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What if a company lost $54 billion and nobody noticed?
" We're now being told that $50 billion of market value was simply an illusion, an accounting quirk."
"What a quirk! There are only a handful of companies in the world even worth $50 billion. Something must be wrong with a system that played fast and loose with numbers to such an extraordinary degree."
"When you think about it, though, the fact that these accounting mechanisms were pervasive makes the situation even shadier. If "everyone" really appreciated that the most admired companies in America routinely reported numbers they knew were illusory, why did those companies bother to go through the exercise?"
"That's how a successful company like VeriSign can purchase Network Solutions for $21 billion and two years later, after more acquisitions, be worth just $2 billion as a combined entity. We're all suddenly noticing that the emperor is stark naked."
"The problem the AOL write-off highlights is a collective one, and it comes down to trust. Trust is the foundation of our entire financial system. For thirty years, since we went off the gold standard, the almighty dollar has been backed by nothing more than the promises of the U.S. government. Absent faith in the stability of the United States, it would be worthless."
"Similarly, the stock market, and the economy as a whole, can only function if participants believe the game is fair, and that enforcement mechanisms and remedies will take care of the situations, such as Enron, where it isn't."
"As the U.S. government routinely tells the rest of the world, the key to trust is transparency. If the workings of the system are plain for all to see, inefficiencies and cheating will eventually be spotted and stamped out."
"Trust becomes endangered when companies, some investors and regulators decide collectively to pretend that two plus two equals five. Trust became debased when so many of us concluded that the numbers we were seeing were irrational and unsustainable, but we should act as though they were real and justifiable."
"Goodwill write-downs, flameouts of well-funded start-ups and even the collapse of Enron are cathartic. These events are painful, but they provide the necessary public confirmation that the environment has really changed. It's the end of an era. And, let's hope, the end of an error."
2:44:23 PM Google It! 
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