Accounting

Hidden Financial Risk, Understanding Off–Balance Sheet Accounting

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Then Enron disclosed problems in its third-quarter report of 2001 and soon declared bankruptcy. All of a sudden people were interested in accounting at levels I had never experienced previously. During the first half of 2002 I had at least 500 interviews with the media, and I discussed at length issues about Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, and Arthur Andersen. My main message was simple: The culture of financial reporting that began around 1990 brought about this mess. When managers engage in “earnings management,” what they really mean is that when they cannot make profits legitimately, they will exaggerate and abuse accounting numbers until the reported numbers make them look good. Aiding and abetting this process of “earnings management” have been board directors who never asked serious questions, corporate lawyers who were eager to push the limits, stock brokers and investment bankers who did not care how they made a buck, financial analysts who worried little that they served as used-car salesmen for their investment banking firms, auditors who looked the other way, an impotent Financial Accounting Standards Board, an overextended Securities and Exchange Commission, and members of Congress who would tolerate almost any- thing for sufficiently large campaign contributions.

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Publisher

: ., 2003

Collation

1-298

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0-471-43376-4

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NONE

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Subject(s)

Hidden Financial Risk, Understanding Off–Balance S

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