The big news of the day is the Worldcom accounting scandal. It seems they reported all of their daily business expenses as capital expenses, meaning that those costs don't show up on their current balances sheets, creating a $3 billion accounting error. Coincidentally, Arthur Andersen was their corporate auditor. It's begining to look like everything Andersen did was corrupt or illegal.
Worldcom is claiming that they were duped by their CFO and Andersen, but I'm thinking they just didn't want to see what was going on. At best. This is the same company who's founder and chairman wrote himself a $366 million loan out of the corporate account to cover trading losses. Wolrdcom was founded by Bernie Ebbers, who claims to de a devout, conservative Christian, whic makes me wonder if his Christianity is different from what I was taught about growing up. Granted, I'm Catholic, but the idea is basically the same. I'm pretty sure that Mr. Ebbers would be quite upset if he owned stock in a company that lied about expenses and earnings, but he seems to have missed the part of Christianity that says to treat others as you wish to be treated yourself. I guess he likes being lied to and deceived. Just a thought.
A big part of this scandal is that Worldcom has big ties to the Bush Administration and the Republican party, with something on the order of $1 million in campaign contributions. It makes you wonder what kind of concessions they bought. Do thy include getting a pass on securities fraud, and maybe bankruptcy protection? If you think caps on campaign contributions are out of line, follow this story, and the Enron case. The fact that the reform bill that came out the Enron scandal is dead in Congress should alert people to the peril of unfettered corporate access to our nations legislators. Remember: Businesses are not people. They shouldn't have the same rights as people. We're paying the consequences of that right now.