Beancounter 2.1211/12/2022 The Big 4 were in on the CDO market that ultimately led to the financial crisis - making money advising on such things as 'optimal asset selection' and 'transaction design', aided by the International Accounting Standards Board, funded by the accountancy firms, setting accounting rules which concealed the problems until it was too late. #Beancounter 2.12 professionalThen of course there was Enron where Andersen's Professional Services Group was overruled when it queried what in the end were revealed to be entirely illusory profits which ultimately brought down both the accountancy firm and its client. In some of the scandals the fraudsters could not have got away with what they did, on the scale they did, without the help of some of the accountants involved. The position is worse in the US where SEC investigators discovered complicity, backdated documents, lobbying of senators to keep the regulators at bay during their investigations of failed Savings & Loan institutions over 1,000 of which failed. On the HBOS audit, for example, junior staff highlighted valid concerns that never made it to the audit report and we all know how that ended up. The essence of the author's argument is that the real profits come from non-audit work and that this pursuit, particularly of consulting work, makes the auditors less like to challenge clients. Unfortunately, the high standards of those early guardians of accurate accounts have gone by the wayside. You couldn't make this stuff up!Īfter 40 years of lobbying, in 1900 all British companies required an audit to protect investors from the fraud and malpractice that it was claimed would not have happened if there had been a qualified auditor. It is both alarming and blackly funny that KPMG, which more than any other firm managed to miss the devaluation of sub-prime mortgages, was called in by the European Central Bank to assist with its 'asset review process'. Meanwhile James Marwick, one of the founders of what is now KPMG, irony of ironies, made his name identifying overvalued securities at mortgage businesses. Deloitte, for example, was the scourge of the untrustworthy, self-serving proprietors of the railway companies. The author sets the background well - how & why double entry bookkeeping came into being and charts the origins and rise of the Big 4 as we know them today. I started off thinking he might be going over the top but with the sheer weight of examples my already jaded view of the Big 4 became ever more jaded. The author does go into some of the technical aspects but don't let this deter you from reading the book - it is a riveting, well-written story. In one sense there is nothing too surprising for anyone who has been on the inside, but the sheer number of scandals, failures and dodgy dealings presented together is damning. It can be used both as textbook for a Virtual Reality course, and as a reference for courses covering computer graphics, computer animation or human-computer interaction topics.This is not a comfortable read for anyone who has ever worked for one of the large accountancy firms (I worked for all of them at one time or another, but never in audit). This book was conceived as a guided tour and provides practical explanations of each step in the process of creating a Virtual Reality application. The book closes with an overview of successful VR systems and applications and gives a glimpse of what lies in the future. The final part covers the main principles of Virtual Reality hardware using a generic classification of interaction devices based on a human-centered approach (via the five human senses: vision, sound, touch, smell and taste). A review and discussion of the main types of VR system architectures defines the different alternatives for organizing and designing a VR application. Part 2 provides more details on the components, structure and types of virtual worlds that can be created, including detailed explanations of the main modeling and animation techniques for virtual characters - one of the most important aspects in a virtual world. The first part of the book reviews the basic theoretical and practical concepts involved in the visual aspect of virtual environments. The fruit of many years experience on the creation of synthetic worlds and virtual realities, this book is based on the considerable expertise of the authors, who share their knowledge of mastering the complexities behind the creation of Virtual Reality (VR) applications.
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