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Why separate blogs for nonprofits, accounting, and coping with change? Why so much discussion on banking and energy?

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  • Why do I have so many blogs?
  • Why are there separate blogs appealing to the nonprofit world and CPAs?
  • Why do so many posts talk about banking?
  • Why so much discussion of energy production?

Might be time to mention again how my writing is organized.

The basic idea is that blogs need to have a narrow focus in terms of topics or issues. Then the blog will gather an audience of people with that interest. Cover too many topics and everyone will lose interest.

That means I have split up the core of my writing into three blogs, each designed to appeal to a different audience. People interested in one of those areas may not be interested in the other topics, so I assign my posts to the blog that will have readers who will be more interested in that discussion. The main blogs are:

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Why separate blogs for nonprofits, accounting, and coping with change? Why so much discussion on banking and energy?Read More »

Why separate blogs for nonprofits, accounting, and coping with change? Why so much discussion on banking and energy? Read More »

So you think tons of bankers should be in jail? Getting a jury to agree seems to be a problem.

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Looks like it is really hard to prove individual culpability for conspiracy when a banker’s employer was aiding tax evasion. (I don’t use the word alleged in a sentence saying a bank committed a crime because UBS has already ‘fessed up and paid a $780,000,000 fine.)

11/4 – Wall Street journal – Acquittal in UBS Case Sets Back Tax Probe – A senior executive of UBS was on trial for allegedly helping Americans evade income taxes. The feds alleged that the banker ran a conspiracy to launder money and evade taxes, with said conspiracy involving cloak and dagger techniques to hide from authorities that the bank was knowingly and intentionally laundering money for its clients.

Didn’t turn out well for those who want to see a new federal penitentiary built to hold all the bankers who belong in jail.

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So you think tons of bankers should be in jail? Getting a jury to agree seems to be a problem.Read More »

So you think tons of bankers should be in jail? Getting a jury to agree seems to be a problem. Read More »

Looks like settlements in forex manipulation fiasco might be an order of magnitude higher – hard to keep track of the estimates

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Anyone else having trouble keeping track of the rumors on the forex settlement talks?

Previously discussed that a few too-big-to-fail/jail/manage banks might have fines in the range of $0.5 to $1.0 billion apiece. Looks like the rumors of settlement amounts were off a lot.

A few articles that leave me scratching my head: …

Looks like settlements in forex manipulation fiasco might be an order of magnitude higher – hard to keep track of the estimatesRead More »

Looks like settlements in forex manipulation fiasco might be an order of magnitude higher – hard to keep track of the estimates Read More »

Update on Forex manipulation. Also, another thought why the banking fiascos won’t be ending anytime soon

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Previously mentioned the big banks are under investigation for allegedly manipulating forex: Next banking fiasco? Manipulating foreign exchange rates? Those are the rates used to trade currencies. In addition to admitting manipulation of Libor, many banks now stand accused of manipulating forex.

Just two updates..

10/30 – Wall Street Journal – Big Banks Brace for Penalties in Probes – Tons of leaks feed the story of the typical cast of big banks being in negotiations to settle allegations of their manipulating foreign exchange rates, or forex. Big news to me is the banks are all trying to settle at the same time with all of the regulators.

(If one company reaching a simultaneous agreement with every regulator is called a global settlement, then if every company in the industry reaches an agreement with all regulators on the same day, would that be called a global global settlement? Universal global settlement?)

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Update on Forex manipulation. Also, another thought why the banking fiascos won’t be ending anytime soonRead More »

Update on Forex manipulation. Also, another thought why the banking fiascos won’t be ending anytime soon Read More »

Frauds are a cancer destroying capitalism

Leave a Comment / Economics, Other stuff /

My previous post described a comment by Sam Antar during his CPE session that the fines arising from of a long list of financial fiascos are essentially a tax on illegal behavior.

He made another comment in that session that I wanted to describe in detail. He said these frauds are a cancer destroying capitalism.

I had opportunity to visit with him a few weeks ago and asked him to expand on this idea. I will summarize what we discussed.

Cancer destroying capitalism

He indicated the foundation of capitalism is reliability of financial information. If you can trust financial information you read then we can do business with each other.

He says the extent of frauds we have seen are leading people to lose faith in financial information. That leads to losing faith in their counterparties. Therefore people have less trust. In financial terms that means the risk premiums for transactions go up. The interest rate built into a transaction increases and the return drops.

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Frauds are a cancer destroying capitalismRead More »

Frauds are a cancer destroying capitalism Read More »

Warning to bankers that too-big-to-manage might mean too-big-to-exist

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Federal Reserve officials gave too-big-to-fail bank leaders a warning at a private lunch that they need to improve the risk management and ethical behavior inside the banks. The alternative put on the table is a suggestion that if they are too large to manage then they may need to be broken up into smaller banks that can be managed.

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Warning to bankers that too-big-to-manage might mean too-big-to-existRead More »

Warning to bankers that too-big-to-manage might mean too-big-to-exist Read More »

Update for accountants – posts from CPA-Scribo

Leave a Comment / Accounting, Audits, Other stuff /

While I’ve been getting a book into print and writing some CPE classes during the last few months, Charles Hall has posted a bunch of great articles of interest to CPAs. Haven’t mentioned any of them yet. Here’s a few that I think would be most helpful for you.

Here’s some more posts that would well be worth your time.

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Update for accountants – posts from CPA-ScriboRead More »

Update for accountants – posts from CPA-Scribo Read More »

“Top 10 questions that Ministers, Missionaries, and Church Treasurers Ask Tax Preparers”

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Following discussion is cross-posted from my other blog, Nonprofit Update. This may be helpful for CPAs serving the NPO community. You can point your clients to the linked article as a way to address common basic questions.

Corey Pfaffe, CPA, provides answers to those top questions at MinistryCPA.

The questions, with links to each answer, can be found here.

You can download a superb 12 page PDF of the full set of answers here.

If you are a pastor, missionary, church treasurer, or on the finance staff of a charity, I recommend you check out Prof. Pfaffe’s superb explanations. Get professional advice to apply the information to your situation or if you need to go beyond the very straightforward answers.

There is a bonus question: …

“Top 10 questions that Ministers, Missionaries, and Church Treasurers Ask Tax Preparers”Read More »

“Top 10 questions that Ministers, Missionaries, and Church Treasurers Ask Tax Preparers” Read More »

Ideas to make your writing more understandable. Give it a shot.

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The whole purpose of writing things is for other people to understand your ideas. Why then is so much writing bad?

Steven Pinker suggests in The Source of Bad Writing that the issue is

The ‘curse of knowledge’ leads writers to assume their readers know everything they know

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Ideas to make your writing more understandable. Give it a shot.Read More »

Ideas to make your writing more understandable. Give it a shot. Read More »

More good stuff for auditors – 9/25

Leave a Comment / Accounting, Other stuff /

A few links and comments of interest to auditors.

9/14 – The F Student – It’s a Good Hurt – Exercise is boring. Sometimes the stretching after a run is painful. Yet exercise is critical for good health overall. Stretching is imperative (as I understand) to prevent injury next time you run.

Internal controls and all those accounting procedures are the same thing, according to Rumbi Bwerinofa. …

More good stuff for auditors – 9/25Read More »

More good stuff for auditors – 9/25 Read More »

Next banking fiasco? Manipulating foreign exchange rates?

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The Wall Street Journal reports ”Flipped” Bankers Aid U.S. in Foreign-Exchange Probe – Criminal Charges Are Expected as Early as Next Month.

Looks like it is time to pay attention to a new fiasco. After manipulating LIBOR comes the foreign exchange rates, or forex.

Article appears to be based on lots of leaks. In a tossup between guessing whether the Justice Department or the banks are leaking most of the info, I’ll guess the slightly higher probability is the feds.

This new fiasco is apparently developed from information obtained during the LIBOR investigations.

Individual enforcement action this time

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Next banking fiasco? Manipulating foreign exchange rates?Read More »

Next banking fiasco? Manipulating foreign exchange rates? Read More »

Can you live with mission critical applications disappearing for a week?

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Consider your vulnerabilities to a software vendor disappearing overnight.

I changed RSS readers for a third time this week. They keep shutting down on me.

As an active blogger, reading a lot of blogs therefore access to news sources is mission critical. Well, I suppose I choose to make it mission critical – it’s a big deal for me.

Substitute your mission critical applications for my reliance on RSS feed and you can think through an assessment of how vulnerable you are to vendors just going away.

(Cross-posted from my other blog, Nonprofit Update. Think about your tax software or audit software as you read this post.)

On Monday Bloglines disappeared. That has been my RSS feed for quite a while. I thought, might be a server problem. Maybe a software upgrade that failed. Down lines somewhere. I can live with that for a little bit.

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Can you live with mission critical applications disappearing for a week?Read More »

Can you live with mission critical applications disappearing for a week? Read More »

Scott London is now in Lompoc penitentiary.

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As part of the final editing of my book, I checked the locations of Mr. London and Mr. Shaw in the federal prison system. You can look up such things at the Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator.

Mr. Shaw is still at Taft Correctional Institute. Last time I looked, they were both at Taft.

Mr. London has been moved up the coast to Lompoc USP (United States Penitentiary). That is a medium security prison with an attached minimum security facility.  The facility is a mile or less from Lompoc, maybe 2 miles from the ocean, and is immediately adjacent to Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Mr. London’s official release date is still July 23, 2015. Mr. Shaw is scheduled for release November 28, 2014, the day after Thanksgiving.

Update:  Mr. Shaw released 11/28/14.

Scott London is now in Lompoc penitentiary. Read More »

How much wealth was in the Roman treasury in 49 B.C.? How about annual tax revenue under Augustus?

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Hadn’t thought about that question too much, but when Jacob Soll mentioned it in his book, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations, it got me thinking.

He gives the following info:

In his Natural History, Pliny states that in 49 BCE , the year Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the Roman treasury contained 17,410 pounds of gold, 22,070 pounds of silver, and in coin, 6,135,400 sesterces.

Soll, Jacob (2014-04-29). The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations (Kindle Locations 276-277). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.

I don’t think in terms of pounds of gold or silver and I don’t know what a sesterce is or what it is worth. But I do know how to search the ‘net.

I share this on my Nonprofit Update blog and cross-post it here at Attestation Update because I enjoyed it and think it might be some fun trivia for accountants and people working in the faith-based community.

By the way, Prof Soll’s book is superb. Just got started reading it and think I will find lots of little tidbits to share. More on that idea in my next post.

How much is that worth?

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How much wealth was in the Roman treasury in 49 B.C.? How about annual tax revenue under Augustus?Read More »

How much wealth was in the Roman treasury in 49 B.C.? How about annual tax revenue under Augustus? Read More »