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To: nokomis who wrote (61083)	7/18/2002 2:05:18 PM
From: Ron	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 208838

Accounting skeletons keep popping out of closets. Each day, investors cautiously check to see what the latest "bad news" is from Wall Street. They seldom start the day empty handed. Yesterday, a massive class action suit filed in Ontario against Nortel alleges improper accounting practices. Today a front page Washington Post article spells out concerns about "unconventional deals" delaying bad earnings news for AOL, plus the now confirmed departure of once-ballyhooed AOL honcho Bob Pittman. The lawsuits might be shrugged off, except for a graphic Forbes report, just out, which shows a lawsuit filed last year against WorldCom, and subsequently thrown out by a judge, in fact did state the WCOM accounting problems fairly accurately. But it is not today's skeletons that are really spooking investors.. The really big bad bugaboos lurking down the hallway could be a spate of accounting "irregularities" to be turned up by the new, aggressive, and chastised auditors who are replacing Arthur Anderson at many companies. The prospects of a Spiro Agnew redux with Vice President Dick Cheney, at the center of an accounting investigation of Haliburton also looms darkly. Finally, the great irony of it all: Many of the large media companies breathlessly calling for tougher accounting standards, and especially a crackdown on the use and accounting for options, are themselves among the worst offenders, practicing aggressive accounting procedures and liberal use of options as lubricant for otherwise rough uphill sledding. -----------------------------------------m---( ". )---m-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- snip... and uh.. oh yea.. WCOM might file for bankruptcy as early as next week. Read it right here from a very credible source :) WHAT NEXT?