If you were tasked with writing an accounting standard to answer the questions about digital currency, what would you do? How would you begin? What do you think your conclusion would be? Is it cash? Investment? Inventory? Intangible? Would you use fair value accounting?
Given the SEC Chair’s promotion of IFRS, why do you suppose that movement on the issue continues to drag on so slowly?
Do you think you could have predicted the goodwill impairments for these German firms? What would make good predictors?
Do you think the proliferation of non-GAAP measures is due to the accounting standards requiring firms to provide meaningless data to investors? In other words, are the accounting standard setters themselves responsible?
The IASB has passed a new rule that will require most leases to be capitalized. If investors are “reasonable” and if markets are efficient, who cares where the lease information appears? In your opinion, does the new rule call into question these assumed attributes of investors and markets?
In a critical reading of this announcement, why do you really think the IASB offered the FASB a seat at the table on its new 12 member forum?
Both the FASB and the IASB are under pressure to prioritize and streamline accounting disclosures due to perceived disclosure overload. How would you determine which disclosures are absolutely necessary and which ones could be eliminated?
Why do you think it was “necessary” for the IFRS supporters to “push back” against the SEC report on IFRS? How did the push-back address the issue of the cost of conversion?
What’s the point of conversion to IASB (from U.S. GAAP) if there is an escape hatch as implied by the SEC’s Chief Accountant? (FASB could decide not to apply an IASB rule that “does not improve financial reporting for U.S. investors.”)
