Randall Bolten Blog

At a dinner last night, the Northern California chapters of Financial Executives International had the privilege of hearing from Sir David Tweedie, Chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the person at the very top of my very short list of nominees for sainthood. Sir David spoke of the need for global adoption of the emerging International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

This morning on Meet the Press, Colin Powell announced his support for Barack Obama. His comments about both Sens. McCain and Obama were balanced and largely positive, but two factors seemed key: the negative tone of the McCain campaign, and the choice of Sarah Palin as running mate – a choice you could argue was motivated in the first place by the tone of the campaign.

Phred Dvorak recently wrote an excellent article on executive compensation disclosures in public company proxy statements (WSJ, 3/21/08). Her main theme was that in the face of SEC requirements for fuller disclosure of executive compensation, companies have provided so much additional verbiage that normal humans can no longer make any sense of the disclosures. Amen.

First of all, if you think I’m actually going to offer an opinion on this subject, you’re crazy. Oh, no, no, no. We’re here to help you form your own opinion. You can do this in Four Easy Steps, by finding out...

I launched this blog by practicing on uninteresting, non-controversial topics like the U.S. financial meltdown and software revenue recognition. Now that I’ve gotten a few posts under my belt, it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy for me! I now take on the really tough issues, like tipping in restaurants!

In yesterday’s presidential debate, Barack Obama attributed the current financial crisis to eight years of Republican misrule and shoddy regulatory practices.

I recently had an interesting conversation about software revenue recognition with a partner at one of the “Final Four” audit firms. [Yes, I know. . . only two people like us could call such a conversation “interesting.”]

Since this is my first posting on “Painting with Numbers,” it seems completely appropriate to talk about words instead of numbers. And just one word, at that. And that word is. . . “BAILOUT”! OK, there’s another word, too: “SPEND.” What does this have to do with “numbers”, and how we “paint” with them? A lot.