Gotta hand it to them, they really respect tradition. Obviously, that proves once and for all that corporations are conservative:
Look for another rosy round of profits when banks turn in their numbers for the second quarter ending in June when it will be legal for them to improve their balance sheets by shifting losses into the future, thanks to new accounting rules passed by a one-vote margin by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).
It's just one in a series of changes made to accounting rules that allow banks to shift or ignore losses or pretend that liabilities aren't liabilities. The struggle for control of the financial recovery -- where the money goes, how it's counted and who survives -- is nothing short of war. Truth has been the first casualty.
The latest rule change allows banks to split losses into ones that they recognize immediately and others that are pushed down the road and may pop up on the books later. It passed in April with barely any notice from the press. The accounting tricks allow banks, which may otherwise be deemed insolvent, to continue to operate. It's a hell of a time to be an accountant.
Good to see the banks returning to the time honored tradition of fraud and cooking the books. When in doubt, look to the traditions of the past which served you well, I always say. Back when they cooked the books to make the toxic assets look like tasty morsels of organic economic goodness, they were flying high and snorting cocaine off the asses of $10k/night hookers in hotel rooms that cost more per night than a middle class family's mortgage monthly mortgage payment. Now that they're back to square one, they can get their act back together.
Well, anyway, let this be yet another lesson that the rule of law is one of those nice academic constructs which really doesn't do a whole lot to define the way the world actually works. When the going gets tough, the corrupt starting scheming on how to fix the system to work for them. Stroke of the pen, law of the land and all.
"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce"
Karl Marx
I guess that puts this historical cycle somewhere in the vicinity of straight-to-dvd comedy movies written by a committee of identity politics activists, old church ladies and wahabi imams and certified by the ADL.
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