U.S. politics 23

[Mad Monkey]

I think Chataya's concern is more in the cost of implementation/relative ineffectiveness of the law rather than just the fact that it can be avoided.

[Bill Foote]

Chataya, you're going to have to spell it out better. Most of us don't make hundreds of thousands to not do our job or suck at it, so don't see where you're coming from.

So which fields of accountants are first in line for the guillotine? I need a fucking road map here.

[TrackerNeil]

Not really. All attention that can be given to a financial statement audit is already given to it. Seriously - despite having a multi-billion dollar acquisition this year, our auditors are still questioning us about $90,000 items. (They're also focused on the acquisition, too, never fear).

The only good thing that SOX did was mandate a prison sentence to executives whose companies are involved in accounting frauds, even when the executives claim they knew nothing. That's 10 years. If the executives can be proven to have known something, that's 20 years.

However, not one executive has been sentenced under the SOX laws, to date. It was a reaction to Enron, nothing more.

Additionally, you may be interested to know that the US is moving to looser accounting standards (IFRS), and abandoning US GAAP. A final decision on the "IFRS roadmap" is expected by 2011. But essentially, expect large-scale restatements to happen in 2020, as looser 2011 revenue recognition, leasing, etc standards face a backlash by 2020.

So we continue to work to close loopholes, or at least narrow them. That's really all any legislature can do, and as laws are improved, lawbreakers come up with more clever ways to evade them. That's part of the age-old story of law enforcement.