• SEC, CFTC Mull Joint Enforcement Squad: Sources – “U.S. securities and futures regulators are considering a joint enforcement squad to investigate and root out fraud in the markets, two sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.” All together now: FRAUD SQUAD. [Reuters via NYT]
• Suspicions Arise After Balloon Boy Found Safe – We’re saturated by the coverage already. [NPR]
• Obama wins first financial reform victory in months – Derivatives are no match for a debatable Nobel Peace Prize recipient. [Reuters]
• Justice Agency Resists Music Merger – “The Ticketmaster-Live Nation deal is widely regarded as a bellwether of the department’s attitude toward such potential deals as Comcast Corp.’s proposal to take a majority stake in General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal. Like the proposed Ticketmaster-Live Nation alliance, a Comcast-NBC deal would represent ‘vertical integration,’ in which several links in the chain between producer and consumer are controlled by a single entity.” [WSJ]
• On the Calendar: What Every Auditor Should Know About Litigation – Jim Peterson will be at Baruch College on Dec. 2 for Corporate Integrity’s 4th Annual Audit Conference, “Ensuring Integrity.” Check it out. [Re: The Balance]
Related Posts
Preliminary Analytics | 11.16.09
• Study Suggests Accounting for Contingencies Needs Help – Environmental liabilities aren’t reflecting the actual cash paid. [Compliance Week]
• Bankruptcy Rise Slows With Thaw In Lending – “Now corporate failures have slowed, as companies once on the verge of default have found a new life. These companies are now refinancing their balance sheets with new debt, pushing out maturities on existing loans or using distressed-debt exchanges to avoid a bankruptcy filing.” [WSJ]
• GM to begin repaying government loans – “[GM] reported a positive operating cash flow of $3.3bn, but cautioned that this would not be repeated in the fourth quarter and that its cash reserves would be ‘materially lower’ at the end of the year.” [FT]
• Xtremely restless: Recession intensifies Gen X’s ‘middle child’ syndrome, urge to job hop – Let’s just blame everything on the recession, shall we? [CT]
• Should paid sick days be the law? – Or maybe going to work sick should be against the law. [NYDN]
Preliminary Analytics | 12.22.09
• Dubai World fails to seal deal on debt talks – Even though DW is insisiting that the talks have been “constructive.” [Times Online]
• Marijuana-Reeking Tour Bus, Red Ferrari Are FDIC’s Crisis Booty – Not to mention ashtrays with dead cigarette butts. These guys will take everything. [Bloomberg]
• FBI Probes Hack at Citibank – The bank deee-nies that there was a breach so you have the less than desirable option of believing the B or the C. [WSJ]
• World Series Champs Pay Hefty Luxury Tax – Tax Girl is not a Yankee fan. [Tax Girl]
• U.K. Backs Merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation – Somehow the Brits came to this conclusion: ‘[T]he merger will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in the market for live music ticket retailing or in any other market.’ [NYT]
Preliminary Analytics | 01.04.10
• Fed Chief Edges Closer to Using Rates to Pop Bubbles – However, don’t even think that the low interest rates were the cause of the housing bubble, that was due lax regulation, thankyouverymuch. [WSJ]
• Auditors Missing in the Financial Crisis — Readers Offer their Thoughts – “It’s not just that the Big Four tetrapoly fail the essential tests of insurability, although they do – because of sector concentration, unpredictability of losses and inability to quantify exposures. It’s also that if any such ‘super-audits’ actually existed, the auditors would surely be performing them already.” [Re: Balance]
• Tax Person of the Year – How Charlie Rangel was even a nominee, we’ll never know. [TaxProf Blog]
• Family Business Challenge: Attitude of Entitlement – “Someday all this will be yours” could have unintended consequences, like the kids screw up your life’s work. [The Exuberant Accountant]
• Small Biz Exemptions from IFRS? – A la SOx. [The Summa]
• Dubai’s “superscraper” makes history in hard times – After a couple of delays Burj Dubai is finally opening today and despite all the trubs in the Dubai lately, “experts” are saying that all 1,100 units are sold. [Reuters]