I came across a recent Twitter link to the “history of IFRS,” on a website called “Biz Stalker” (it describes itself as the leading information website in India) and I found it so informative and well-considered that I’ll post it here in its entirety:

• The International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) was ascertained in June 1973 by accountancy physiques affecting ten nations. It originated and circulated International Accounting Standards (IAS), statements and a national receptacle. These stood stared to by various federal analysis standard-setters in expanding federal standards.
• In 2001 the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) restored the IASC with a remit to arouse intersection between nationwide estimation principles through the advancement of customary computation norms. During its initial convention, the current Board recognized surviving IAS and Standing Interpretations Committee principles (SICs). The IASB has begun again to cultivate ideals convening the unique precepts “International Financial Reporting Standards” (IFRS).
• In 2002 the European Union (EU) approved that from 1 January 2005, International Financial Reporting Standards would correlate for the compressed catalogues of the EU documented firms, provoking about the beginning of IFRS.
• ·so this is all about history of IFRS,
  if you want to learn more about it contact us….

It’s so tempting to call the number they provided, if only to talk more about arousing intersection. But this is nothing compared to a subsequent posting – an amazing “acknowledgment summary of IAS 1” (as I post this article the link isn’t working, but you’ll have to take my word for it that it existed, and may one day return). Space prevents me from reproducing all of that here, but I’ll present a few passages, contrasted and compared with the red book version we’re more accustomed (in our folly) to dealing with…

Boring official version An entity shall present separately each material class of similar items. An entity shall present separately items of a dissimilar nature or function unless they are immaterial.

Enhanced Biz Stalker version Any concrete grade of identical commodities must be presented individually in the monetary declarations. Different articles may be approved hardly if they are separately supernatural.

(There’s something deeply poetic there, in the notion that to be material is both to be fully physical and present, to be “concrete,” and yet simultaneously almost to transcend physical form, to be “supernatural.”)

Boring official version Financial statements are a structured representation of the financial position and financial performance of an entity. The objective of financial statements is to provide information about the financial position, financial performance and cash flows of an entity that is useful to a wide range of users in making economic decisions. Financial statements also show the results of the management’s stewardship of the resources entrusted to it. To meet this objective, financial statements provide information about an entity’s (assets, liabilities etc.):

Enhanced Biz Stalker version The motive of widespread intention monetary assertions is to procure advice about the monetary responsibility, economic creation, and currency cycles of a substance that is valid to a full distance of stoners in giving rise to monetary determinations. To race that motive, economic messages contribute advice about an element’s (possession, drawbacks etc.)

(The key stroke of genius here is surely the reconfiguration of “a wide range of users” as the infinitely more evocative “full distance of stoners.” Thereby, Biz Stalker breaks through the pretentiousness and self-regard and confidently proclaims, you’re all just tripping! “Race that motive” is a nice substitution for “meet this objective,” implicitly suggesting the impossibility of ever meeting it, that it’s always just a race).

Boring official version A complete set of financial statements comprises…a statement of financial position as at the end of the period…

Enhanced Biz Stalker version an article of monetary posture (symmetry sheet) at the future of the moment

(Again, what tangibility there is in that phrase “monetary posture,” and what far-reaching poetry in replacing the bland “end of the period” with the expansive “future of the moment.” Really, wouldn’t that be your goal for your life, to fully experience the future of the moment?)

Boring official version …a statement of changes in equity for the period; a statement of cash flows for the period

Enhanced Biz Stalker version an announcement of shifts in land for the duration; testimony of coin tides for the time

(Something about that evokes standing on a beach, the land smoothly shifting beneath your feet, as the coin tides slowly roll in. If only all financial statements could evoke such grandeur)

And it goes on. No doubt we have been reviewing here the work of a computer, without the merest trace of human oversight or intervention. But it still allows some reason to hope that the old joke may come partially true, and that an army of monkeys, if they bang away for long enough, may produce if not the complete works of Shakespeare, then at least a stage-worthy version of IFRS…

Once again, happy holidays!

The opinions expressed were only in part those of a human being, and even then, probably only those of a stoner.