Moon Kil Woong

If a Bubble Bubble Bursts Off the Balance Sheet, Will Anyone Be There to Hear It?

When you can claim gains on an asset and choose to hide losses you are just asking for it. That is not accounting it's fraud. Allowing off balance sheet accounting is fraudulent because it is intentionally lying to shareholders if nothing else. Even if accounting allows for it, it is still leads to executive misconduct. As a shareholder, I certainly hope that this issue is brought up someday. Until then I will continue to stay away from financials with derivatives, especially ones that booked derivatives profits before 2008 because they are most likely still sitting on losses that potentially can amount to their entire capital. If they do or not we will never know.

I should say it is probably embarassing to be a corporate accountant these days for financial institutions. You might as well just carry a giant rubber stamp around and replace your entire vocabulary with yes.