Chapter 13. Where Were the Auditors? Counting Fictitious Beans

 

“...We wonder if these fellows can be trusted with the grocery money, much less with restoring public confidence in shareholder capitalism.”

 
 --from a Wall Street Journal editorial about the big four accounting firms, April 23, 2002

Paul Volcker leans his huge frame back in the chair and chortles as he describes some of the absurdities he sees in modern-day accounting.

To the 75-year-old former Federal Reserve chairman, whose reputation for taming inflation in the 1980s matches his basketball player six-foot, eight-inch frame, very few people in business really know what is going on with many aspects of today’s complex sets of accounts.

Volcker says that the leadership of the big accounting ...

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