Bill Black on Modern Accounting Fraud
- Accounting fraud creates short term accounting profits followed by huge losses.
- At its peak 40% of mortgages in the United States were not prime!
- The average CFO in America lasts ~ 3 years. If your rivals engage in accounting fraud and you do not then you last much less than that average…maybe a quarter or 2. Bad ethics drive good ethics out of the market.
Bruce Bartlett’s The GOP’s Misplaced Rage is another lens on the politics behind the real estate bubble.