Corporate American Scum

Another blow for corporate America on the Christian Science Monitor has an overview of the recent explosion of bad accounting and fraud in large American corporations.

“More broadly, it threatens to undermine the fragile economic recovery and is further eroding public confidence in corporate America. It is calling into question some of the most sacred principles of American capitalism. If last decade was the Roaring ‘90s, this one is starting out as the Odious OOs.”

Worldcom is only the latest of several corporations whose accounting practices were the only thing sustaining them. In this case, the dollar amount, “Worldcom misreported its cash flow by $3.8 billion” is quite a bit higher (and the word misreported seems quite generous), and the impact could be severe since “[a]n estimated 1 in 5 Americans use WorldCom as their long-distance carrier” and “WorldCom is the nation’s largest provider of Internet backbone services”. The demise of this company, or even going into bankruptcy could be felt by a lot of people in the U.S.

As a friend of mine recently said of Enron:

“When you find a cockroach in your kitchen, you’re a fool if you think that’s the only one.”

SatireWire, of course, has its own take in Supreme Court Rules Earnings Should be Protected as “Art”.

“One plus one is two. That is math. That is science. But as we have seen, earnings and revenues are abstract and original concepts, ideas not bound by physical constraints or coarse realities, and must therefore be considered art,“ the Court wrote in its 7-2 decision.”

The rest of the satire article is really funny and is encouraged reading.