with cyber blindfolds, (see my 12/30/10 post), unless someone is totally unconscious, I don’t know how you can be handcuffed and not realize it. Not only is there restraint, but quite often chafing accompanies any attempts at movement.

I guess some people kind of like the sensation of chafing against restrictions, but I prefer freedom of movement, even if the handcuffs are fur-lined.

However, I’m not sure the same can be said about some of these enforcement guys over at the PCAOB (Public Company Accounting Oversight Board). Whoever worked on the 2009 domestic reviews of the Big Four Public Accounting firms’ 2008 audits did an outstanding job, despite their shackles.  

I apologize for my blanket statement in a post last fall where I indicated having the PCAOB look over the backs of the self-regulated public accounting industry was like regulation by friends—not really regulation at all. While handcuffed into ineffectiveness, some of these PCAOB guys are actually fighting a valiant (albeit useless) fight. Surprisingly, several of these guys aren’t acting like friends at all—they’re actually trying to be regulators.

Unfortunately, while the PCAOB may even win some battles (still to be seen), they’re doomed to lose the war. But don’t tell those guys. I love seeing them at least try to put handcuffs on the “Big Four” public accountants.

Sometimes the pen is mightier than the sword.

My Cost of IFRS Google ads are back up and running!

After initially being approved by Google and enjoying a brief run of two days over the weekend, my Google ads about the costs of implementing IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) have been tagged as “Under Review” with no information about what is at issue or whom to contact to resolve whatever issues there are. This is the fourth day and waiting for the not very quick resolution of my ad censorship.

In the meantime, I thought I’d post the two “controversial” ads here for you to review. 

I think quickies are underrated. In less than fifteen minutes you can put a permanent smile on your face for the day. And, couldn’t we all use a little boost in the smile department on a Monday morning? Not to mention the aerobic benefits as you rev up your passions for the week.

Who says things have to be long and languorous to arouse deep desire? Whether you’re outdoors in an idyllic nature setting, or it’s the Monday morning rush-hour, taking the time for a quickie detour might be just the thing to ensure a swell week.

So, here are a couple of financial Monday-morning quickies—hopefully worthy of your brief attention.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman, Mary Schapiro, may have her handcuffs loosened—just a little. Some of you in high-powered corporate executive offices may not like this one bit, but you may just have to suck it up. For too long, the only thing the SEC could offer whistle-blowers who turned in financial reporting fraud was the right to keep their jobs.

Now, I don’t know about you, but to me that would be a major disincentive to turning your bosses in. You report them and then they get to make your life hell. No thank you. But now, just maybe, Mary now gets to give the whistleblowers a financial reward of up to 30% of the recovery amount for turning in the perpetrators. Maybe they’ll get to take the money and run for their lives. Just like judicial witnesses.

I for one am glad to see it. With the uphill battle she has to fight to combat the financial shenanigans of the Big Four public accountants and their clients she certainly needs a way to fund a few shell games of her own.

(Read more about the SEC’s Whistleblower pay program at this link. Or read more about the shell games played by government regulators, financial institiutions and their ever-loyal auditors in my forthcoming novel, Shell Games, available for purchase February 13, 2010. In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from Chapter 54—You’ll Accomp’ny Me, to give you a taste of the incestuous situation.

And, if that quick tidbit didn’t get a Monday-morning rise out of you, how about this one?   

Sometimes you just get dragged into things. Even when you don’t care about a given situation, people or events may compel you to speak up, even if you swore you’d avoid the whole discussion like the plague. After all, most things that go on behind closed doors should stay there.  What good does it do to flaunt your nonconcurring passions all over town? You’re not in the room where the action is happening. They don’t care what you or I have to say or we’d be in the room. So it’s best to just stay out of it, right?

Who cares if tens of billions of dollars are involved? Yes, some of it’s my money. Some of it’s your money. But if it’s already a done deal, why waste time and energy on it? Get over it—move on.

Fever is a word with a wide range of uses. Be it out-of-control sexual desire,  the final arbiter of your child’s school attendance, or a reference to an endemic plague—no matter the application, fever always equals heat. 

Yes, Congress is back in session and there’s always plenty of sexual heat in a politically charged city like Washington D.C., but today I’m talking about a different fever we should be paying attention to. The newly formed panel, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, is igniting drama right out of the starting gates, making front page news nearly every day this week—despite stiff competition for the headlines from the major earthquake in Haiti.

Proving that reality is often stranger than fiction, here are links to a few of the Wall Street Journal articles from the last few days, giving you a glimpse of how the sides are already heating up for a major battle against each other. It’s the pitbull regulators and ambulance-chasing litigators versus Wall Street’s “too big to fail” financial titans.

• “Panel Rips Wall Street Titans,” WSJ, 1/14/10, by John D. McKinnon and Michael R. Crittenden;
• “Businesses Criticize Cast of Inquiry Panel—Plaintiffs Firm’s Ties to Commission Probing Financial Crisis Raise Concerns That Information Could Be Used to Aid Litigants,” WSJ, 1/13/10, by John D. McKinnon and Louise Radnofsky;
• “Inquiry Panel’s Head Is Known as a Scrapper—Former California Treasurer Angelides Wants to Channel Public Outrage While Shedding Light on Wall Street Practices,” WSJ, 1/14/10, by Neil King Jr.

Let me be the first to say, the winners of the “who-would-you-rather-play-spin-the-bottle-with” part of the contest has to be the bankers.

Not every woman or company has a sugar daddy, but many do. The sugar daddy test is simple: if your standards of existence would drastically change without the financial support of that specific person, client, or even industry sector, then he/they are indeed your sugar daddy.

This situation is not all bad. Both parties agree to meet the needs of the other and usually a pretty fair arrangement is struck.

But as any of you who’ve had an uncomfortable run-in with your own sugar daddy can attest, it’s not all good, either. The loss of freedom for the recipient of the so-called sugar often becomes an issue. The resulting lack of independence doesn’t even have to be literally acknowledged between the two parties—everyone understands it’s part of the normal price of the sugar.

I was pleased to read the sugar daddy conflict is being addressed by corporate boards of directors with respect to human resource consultancies—saying those landing major human resource consulting projects from the company’s executives are probably not as independent as the board would like with respect to advising on those same executives’ compensation.

According to today’s Wall Street Journal  article by Joann S. Lublin, “Boards Turn to Smaller Pay Advisers to Avoid Conflicts,” the move to hiring smaller, separate firms for pay advice was spurred by activist investor complaints that large, multiservice consultants had “an incentive to recommend that directors award rich pay to top executives.” This online link is to a slightly changed article version entitled “More Boards Opting for Independent Pay Advisors.” (No more cyber blindfolds in my posts.)

Now when will we acknowledge and address the sugar daddy issue with the public accounting industry?

Professor David Albrecht, on his blog, The Summa, said accountants don’t usually make New Year’s Resolutions. Whether that statement took into account accounting bloggers or just normal accountants I’m not sure. However, being neither a normal accountant or normal accounting blogger, I thought I’d give it a go. Here’s my seven (a mystical number I’ve heard) New Year’s Resolutions.

1) I vow to bring more sex and rock ‘n roll to the world of accounting and finance. My blog posts containing references to all three topics were the most popular by far. Even Lin Brehmer, all-around nice guy and D.J. Extraordinaire, on WXRT (my preferred radio station), wrote to tell me they are his three favorite topics. Here’s the link to one of Lin’s podcasts on the banking industry.

I’m listening to you . . . and hopefully, I can keep the content entertaining enough that many more will start following this site than just industry insiders, (although I’m honored to have as many in the industry following me as I do and would love more). We need the passion of the masses to bring about the changes to the accounting industry and financial regulation that will really make a difference—not just make the public accountants and industry insiders richer.

And, speaking of accounting’s rocker connections, you’ve got to hand it to Bono, lead singer of U2, the sexiest rock ‘n roller in the world, (due to his tireless efforts to change the world and because he’s such a sexy dancer). Bono’s recommended a way to use accounting (really!) to both encourage less pollution and improve living conditions in third-world countries. Here’s the link to his op-ed piece in last Sunday’s New York Times. I can’t wait to see them at Soldier Field, in Chicago, July 6, 2010!

Quite a lot has gone on in the financial world in the last year. It’s been overwhelming even for those in the industry to stay up to speed, given the daunting pace of change. Thank you to Edith Orenstein, Director, Accounting Policy Analysis and Communications at Financial Executives International (FEI) and Professor David Albrecht of Concordia College in Minnesota for their prompting to post a Top Ten Posts List on our accounting blog sites. (See links to theirs and CFO.com’s top ten lists at the end of this post.) Collectively they make for a pretty interesting “Year in Finance and Accounting Review.”

Proving that even in the world of accounting and finance, sex and rock ‘n roll sell—the top posts according to my readers were, (in order of popularity):

• Lay Me Down in the Tall Grass—referencing both sex and rock ‘n roll, this was the most popular post of 2009. Only when you read further do you find out I’m actually talking about Accounting Snakes. And yes, there is a very studly looking Lindsey Buckingham (of Fleetwood Mac) performing “Second Hand News,” the song that made this line so famous, at the end of the post.
• Let’s Talk About Sex—complete with the music video of the same name by Salt ‘N Pepa, this post talks about Mary Schapiro and the SEC’s Tenuous Position.  It was the second most popular post.

I don’t know about you, but I’d choose silk blindfolds over cyber ones any day of the week.

So, I apologize for not exposing the cyber blindfold in my own blog post yesterday. And, I thank the diligent reader who pointed it out to me. I wrote my post based on the Wall Street Journal articles in the actual hardcopy newspaper delivered to my home that morning. Alas, my online links aren’t scanned copies of the articles—I’d have to pay for reprint rights—they’re links to the Wall Street Journal’s online archives. Most of the time this doesn’t cause a problem—the online version equals the hardcopy version except there are no pictures.  

But yesterday, December 29, 2009, the online versus hardcopy versions of the Wall Street Journal differed. In fact, my blog link to the blurb I mentioned by Henry J. Pulizzi, from page A6, doesn’t link to his piece at all. I wasn’t able to find Henry’s article online anywhere—in the cyber world, it’s as if it wasn’t written. So instead, the link in my post goes to an article about the same topic (Higher debt limit signed into law), but focuses on Congress passing it, not Obama signing it.

Being the skeptic I am, I thought—what did they want to clean up in the permanent online archives that somehow slipped into the deadline-frenzied newsprint version?