If an alien with an accounting degree touched down in America, it might conclude that we're a weird cult that spends 11 months living frugally and four crazy weeks buying tons of stuff we don't need. It wouldn't be entirely wrong, either.
Accounting rules give financial institutions flexibility about when they choose to recognize venture capital profits.
Enron had already collapsed and filed for bankruptcy protection by the beginning of 2002. But despite complaints from short sellers that corporations had used accounting gimmickry to inflate their profits, many investors thought the crisis at Enron was an isolated case.
I'm a good learner. I can dig in. I knew nothing about mark-to-market accounting when I started the 'Enron' film.
Developing safe products for people around the world will mean accounting for a much wider variety of devices, networks, infrastructure, and political environments.
With demands for special education or standardized test prep being shouted in their ears, public schools can't always hear a parent when he says: 'I want my child to be able to write contracts in Spanish,' or, 'I want my child to shake hands firmly,' or, 'I want my child to study statistics and accounting, not calculus.'
I don't let it bother me too much if someone doesn't like me. I just figure there's no accounting for taste. It's not me, it's my acting. It's like if someone doesn't like someone's food, they just don't like my acting.
Every quarter, we need to see the portfolio and follow the accounting practice of mark-to-market that values investments according to the prevailing market prices and at the price at which they are made.
We don't understand the equity market well, and so we deploy funds in fixed-income securities, and like any other securities, investment in those securities also need to follow the mark-to-market accounting principle.
Companies figured out that the easiest way to make money was to reissue records that the accounting department had paid for years ago and already made a profit.
