However, financial reporting as a system has its limits. It cannot stabilize the world economy, save the environment and help investors understand the financial condition of a company all at once. On a theoretical level, the people guiding the development and improvement of IFRS need to take this reality into consideration.

Transparency is most certainly a role of IFRS, arguably the most important one. The more difficult IFRS makes fraud, for example, the better it is. Stability, however, is not a critical role of IFRS. International financial reporting standards can and do have a direct impact on the transparency of financial statements; they have only a minor and tangential impact on the state of the global economy. While the value they provide in terms of improving liquidity is appreciated, global economic stability is determined by a wide range of other factors, most of which have little to do with financial...
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