Seeing a few of these Viking longships rapidly approach your shores in the 800s was a sign your village was about to have a very bad day. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
One more post to provide context on the reputation of barbarity that is owned by the Vikings.
A wonderful book, The Vikings, from the British Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a catalog of a fabulous exhibit assembled by the two museums in 1980. The major exhibit showcased the artifacts and cultures of the Viking era.
I’m reading my dad’s copy of the book. The text is still available on Amazon in the used market.
The goal of the exhibit was to introduce some balance to the competing visions of raw brutality and “strange glamour” that surrounds the Vikings.
Consider these two comments in the preface:
“In a brutal age the Vikings were brutal, but their brutality was no worse than their contemporaries. “
and
“The Vikings were administrators as well as pirates, merchants as well as robbers. “
Before you get worked up about blood eagles…
Oh, and if you get all worked up about the brutal cold-blooded barbarity of a ‘blood eagle’ execution, try looking up what the oh so very civilized English did when they hung, drew, and quartered someone.
Illustration of a very well armed Viking. One had to be well off to afford a sword and rather rich to have a helmet and mail to protect the neck. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
I’m going to take a look at finances of the Viking era.
Before doing so, I’d like to provide some context of the horrid barbarity of warfare in ancient times.
Previous post mentions the slaughter during the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.
Next I’ll describe the gathering of slaves by Alexander the Great accompanying his path of destruction across the ancient world. Today we would call that human trafficking.
People taken away into slavery by Alexander the Great
Photo doesn’t do justice as a reminder of the fabled AA double doors, but it is a reasonable approximation. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
The recent news on two different firms claiming the Andersen name is subtle. If you are really interested in stories such as this, the news is actually quite interesting.
Viking warrior with sword standing near Drakkar on the seashore. I think that is an ax on his belt. Raiding has paid off well since he is illustrated wearing chain mail. Longboat in background, which was shock and awe stealth technology in the 9th and 10th centuries. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
I’m going to take a look at finances of the Viking era, similar to what I’ve done on legionnaires during the Roman Empire and the plunder gathered by Alexander the Great. There isn’t a lot of information available, but I’ll look at some I was able to find.
The Viking era has recently captured my interest, leading me to read a fair amount on the history of the times.
This is the first time I have dived deep into the adventures of the Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes back then.
My paternal grandfather and grandmother both emigrated from Norway, settling in South Dakota before meeting each other, marrying, and starting a large family.
So it is appropriate to dive into my ancient legacy, later in life though it may be than for most of my cousins.
Why a series of posts on finance in the Viking world? Because I want to.
One of the things I learned early on in blogging is that a person should write on what is of interest. An audience will develop or not, but cannot be predicted. Thus, a blogger should write on what is of interest.
Why post this discussion on this blog? Because this is where I write of accounting issues and it is a short jump into financial issues such banking in general because I am interested in banking and finance. From there is a very short trip to the wide, ever expanding world of banking fiascos. From there, it is possible to jump back a couple of millenniums to ancient finances of Rome and Alexander. From Rome it is merely a few centuries forward to the Vikings. All of that fits within a blog on accounting.
Before I get started
One of the aspects of the Viking era that jumps out is the violence and the widespread plundering.
Several accounts I’ve read say that capturing slaves on raids and selling them into the Arab worlds was more lucrative that making off with all the gold and silver you can find and the loot you can carry.
The ancient world was astoundingly violent.
I’d like to offer two of many possible illustrations.
Roman destruction of Jerusalem
In 70 A.D. the Roman Empire laid siege to Jerusalem, sacked it, and destroyed the entire city, killing essentially everyone crowded behind the city wall at the time. The euphemism is that apart from one wall and one tower, there was not so much as one stone left on top of another anywhere in the city.
The wall and tower were left so that for centuries to come, everyone can see this is what will be left if you go too far in irritating Rome.
So you can keep it filed in the back of your mind, a bill has been introduced in California which would level a sales tax on services. This would include all the services provided by CPAs.
CalCPA sent out a note today pointing to the draft legislation:
To keep from getting caught in a jam with your clients, you might consider adding a clause to your engagement letters that says any quoted fees will be adjusted based on any new taxes imposed by the state.
A fellow woke to fire in his home, packed a few belongings, called 911, tossed a couple suitcases out the window he broke with his cane, then climbed out the window to save his life.
That’s what he told fire officials and his insurance company.
The fully involved fire, which from a photo looks to have destroyed the home, caused around $400,000 of damages.
October 2016 photo at Wells Fargo’s museum in San Diego by James Ulvog.
The Wells Fargo fake account fiasco doesn’t seem to be generating any more major headlines. Still some notable news if you go several pages into the second section of the WSJ. Also, the WF living trust plan got a failing grade.
We need to be ready for what’s around the curve. We will be there really soon whether we want to or not. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
In the short-term, looks like a shortage is emerging for experience accountants. In the longer term, the massive change surrounding us means we need to keep learning and adapting.
As CPAs, we need to keep learning new skills and focus on things computers can’t do.
1/30/17 – Bill Sheridan at Business Learning Institute of MACPA – Want to beat the machines? Learn to do what they can’t do– Here is a way to think about automation that you might be able to wrap your brain around – How will you adapt then 30% of the work you do is automated, done faster, quicker, cheaper, and more accurately than you can do? Not 99% of what you do, not 10%, but 30%?
I can’t get my arms around audit or tax or consulting completely going away. I just can’t picture that. However, I can imagine 30% or 40% of my work as an auditor becoming completely automated. Actually, I sort of like that idea.
Computers don’t do well at applying professional judgment, courage, empathy, flexibility, and reacting to body language.
Point of article is learn to do those things better.
1/31/17 – Bill Sheridan at Business Learning Institute of MACPA – Change is a choice. So are relevance … and your future – Each of us has a choice. We can keep doing what we are doing. Or we can decide to change and grow and learn new things.
I don’t quite understand exactly where the new AA is at in terms of operations. The article uses several verbs that are a bit confusing, such as they “…are setting up…” the firm, and there are five (only 5) offices in the US. Comments from Andersen Tax reinforce my confusion. That all makes sense when I consider the new firm is in start-up mode.
The short article says the firm asserts it is
…the rightful holder of the ‘ARTHUR ANDERSEN” and “ANDERSEN” historical trademarks, logos … at a global level…
There is also a firm called Andersen Tax, which was previously known as WTAS. This firm was founded by 23 former partners of Andersen. They avoid audit work, focusing instead on tax, with legal work also available in two of the European markets.
There is a fight underway between the two firms over the Andersen name. Both claim to have exclusive rights to the name.
Okay, everyone has had a week to laugh at Big 4 partners who can’t maintain the level of attention to detail that is normative for all CPAs below the partner level or to laugh at the incompetence of bean counters in general or to laugh at Hollywood embarrassing itself for two different errors in one show. Your choice for amusement depends on your world view.
Okay, give yourself one more chuckle.
Are we all done now?
Good.
It might be time to see what we can learn from this fiasco other than pay attention to details. In my brief blogging career, I’ve learned that studying major news stories while still a bit fresh is a superb way to learn. We are still curious and so will pay attention for just one more moment.
Let’s look at this fiasco from a disaster theory perspective.
Slatehas a superb article on March 3 that can help everyone learn: How Disaster Science Explains the Oscars Mix-Up. The subtitle, which I’ll quote, gives a great summary: Major errors don’t cause disasters. Banal mistakes and human nature do.
I will describe a number of the ideas in the article and provide by observations.
The author’s contention, along with the point of a specifically cited book, is that massive disasters normally are the result of a series of smaller, quite human mistakes. String together several of those non-serious errors in an unfortunate series and a massive disaster can result.
A key quote in the article says that the typical cause of disasters is banalities and trivialities.
Article suggests a series of minor issues combined into the fiasco we saw last week. Consider a few of the contributing factors in the article.
Contributing errors
The Academy has an outsider tally the results and keep them secret until seconds before each announcement to minimize the risk of a leak. In 1940 the results were released hours before the event. Article says you could have picked up a paper on the way to the show which listed the winners.
Oops.
With the speed of social media today, a leak while the nominees are being announced could be around the world and known by half the television audience while the clips are being played. When every person working on the production and in the live audience has a smart phone with internet access, the risk of leaks today is astronomical.
Apparently, there were a lots of pictures taken backstage, enough to reconstruct much of the few minutes around the fiasco, including where Brian Cullinan was standing and where he was looking.
Apart from the photos in the article, here is the time line that Daily Mail put together:
9:03 – Warren Beatty and Fay Dunaway take stage; Mr. Beatty would have been handed the card a few moments before
9:05 – Mr. Beatty opens envelope and pauses, then hands card to Ms. Dunaway
9:05 – timestamp of Twitter post by Brian Cullinan with photo of Emma Stone
9:07 – Ms. Dunaway makes the announcement
9:10 – Mr. Cullinan moves on stage to correct announcement
Another photo shows Mr. Cullinan standing behind Mr. Beatty holding two envelopes. At a later time I may explain why it is quite reasonable for that to be the exact number of envelopes that ought to have been in his hand at that instant.
3/2 – Page Six – PwC Oscar accountants received death threats – As is almost expected for our completely messed up culture, the two PwC partners have been receiving death threats.
Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub before they merged into Adobe Stock.
The accelerating pace of change doesn’t slow down merely because I have multiple audits in progress plus more that just started. Here are a few articles to help keep all of us up to date on two newly effective standards:
Going concern
For a long time the professional requirements for addressing going concern issues have been located in the audit literature. Yeah, the accounting requirement was in the audit standards. There has been an effort for several years to this guidance out of the SASs and into GAAP. Two articles show the substantial progress:
11/8/16 – Charles Hall at CPA-Scribo – It’s Time to Apply FASB’s New Going Concern Standard– ASU 2014-15 creates a requirement in GAAP for management to assess whether there are conditions or events which raise substantial doubt about ability to continue as going concern.
This is effective for financial statements ending on or after December 15, 2016. Translation: 12/31/16 financial statements. That would be the ones you’re auditing or reviewing or compiling at the moment.
If you haven’t tuned into this new requirement, check out Mr. Hall’s article before you download the ASU for study. Hint: the new requirements on management will seem remarkably familiar.
In case you hadn’t thought about it, having a GAAP-based going concern requirement placed on management means that there is now a specific need to address going concern in a review or comp.
2/22/17 – Accounting Today – AICPA changes going concern audit standard– Now that the going concern requirements are in GAAP, the ASB has modified the rules in the audit literature.
If you casually pay attention to what is going on in the land of Big 4, a world far, far away from most of us in the accounting world, you might have interest in two recent articles from Jim Peterson, pondering the survivability of the huge firms. I will summarize what I think are a few highlights.
2/13 – Jim Peterson at Re:Balance – If the Big Four Went “Ex-advisory” – Deja Vu? Or Worse?– Regulators don’t like the huge consulting practices in the Big 4 and the partners in the Big 4 consulting arms don’t like the constraints on their growth, opportunities, and compensation from being tied to the audit & tax practices.
Article speculates on the impact if the consulting work were to be spun off, as happened back in 1998 through 2001.
