Why Accounting Standards Matter Sudden changes in regulations
could threaten the co-op bottom line Recent months have given us
all pause about the security of our financial markets.
Investment firms that survived a century of market corrections
and bulls and bears could not withstand losses wrought by the
mortgage credit crisis we’re now wrestling with. We won’t know
the full impact of these bankruptcies, takeovers, and bailouts
on our own mortgages and pension plans for some time. And as we
sit contemplating whether we should stay in the market or get
out, we are dumbfounded at how quickly the world’s strongest
financial system toppled. How could they not know how bad things
were? “They” includes government regulators, including the
Securities and Exchange Commission. After Enron and the other
accounting scandals, Congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley. The bill
established oversight through a private entity, rather than the
previous self-regulated system of audits of public companies.
The financial statements audit