Madoff’s Accountant Is Charged With Fraud

The root cause of the numerous number of corporate collapses which nations must address is that there have just too many qualified and unqualified shameless and greedy accountants who had gotten away with dual roles of performing pretentious audits for millions of businesses in the US to Asia beginning from the early eighties.

The effects of globalization and rapid changes in technology complicated further the fluidity of movements in transactions and loose recordings of vital information which millions of ordinary investors in the world today who remain ill equipped in monitoring their assets. In particular danger are the those who do not technological access or finance know how including surprise, surprise a great majority of Americans.

What market participants need in an overdose of healthy skepticism of all matters related to accounting transactions. If you do not protect your own significant interests, be assured that no one else will, and even if paid, the accountant in the majority of cases will only have time to humor you with limited information on the protection of your savings and if need be, enrichment of your investments. This incapacity to provide optimum information extends to markets advisors as in the case of fiascos in the likes of AIG.

The image of the accountancy profession is scarred beyond recognition with the numbers of high profile corporate scandals costing markets billions and harming industries across the globe. Yet accounting professional bodies world wide continue to espouse principles of ethics reflected in their voluminous guidelines and regulations, pride themselves competitively on the numbers in their ranks and lucratively governing members’ behaviours with impotent professional development courses. Adjunctively, dreaded behaviours condoned by some professionals in the forms of fee competition, sloppy supervisions and lackadaisical adherence to standards attach parasitically to lumbering failing markets. Without providing concrete final answers on the practices of qualified accountants members flouting the profession’s rules rapidly and suspending immediately any member’s work upon the slightest suspicion, world accounting bodies serve to invite further scrutiny and questioning of its real relevance in market functions.

True, markets are never perfect and cannot be expected to be so, but witness the denigration of the markets and corporations by the unscrupulous despicable greedy few, it is dreadfully disappointing to think if so called professionally trained thousands frontline practitioners with substantial years of experiences of this once noble profession armed with the best of accounting principles cannot withstand and overcome the onslaughts of corporate greed and financial debaucheries practices by financial deviants or commercial terrorists, who can you really trust to protect your investments?

Show anyone without accounting qualifications audit rules and regulations in any developed nation with a mature accounting profession, he or she will be astounded with the overwhelming amount of do gooder audit principles promulgated for all accountants to adhere to in their practices. Nothing less of the best in audit practice would have been expected of Freihling, yet his continuing practice as a CPA in showing disdain for objectivity in the audit and certification of the Madoff investments vehicle clearly show him to have low regard of the true and fair view principle that is ultimately the objective of a sound and credible audit exercise. When Friehling is found guilty with the weight of the evidence stacked against him, the appropriate sentence must send a deterrent message to future would be accountants; that the life savings of ordinary folks are not trinkets to be trifled with at accountants’ pleasures, particularly those who are CPAs. Sad to say, hundreds of thousands of books will continue to be ‘cooked’ or audited without proper applications of strict audit guidelines and accounting standards with the increased chaos in world markets and the experienced flouters fearlessly signing off on unreflective and inaccurate accounts until and unless market participants purge the accounting profession significantly of cowardly bean counters!  Until the heaviest of deterrence exist, hapless and naive market participants who will lose again in the tumultous and turbulent tsunamis of corporate scams and scandals can only hope for repentance, return of takings or divinely, retribution on sons of those who sin against the markets.

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/madoffs-accountant-is-charged-with-fraud/#comment-215051

Bullish bailouts

Recent history of financial collapses since Enron show ordinary Americans to be real push overs when it comes to the threats from financial terrorists. Even with the best of many technologies and talents in non financial fields, the American people flounder helplessly in the aftermaths of financial scandals. America is the only nation capable of proclaiming itself to be bastion of sound financial systems and credible promulgator of financial regulations. However, recent events indicate that lawmakers and ordinary righteous American people continue to be held at ransom by shameless, unconscientious and greedy groups of insiders.

In this, the Obama administration must find its own invisible mettle and embark with the American people on a relentless pursuit of justice in the face of the tsunamis of financial scams, swindles and scandals. The American people need to show unpliable cohesion and outright fortitude towards unconscientious and shameless greedy recipients of any form of unjustified rewards. The American people must inform the world that nothing of the magnitude and nature of financial scams and advertent mismanagements can ever be tolerated again. It is insane and humiliating to see many ordinary non market participants in the world today go without meals much less jobs whilst a few thousand ‘best and brightest’ collusive insiders in complex webs of artificially created financial instruments hold the world’s financial systems ransom. Intelligence in the state of being of employment is not a stand alone attribute, it must come in a package that includes the requisite qualities of conscience and sense of responsibility. To ALL stakeholders which includes the public at large. The ‘best and brightest’ in any field must be reminded; to whom much is given, much is expected.

The frequent bailouts are consequences of clearly dishonest and incompetent acts; dishonest because knowledgeable employees should know that the funds are being advertently placed in the wrong funds possibly to enrich the employees first and incompetent, because carefully screened rightfully candidates engaged for sophisticated investment work simply cannot engage in investment activities that threaten the savings of investors! These consequences of repeated high profile corporate failures are similar to unprovoked attacks on peaceful economies and must be defended against with overwhelming means just as in a war since lives are consistently being harmed and possibly destroyed eventually. These threats should not be taken lightly, as the consequences of irresponsible management of the billions of shareholders have a cascading effect to ordinary common non stakeholders. Amongst the terms in all employment contracts is the requirement that employees must act in the best interests of the company and this implicitly includes stakeholders a condition even the ‘best and brightest’ cannot simply deny not knowing.

Mr. Obama with his own ‘best and brightest’ will not have all the credits for successfully thwarting the leakages of taxpayers funds into the hands of the greedy unrepentant few. Yet, neither should they take all the blame that come with the failure to stop the dispensing of gargantuan amounts of bonuses into the gutter at the expense of the needy majority.

Every responsible and conscientious individual on this planet has a role to play in overcoming the scourge of corporate greed that continues to plague the world’s economies similar to the responsibility to protect other assets of the world. With the best of brains in America, it is not only insulting to humanity throughout the world that livelihoods of millions can be strangled to oblivion at the hands of so few who believe that their lackaidaisical approaches to financial investments and management account for something whilst the great numbers of struggling householders and millions of job seekers face dark prospects of better lives ahead. Hence, Americans or not, all must join forces to overcome the seemingly insatiable greed that is prevalent in environments where cynical deception and unremitting schemings continue to be trade practices used to hoodwink ordinary investors just as they were employed to subdue the minds of ordinary millions in wars.

With thousands of brilliant lawyers in America, there is no excuse of not thwarting the thievery and repeated siphoning activities of identified undeserving traders. The solutions can be found in the faces of the young children who have parents and family members with lost jobs and homes lost. Name the undeserving recipients, shame them and fire them. To paraphrase Bush’s words, bring them on! No one is indispensable. Experience can be learnt and performances bettered by righteous people. History is filled with countless examples of financial hardships overcomed by conscientious and correct acts by responsible people who truly have the welfare of good ordinary folks at heart. Teach the world the real meaning of good old American ethics and shower real benevolence to those most, not reward stupidly over and over again, the acts of snakes in suits.

http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13312913