To: Dee Jay who wrote (37526 ) 12/12/2001 4:18:52 PM From: Greg h2o Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 42804 << Are you saying that Republican will REDUCE that kind of scrutiny which serves your clients' best interests (and your own) or that it's a mere coincidence if that happens while Republicans are in charge of the SEC's enforcement division? Or that it's a good thing if that happens? Or are you simply stating that reporting those facts and comments makes the writer biased and anti-Republican?>> neither. and you can try to put whatever words into my mouth you desire, but your statements continue to be both inflamatory and inaccurate. i'm saying you should look at the real facts under Levitt's regime a tad closer: <<On balance, the average company's chances of being slapped with an SEC lawsuit for financial-statement fraud during the Levitt regime hardly increased over previous years. The SEC initiated financial fraud actions involving 29 companies in fiscal 1999, 33 in 2000, and 28 in 2001, according to CFO's analysis of the SEC's litigation releases. These statistics fit smoothly into trends revealed in the 1999 fraud report sponsored by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (known as the COSO Report), which found an average 27 companies per year facing penalties for financial-statement fraud between January 1987 and December 1997. The types of issues that led to charges weren't particularly distinctive, either. "These cases represent good old meat-and-potatoes deception; there's nothing unusual about them or the number of people involved," says Jack Ciesielski, publisher of the newsletter Analyst's Accounting Observer. Indeed, prematurely or falsely recognized revenues were cited in an average 51 percent of the cases taken in each of the past three years, compared with 50 percent recorded in the COSO Report. Understatement of expenses or liabilities showed up in 18 percent of the COSO cases, compared with an average of 26 percent of those taken between 1998 and 2001.>>