Trader/God wrote, “And what about Skilling and Lay? Can we really call two people criminals who did what the smartest accountants and lawyers money could buy told them to? If spending tens of millions of dollars a year to ensure compliance isn’t enough, how can any normal person protect themselves?” that is an absurd statement. do you know how public accounting works? the accountants don’t create financial statements or create elaborate schemes to hide liabilities or overstate earnings. Fastow comes up with the scheme and the accountants either agree with it or disagree with it. the accountants didn’t want to disagree with it because they didn’t want to lose a $10M client. there’s a conflict of interest and AA was grossly negligent. no comment about the lawyers.
And so the story goes http://www.financialweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080609/REG/806090322 Put me down for one “Free Skilling” T-shirt
Accountants are a useless breed.
Bleeck Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Accountants are a useless breed. LOL
Go read the books - “Smartest Guys in the Room” and “Conspiracy of Fools”… Lays out in much more clarity why/how Enron collapsed and also gives you a good sense of what a crappy job the movie/“documentary” (quotes intentional) did of telling the story. Just my 2 cents.
The documentary, though ,interesting comes across as too anti-market, runs too high on the morality fuel (as a contrast to ethics), and appeases to popular anti-high-compensation sentiments (it seems only entertainers have the RIGHT to flamboyant lifestyles in the West, how crooked the reasoning can be)… I must add though, the Nigeria Enron deal was actually called for by my state govt, so I wonder why they decided to treat that as a SPV/VIE. In any case it never got started (or the start-off was never intended?). Lol, so much for the Simpson clip… Hey Bleeck, If I’m not wrong, I think all of us here are all some sort of hybrid accountants (and presumably high on ethics too) to have come this far? Oh dear…
I like to think that my investments add value to my customers, fact is they get off richer than they were. Accountants tend to be… well… money-takers. Not money-makers; at least not for their clients.
Bleek agreed, thats why I left corp fin, exactly, thought I was the only one that felt that way. When doing reporting / accounting, I just felt like burden on the company, I didn’t add real value to operations. For instance, me busting my ass will not increase sales or margins.
if all the accounts stick with their role as the book keepers, they add value. if they start to become creative, they do damage.