Restating Earnings

Amusing take via Scott Adams:

Restate_1

Dilbert2006166591130

Dilbert2006121018002

Source:  Dilbert.com

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What's been said:

Discussions found on the web:
  1. abe commented on Nov 29

    Bloomberg reports that MSFT’s Zune took 9% share of the market in first week

  2. Gold commented on Nov 29

    when are the other 1000+ companies with options back dating issues going to come out of the closet? do all of these guys just get to resign and go play golf after looting the shareholders blind ……….. what happened to our justice system ?

  3. paul commented on Nov 29

    From today’s Washington Post:

    “Business interests, seizing on concerns that a law passed in the wake of the Enron scandal has overreached, are advancing a broad agenda to limit government oversight of private industry, including making it tougher for investors to sue companies and auditors for fraud.”

    Maybe soon companies will have the right to make up numbers again. After all, following the S & L’s Congress went on a wave of financial deregulation. “But it’s different this time”?

    Five Years After Enron, Firms Seek Weaker Rules
    By Carrie Johnson
    Wednesday, November 29, 2006; Page A01
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
    article/2006/11/28/AR2006112801686.html

  4. DavidB commented on Nov 29

    That’s unbelievable paul.

    I guess these guys have a hard time with being accountable to their unwashed employers. Do they forget that they are supposed to be our employees and we own those businesses?

    I guess we can all go out and eat cake

  5. Gold commented on Nov 29

    Nothing like risk free self dealing….. what a set up. Unfortunately ordinary Joes like you and me actually have to put our balls on the line to make money.

  6. S commented on Nov 29

    Gold: “what happened to our justice system”?

    Spitzer is too busy shopping for accoutrements for his new Albany home and contemplating whether he’d like to eventually have his mail sent to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to worry about corporate corruption any more.

  7. brion commented on Nov 29

    Regulation is EVIL and an impediment to our free-markets and the “genius” of capitalism…..

    -standard Republican boilerplate

    (translation-while the “Kenny boys” of the world may eventually wind up in hades, in the meantime, “you scratch my congressional back and i’ll scratch your bottom line genius!”

  8. me commented on Nov 29

    I have the answer to backdating, just do like IBM. They gave Sam zero cost options and he exercises in one day and makes a cool $5.1 Million.

  9. exSFBarista commented on Nov 29

    Is that 9% market share number based on # of Zunes pushed out into stores, or # of Zunes actually sold to end-users?

  10. paul commented on Nov 30

    More from today’s New York Times on the ‘independent’ panel:

    “In general, it said, the government should be hesitant to ever indict companies, given possible damage to innocent shareholders and to the economy, and it said the law should be changed to give Washington the power to block state indictments of accounting or financial firms.”

    Call that last provision the anti-Spitzer clause.

    “Federal indictments of corporations should occur only “in exceptional circumstances of pervasive culpability throughout all offices and ranks,” the report stated. It added that if a state wanted to bring charges against either an auditing firm or a financial firm, the Justice Department should be able to block the prosecution “on the grounds of national interest.””

    snip
    “”The report pays lip service to the need for rigorous enforcement but would dramatically diminish the effectiveness of the S.E.C., of criminal enforcement, of state attorney general enforcement and of private damage actions,” said Harvey J. Goldschmid, a professor at Columbia Law School who had served as general counsel and as a member of the S.E.C. He said he had seen the final report but declined to discuss or disclose details of it.

    ““The recent drive for accountability and deterrence would be replaced by a world in which almost anything goes,” he added. “The committee raised legitimate questions but over all their recommendations are unbalanced and unwise.””

    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/business/30regs.html
    Panel to Urge Rewriting Rules to Aid Companies
    By FLOYD NORRIS and STEPHEN LABATON
    Published: November 30, 2006

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