The accounting profession's rules clearly failed to deal with earnings manipulation and corporate hanky-panky.
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The world's accounting profession is in the midst of a massive effort to harmonise accounting standards.
Bowsher is chairman of the Public Oversight Board, which oversees the accounting profession, but which is disbanding March 31.
The new board would still be funded, in part at least, by the accounting profession, though by a mandatory fee.
There is truth in this, but it remains to be seen how much change the American accounting profession will accept.
The prospect--some would say the certainty--of change, drastic change, is very much in the air right now for the accounting profession.
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After all, the law requires almost all companies to be audited, and the accounting profession has a monopoly on the business.
If the accounting profession wants to truly modernize, it needs to break down the walls of individual departments and get social.
What an activist-minded Treasury chief and the SEC should do is make sure that bank regulators and the accounting profession don't overreact.
In 2008, the Pathways Commission was formed as a partnership between the SEC and private industry to modernize the accounting profession.
Because they were born conservative or pessimistic, they chose to become stock analysts (although the accounting profession is always there as a back-up).
The Public Oversight Board, which monitors the process, lacks independence from the accounting profession, which funds and staffs it, and has little ability to punish miscreant auditors.
The confrontation between the accounting profession and its critics has two distinct but related rounds: Round One is over accounting principles--the rules specifying acceptable methods of measuring company finances.
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Thomson, CMA, is president and CEO of IMA (Institute of Management Accountants), one of the largest and most respected associations focused exclusively on advancing the management accounting profession.
Fearful of prosecutors and trial lawyers, the accounting profession is already aggressively pressuring companies to massively write down the value of securities with subprime mortgages or other consumer receivables, such as auto loans and credit cards.
On top of all this, the accounting profession's critics have one more small request: They want a system of accounting that is as useful to government policymakers, consumers and other groups as it is to investors and creditors.
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Partly, their exercise appears to be a clever attempt to deal with an issue that continues to dog the accounting profession, especially the biggest practitioners: limiting the potential liability for frauds and misstatements which they fail to detect.
McDonough, a former executive of First Chicago, did a 10-year stint as head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York before becoming the first chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a U.S. regulatory entity overseeing the accounting profession, in 2003.
McDonough, a former executive of First Chicago, did a 10-year stint as head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (nyse: BK - news - people ) before becoming the first chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a U.S. regulatory entity overseeing the accounting profession, in 2003.
Accounting is a very conservative profession, and there was some hesitancy about being humorous.
At the same time, the profession is trying to hammer out a better system of producing accounting principles.
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We discussed the increasingly strategic role accounting and finance professionals are asked to perform and the skills necessary to advance in the profession.
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