“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, the old cliché tells us. But what if it  really is broke? You can alleviate the symptoms but you can’t cure the disease while the root-cause remains. On the economic front, cries for stimulus and growth will remain forlorn while the dearth of credit persists, and monetary systems […]

What an interesting year for anniversaries! Exactly thirty years ago Laker Airways went bust and Bill Mackey, Laker’s liquidator, left us his own history lesson, which is now part of accountancy folklore. He produced a colourful checklist for prophesying a company’s financial collapse: lavish offices and flash company cars with personalised plates; a flagpole in […]

The argument about auditors’ contribution to the 2008 debt crisis is still unresolved, and it will remain so until the central question of audit scope is addressed. The traditional perception that auditing has an historic focus merely entrenches its uselessness in the face of a radically altered commercial environment and risk levels that demand a […]

Original thinking is needed to deal with problems of sovereign debt

Have giant corporations outgrown the ability of even the largest audit firms to report safely on their accounts? Complexity, geographical reach, exponential growth in the number and size of transactions leave auditors struggling to do justice to their authentication processes. The greater the size of the client entity, the more that can go wrong. This […]

King Canute was neither vain nor foolish. He ordered the tide to recede only to demonstrate to his court that even his awesome powers had limits. Vain and foolish politicians, however, aspire to preserve the myth of Euroland and still believe that, by hook or (especially) by crook, they might actually make it work. Well, […]

Submitted to The Times on 28th August 2012 Sir, David Wighton (August 25, page 47) usefully draws attention to the resurgence of interest in a return to the gold standard in the USA. However, certain of his assertions stand in need of factual correction. The volatility in recent years of the price of gold, which […]

 The human condition is characterized by periodic swings between lawless permissiveness at one extreme and uncompromising rigidity at the other. Whenever one dominates it falls victim to corrective processes that, in turn, become excessive. Sanity is restored only when the pendulum returns, even briefly, to a position somewhere between. Abuses of vulnerable members of society […]

Paper money is dangerously ephemeral when not anchored to a stable and finite measure.

The argument about auditors’ contribution to the 2008 debt crisis is still unresolved, and it will remain so until the central question of audit scope is addressed. The traditional perception that auditing has an historic focus merely entrenches its uselessness in the face of a radically altered commercial environment and risk levels that demand a […]