Accounting as a Radical Idea
The accounting profession doesn’t have the best reputation. Because of their role in business scandals of the late 1990s many investors think that the main job of accountants is to conceal...
View ArticleAuction-Rate Market Winners And LosersAs Credit Market Woes And Accounting...
Earlier this morning we discussed how changes in the way accounting rules treated auction-rate securities helped drive corporate investors out of the market. (For a rousing debate of exactly which...
View ArticleFrom Mark-To-Market To Fair Value
The debate over mark-to-market accounting rages on. The accounting standard known as FAS157 has been criticized by some bankers, notably Blackstone Group chief Steve Schwarzman, for needlessly causing...
View ArticleGet That Damn Light Off Me!
When exactly did this “blame the test” game start? At what point exactly was it when the fact that Jr. can’t add three plus three became “well, of course not. The test is unfair.”? What level of...
View ArticleCoincidence? We Think Not.
GE Pays $50 Million to Resolve SEC Accounting Probe [Bloomberg] Former GE Chief Jack Welch Expects Full Recovery From Discitis [Bloomberg] We’re rooting for Jobs now based on this connection. Continue...
View ArticleJPMorgan Has A Lot Of Great Things Going On This Quarter Other Than, Y’Know
When the London Whale thing came out, JPMorgan made one sort of clever attempt to minimize it by saying this: Since March 31, 2012, CIO has had significant mark-to-market losses in its synthetic credit...
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Banks Are Losing One More Source Of Fake Income
Have you given up on this week yet? Of course you have. Libor Libor Libor Libor, we get it, mistakes were made. Next week though we get the start of bank earnings season, which will at least kick off...
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Deutsche Bank Ignored Some “Losses” Until They Went Away
Oh man, what is going on in this FT article? Here is the bottom line: In a series of complaints to US regulators, two risk managers and one trader have told officials that Deutsche had in effect hidden...
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Where Did Deutsche Bank Get The Losses That It Ignored Until They Went Away?
Every financial contract is subject to a bunch of risks, and in some sense each of those risks affects its value. There’s some chance that an asteroid will crash into the earth next year, rendering...
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Earnings-Manipulating Managers Just Want To Make Shareholders Happy
I’m generally fond of companies that find creative ways to access the public equity markets while not giving away all the “rights” that traditionally go to “owners” of “companies.” I mean, you want...
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U.S. Banks Would Look Scarier If They Were European Banks
This Bloomberg article about accounting differences between the US and Europe for derivative-y things comes down pretty squarely on the side of Europe, which is to be expected: European (well, IFRS)...
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Advanced Accounting Philosophy: Americans, Europeans Differ on the...
When is a loss a loss? That is the question. Continue reading »Follow Dealbreaker on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.Tags: accounting, existentialism, FASB, IASB, losses, transatlantic tiffs
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No One Wanted To Tell The London Whale He Was Looking A Little Bloated
Here’s a good Sonic Charmer post about how JPMorgan could have prevented the London Whale loss by imposing a liquidity provision on the Whale’s desk: Liquidity provision means: ‘the more illiquid the...
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SEC Turns Its Attention Back To Accounting Fraud, Literary Criticism
A criticism of the SEC that you’ll sometimes hear is that it’s mostly a bunch of lawyers, and two things that are broadly true of lawyers as a class is that they are good at close readings of dense...
View ArticleAs Luck Would Have It, Goldman Sachs Didn’t Actually Lose $1 Billion On...
Or, at least, if it did, the Reuters-reported loss did not take into account “many of the firm’s market-making and client facilitation strategies” which “utilize financial instruments across various...
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If Chris Rokos Isn’t Allowed To Lose $383 Million At Brevan Howard, He Should...
Chris Rokos and his former hedge fund, Brevan Howard, agree on one thing: He was a pretty good trader. The former thinks that the latter’s five-year non-compete is a travesty of justice depriving the...
View ArticleJPMorgan Has A Lot Of Great Things Going On This Quarter Other Than, Y’Know
When the London Whale thing came out, JPMorgan made one sort of clever attempt to […]
View ArticleBanks Are Losing One More Source Of Fake Income
Have you given up on this week yet? Of course you have. Libor Libor Libor […]
View ArticleDeutsche Bank Ignored Some “Losses” Until They Went Away
Oh man, what is going on in this FT article? Here is the bottom line: […]
View ArticleWhere Did Deutsche Bank Get The Losses That It Ignored Until They Went Away?
Every financial contract is subject to a bunch of risks, and in some sense each […]
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