TheBookkeeper

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.

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..

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.

Clock is Ticking for Banks With Asset Quality Issues (Part II)

Mindi did you ever consider that today's bank failures are brought on by bad bookkeeping. Are you aware that bookkeeping is a 650 year old language whose fundamental controls were abandoned when record keeping moved from paper and punch card systems to computer code? Do you know that accounting is a strategy run subject to that bookkeeping framework of rules? No accountant or economist that I know of, knows a proper bookkeeping's finely tuned rules. Bookkeeping is a piece of the banking story you would do well to consider.