“If you’ve nothing nice to say…. come sit by
me.”

 — Dorothy Parker

With the change of
seasons, I am just back from a two-week break in Russia, including a stretch so
deep in the countryside as to be beyond all connectivity.

An annual break is
probably no less important in the ink-spreading trades than elsewhere – although
more for health and re-focus than for risk control (witness the “vacation rule”
violations now part of the Paris trial of Société Générale’s rogue trader Jérôme
Kerviel).

In any event it’s a
good time for a pause:

• BP’s agonies in the
  Gulf and in Washington have pushed off the front pages the mis-adventures of
  Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, showing once again that the capacity for
  public outrage is both finite and subject to “proximity bias.”

• The late-stage
  negotiations in the US Congress over financial institutions reform legislation
  include not one word of attention to the survivability plight of the global
  audit franchise of the Big Four firms – leaving that multi-dimensional problem
  to leap onto the public screen with the next (and inevitable) outbreak of
  financial scandal.
  

• Two significant
  court decisions still await the leisurely pace of the judiciary: the Florida
  appellate ruling in the Bankest
  matter, which could determine the fate of the Seidman accounting firm, and the
  United States Supreme Court’s now overdue ruling on the constitutionality of
  the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (see here)
  – the latter having potential to unleash onto the world of financial
  information regulation all the mischief that Messrs. Frank, Waxman and Dodd can
  muster.

• And above all,
  outside the US at least, the season of the Coupe du Monde attracts far more
  interest and attention — especially with the French team crashed out early in a spasm of mediocrity, petulance and politics — than the soporific pronouncements from the accounting
  standards-setters about GAAP/IFRS convergence.

There being nothing
worth tooting a vuvuzela about, in
other words, let respect be paid to the quiet of summer.

Thanks for joining. Comments and suggestions are welcome, and subscription sign-up is easy, both at the Home page.