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<p>What's gone wrong with accounting? This is the question on every lip since it began to seem that Arthur Andersen & Company stood mutely by as Enron hid debt and exaggerated profits.</p> <p>More apt is the question: What has gone right since we handed accountants the federal gravy train of the mandated annual audit of public companies? Folks, this is not the first time auditors have failed to step forward and blow the whistle on some intransigent management, warning investors to run for their lives.</p>

<p>The bankruptcy of Enron -- at one time the seventh-largest company in the U.S. -- has underscored the need to reassess not only the adequacy of our financial reporting systems but also the public watchdog mission of the accounting industry, Wall Street security analysts, and corporate boards of directors. While the full story of what caused Enron to collapse has yet to be revealed, what is clear is that its accounting statements failed to give investors a complete picture of the firm's operations as well as a fair assessment of the risks involved in Enron's business model and financing structure.</p>

<p>The list reads like the "Who's Who" of the white-collar defense bar. Among them are former federal prosecutors and lawyers with the Securities and Exchange Commission. One was a Watergate prosecutor. Another defended former President Clinton.</p> <p>Now, these lawyers have been tapped to represent senior executives and board members at Enron Corp. and independent auditor Arthur Andersen as the Justice Department, SEC and Congress investigate possible wrongdoing at the Houston energy-trading concern.</p>

<p>In dealing with lawsuits stemming from its actions as Enron Corp.'s outside auditor, Arthur Andersen LLP likely won't be able to pass the bulk of any potential judgments against the big accounting firm on to insurance companies because Andersen, in large part, serves as its own insurer.</p>

<p>A now highly publicized August 2001 letter from an Enron Corp. executive raising serious questions about the company's business and accounting practices was actually one of the later shots fired in an internal struggle that had been going on inside the energy-trading company for a year or more.</p>

ollowing is the text of an unsigned letter written in August to Kenneth L. Lay, the chairman of the Enron Corporation (news/quote), after Jeffrey K. Skilling resigned unexpectedly as chief executive on Aug. 14. Its author was later identified as Sherron S. Watkins, a vice president for corporate development at Enron. The House Energy and Commerce Committee released excerpts of the letter on Monday and the full letter yesterday: Has Enron become a risky place to work? For those of us who didn't get rich over the last few years, can we afford to stay? Skilling's abrupt departure will ...

After a few days of media hyperventilating, the first round of the Enron scandal is over--and George W. Bush looks good. IS THE Enron scandal over already, the White House part of it, that is? Not quite. We've only finished the first round. For sure, President Bush and his administration won the round, emerging totally unscathed. Bush was not implicated in any wrongdoing. Neither Democrats nor the media laid a glove on Bush or anyone in his administration. But there are more rounds to come and Bush is still in danger. Round two starts later this month with the beginning ...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Gordon Smith and Secretary of State Bill Bradbury -- opponents in this year's Senate race -- were looking for ways Tuesday to donate their Enron contributions to help the company's financially shaken employees. Enron filed for bankruptcy protection Dec. 2, and now faces a litany of allegations about shady business practices. Many employees at the Houston-based energy giant had sunk much of their retirement in company stock and are expected to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. Chris Matthews, spokesman for the Oregon Republican, said Friday the senator planned to keep his Enron contributions because he ...

Schumer denies donation swayed him Albany-- Senator says he backed deregulation before Enron gave nearly $22,000 to his campaign U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer said Monday that he favored deregulation of the electricity market long before the now-collapsed Texas energy giant Enron donated close to $22,000 to his campaign and doesn't think those contributions will hurt him politically. Schumer, D-N.Y., said he assumed Enron gave him $21,933 to support his 1998 Senate bid against then GOP-incumbent Sen. Alfonse D'Amato because power deregulation was part of his platform. But since his election, Schumer said, he has opposed legislation the company favored limiting ...

Robert Theodore KnalurP.O. Box 10083 Detroit, MI 48501 January 14, 2002 Senator Joseph Leiberman 706 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510 RE: Enron Investigation Dear Senator Leiberman, I watched your Sunday morning appearance on Face the Nation with intense interest. Inasmuch as I own a fair amount of Enron stock in my SEP/IRA, I'm sure you can understand my curiosity relative to your investigation. Knowing you to be an honorable man, I feel secure that you will diligently pursue the below listed matters in an effort to determine what part, if any, these matters contributed to the collapse of ...

US official sees Enron slowing energy mart change WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) - The Enron Corp. (NYSE:ENE - news) debacle won't end federal and state efforts to further restructure U.S. energy markets, but it will slow the process for the next two or three years, a top Bush administration energy official said on Tuesday. ``I think we've gone too far to go back,'' said Vicky Bailey, Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Affairs and Domestic Policy. Bailey, speaking to reporters at a U.S.-Canada energy conference, said that Enron's problems along with last year's California energy crisis will drag out the ...

A Republican website, www.continue.to/enron launched by Stopdemocrats.com over the weekend has been an overnight success. The website has received praises via an email from a local CBS reporter in Texas, it has been featured on several websites such as BushCountry.org and FrontPageMag.com, and it has received more than 5,000 hits in 72 hours. The website got some changes today that include a link to the source where the fact is found and an additional 15 facts that are included in "50 reasons why the Democrats are hypocrites when it comes to Enron" Here is a partial list of 10 facts ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - David Duncan, who was fired on Tuesday by auditor Andersen for his alleged role in destroying documents related to its review of Enron Corp.'s books, will meet with congressional investigators on Wednesday, a spokesman for the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee said Tuesday. "Mr. Duncan will be meeting with our investigators tomorrow," said Ken Johnson, the spokesman told Reuters on Tuesday. The panel has been probing Andersen's role in the collapse of the energy trading giant last fall. "Frankly, now that he's been fired, he may be a little more motivated to be cooperative," Johnson said. ...

Well for my web site I could use some help in finding some pictures. First: A picture of Clinton with Kenneth Lay. Second: A picture of a Gore fundraiser Charles Bone. Third: A picture of Linda Robertson who worked for the Clinton Treasury Department.

NEW YORK - Most of the attention paid to Enron's finances has focused on its balance sheet--in particular how it hid debt by allocating it to supposedly independent private partnerships. But the jet engine of Enron's share-price rise was not its asset and liability picture, but its otherworldly increase in revenue: Between 1996 and 2000, Enron reported an increase in sales from $13.3 billion to $100.8 billion.To put Enron's 57% five-year sales growth rate in perspective, during that same period, Cisco Systems enjoyed a 41% sales growth rate. Intel's rate was 15%. In its creation of revenue, if not profit, ...

John McCain says 'we're all tainted.' But Big Business may be learning a lesson in how much money can buy&nbsp; Half the House of Representatives. Three-quarters of the Senate. The head of the Justice Department. And of course the president and vice-president. Kenneth Lay and Enron have sent a total of $5.7 million from Houston to Washington since 1989, $4.1 million of it to the business-friendly Republicans — and $623,000, over the course of his political career, to George W. Bush alone. (And that's only at the national level — Texas attorney general John Cornyn has had to join the ...

WASHINGTON -- Analysis from a campaign finance tracking group shows Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., had received more money from lobbyists as of Oct. 1 than any other Congress member. During Cantwell's Senate race, she criticized her opponent, Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, for being too cozy with lobbyists. Cantwell said she would put the "interests of constituents before those of powerful lobbyists." The Center for Responsive Politics, which provided the analysis, said Cantwell received just over $50,000 from lobbyists during the first half of 2001, based on Oct. 1 figures from the Federal Election Commission. Cantwell has been working to erase ...

<p>The Bush White House has followed the well-trodden path of its modern predecessors and drawn attention to itself while trying to draw attention away from itself.</p> <p>The Democrats are faring only a little better. The Democratic National Committee is playing politics shamelessly, but that act itself is keeping it from being taken seriously. Party figures in the Senate, like their Republican counterparts in the House, decided well in advance of last week's feeding frenzy to treat Enron as one of those rare business scandals that easily engages the public and not as a governmental story as long as the evidence doesn't make it one.</p>

<p>CNN just reported the development, formal action has been started.</p>

Washington, Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Enron Corp.'s use of a tax strategy known generically as ``trust-preferred securities'' is being examined by government officials, who are trying to find out if that contributed to its financial problems, the Wall Street Journal reported. The strategy drew criticism in 1996 and 1997 from former President Bill Clinton's administration as a possibly improper way to reduce taxes and hide debt, the paper said. The administration failed to block the strategy and the Internal Revenue Service dropped a legal challenge to Enron's use of it. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. pioneered the product with an ...