Posted on 08/13/2002 5:26:53 PM PDT by bradactor
Analyze This Most of the corporate misdeeds happened on Clinton’s watch.
By Jerry Bowyer
id anyone notice that the new WorldCom restatement numbers released last week add up to the fact that now, in aggregate, the majority of the income distortions which have been announced since the Bush presidency began occurred before the Bush presidency even started?
Since the New York Times is not likely to explain this to you, I will. When a company restates something, it is usually correcting an error from past disclosures. But a point about the timing seems to be lost on virtually all of the TV and print media who continue to discuss the financial scandals as having occurred "on President Bush's watch."
Many in the media do not seem to understand that they've seized upon the one date that has no financial or accounting significance whatsoever — the date of the announcement. The fact that a restatement is announced "on President Bush's watch" has nothing at all to do with when the distortion originally occurred. For that piece of information, Peter, Tom, Dan, and — yes — even Ashley need to read what's in the press release, not just the date at the top of it.
More, if they were to look at the latest WorldCom restatement, and add it to the other celebrity restatements that cover the period before Bush became president, and then compare that number to all the high-profile restatements which occurred after January 2001, they will find that the bulk of the financial distortion occurred while Bill Clinton was still president of the United States.
In fact, all of the Enron misstatements occurred "on Clinton's watch," as did almost all of the Xerox misstatements.
Now, no one would suggest that these accounting distortions were Bill Clinton's fault (well, maybe Bob Barr would). No U.S. president could possibly have mastered the detail necessary to anticipate the kind of complex accounting issues that lay behind the general ledger errors that occurred in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Most of the staff of the offending companies didn't know about it; the media didn't know about it; the regulators didn't know about it; the analysts didn't know about it; and even the shareholders didn't know about it. (However, I'd have to say that the shareholders seemed to figure everything out long before the government or the media.)
The plain truth is this: You just can't pin accounting errors on George W. Bush that occurred while he was sitting in Austin learning how to pronounce "Mogadishu."
I think it was Will Rogers who said that "a man has a right to his own opinions, but he doesn't have a right to his own facts." So let's hear all the opinions, then. Let's hear interpretations and arguments about how much responsibility a president has for miscalculated amortization of capitalized good-will expenditures. Let's hear why Bush should've known that Coca-Cola wasn't using the Black-Scholes method of options-expense calculation.
Chances are we're not going to hear any of this, although an objective accounting of the facts would be nice. The media can begin with this fact: The lion's share of income distortions, which currently have Washington and Wall Street in a mutual tizzy, occurred before George W. Bush took the oath of office. Now, let the debate begin.
Don't kid yourself. They know exactly what they're saying.
-PJ
Hello, media...are you listening?
/sarcasm
We need to deal with the mainstream press. Their Clinton cover-up is far more destructive to the nation than Watergate.
Hey dude, this is a conservative website and that kinda talk does not set well around here. I suggest you try a liberal website to spew this crap so no one will care.
Conservatives debate and think and use FACTS. You've managed to react emotionally only. Sure you are really a Conservative ?
BUMP!
Name me one Att. Gen. and one president, that took on the corruption of a previous president ; you have many scandals to choose from : Grant, Harding, Carter, etc., etc., etc. ! There is NO historical prescidence ; not a one.
Stop reacting emotionally and T-H-I-N-K ! What you imagine you want, is not only without precident, it would open a can of worms, that would be a disater !
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