Via 'The Motley Fool' (T/Y Going Concern). Munger gave a two-hour speech discussing a variety of topics including his take on the economy, Wall Street, and unemployment. Also discussed was his disappointment in accountants...
"The accountants utterly failed us. And by the way, there's practically no sign of any intelligent reversal of the failure of that profession. I have yet to meet many accountants who are the least bit ashamed for their contribution to our recent troubles. But it was immense. Imagine when Enron comes down to the SEC and says "we want to write a little contract with A, and a little contract with B, and take all the profit we're going to make from these complicated contracts over the next 20 years into earnings immediately, and put an asset on our balance sheet of $28 billion from signing two pieces of paper." And the SEC, led by wonderful accountants who studied at great places, [says] "Why, of course you should have that kind of accounting!" What the hell were they thinking? How can anybody have any respectable understanding of human nature without realizing that the kind of people who were going to be tempted by that accounting were not going to be able to resist the temptations? It was disgusting."
"Partly the establishment accountants want to please the people who are writing the checks. And partly the academic accountants get full of people who overdosed on mathematics. They want everything to be in balance. And they don't think that that really isn't rational when creating rules for a human behavioral system. They're too mathematical and not rational enough when dealing with their fellow humans. You can't give the average Wall Street CEO really lenient standards of accounting and expect the figures to be good."
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