Watch out FASB: there's a new accounting cleanup crew. In October, Columbia Business School launched the Center for Excellence in Accounting and Security Analysis (CEASA) with seed money from IBM, the GE Foundation, and Morgan Stanley. According to Stephen Penman, professor of accounting at Columbia and co-director of the center (along with Trevor Harris, a managing director at Morgan Stanley), the think tank will bring together academics, finance executives, and others to develop "independent policy research" on some of today's most pressing accounting issues. Entire Article