Be careful when you wish for uniform global standards

摘要

We begin by repeating this Feb. 24, 2010, quote from the American Institute of CPAs' Barry Melancon: "Our increasingly global economy makes it clear that the U.S. should move toward a single set of high-quality, globally accepted accounting standards for public companies."rnAfter quoting it in our most recent column ("Be careful when you wish for high-quality global standards," May 10-23, page 16), we challenged the assumption that convergence is the path to high quality. We described 20 critically needed GAAP reforms that would make financial statements more useful to users for making rational decisions. Unfortunately, switching to International Financial Reporting Standards won't eliminate inferior practices and could even make them more difficult to correct.