Cooking the Books 101

Every company games the numbers to a certain extent to achieve budget and get bonuses. This is nothing new. But two things make the here and now different for us. First, our money is the issue (history is always about other people’s money). Second, these are BIG numbers.

Enron, Aldelphia and WorldCom are extreme examples. They are the few bad apples that get all the headlines. I believe that people with better ethics run the majority of companies. They may bend the rules, but few take the process to the extremes of Enron or WorldCom. If this weren’t true, we’d all be investing in government bonds