TheBookkeeper

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.

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.

Short Sales: SEC Turns Back the Clock to 1931

However you slice it a naked short bet that pays off is somehow collecting counterfeited money. And if the short bet loses money, who gets that profit? The broker? There is no way that such practices could be being posted to a proper double entry bookkeeping framework of rules.