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Technology Stocks : WCOM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BWAC who wrote (10814)	6/25/2002 9:10:06 PM
From: Daniel G. DeBusschere	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11568

BWAC- Thanks for your thoughts. If the statement is true, then what would be anyone's motivation to create a "crisis of monumental importance" based on this? I have seen a lot of fights over capitalized costs versus operating expenses and I have seen the IRS basically say f__k GAAP this is a capitalized cost as far as US corporate tax accounting is concerned - you are NOT going to get a current expense deduction and reduce your taxes this year - you are going to capitalize the cost and depreciate it over 40 years!! The real consequences of this action may be experienced tomorrow by a serious market meltdown. People are going to sell first ask questions later. I may be a buyer tomorrow if opportunities arise.

To: BWAC who wrote (10814)	6/25/2002 9:22:13 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Respond to of 11568

Interesting development. Reminds me, in some ways, of AOL's accounting scandal of a few years ago where they were capitalizing certain customer acquisition costs. The restatement wiped out several past periods of earnings (I think it wiped out all the earnings they had ever reported previously). Now, AOL was capping what everyone else agreed were marketing costs, but a big difference exists if these (at WCOM) were costs incurred in building out telecom projects. It won't matter for tomorrow, but it will matter in whether we BK or not. PS: I noticed that Sigmore didn't mention the shareholders in the groups he tried to reassure.