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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TGPTNDR who wrote (140762)	12/4/2001 9:24:06 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1580603

I think you're being rather hard on the accounting profession. These things are difficult and Arthur Andersen was doing the very best they could under the circumstances. As a CPA, I have watched the deterioration of the accounting profession over the last ten years. The big CPA firms have literally been in control of the standards setting process for years. If they needed new FASBs to deal with the Enrons of the world, they were certainly in a position to get the professional standards drafted. The larger firms are an embarrassment to the profession. The most fundamental of auditing standards requires that the auditor be independent with respect to the auditee. Yet, AA was collecting a million dollars a week in auditing and consulting fees. No way are these guys independent. Another fundamental premise of auditing is that if there is doubt as to an organization's ability to continue as a "going concern", that doubt must clearly be disclosed in the financial statements. For the financial analysts to have missed this, they had to be blind. For the CPAs to have missed it, they had to be criminals. Hard on them? Maybe. But these people have destroyed what was once the most honorable and respected of the professions. As a member, I'm more than a little disgusted. (By the way, I'm lucky enough to have multiple diciplines to call on, so I was able to get out of the accounting business before it declined quite so far <g>).