Free Republic

Almost all of the companies in the S&P 500 (^GSPC) have announced their quarterly earnings, and now Wall Street’s number crunchers are finalizing their conclusions as to what actually happened during the last three months of 2015. Unfortunately, it’s become an increasingly challenging task to understand the true financial performance of the big publicly traded companies because of the widening of something called the “GAAP gap.” Don’t worry: this topic isn’t as scary a concept as it sounds. In a nutshell, there’s a standard known as generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, which encourages some uniformity in how companies will...

The Chinese Devil Wears Prada: Why 0% Growth is the New Size 6.8% Nouriel Roubini | Jan 22, 2009 The Chinese came out today with their 6.8% estimate of Q4 2008 growth. China publishes its quarterly GDP figure on a year over year basis, differently from the U.S. and most other countries that publish their GDP growth figure on a quarter on quarter annualized seasonally adjusted (SAAR) basis. When growth is slowing down sharply the Chinese way to measure GDP is highly misleading as quarter on quarter growth may be negative while the year over year figure is positive and...

Her railing against the harmful pressure on youngsters to bolster their resumes and applications when applying to college made Marilee Jones one of the nation’s best known deans of admissions. But the college crusader was forced to quit her prestigious post at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this week when the school learned she embellished her own resume and lied about her college degrees. “This is a very sad and disappointing story. She really is a quite competent person, a leader in her field,” said Chancellor Phil Clay. “But this is a case where integrity and honesty trumps everything.” For...

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – After months of complex and occasionally acrimonious debate, EU finance ministers have reached a deal on the reform of a key plank of the union’s economic policy. An agreement was reached on how to reform the EU's infamous Stability and Growth Pact - the set of rules underpinning the euro – after 12 hours of emergency talks beginning on Sunday (20 March) afternoon. Ministers will now draw up a report for EU leaders, who will rubber stamp the deal at a summit tomorrow (22 March). But Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister, who doubles as his country’s...