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The IICPA
is organized for meritorius purposes, substantially all of the activities are for the benefit of
professional accountants worldwide in discharging their duty to the public, and no part of the net
earnings, if any, inures to the benefit of any private shareholder within the meaning of IRC section
501(c)(7). See Purpose - Vision - Mission. *)
This website -
streaming since 2003 - is an alternative forum
for the enhancement of the profession, standing and recognition of
interested individuals, corporations or other entities, who
are currently (or have been in the past) licensed public accountants to perform
the attest function anywhere in the world, by providing a professional network, completely
voluntary and free of any organizational restraints, governmental
influences, interferences, inhibitions, without any duties,
obligations, rights or privileges of its members other than the rights (1) to make application
to join the network, (2) receive a membership certificate and license, and (3) have their peered or
unpeered papers published on this website.
Public accounting
is characterised by conformity. The accounting profession is a
largely homogenous conformist body that promotes itself from within, dominated by two bodies:
the FASB (the Financial Accounting Standards Board in Norwalk, Connecticut, USA 06856-5116)
and the IASB (the International Accounting Standards Board headquartered in London, EC4M 6XH,
United Kingdom).
The FASB and the IASB are converging the rule-driven US-GAAP with the more principle-driven IFRS
under what is known as the Norwalk Agreement
of 2002 to "achieve compatibility" through "the development of high-quality, compatible
accounting standards that could be used for both domestic and cross-border
financial reporting."
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For over 500 years,
accounting principles are "backward-looking" and have witnessed, if not caused,
financial crises and desasters including the Great Depression
that followed Black Tuesday in October 1929, the South American, the Savings &
Loans, the Asian, and now the ongoing Global Financial Crisis triggered by BNP Paribas' suspension of
redemption of three investment funds worth 2 billion euros on August 9, 2007, citing problems
in the US sub-prime mortgage sector because it was "impossible to value certain assets" in an uncertain market.
The financial losses are now in the trillions of euros. While criticism rises from individual members (see Articles),
the public accounting institutes in various countries remain fixated
on the pronouncements by the two main bodies: the FASB and the IASB.
Forward-Looking Financial Reporting: The IICPA is seeking an answer
to the problems of the status quo by developing a new set of forward-looking dynamic reporting standards,
and the Federal Reserve, FDIC, OCC and OTS are now also turning towards "Forward-Llooking Economic
Assessments" testing the solvency of the major U.S. banks. See
Agencies to Begin Forward-Looking Economic Assessments (February 25, 2009) under the
Supervisory Capital Assessment Program and
Joint Press Release May 7, 2009.
A Convention.
In essence, the art of accounting remains a convention based on double-entry bookkeeping creating
a set of self-balancing accounts, as formalulated by the Franciscan monk and mathematician,
Luca Pacioli, 1494 A.D., in his tract Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et
Proportionalita, promoting a method that gained fame as "Italian
bookkeeping". De
Computis et Scripturis | Venetian
Bookkeeping.
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Painting by
Jacobo de Barbari (1495) (Il Museo e Gallerie Nazionali
di Capodimonte, Napoli)
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Audit the Future 1
SuperGAAP IICPA
Committees are
involved in seeking and developing a new set of financial accounting and reporting
standards such as "Superimposed Dynamic Forward-Looking
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles" SuperGAAP and
build authoritative support for "prospective financial
reports". Present GAAP is based mainly on historical values
that may be irrelevant and unreliable, failing to report
"fairly" the financial position of the enterprise which includes the future.
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SuperGAAP would not merely involve an audit and publication of past events, but
also a complete set of forward-looking dynamic (as opposed to the
FASB's & IFRS's static) financial reports, reviewed for
reasonableness by a multi-disciplinary team of professional
accountants and experts, for example, from the areas of production, distribution,
R&D, public administration and law, assessing the enterprise's ability
to meet the opportunities and risks of the future. (See also summary of the AICPA's
Prospective Financial Information Audit & Accounting Guide
of March 1, 2008).
*) The IICPA is not yet active on the African continent and the countries of the former Soviet Union, and is not engaged in trade or business in the U.S.
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