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Companies, if granted the leeway, will surely present their financial results in the best possible light. And of course they will try to persuade investors that the calculations they prefer, in which certain costs are excluded, best represent the reality in their operations. Call it accentuating the positive, accounting-style. What’s surprising, though, is how willing regulators have been to allow the proliferation of phony-baloney financial reports and how keenly investors have embraced them. As a result, major public companies reporting results that are not based on generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, has grown from a modest problem into a...

...OK, now I get it – we’re playing by government rules. It’s like Chicago rules only better. Here’s all you need to know: if generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) were good enough for government work, we wouldn’t have had to invent generally accepted government accounting principles (GAGAP). But you already knew that your government operates by it’s own rules, didn’t you? Anyway, in case you were wondering why you’re just now hearing that the national deficit is actually 6 times higher than previously reported, it’s because of the golden rule. Using these special government rules, we don’t have to count...

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's vaunted fiscal cushion has begun to erode quickly, and an underperforming state income tax is the chief culprit. Fiscal analysts for the executive and legislative branches agreed on a consensus revenue report late Tuesday that pushes the current budget to the brink of a deficit -- or possibly over it. More importantly, the controversial half-a-billion-dollar surplus Malloy and the legislature built into next year's budget -- after a record-setting tax increase -- has been chopped in half in less than seven months. And the worsening fiscal picture also creates one more problem for Malloy, or more...

Motley Fool A Dubious Sign of the Times Tuesday March 7, 3:17 pm ET By Tim Beyers I've long wanted to own stock in New York Times (NYSE: NYT - News) for several reasons. I love the paper. I'm a big fan of About.com. And then there's sentimental angle: I'm a New York native. But there's one big reason why I'm not buying the stock. A check of the proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday reveals that chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and CEO Janet Robinson both received hefty bonuses despite meeting less than 60%...

By GAO (Government Accounting Office) estimates the "prescription drug benefit" program INCREASED BY 26% IN 2004, all historically accumulated, future spending obligations and committments of the U.S., including SS, Medicare, vet benefits, etc., accumulated throughout U.S. history, since before Roosvelt. http://www.babylontoday.com/#gao_financial The prescription drug benefit is the 8.1 trillion dollar portion, of the 13 trillion dollar increase, to a total 43 trillion, of current U.S. future spending obligation. But don't worry, according to the GAO, that only represents a $350,000 obligation per full-time worker in the U.S., SO FAR! But sadly the following demonstrates that the spending will be much...

Gao Fiscal Year 2004 U.S. Government Financial Statements using GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) "First the federal government reported a 412.3 billion unified budget deficit and a 568 billion on-budget deficit in 2004, representing approximately 3.6 and 4. percent of gross domestic product (GDP), respectively. Second, the U.S. government's reported liabilities, commitments, and other obligations grew by $13 trillion in 2004 primarily due to enactment of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit and now surpasses $43 trillion, representing close to four times current GDP."

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C - news) on Tuesday became the first U.S. financial company to say it plans to report only income on a net basis, as U.S. companies have come under fire for giving misleading results that omit various charges. "We are going to report our earnings going forward on strictly a GAAP basis so that everything will be included," Citigroup Chief Executive Sanford "Sandy" Weill told analysts and reporters on a conference call about its earnings. GAAP, or Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, are a widely accepted set of rules, conventions, standards and procedures for reporting...

When Accountants Attack Profits: The GAAP Accounting Exodus INTRODUCTION The Enron debacle has cast a shadow on the credibility of corporate America. Companies are turning over every stone to make sure that financial reports are both accurate and presented in a way to convey credibility. One would think that in this environment, my company, Cypress Semiconductor, would be reporting exclusively with the “seal of approval” of the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). But we do not. We publish two sets of financial numbers: one in the GAAP standard, and the other in the “pro forma” standard, which we have turned...