Where’s the paper trail?

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized, Video Updates.

As more and more Americans face mortgage foreclosure, banks’ crucial ownership documents for the properties are often unclear and are sometimes even bogus, a condition that’s causing lawsuits and hampering an already weak housing market. Docx, and companies like it, were recreating missing mortgage assignments for the banks and providing the “legally required signatures” of… Read more »

There’s More to Toxic Than Meets the Eye

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As a way of tracking the housing crisis, an NPR investigative team bought a toxic asset.  While it was filled with home loans from people across the country who borrowed more than they could afford, it also contained at least one mortgage that was a part of a $200 million mortgage fraud scheme. The house… Read more »

Troubles for Deloitte

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The American government has terminated its contract with an international accounting firm that was providing technical advice to the Afghan banking system here because of the firm’s failure to report signs of trouble at Kabul Bank, the nation’s largest financial institution. The United States Agency for International Development ended the banking portion of a contract… Read more »

Is the Game Rigged? Say it ain’t so!

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The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil charges against a former director of Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble, accusing him of passing illegal tips about those companies to Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund manager set to go on trial next week for insider trading. Rajat K. Gupta, former Goldman director, is the highest-profile… Read more »

Macro Sea: Urban Renewal and Greening Ideas

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David Belt, a successful developer and construction consultant and manager, is interested in urban renewal and the greening of America.  He created a stir when he created do-it –yourself swimming pools made from dumpsters.  In another project, Glassphemy, Belt and his team of architects endeavored to make recycling more exciting.  This project allowed participants to… Read more »

More BP back in the News

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The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are currently investigating several BP entities regarding trading in the next-day natural gas market at Houston Ship Channel during October and November 2008. The FERC’s enforcing body is now mulling whether to pursue charges against BP, which was prosecuted on… Read more »

The Avandia Disaster

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GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)’s $3.4 billion legal charge on the diabetes drug Avandia probably isn’t the last of the costs the company will record against this drug. That means Avandia will probably be a lossmaker for GSK, proving that former CEO Jean-Pierre Garnier 1999 failure to follow up on worries about heart attack deaths associated with Avandia… Read more »

The Accountant Did It

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A 43-year-old CPA who volunteered to do the books for the Libertyville Boys Club turned himself in after $66,700 of the not-for profit group’s youth football program funds were missing. Jacobsen had been volunteering his services to the club since February 2009 as the treasurer of the club based at Butler Lake Park, Illinois. Libertyville… Read more »

2011 Prediction

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According to William K Black, the FBI and the DOJ will not be likely to prosecute the elite bank officers that ran the enormous “accounting control fraudss that drove the financial crisis. While over 1,000 elites were convicted of felonies arising from the savings and loan crisis from the 1980’s and 1990’s , there are no convictions of… Read more »

Cooking the Books for Lehman?

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N.Y. Attorney General Cuomo filed charges against Ernst & Young on December 21, 2010, alleging that the firm helped Wall Street Investment bank Lehman Brothers conceal its deteriorating financial condition before the bank’s historic collapse in the fall of 2008.  The civil lawsuit, which seeks more than $150 million, is the first law enforcement action to… Read more »