Predators and Profits: 100+ Ways for Investors to Protect Their Nest Eggs

Chapter 9. Goosing, Stuffing, and Faking: Tricks of the Trade to Drive Revenue Up and Costs Down

	“In the corporate world, some things aren’t exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures.”
	--President George W. Bush at a news conference on July 8, 2002, a day before announcing a crackdown on corporate criminals and as he defended his own past business dealings

Now let’s look at the truly creative. Playing around with a few asset sales, some pension gains, or “cookie jar” reserves to prop up earnings is one thing. But this is small time crookery to the real manipulators and deceivers. They prefer to simply scratch a few billion dollars from one column and put the money in another, to stop the computer clocks so that a late order ...