Posted on 08/14/2002 11:43:24 AM PDT by Ditto
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.
— Jerry Bowyer is the chairman of Impact Mutual Funds and a television and radio talk show host. He can be reached through his web page: www.jerrybowyer.com.
I think the jury is still out on whether he can pronounce that word.
LOL. Keep in mind that Enron's sin was off balance sheet accounting to a tune of a few billion dollars while Worldcom accounted expenses as capital for several billion more dollars. For those deceptions, people will rightly go to jail. At the same time, trillions of dollars of Al Gore's Social Security "lock box" are all off the balance sheet and accounted as capital when they have already expensed. Every penny!
Congressman Billybob
Click for latest column: "Good People, Naked People, People Who Are Wet and Wild."
I believe that that is why Gore tried so hard to steal the election in Florida. This was all part of a 16-year plan. Gore lost, and the "machine" couldn't keep the companies propped up anymore. Within two years, all the insiders cashed out and left everyone else in ruins.
...and the public would be told that the economy is the best there ever was.
They were. The government revised the economic figures from 1999-2000 downward last week. Instead of increasing, the economy was decreasing.
-PJ
The journalism profession is an analog of the modern-day teaching profession, as corrupted by the leftists. Both suffer from the handicap of ignorance -- they have no knowledge of that which they speak (or write).
Thus, they mistake dogma for truth.
In short, the union bigwigs did EXACTLY what the corporate bigwigs did -- take the money and run, and screw the little guy. For more on such subjects, click the second link, below.
Congressman Billybob
Click for latest column: "Good People, Naked People, People Who Are Wet and Wild."
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