[Southack]

You charge ALL of the money that the company paid out as soon as the company cuts checks.

At least, that's what you do under today's accounting rules.

If you change the accounting rules to comply with this ridiculous new "expense options" fad, then the company will have to GUESS at its expenses and mark up its accounting books to reflect first the "guess" at the initial time the options were issued, and then later revise the accounting books to reflect true market value (Oh, and that true market value changes every hour of every business day).

Why?

Why change from using the ACTUAL money that a company is out (i.e. today's existing accounting process) to one where guesses and constant revisions are required (i.e. this new "Expense Options" craze)?

Why change our accounting processes to make large-scale corporate embezellment easier? That's what "expensing options" does. It forces companies to clutter up their accounting books with guesses and revisions that can easily be manipulated by insiders to defraud stock-holders of corporate equity.

In this climate of massive accounting crisis, why would ANYONE support that sort of change?

[Deuce]

You just haven't thought about this issue sufficiently. Let me ask you, again, to address a specific question.

Three companies A, B & C have identical operations. Each generates $1 billion in revenue; each has non-salary expense of $400 million(IOW, they all have gross earnings of $600 million before salaries). Company A pays $550 million in salaries; Company B pays $50 million in salaries and grants options to buy 100 million shares at it's current price of $10 at any time in the next 2 years; Company C pays no salary but grants options to purchase 100 million shares at a price of $3 any time in the next 5 years. Is it your opinion that the best reflection of earnings is that A earned $50 million; B earned $550 million; and C earned $600 million? If so, our differences have nothing to do with my lack of understanding of options but rather your lack of understanding of what earnings purport to measure.