What’s exceptional about Richard Murphy?
Posted by Christie Malry on March 15, 2010 at 9:11 pm
Other than his unerring ability to suspend facts while delivering his truly unexceptional blog entries. This time, Ritchie crows:
What’s exceptional about E & Y’s performance. They:
- alloweed window dressing
- put fornm over substance
- ignore the true and fair over-ride
- box ticked to confirm compliance with an accounting framework they helped create and which is itself misleading
That’s what auditors do. There’s nothing exceptional about this. The only odd thing is no one has appreciated it - bar the likes of Prem Sikka, Dennis Howlett, Francine McKenna and me.
I wonder if Dennis Howlett and Francine McKenna are entirely happy being lumped in with Tweedledum and Tweedledumber. I doubt it; Francine's article on Lehmans is pretty good, as you'd expect. Not for her the dribbling conspiracy theories beloved of our old friends Sikka and Murphy.
A measured observer, looking at what auditors do, would conclude that they do an excellent job. That a handful of audits end in failure among the many millions undertaken in recent years is evidence of high overall audit quality, not that the audit process is subverted and rotten.
Ritchie hasn't done an audit in years and I doubt he's ever done an ISA audit. He is simply ignorant of what auditors do in accordance with either ISAs or PCAOB standards. We know this for sure, because he muddled the two up in his previous article, as I pointed out before.
On the accounting standards side, far from SFAS No. 140 being "created" by the (then) Big 5, Michael Crooch (an Andersen partner) abstained in the vote to endorse it. There wasn't an E&Y partner on the FASB at the time.
"True and fair override" is a UK GAAP concept that has no direct equivalent in IFRS or US GAAP. However, there are protections in both IFRS and US GAAP against the form over substance problem. As the examiner's report makes clear, US directors are not permitted to prepare financial statements that are misleading. And it's the directors who prepare financial statements, not the auditors.
As for his first two statements, I think we'll just have to wait and see. The examiner's report said that there were "colorable claims" against E&Y. He didn't sign their death sentence, even if that's what Ritchie would have liked.
Your judgement really is very poor
See this: http://called2account.com/
Dennis, Francine and I publish together
Both also respect Prem
There's good reason to do so. He's been consistently right
And if my blog is so poor - why do you write about it so much?
“And if my blog is so poor - why do you write about it so much?”
Er, because
a) Your stuff is continuously pretty hopeless and your position is largely compromised. For example, it is pretty unlikely you will ever argue against a tax system that requires fewer tax inspectors, now you have apparently taken their union’s shilling.
b) You pretty much don’t get the idea of blogs as a place for debate. You have pretty much got rid of dissent at your own place (hilariously using the ‘it’s my property’ defence, when at the same time criticising others on how they use their property). So any criticism (and there is room for plenty) must now happen outside your own blog.
c) You refuse to debate. At your own place you just hurl abuse and then complain about the level of abuse – when you set the example. You really just want to be surrounded by back slappers.
d) Here, instead of getting into Christie’s substantive critique, you pick some minor aspect of the post, and then use it as grounds to diss the entire post. It is how you typically operate, not a one-off.
"It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." --Oscar Wilde
That's a feed aggregator site from the content you individually post on your separate blogs. Bully for you.