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Strategies & Market Trends : Three Amigos Stock Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: milesofstyles who wrote (7196)	7/26/1998 9:44:00 PM
From: Sergio H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29382

Miles, the laws allow leeway. Accounting principles provide alternatives beyond choosing to depreciate or not to depreciate. These alternatives are legal but the reporting must be consistent throughout the report. In your example, Co's A, B and C chose 3 different methods to account for an acquisition. A careful look at the balance sheet would indicate what method was used and what benefit was derived from using the particular method. In your initial discussion with Joe, I believe that the topic was slightly different and it concerned intangibles that can not be found on the balance sheet. Thank you for posting your tools. I am not familiar with how to make use of them. Sergio

To: milesofstyles who wrote (7196)	7/26/1998 10:08:00 PM
From: milesofstyles	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 29382

sergio, yes we were talking about the intangibles for soss and i indicated they were probably from acquisitions of companies. the example posted after was for a general asset...like furniture... hese alternatives are what i refer to as manipulation.these decisions on how they are handled are based on current financial position. suppose a company wants to establish their ablility to obtain credit...what do they do? boost the balance sheet by increasing their assets so they add the furniture...another company that does not have that problem might expense the same item. yes, accounting principles allow it. and since the expense side affects the income statement and the asset affect the balance sheet i think it is easy to see how ratios can reflect these actions differently. the reporting will not reflect what decision was made regarding furniture. this is an internal decision that is not governed from what i know. these types of decisions by no means would result in inconsistency of reporting. they are options available to the company to handle as they wish.but these decisions affect the financial statements and thus ratios. milesov