BBC News: Andersen video puts Cheney on spot
“…I get good advice, if you will, from their people based upon how we’re doing business and how we’re operating over and above the just sort of normal by-the-book auditing arrangement..”
God help us. Can you imagine? Good advice? Over and above? By-the-book auditing? I know it is slightly irrelevent and senseless but, in light of Enron and the doubt cast upon Cheney and Bush’s business past, it seems slightly amusing to me.
I’m certianlly no pollyanna but, I don’t expect either of these guys did anything “by-the-book” in business. Hardly anyone one in business (anymore) really does. They all look for the magical mathmatical short cut to doing any actual real or hard work. Why work for money when you can bait, switch, and trick for it? This is not just conjecture, it’s being taught in the best business schools in the country.
Sit in on any 300+ level accounting or finance class. You’ll find several strategies being taught “off the books” that parallel accounting practices that are nailing these companies to the walls. That’s the way that complex accounting works in capitolism, like it or lump it. The honest and straightforward companies many times have their behinds handed to them by stockholders. If they aren’t over-reporting numbers then they are bolstering their book values and flattening debt ratios by laying people off by the thousands. Laying them off despite a marginal loss in revenues. Or, are the companies caught doing these dastardly deeds simply striving to meet and cover up massive executive overhead? Salaries, bonuses, stock options and god-knows-what. That tends to piss off shareholders as well.
(link via metafilter).