The Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (SFRC) is a group of publicly recognized independent experts on the financial services industry--including banking, insurance and securities--who meet regularly to study and critique regulatory policies affecting this sector of the economy.

The number of schools ranked highly in guides such as Barron's Profiles of American Colleges is increasing, without any evidence that these schools' instructional quality is also increasing. Applicants and their families should be wary of letting these rankings serve as the main criteria in their college decisions.

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) is an accounting system that relies primarily on cost to establish balance sheet values. This works well when hitched to a depreciation system that reduces the value of assets as they are used up or made obsolete. But how should companies account for financial assets...

U.S. adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), has been sidelined by the financial crisis, but deserves more attention.  Both issues illustrate the perils of political interference in financial reporting and in the process of professional standard setting.

Does a pension plan that takes more investment risk become better funded? Both the current accounting standards and the proposed revisions answer yes, while economic theory and real-world financial markets say no. Until and unless this central question is answered correctly, both the size of pension liabilities and the steps that could address them will be misunderstood.

On January 31, 2011, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued for public comment a proposed approach for recognizing impairment allowances on financial assets.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR), which pushed Congress to give FHA yet more responsibilities, is now trying to show that the agency is not really insolvent. But the slippery "facts" they are using show how tenuous their argument is.

In November 2003, fifty-seven specialists in accounting and accounting policy participated in a three-day discussion on the future of the accounting industry. The result of this discussion was broad agreement that major changes were necessary in what accountants are asked to certify and in the public perception of financial statements...