Author: TCA

Well, it certainly seems like the Fed has decided the only real way to get out of this mess is through inflation. With the dollar in a free-fall and no support at all from any of the usual suspects, it appears that the Fed and the administration are happy with this decline.

Perhaps, they are thinking that the dollar’s free-fall will stoke foreign demand for U.S. products. What they seem to forget is the fact that we import most of what goes into the products we manufacture here. Therefore, you’re inflating the cost of the goods to be sold thereby increasing the sales price and taking away any price advantage a falling currency value might have provided you.

At this point, the only thing inflation will do is to bring back memories of the Carter years and stagflation.

As a CPA, I endeavor to keep up to date on the lastest and greatest from the rulemaking bodies, i.e. the SEC and the FASB. As the accounting standard setting bodies try to move U.S. GAAP towards international standards, one thing is becoming very clear. The FASB, like the current administration in Washington, doesn’t listen.

Similar to the professorial clique currently running the Obama administration, the FASB (and the IASB the standard setters for international standards) are full of people who have never had to implement a standard and would not know how to book a journal entry into a set of accounts if they had to. Not really listening to your constituents is a bad thing. Look at Obama’s approval numbers since his steamroll on health care.

I believe a similar thing is starting to happen with accountants. If we, the practictioners, don’t believe in the accounting fictions being created, how can we do our job. How can you sign a certification required by law on an SEC document that says you have reported numbers correctly when you don’t believe the underlying standards are correct?

One way is to get rid of the FASB and have the feds develop the accounting standards we use. While this might seem like a bad move, I know I can influence a politician and get him to listen. I wish I could say the same for those at the FASB.