Re: "I'd call that a real stretch." (...The reforms which could have headed off the entire financial bubble... if they had only been in place.)
>>> I wouldn't. Sound accounting reforms of the types proposed back then (expensing stock options, banning accounting firms from holding accounting AND consulting contracts with the same client, etc.) would have headed off the worst excesses of the financial bubble... and would have put the financial reports of thousands of companies a lot closer to the 'straight and narrow'.
"That was hardly the first roaring bull market and numerous ones happened when accounting standards were tighter than they were in the Roaring '90s."
>>> Our problems stemmed not from a 'roaring Bull Market'... but from a financial asset Bubble (quite a different thing), and from dishonest accounting, and dishonest investment "sell side" analysis.
>>> Failure to enact the Levitt/Rubin accounting reforms after a decade-long process of examination (and with the full support of Greenspan, Buffett, the WH, US Accounting Standards Board, the SEC, etc.... --- but going against the opposition of numerous politicians 'bought and paid for' by the financial lobby, including Lieberman, Dodd, DeLay, Breaux, etc.) condemned us to an eventual disaster. |
