It has, it seems, begun to occur to those within the Trump administration that there might not be another four years in which to luxuriate in the trappings of office while simultaneously undermining the basis of those very trappings. Certainly, it seems to have occurred to the president’s trifling handful of actual global allies that they should get all they can from this White House over the next 204 days and however many hours, in the knowledge that President Biden won’t give them those things but in the very real hope that he’ll be too feckless to take them away. That it’s time to do as much damage as they can and get the hell out before they get singed by the coming conflagration. Joseph Otting has already leapt from the dangerously listing ship; Jay Clayton is trying to do so in his inimitable, bumbling half-in, half-out doomed-to-failure sort of way. Even those who, rightly recognizing that there is no longer any reputational damage wrought in this country by shamelessness and collaboration, have no intention of abandoning the Dear Leader, seem to recognize that their time in power may be short. Best to finish off what can be finished off and throw your weight around while you’ve still got it—to make your mark—come what may.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is moving to boost the way it monitors for risks at thousands of U.S. banks, potentially scrapping quarterly reports that have been a fixture of oversight for more than 150 years yet often contain stale data…. “What we would like to do is frankly make the call reports obsolete, and not because we wouldn’t have the data but because we would have better data and we would have more timely data,” FDIC Chairman Jelena McWilliams said in an interview….
Officials hope to complete a prototype system in about six months. Lenders would be incentivized to use the new reporting system, but the agency isn’t expected to mandate its use.
[Financial Accounting Standards Board Chairman Russell] Golden, whose seven years as chairman come to an end Tuesday, helped put company operating leases on the balance sheet and devised a uniform approach to how companies must recognize revenue…. But problems persist in navigating accounting standards. Some investors argue the U.S. rule maker’s longtime focus on reducing compliance costs has lowered the quality of corporate information.
FDIC Considers Scrapping Quarterly Bank Reports [WSJ]
Russell Golden Leaves FASB With Streamlined Standards, Lingering Rule Questions [WSJ]