Stock Profits: Getting to the Core—New Fundamentals for a New Age

The traditional assumption understood by every investor, analyst,

and planner has been based on trust. As long as a corporation pre-

sented an independently audited statement complete with an un-

qualified opinion letter, we knew that we could depend on the

numbers.

Today, we face a troubling, new environment. Everyone has had

to contend with the reality that we cannot simply accept the numbers

presented in an annual report, even when the numbers have been in-

vestigated by a professional auditing firm. We now know that the

glaring conflicts of interest on the part of those auditing firms con-

tradict the requirement of objectivity and fairness. Auditing ...