Olivier Travers

Wired: "As part of efforts to improve the clarity of information given to investors, the Securities and Exchange Commission warned this week that it will crack down on companies that use creative accounting methods to pump up poor earnings results. In particular, the commission said it will focus on abuse of a popular form of [...]

According to FASB’s new merger accounting standards, companies will no longer be able to amortize goodwill, neither will they be able to use the pooling-of-interest booking method. See why it’s important and how it can impact reported earnings.

James J. Cramer: "At the end of the month, loser mutual funds engage in a shameless markup game. It’s time to fight back." Reading his latest columns, there’s no question Cramer doesn’t like window dressing and incompetent mutual fund managers.

Jim Griffin: "It’s a bad idea, for all concerned, to let key currencies get so far out of alignment, but Americans can run only American economic policies. On this side of the water, there is no alternative to a strong dollar policy. If the rest of the world will not take effective action to bring [...]

The Street: "What’s clear is that even if the bubble deflated quickly, it’s messy dealing with a deflated bubble. Sadly, the same lunatics running the asylum during the upswing — the fairly maligned entrepreneurial-investment banking-venture capital complex — continue to dispense the pills."

Motley Fool: "Can we learn anything about investing decisions by studying human perception and traffic accidents? Sure. Cisco had been so strong for so long that it was easy to look past the warning signs. We looked but we didn’t see."

TheStreet.com: "First, take the company’s customer base, which has long been considered one of Amazon’s most valuable assets. For the 12 months ended June 30, only about half of the company’s 17 million active customers made purchases, noted Mark Rowen, an analyst at Prudential Securities who has highlighted the issue in past research reports." Where [...]

Well I didn’t yet, but maybe I should. Prepare for a good laugh. If you’re in a shared office, your coworkers are going to pop in in a matter of seconds.

The McKinsey Quarterly: "The telecom sector’s recent problems have been widely discussed, but more bad news is coming to light: some of the industry’s meteoric growth was propelled by financing that equipment providers extended to high-tech and telecom start-ups that are now having difficulty making their payments or, like Winstar Communications, have spectacularly collapsed. Consequently, [...]