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Economists scour the US to find out why we're more in debt than the Department of Commerce says we are. Like most people, economists love a mystery – especially if it involves not a missing person but a missing $2.9 trillion in United States debt. That's $2.9 with 11 zeros after it. Some words of explanation: Every quarter the Department of Commerce comes up with the US "International Investment Position." At the end of 2006, for instance, the US had a net negative position – by this measurement of international assets and liabilities – of $2.6 trillion. In other words,...

A month after his musical comeback hit a sour note, pop star Michael Jackson has sued his former accountants for breach of duty, claiming they withdrew huge sums of money from his bank accounts but neglected to pay his bills. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last Thursday and obtained on Tuesday by Reuters, says the accounting firm Bernstein, Fox, Whitman, Goldman & Sloan withdrew $2.5 million a year from Jackson's accounts but failed to properly pay the bills for which the money was earmarked. Representatives for the Los Angeles-based firm were not immediately available for comment. Jackson,...

A Battlefield for Tax Reform There are a few significant battlefields in the war for tax reform. One of them is Free Republic. What makes the Free Republic battlefield significant is that the debate is at the cutting edge. The debate on Free Republic is the most current and most knowledgeable. It is a year ahead of other significant battlefields (radio talk shows, political town-hall meetings, conversations among neighbors and coworkers.) The trend on Free Republic with respect to tax reform is going to show up in the real world. Free Republic is a tiny segment of the world, albeit...

My wife has a good friend who has been looking for a job. She is Chinese... my wife and the friend who is looking for a job. Her friend is a CPA and is looking for an accountant position. There is a job shortage for Chinese accountants - make that a HUGE job shortage - in Beijing. The big four - www.pricewaterhousecoopers.com, www.deloitte.com, www.kpmg.com, and www.ernstandyoung.com - are all hiring. And they desperately need accountants in China. The giant state-owned enterprises need international accounting expertise as they prepare to adopt new accouting procedures that will help them gain investor confidence....

Testimony of Beth McConnell Director, Pennsylvania Public Interest Group Education Fund On behalf of United States Public Interest Research Group, Consumer Federation of America, National Consumer Law Center Before the Internal Revenue Service Public Hearing, April 4th, 2006 Regarding Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Amendments to Section 7216 Regulations and Revenue Guidance 26 CFR Part 301 [REG-137243-02] RIN-1545-BA96 and Revenue Procedure 2005-93 [Notice 2005-93] Good morning. My name is Beth McConnell, and I’m the director of the Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group Education Fund (PennPIRG Education Fund). I am also offering comments today on behalf of U.S.PIRG, the National Consumer Law...

"Congress shall create a Tax Code weighing more than the combined poundage of the largest member of the House and the largest member of the Senate, plus a standard musk ox." Article I, Section VI of the Constitution of the United States (according to "Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway") It's that time of year again. Dig out the receipts showing every possible legal deduction. Find all those canceled checks proving that you paid all those doctor bills last year. Add up the mileage for all those business-related trips you took. Put it all into a shoebox, take it down...

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Christopher Dodd, the very liberal Connecticut Democrat, wrote of his recent visit to Venezuela in a letter to the editor of The Washington Post. Hugo Chavez, the neo-Marxist military leader, was "democratically elected," Mr. Dodd notes; he urges the White House "to reconsider its failed approach to Venezuela." In just the same way, Dodd would welcome back Jean-Bertrand Aristide, his best friend in Haiti. Dodd is known in Washington as "the senator from accounting," a richly earned sobriquet for the legislation he initiated that would have protected the Arthur Andersen firm for its role in the Enron...

The hunt for terrorist and criminal money launderers is being undermined by the continuing refusal of some lawyers and accountants to report potentially suspicious transactions by their clients, the country's leading economic crime investigator warned yesterday. Jon McNally, head of the economic crime unit at the national criminal intelligence service, admitted he was "frustrated" that the two professions had done relatively little to help the police since September 11. He accused many firms of not making appropriate checks to ensure their clients were honest people dealing with legitimate funds. Thanks mainly to the diligence of the major banks following the...

The current accounting scandals—and the "crisis of confidence" they have inspired—are nothing new. To gain perspective and prepare for the next cyclical bull market, it's important to understand the historic relationship between accounting and the stock market. In his 1973 book "The Go-Go Years," John Brooks laid out how the two relate, and I'll lean heavily on his account for this article. Brooks wrote his classic book during the last (long) bear market, and it describes how the preceding bull market (the 1960s) contained the seeds of its own destruction, and how it paralleled the previous bear—the Crash of 1929....

As part of efforts to clamp down on abusive corporate tax shelters, the Internal Revenue Service is expected to file enforcement actions against two accounting firms as early as today or tomorrow, several people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. The agency has stepped up its focus on firms that provide advice to companies on how to minimize their tax bill. The pressure on so-called tax-shelter promoters is considered an effective means to identify how widespread the practice is. The enforcement action -- the first of its kind against a promoter -- would be to compel...