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Post by icefisher on Feb 22, 2012 6:00:02 GMT
"I am a believer in real science stuff you can demonstrate, not stuff you conjure up with a bunch of abusive statistical analysis that has zero real peer review or court relief for the victims as the jackals and weasels scream for academic freedom to do this with impunity." They have some pretty good science done on the effects of second hand smoke. But it seems some people will deny any amount of science for a buck. I sort of imagine they do. The question is really are the data representative of what they use the data for? Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly define the scope of their findings. Standards in the trade are abysmal on that order. Accountants wouldn't opine on such poorly framed and described set of study conditions as all too often seen in so-called good science with a 10 foot pole.
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Post by icefisher on Feb 22, 2012 8:58:30 GMT
Accountants these days are hardly a good example of people with integrity.
Time and time again, the financial system appears rotten to the core, and all aided and abetted by accountants.
Besides it is a job of an auditor to work for the company that pays him rather than work for the publics benefit - something that most of us did not realise till we saw the garbage going on supported by accountants. The common assumption is that an auditor has some kind of government sanctioned authority.
When the auditors come rushing in to a firm, they are not checking the companies books but rather checking on the employees for the benefit of the owners who then kind of get whatever result they think they can get away with after talking it over with the auditors.
There is that joke about the boss who interviews 3 accountants by asking them what 2+2 is. The first two do their best to give creative explanations of how 2 + 2 =4 . The guy who gets the job asks the boss 'what figure do you have in mind?'
Fairly evidently from the way you bend the rules of Science to get the result you want, an accountant/auditor seems trained to bend rules to get the results he is seeking
LOL you are about as clueless here as you are in climate science Iceskater!
First you are demonstrating the typical knowledge of a moron when it comes to who auditors are supposed to be working for. No they do not work for the public Iceskater, never have, never will, and don't need to.
They work for the owners, the stockholders. They work for company creditors. Nobody else do they work for. Its because it is only these people that have investments in the company. Them and nobody else needs care a whit about what they do in terms of financial results.
You probably have nothing, no stocks, no investments or you would know that auditor reports come to the stockholders addressed to the stockholders.
So you are just grousing to grouse here. You have no interest in what they do so you are just going whine like a little baby about what they do.
You also know nothing about what they do. Of course they work for the owners they audit management for the owners and creditors. They ensure the managers are following owner established policies, protecting owner assets, and ensuring they are not padding bonuses by booking unearned income.
They have no role for the public, zero, zilch, zip, nil, nada, none.
They have no role to stop a national crisis, zilch, zero, zip, nil nada none. Thats the job for your elected officials. and is not what public accountants do.
Government agencies have the role of dealing with the economy and government guarantees of loans and savings deposits etc. Government agencies establish the underwriting guidelines for mortgages purchased or guaranteed by the government. Public accountants have no role in that. Often public accountants are called in to clean up messes that got out of control on the governments behalf but thats always after the fact.
CPAs work hand in hand sometimes with government auditors to help keep costs down for the owners sharing information. But each has to do their own verification work. Accountants cannot rely on government auditor examination work. They have an interest in any findings the government auditors might find but their objectives are very different.
CPAs often are out in front on this national crises and they advise their clients on investments, advice that sometimes is listened to and sometimes its not.
Management consulting became my area of concentration and other than putting 3 years into auditing I have no interest in it. Your moronic ignorant insults of the trade accusing them of stuff they have absolutely no responsibility for or to you is beyond stupid on your part,
They answer to the owners and creditors. If they screw up the owners and creditors can sue them. Nobody else can because nobody else has a reliance on their reports. Nobody else has any money invested other that owners and creditors.
Maybe you think they owe you something because you read a few columns in the business section once a year. But again you are wrong on that. And you parade your ignorance on that wearing stupidity like a badge of honor.
You have no standing. And if you had standing and actually lost a buck or two on your single share of stock if you have a share and an auditor actually harmed you for failing to do his job you would have probably joined with other owners and sued the SOB.
But obviously thats not the case either because you don't even know what the he11 they do or who they do it for or for gawds sake even what they do.
Its exactly how you do climate science. You read the back of Cheerios box and suddenly you are an expert in your own mind.
Your wife must consider you a high maintenance individual. I feel sorry for her to be married to such a complete jerk.
And if you think you are hurting me thats just more pure stupidity on your part. I left accounting over 20 years ago to go into private consulting practice that has nothing whatsoever to do with accounting. I chose that path as I didn't relish the high intensity environment and the risk they expose themselves to, not to speak of jerks accusing them of ruining the economy when they have zero responsibility for that.
Audit partners put it all on the line. A single client is practically nothing to a top accounting firm. It might be to one or two or three partners out of maybe hundred or thousands of partners in a firm.
So peer review within a firm is intense as other partners not earning bonuses on income generated from a single firm have their personal assets at risk from the actions of a partner who is getting bonuses.
Entire accounting firms have gone down from the failure of a single partner. Its a high risk business and its taken absolutely seriously. I even supported testimony of one of my partner/managers in front of the US Senate against another accounting firm who had screwed up. It was an elaborate fraud and the firm had been taken in by it. We unraveled it and presented it in a Senate hearing on the matter. The audit firm was sued by shareholders and went out of business.
The backroom wheeling a dealing is purely a figment of your imagination. Auditors are in those rooms punishing management and making out IC reports for the owners on needed improvements, cutting bonuses for managers, its not anything like what is in your imagination.
Bottom line it is the standard in the world for accountability. I know of no other system of accountability that comes even close not a mile. Next in line is probably Doctors and malpractice lawsuits but Doctors do not see the kind of peer review both internal to their firm and from other external firms that accounting firms go through. In your imagination I am sure that this went about 10,000 feet over your head but nothing news about that. Maybe you should consider buying a share of stock or two, or if you do maybe you ought to try reading a report or two signed off on by the auditors. Technically to sue an auditor you have to claim to having done that and saying your investment was based upon the information the auditor gave you. But obviously until you actually do that so you would know what they do (it says so right in the reports) you probably ought to refrain from investing.
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Post by trbixler on Feb 22, 2012 15:39:51 GMT
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Post by icefisher on Feb 22, 2012 15:47:08 GMT
Apparently you demand that scientists have moral duties, but do not consider this important for auditors.
But once again you are dishonest
I made it absolutely clear the Auditor does not work for the public but instead works for the owners
Hey don't feel bad Iceskater. You are capable of learning. I was just noting that your naivete to have believed anything different.
Nor did I anywhere suggest that auditors have a superior morality to anybody. Morality is simply a personal perspective which in general we are seeing that the people who work for corporations are generally more moral than the ordinary rabble.
What is it now Climategate X? Or what I have lost count.
The supposed environmental movement and academia has been totally overrun by the immoral. Corporations tend to fire the immoral for failing to live up to standards they seek. Who fires immoral academics who are almost untouchable or immoral Presidents of essentially one man activist organizations like the Pacific Institute?
Auditors have public accountability like all professionals have. The are licensed by the government to ply their trade. Unlike the out of control world of academia where recognition is sought like PhD and it isn't a government license that can be pulled by the government for immoral acts and/or a lapse in professionalism.
Yeah Iceskater you are naive. Like a babe that just fell out of the cradle.
But putting aside vague accusations of immorality by the immoral there is no assurance of morality. It just naturally arises out of moral people and doesn't arise out of the immoral.
Be clear though what I am talking about is accountability. Auditors are completely accountable to the letter of the law for their work to investors and creditors or anybody in the public who relies upon their work and invests or loans money to an auditee. Audits are generally required for any company who publicly sells stock on a public exchange.
Auditors are not perfect and auditors sometimes fail to do the job they try so hard to do. If you had ever worked in a audit firm you would know. Its about as high intensity of an environment to work in there is. It's totally and 100% focused on being in essence professionals plying a trade similiar to medicine but in the field of finance and corporate operations to protect owners from weaselly thieving employees from the President on down to the level of employee that has sufficient responsibility to take ownership to the cleaners.
If you owned one share of publicly traded stock you would have auditors working on your behalf. If you don't you probably don't unless you hire an accountant in private practice to do your taxes or something.
So yeah like a guy that fell off the turnip truck yesterday you registered surprise at learning yesterday that auditors work for the owners. I recognized that.
Put don't take it hard Iceskater the world if full of morons. Its nothing unique.
I said:
Besides it is a job of an auditor to work for the company that pays him rather than work for the publics benefit - something that most of us did not realise till we saw the garbage going on supported by accountants. The common assumption is that an auditor has some kind of government sanctioned authority.
Authority? Nope! They have publicly sanctioned responsibility Iceskater!
If an accountant fails to do his job in a workmanship manner or he commits and immoral illegal act he is fully responsible. He can lose his license to practice.
You though being the latest turnip truck delivery were apparently completely oblivious to that though.
a joint creative effort that these days seems to have almost nothing to do with business ethics morality or what was once known as common decency, and is everything about driving as much as possible thru whatever legal loophole can be found
So now we get to your real beef. People who own stock. Class warfare. I sort of expected that. They aren't paying enough to pay your unemployment insurance. OK. As long as we are clear here what your real beef is.
You go on though
Your moronic ignorant insults of the trade accusing them of stuff they have absolutely no responsibility for or to you is beyond stupid on your part,
They answer to the owners and creditors.
So according to you the accountants and auditors can help a bank to create off balance sheet vehicles or Structured Investment Vehicles that enable a bank to increase profit, increase leverage beyond all sane levels and regulatory requirements, where SIV's had no legitimate purpose other than to confuse and bewilder anybody reading the financial statements and I am a moron for observing that accountants and auditors are in cahoots with the owners?
Cahoots. LOL! How we are on a major exploration of the mind of a typical mindless liberal. I would like to draw a difference here between a "feet on the ground" liberal and the mindless liberal. (and out of all fairness the same sort of division exists in conservative ranks as well, the feet on ground conservative who just wants people to leave them alone and the mindless conservative who ride around wearing white sheets)
Mindless liberals and mindless conservatives sort of share common territory on the back invisible side of the political spectrum.
Well since right now I don't know if you ride around at night wearing a white sheet I will take the obvious path to your mindlessness.
First you need to declare in or out. You are trying to play the game of concerned public with an interest in public accountability. But the question is are you part of the society that promotes private enterprise, personal accountability, responsibility, and ownership of corporations, small business owners, or like most an average Joe happy to have a job with a thriving company and chances of promotion?
Or have you declared being out of that; feeling like a victim employee being taken advantage of by your employer or worse not employed and feeling corporations don't pay their fair share to lift you out of your misery?
You need to declare a side here. Because if its the former side you are part of the mainstream. The accounting trade is there for you. You can take advantage of their services or you can choose not to. Its your choice. Regular honest employees are almost always happy to see the auditors. Maybe a little nervous about having something misinterpreted or having a minor mistake they made uncovered; but generally after some experience with auditors they find they are on the same side. They want a company with healthy finances as it helps ensure they keep their job and provides exposure of a job well done potentially opening a promotional path.
Indeed auditors help these people for a company to keep their profits and have money to pay their employees and keep the business afloat using as you call rather disparagingly "legal loopholes" as if that were a bad thing for which anybody following the letter of the law was a bad guy.
And if you fail to understand financial information thats pretty much on you. I can assure you auditors spend huge amounts of time carefully picking words to express financial information in a manner that is clear to somebody who understands financial matters.
Somebody who takes the time to ask questions what a liability is or what a sane amount of leverage is.
Accountants are not in business to contain risk but express risk in ordinary terms. Financial statements of highly leveraged companies always has the leverage ratios specified for the investor so he can identify what in his own mind what a sane level of leverage is.
Of course if you only read about companies failing because they had an "insane" level of leverage in the business pages and are passing judgement on the auditors you completely fail to understand miserably what is going on.
High leverage means high risk to owners. Accountants are not in business to enforce on the public maximum levels of risk. You can individually hire an accountant or financial advisor to explain it to you and recommend levels of risk for you if you don't understand them.
Auditors have a level of responsibility to disclose business cash flows in order to conclude if normal operations of a company is properly serving its debt and its leverage ratio. Its no the role of the account to guess what the economy will do it entire introspective about operations and debt service and if the business model is currently working. If debt service appears it can be a problem like a pending balloon payment obligation or deteriorating cash flows its the duty of the accountant to disclose that possibly issue a qualified or adverse opinion.
But its not the role of "public accounting" to define what an "insane" level of risk is. It is only their role to quantify it so advisors and yourself can make personal investment decisions.
And you tell me
They answer to the owners and creditors
It is just peculiar you could say all of that when i clearly said the auditors work for the owners rather than the public
However, evidently auditing firms did have a role in todays still unfolding disaster.
Can we say the accountants and auditors let us down?
Who is "us" Iceskater? You are suggesting we are pals or something? I seriously doubt that.
You need to declare what your interest is. Its not clear to me if you are looking for financial information, an explanation for why you lost money, or if you are just looking for a babysitter.
Its not clear if the issue is you don't understand what a leverage ratio is and you bought stock anyway or if you bought into a mutual fund and didn't read the prospectus or didn't understand it or what your interest is or was.
You need to add some perspective here of where you have assigned yourself any level of responsibility whatsoever. If you think its zero then you are indeed the mindless liberal seeking a baby sitter.
Not really. Human nature is just human nature. It is likely at least some in the financial elite knew entirely what was going on, and simply used the accountants and auditors to hoodwink the public that all was well and properly accounted for and relied on greed and stupidity to get the results they wanted.
Has anybody gone to jail? Not that i know of.
do you actually think people should go to jail simply because you might have made bad investment decisions? You need to be more explicit about why you think somebody should go to jail and provide a bit more details about who was responsible. Your vague implications make you sound like a typical mindless the-world-owes-me-a-living socialist.
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Post by trbixler on Feb 22, 2012 16:08:08 GMT
No agenda science. No do as I say and do it now. Possible just for the aggrandizement of the discovery but not as lucrative as an AGW "discovery". What happened to climate science other than government and politics. Sad indeed. "Fossil footprints reveal oldest elephant herd" "The world's oldest elephant tracks have now been revealed, 7-million-year-old footprints in the Arabian Desert, researchers say. These prehistoric footsteps, likely the work of some 13 four-tusked elephant ancestors, are the earliest direct evidence of how the ancestors of modern elephants interacted socially, and the oldest evidence of an elephant herd." Read more: www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/22/fossil-footprints-reveal-oldest-elephant-herd/#ixzz1n7wzIv66
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Post by trbixler on Feb 22, 2012 17:47:48 GMT
OK for the "cause". Maybe a grant from Gore will help his ego and legal team.
"'Culture-warrior mode'? Scientist acknowledges lying to get Heartland Institute documents."
"Whatever the truth about the memo, the incident shouldn't be interpreted as a case of one bad egg spoiling the carton, suggests Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who has written extensively on the climate issue.
The Gleick affair, which he dubs a personal tragedy for the beleaguered researcher, puts a spotlight on “a subset of a community,” he says, one that “has lost it's way." He adds, "You saw some of that in the East Anglia e-mails – the idea that [some researchers] can play by their own rules.”"
'Culture-warrior mode'? Scientist acknowledges lying to get Heartland Institute documents.
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Post by icefisher on Feb 22, 2012 20:20:55 GMT
Steve for example says he has a degree in physics, and I have a degree in chemistry. Nobody with scientific training or knowledge of the history of the thermodynamic laws is going to agree with you on backradiation and that is a simple fact.
You are just muddled up and using the foundation concepts incorrectly.
They must be handing out degrees in Chemistry in Cheerios boxes these days. Are you a complete blithering moron or something? I think I have told you 10 times I have no position on backradiation one way or the other. Its an unproven, undemonstrated concept.
If you have some evidence other than a top 5 fallacy like arguments from authority or what you can conjure up in your imagination by all means provide a link to it. In the meantime get a book on English and study up on what "not having a position" means.
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Post by icefisher on Feb 22, 2012 20:28:15 GMT
As for people going to jail over the current financial crisis, other than the results of the crisis possibly leading to World War 3, it has little to do with me or the rest of the Worlds population. But all of this is fairly irrelevant.
Fairly irrelevant?
You haven't yet explained what you think the accounting profession owes you and why.
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Post by icefisher on Feb 22, 2012 22:35:17 GMT
This is a typical example of your dishonest representation of me and your own position on backradiation.
1. You say you have no position on backradiation, but declare it is an unproven undemonstrated concept.
2. You say I am blithering moron for observing you have a very strong position on backradiation, and they must be handing out degrees in cheerio boxes
3. You want to pretend i have not provided you of a proof backradiation exists where i gave the example of two warm balls in a cold environment and you declared you did not think they would be warmer on the inside faces of both warm ball and warmer ball
4. Dispite my efforts to get you to examine the two ball scenario you have simply done nothing other than provide the kind of abuse you have just done where i am supposed to get a dictionary to understand your claim you have no position on backradiation
5. Your own position on backradiation is based on a confused understanding of the laws of thermodynamics which you have declared invalidates all explanations and experiments proving backradiation.
It really is massively odd you can do that without realising you sound totally mixed up.
No Iceskater you have ignored Lord Kelvin.
On electromagnetic theory: "I never satisfy myself until I can make a mechanical model of a thing. If I can make a mechanical model I can understand it. As long as I cannot make a mechanical model all the way through I cannot understand; and that is why I cannot get the electromagnetic theory ..... But I want to understand light as well as I can, without introducing things that we understand even less of. That is why I take plain dynamics. I can get a model in plain dynamics; I cannot in electromagnetics"
On science: "In physical science the first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be."
You have ignored all the above. I am in complete agreement with Lord Kelvin in these matters. You instead ran with knowledge of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind and are making an ass out of yourself. Myself I do like Lord Kelvin and stick with plain dynamics, actual heat flows for example. Not using semantics to claim warming out of thin air.
You slightly alter the form of words and then pretend you have changed the substance sufficiently and proven a point without doing a single stitch of science. Its like science by proclamation. You may as well be a Pope!
And then you move forward like a buffoon. Like I say degrees have been incredibly cheapened over the years, today its like every parent wants their kid to get one so the educational system just dumbed itself down to provide what the people wanted.
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Post by icefisher on Feb 22, 2012 23:42:25 GMT
This is a typical example of your dishonest representation of me and your own position on backradiation.
1. You say you have no position on backradiation, but declare it is an unproven undemonstrated concept.
2. You say I am blithering moron for observing you have a very strong position on backradiation, and they must be handing out degrees in cheerio boxes
3. You want to pretend i have not provided you of a proof backradiation exists where i gave the example of two warm balls in a cold environment and you declared you did not think they would be warmer on the inside faces of both warm ball and warmer ball
4. Dispite my efforts to get you to examine the two ball scenario you have simply done nothing other than provide the kind of abuse you have just done where i am supposed to get a dictionary to understand your claim you have no position on backradiation
5. Your own position on backradiation is based on a confused understanding of the laws of thermodynamics which you have declared invalidates all explanations and experiments proving backradiation.
It really is massively odd you can do that without realising you sound totally mixed up.No Iceskater you have ignored Lord Kelvin. On electromagnetic theory: "I never satisfy myself until I can make a mechanical model of a thing. If I can make a mechanical model I can understand it. As long as I cannot make a mechanical model all the way through I cannot understand; and that is why I cannot get the electromagnetic theory ..... But I want to understand light as well as I can, without introducing things that we understand even less of. That is why I take plain dynamics. I can get a model in plain dynamics; I cannot in electromagnetics"
On science: "In physical science the first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be."You have ignored all the above. I am in complete agreement with Lord Kelvin in these matters. You instead ran with knowledge of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind and are making an ass out of yourself. Myself I do like Lord Kelvin and stick with plain dynamics, actual heat flows for example. Not using semantics to claim warming out of thin air. You slightly alter the form of words and then pretend you have changed the substance sufficiently and proven a point without doing a single stitch of science. Its like science by proclamation. You may as well be a Pope! And then you move forward like a buffoon. Like I say degrees have been incredibly cheapened over the years, today its like every parent wants their kid to get one so the educational system just dumbed itself down to provide what the people wanted. More dishonesty. I have already provided experiments to prove you were wrong and you conceded nothing. And you already have another experiment described to you. You refuse to say why the balls will not be warmer on the faces next to each ball. Thus ensuring you can obfuscate further when the balls do in fact warm. You have also refused to give reasons for your peculiar ideas on the balls internally heated surfaces where your ideas are obviously totally wrong. And refused to give reasons why you think the zeroth law is describing objects spontaneously tending towards equilibrium when clearly it is describing objects already in equilibrium You therefore ensure you can remain totally ignorant of science while abusively declaring scientific people are poorly educated What can I say Iceskater. You can't even read.
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Post by icefisher on Feb 23, 2012 0:05:05 GMT
Uh. . . .sit and spin on it.
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Post by Ratty on Feb 23, 2012 0:58:20 GMT
Please be nice to each other on this HearlandGate thread ....
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Post by icefisher on Feb 23, 2012 1:10:09 GMT
Iceskater is just having a hissy fit.
He can't support his back radiation theory so he claims I am toxic to the "cause".
I take that as a compliment.
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Post by icefisher on Feb 23, 2012 1:43:02 GMT
Iceskater is just having a hissy fit. He can't support his back radiation theory so he claims I am toxic to the "cause". I take that as a compliment. It is fully supported. Only a scientific imbecile would argue otherwise Fully supported huh? Are you too big of moron to find the support? Or are you a moron who doesn't know what support is?
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Post by sigurdur on Feb 23, 2012 1:43:30 GMT
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