Monday, November 2, 2009

Emanuel Wants to Embellish Fictional Financial Statements


SEC rules apply to publicly traded companies. Off balance sheet items and "fair value accounting" rule changes make financial statements opaque. A proposed rule change could increase this opacity. Bloomberg reported:

The Obama administration is pushing House Democrats to spare small public companies the cost of complying with investor-protection rules imposed after the accounting frauds at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc., according to people familiar with the efforts.

Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is seeking the reprieve from audit requirements under the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Payback and politics. Isn't that Rahm's specialty?