A Billion Dollar Write-Off

We've been talking asset impairment in Prof. Mark Lang's accounting class, so the news of EBay's $1.4 billion write-off related to its Skype acquisition is pretty timely.

(Thanks to the class discussions and Prof. Lang's habit of beginning every class with a video, I actually know how a write-off works and how I would explain it to Kramer.)

The NYT post makes some insightful observations regarding the situation, particularly by couching the EBay/Skype fiasco as a warning sign for the pending Microsoft/Facebook transaction.