Business
Limited reforms within professional management circles have led in the past to activity-based costing, economic value added, and risk measures.
Not only do most businesses raise capital based on numbers derived from current standards, there are extensive lobbying efforts by the accounting industry to keep those standards roughly as they are: complex, loopholed, and unable to be applied or audited easily by laymen.
Heads of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since the 1980s have consistently complained that this lobbying makes it impossible for them to apply meaningful reform, even in the wake of accounting scandals, e.g. that which felled Arthur Andersen in 2002.
Read more about this topic: Accounting Reform
Famous quotes containing the word business:
“BOSWELL. But what do you think of supporting a cause which you know to be bad? JOHNSON. “Sir, you do not know it to be good or bad till the Judge determines it.... It is his business to judge; and you are not to be confident in your own opinion that the cause is bad, but to say all you can for your client, and then hear the Judge’s opinion.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“God forgive me, I do still see that my nature is not to be quite conquered, but will esteem pleasure above all things; though, yet in the middle of it, it hath reluctancy after my business, which is neglected by my following my pleasure. However, music and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.”
—Samuel Pepys (1633–1703)