| This is the Weekend Edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a roundup of the most popular stories Bloomberg Opinion publishes each week based on web readership. New subscribers can sign up here; follow us on Threads, TikTok, X, Instagram and Facebook. Well I think accounting is cool. Accounting, like tax law or Ancient Greek, has this pleasing constellation of features: - It is an arcane and detailed body of knowledge, so if you have a detail-oriented, trivia-loving cast of mind, you might enjoy it, and if you become good at it people will be impressed at all the random stuff you know.
- But it's not random. Despite the arcana, it is a fundamentally principled body of knowledge: The rules fit together in a largely sensible way to achieve some core goals. In accounting, the basic goalsinclude accurately and usefully presenting a company's financial position, accurately reflecting changes in that position, etc.
- It is a social body of knowledge: Accounting rules are made by committees based on human experiences; they are not given facts of the natural world. Understanding people helps you understand accounting, and vice versa.
- If you understand the principles deeply and study all the arcana, you can find little glitches, little places where the actual rules can be used to accomplish things that seem to contradict the deep principles. In tax law, the glitches tend to have the form "make income disappear." In accounting, the glitches tend to have the form "make income appear out of nowhere." Finding those glitches is a satisfying intellectual endeavor and a way to demonstrate to yourself that you have truly mastered both the principles and the details.
- Also, if you are good at finding those glitches, you can turn them into a lot of money. (This does not work with Ancient Greek.)
Does that sound appealing to you? Probably most of you are saying "what, no," and a substantial minority of you are like "yes, that does sound cool, that is pretty much what I do in my job as a [derivatives structurer][distressed credit investor][software engineer][fintech founder][financial fraudster], though I probably get paid more than the accountants," and a few of you are like "I am an accountant and that doesn't sound all that much like my day job," and then one of you is going to email me to be like "I am an accountant at a Big Four national office and thank you for appreciating my art." But a lot of 18-year-olds will start college soon and they all think accounting is boring, so there is a dire shortage of accountants.
Read the whole thing. Gus Walz Is Not Your Inspiration Porn — Sarah Gundle New Trump Charges Expose the Supreme Court's Failings — Noah Feldman AI Giants Can Learn a Thing or Two From Mark Zuckerberg — Parmy Olson Harris Can Win on Vibes — and Trump Knows It — Nia-Malika Henderson Hong Kong's Pure Fitness Is Losing Its Swank — Shuli Ren The Breakout Star of the Democratic Convention Was … YIMBY — Matthew Yglesias Putting 'Asia First' Could Cost America the World — Hal Brand Milton Friedman's Shower Scene Is Back — John Authers Working Six Days a Week Is No Myth In Greece — Lionel Laurent Here's what we've been listening to and watching this week. - Miss Nvidia earnings? Jonathan Levin, John Authers and Dave Lee discuss "the most important stock on planet Earth."
- Google and Microsoft are losing the AI race to Mark Zuckerberg's Meta. Parmy Olson explains why.
- Ending the SALT cap is a great idea for wealthy New Yorkers, but not at the expense of Gen Z, Kyla Scanlon argues.
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