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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Zia Sun(zsun) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StockDung who wrote (8219)	6/10/2000 1:19:00 PM
From: Sir Auric Goldfinger	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10354

Task Force to Aim At Accounting Fraud Look for the Securities and Exchange Commission -- as early as this summer -- to bring headline-grabbing enforcement actions against a number of publicly traded firms for accounting shenanigans. A new Financial Fraud Task Force appointed by SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt last month already is up and running with several investigations under way. Levitt believes a recent spate of highly publicized accounting restatements threatens public confidence in the integrity of securities markets. He intends to send a forceful message that sleight-of-hand accounting will not be tolerated. The task force is headed by Charles Niemeier, a lawyer and accountant who was hired as chief counsel for the group, and Paul Berger, associate director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement. The commission won't identify specific cases, but quite a few of them are already part of the public record. MicroStrategy, of Vienna, Virginia, saw a $12.6 million gain become a net loss of $32.5 million after restating its 1999 earnings in April. It has said that it is being looked at by the SEC. Anika Therapeutics, a Woburn, Massachusetts-based medical-device manufacturer, restated its 1998 and 1999 revenues in March. It has acknowledged that it, too, is the target of an SEC investigation. So has software maker Inso of Providence, Rhode Island, which restated revenues for the first three quarters of 1998. High-tech startups with a desire to please Wall Street with steadily climbing revenues have evidenced a predilection for deceptive accounting. Berger says attempts to artificially level revenues, like the use of "cookie jar" reserves for rainy days and the practice of booking income long before the cash is actually received, are of particular interest to the task force. Niemeier said they'll also look at the growing practice of using supplementary statements to distract investors from legally required generally accepted accounting to more favorable interpretations like "cash earnings." Democratic pollsters have found that voters are so positive about the economy, it's unlikely they will turn negative before November, absent a sudden catastrophe. This should help Al Gore, says Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank for the party's centrist New Democrats faction. The poll found that the electorate's biggest economic worry is a stock-market crash. Losing health coverage was a distant second. The poll also found that voters consider personal control over pension and health-care benefits to be most important to their success in the so-called New Economy. But Marshall and pollster Mark Penn state that, because Social Security wasn't specifically mentioned in the poll, this result does not represent voter sentiment regarding Social Security reform. Of interest on the World Wide Web: The site of the House Committee on Government Reform, (www.house.gov/reform/) has newly released memos on Clinton-Gore fund raising. At www.sec.gov, the SEC's Website, you'll find an advisory regarding variable annuities. Get the lowdown on electricity deregulation at www.house.gov/commerce/, a Website of the House Commerce Committee. Markup of a bill is scheduled for June 14. E-mail comments to editors@barrons.com interactive.wsj.com