[asbromberg]

I think its wrong to think that any accounting system can ever be made to be appropriate for all industries (GAAP, IFRS, or anything else). They each require 100s of decisions and assumptions that may bias or mislead investors one way or another; its not like any one of those decisions is the "right" one either. Its more important that we make sure investors are aware of what those pitfalls are. Not to mention, the cost of asking every US company to switch to IFRS would be enourmous (though i'm sure the big 4 accounting firms wouldn't mind).

As a side note, GAAP definitely isn't industry agnostic. For example, FASB (the financial accounting standards boards) issues guidance on revenue recognition for all sorts of companies and the guidance for a software company is very different than the guidance for your generic widget manufacturer.