Who is viewed as more socially/moraly reprehensible?

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People on this thread are insinuating it's bad for Fidelity/TCW/VG to lose money due to stealing, but not bad if Sony/CBS/Random House/MSFT do. They are being very hypocritical and illogical.

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This is because they actually do steal from Sony etc and therefore need to think that it's all kosher.

[Aloysius]

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FTR, this is quite wrong. I've only worked at 6 Fortune 500 firms, but to cook the books so that your outside auditors, your add'tl outside auditors [remember, ENE had 2 sets for some transactions in the 'gray area'], outside counsel, rating agencies, hedge funds, the IRS, and the SEC don't notice is quite hard.

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Sorry, it's degrees of "cook the books" I think we're not seeing eye to eye on, I agree that it's very difficult to swing the numbers significantly. (And I've only worked at 2 Fortune 500 and not really a critical part of the reporting process, more strat planning or i-banking at the time). Smaller shifts happen all the time and there are a multitude of ways to pad / spin numbers (is really what I meant).

-Al

[Blarg]

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Seriously, how is stealing copyright [of anything] to make/save money for yourself different/better from playing acc'tg games to make/save money for all your employees and stockholders?

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They might be the same offense in theory

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Well, that was my point. People on this thread are insinuating it's bad for Fidelity/TCW/VG to lose money due to stealing, but not bad if Sony/CBS/Random House/MSFT do. They are being very hypocritical and illogical.

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but in impact playing accounting games at major companies is 1) not that hard to do;

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FTR, this is quite wrong. I've only worked at 6 Fortune 500 firms, but to cook the books so that your outside auditors, your add'tl outside auditors [remember, ENE had 2 sets for some transactions in the 'gray area'], outside counsel, rating agencies, hedge funds, the IRS, and the SEC don't notice is quite hard.

That's why the ENE situation was a HUGE shock to the market.

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It's scandalously easy. Remember Barry Minkow, the darling of Wall Street? What a joke, and a telling one.

I used to work in a Big 5 accounting firm, and a friend there told me that you can show a profit or a loss very easily by deciding how you want to declare your assets, investments, depreciation, etc. You've got options, and he told me sometimes they were changing back and forth between at the last minute before approving the direction audits would take.

[NajdorfDefense]

Every firm spins the #s to their advantage, or they wouldn't have marketing, finance, and IR depts, the lot of them.

As long as they are not actually breaking the law, that is fine. There is no middle ground here. Presenting a good face to the public is normal, even expected.

Law-breaking, lying on your financials is wrong, as you/others have said, it's a form of 'stealing,' just like stealing from MSFT or Sony or AOL or AAPL lifting a truckload of Coke while it's parked outside of WMT.

Of course, stealing $100mm is 'worse' that stealing $1.00 [I guess, and in the eyes of the law as well.]