Oh, the Things Auditors Do....

    Take a Tour on the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board Site

The PCAOB was setup by the US Congress as part of a number of post-Enron, SarbOx changes. The website, www.pcaobus.org is interesting although the age of some of the documents on the site would leave one to believe that:

• it takes years for this august group to make a decision
• change is really slow in the world of auditing

There are some nuggets in there, though. If you'd like to read about a Deloitte case, it's there. There are disapproval notices (although the most recent is 2005). One disappointing section of the site is the News/Events page. Most of the announcements deal with speeches someone is giving or accounting pronouncements.

For a group that was spawned from the tumult of Enron, there seems little relationship between its origins, it's raison d’être, and what they are doing. I'm still not sure how pronouncements and board or staff appointments are preventing more Bear Stearn collapses. In fact, I didn't immediately see anything on the site that addressed SPEs (special purpose entities) or CDOs or other instruments found in the Enron and/or Bear collapses.

Is this group effective? I'm not convinced. Comments?

see also Forbes 4/21/2008 "Auditing the Auditors".