Financial Crisis

While many graduating colleges are entering an uncertain and even depressing economic landscape, those with the foresight to major in accounting are actually seeing improving conditions compared to previous years, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a professional organization composed of people working in human resources and college career services.

After negotiations with its European Union counterparts in Paris last week, U.S. tax authorities have agreed to propose changes to the way that foreign income is reported due to concerns voiced by banks and governments that the current model breaches privacy and is unnecessarily complex, according to the Financial Times.

President Barack Obama is in the process of forming a special unit within the Justice Department’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force devoted to investigating abusive lending and securitization practices during the buildup to the economic crisis, and has asked New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to lead it, according to MSNBC.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the last remaining member of the president’s original economic team, said that if Obama is re-elected this year it is unlikely that he will remain in the White House, according to Bloomberg.

While the five largest banks have agreed to overhaul their mortgage lending practices and pay $25 billion as part of a settlement agreement over deceptive practices, some state attorneys general have balked at the proposed deal, despite political pressure from the White House to sign on, according to the Associated Press.

The Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee's first meeting of the year begins today and it's expected to turn its attention back to the nation's slow economy and disclose more details about a plan to keep interest rates low through mid-2

The President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness on Tuesday made a number of recommendations for jolting the nation’s jobs that, among other things, proposes that the statutory corporate tax rate be lowered to rates of what it called international competitiveness, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Former New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine has probably not had a single good day since the collapse of MF Global, the commodities brokerage firm that he led through both its meteoric rise and spectacular failure, which resulted in more than a billion dollars just plain vanishing into thin air.

The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) issued a release on Dec. 28 advising auditors "that the appropriateness of management’s use of the going concern assumption is a matter to be considered on every audit engagement."

With just a few days to go, the Republican holdouts in the House of Representatives waived their objections to an extension to the payroll tax cut. (The NYSSCPA E-zine covered this is detail in yesterday's edition.) The cut, which was to expire this year, now runs through Feb. 29. Congress will work on extending it through the end of 2012.