TheBookkeeper

Repaying TARP for a Return to Gluttony

video.forbes.com/fvn/i...

Might they also be anxious to get on with the next really big scheme? Banks that are casinos are not banks, and they never will be.They will in time have to be shut down. Geithner & Obama made a great mistake putting them back in business. They are nothing but a tax on We The People. They are criminals by any standard.

Did CDS Cause All the World's Ills? Confronting the Crisis Backlash

I would love to see a book-keeper's journal and ledger that shows how these derivative instruments are recorded. I don't believe that the present methods of tracking such commercial histories would pass a test for legality..

Goldman's Blankfein on the Credit Crisis and Regulation: Not Far Enough

Wasn't it Blankfein that sat in with Geithner when the first AIG bail out was designed? Wouldn't it be nice to know if AIG was the broker for the mortgage bonds that Goldman's Blankein sold short in late 2006. And, after that, packaged and sold another 6 billion plus after cashing in on the short bet. Of course he likes the present system of regulation. Hopefully Geithner will take Blankfein with him on his way out the door.

Bank Nationalization: It's Just Plain Wrong

www.pbs.org/moyers/jou...

Bank Nationalization: It's Just Plain Wrong

ClydeDNA This movie
www.pbs.org/moyers/jou...
is surely designed by the present state of the mind of economists. Money is book-keeping's debit system. A great deal of economic exchange takes place without the assistance of banking at all. Our culture needs to understand how a proper double-entry book-keeping framework works if we are to even begin to understand how money works.

The role portrayed in this film, of banks being exclusive money lenders, is completely misleading. as to what makes a well run culture successful. Yes is true that banks, particularly since book-keeping is being done by bogus book-keeping software, have become corrupt. But to get a handle on how a culture trades it goods and services, you have to look at those goods and services, and not at the money that is so easily corrupted by schemers.

This film is a bad joke on unstudied minds, which includes most of today's economists who believe that economics can be expressed mathematically. It cannot. If one studies book-keeping in the detail that this film attempts to study money, they would find that book-keeping, and the money supply, are in fact grammatical language. There is a subject, predicate, and object involved in every business transaction. The object is a story we live by. That our culture, as story, is so badly corrupted today is the work of liars, not miscalculation. Book-keeping, after all, can be precise without going beyond simple arithmetic. If you want a clear picture of today's best alternative solution view this interview:
www.pbs.org/moyers/jou...

Global Sovereign Bond Watch: Overstuffed Supply

"Global sovereign bonds are just another asset competing for capital."

Could today be a wise time to refresh our understanding of the word "capital," in the context of commercial trade? It's binary complement for centuries has been "cash." An artifact of value is brought to the marketplace and sold by a debtor to a creditor. The debtor in the trade receives "cash" as the "value" of the artifact in trade. The creditor who paid out the cash, receives in exchange "capital-potential." Capital's potential is an expression of rights to ownership of the artifact. Capital's expressed value will gain or lose real value in future trades. When money is the artifact in trade, the creditor is betting on the paper, or the gold, or the oil having real value in return for potential value spent in a future trades. Capital that has expressed potential value of one sort is seeking real value in trade by purchasing capital of different sort. "Money in the bank," has a whole new meaning in today's world as potential gets removed further and further from physical assets with real value. Sometimes, in changing times, it is helpful to go back to basics and to rethink what one thinks they already know.

Furthering the Discussion on Bank Nationalization

“We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we’d like to do our best to preserve that system.”

Wouldn't it be nice if Secretary Geithner's words were in fact a.true statement of fact? The fact is that our financial system is being run by dreamers who are guessing "What might we try next," in the way of a solution to 40 years of Ponzi schemers using new-found computer power to accelerate bad ideas into today's crash.

Gold Pressure Is Near a Breaking Point

Alan Greenspan Oct 2, 2008, Sandra Day O’Connor Project Conference:
"During the past year, lack of trust in the validity of accounting records of banks and other financial institutions in the context of inadequate capital led to a massive hesitancy in lending to them. The result has been a freezing up of credit.... trust will eventually reemerge as investors dip hesitantly back into the marketplace. From that point, history tells us, financial and economic revival sets in. I suspect it will be sooner rather than later. In either event, human nature being what it is, revival will come. It always has in this society governed by that remarkable document we call the Constitution of the United States."

Even if gold goes to $20K an ounce, if our world is to be safe to live in, our society must resolve the state of ignorance held by countless Greenspans who said: "During the past year, lack of trust in the validity of accounting records of banks and other financial institutions"

In fact "bank records" are not "accounting records." Accounting is a business strategy played subject to the rules of double-entry book-keeping. If banks today were using a proper double-entry bookkeeping framework of rules their "books" would be easily auditable and transparent. Greenspan's problem, and countless others, would disappear. .

Whatever happens to gold as the dollar fails will not take the place of society's need to return to a proper practice of double-entry bookkeeping.

Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Citadel: Earnings Troubles All Around

You said:
"Tighten, don't loosen, accounting rules for financial institutions,"

Surely you know, sir, that the rules that accounting must follow are the 650 year old double-entry book-keeping framework of rules, no? If banks had been accounting to those rules the nation would not be where it is today.

"making them mark-to-market financial asset portfolios that specifically cannot be held on a long-term basis. Also clarify rules around consolidation of off-balance sheet vehicles,"

There is no legal 'off balance sheet vehicle.' A book-keeper's job is to administer contracts with transparency to all entities that are parties to the contract, and that surely includes stockholders. If a vehicle is placed off the balance sheet then any obligations an entity has to that vehicle's contract belongs on the entity's balance sheet. This is book-keeping 101, which is to identify an entity's boundaries of contractual obligations. aka "rights to ownership."

"forcing all but the most clearly dissociated entities to be recorded as on-balance sheet obligations."

There is no "all but." There is either a contractual obligation or there is not an obligation. All else is fudged books. Banks are failing because they are not doing their bookkeeping. An accountant is not a bookkeeper. Accounting and bookkeeping interests are as different as the baseball pitcher and the umpire who is calling balls and strikes.

We're in an Opacity Crisis

Hi Cate,
All that you hope to see in the way of transparency and control will return when business entities of every description return to a proper double-entry bookkeeping framework of rules. Such rules were customarily used by all business entities prior to computer software. The proper framework was never programmed into software. It will soon have to be because there is no other framework of rules that will get the present cultural collapse back on track and subject to the return to a constitutional government. The 650 year old double entry bookkeeping framework of rules supervised commercial trade since the middle ages. It is not only the de facto language of commercial trade. It is the only language of commercial trade.

If you wish to put my words to a test, find the best accountant you know. Ask him or her to define a debit versus a credit. Send me their answer and I will send you the proper definition. You will be quite surprised to learn how little accountants know about the double-entry framework of rules.

Can Capitalism Survive Its Latest Entanglement With Socialism?

Does an economist know how double-entry bookkeeping works? It is today's problem, but I never hear it mentioned. Why? A credit default swap would never post in a proper double entry framework of rules.. It is an illegal entry because it commingles rights to ownership. Why is this never talked about?

How to Spend $700B and Actually Solve the Problem

This makes sense, and it approaches the solution used in the Great Depression, when commercial banks were formed. They could only lend county-wide. Banks became a service the citizenry that were restricted from gambling with the citizen's money that was on deposit..

Ramifications of Fannie, Freddie On The U.S. Budget [Housing Tracker]

With all this responsibility heaped upon We The People We The People need, most of all, to become literate in a proper double-entry bookkeeping framework of rules.The financial community, its accountants, and it auditors have not a clue as to how a proper double-entry framework of rules monitors proper accounting practices Fixing the bookkeeping is our first line of defense if our future is to lead into a recovery. We have yet to see all of the failures that are already in the pipeline.

Is There a Margin of Safety in Financials?

Wouldn't this be a good time to reevaluate how well double entry bookkeeping practices are being followed? The more closely the double entry bookkeeping rules are enforced the more transparent the financial facts. Why sit on the sidelines and watch for what is going to happen when a proper bookkeeping can be telling you the facts right in the here and now? That you don't know is proof that the rules are not being followed.

Corporate Fraud + Government Intervention = Bailout Nation

A good, unbiased commentary, for sure.
However, the story misses one important point. The 650 year old double entry bookkeeping framework of rules has never made it into software code. Our present monetary system has no control language with which we can reconstruct its misuse. Without a proper framework of rules, that monetary system resembles the national museum in Baghdad in 2003. When no one is there to guard the treasure the attitude becomes, "If we don't steal it someone else will."
Nobody will be convicted for these frauds because reconstruction the history of facts is impossible using today's financial data management systems. A proper bookkeeping is designed to record a reusable history. It's called "the audit trail." With an audit trail we could go back and reconstruct the facts in detail. Had we had that for the past 30 years, the problem, of course, would never have occurred because most of us only break the law when we are quite certain there is no accountable way to get caught.
The problem is worse today than it was yesterday, and it will be worse tomorrow. The pattern of decay will continue until we decide as a citizenry that an accounting audit trail, that had served commercial trade for 620 years, would make a good idea to return to as soon as we possibly can.