>I wonder what the stockholders would think if they really saw those balance sheets? Maybe a little sloppy accounting is necessary between business cycles to keep the stockholders interested.
>
>Charlie

Is that what you call it? "Sloppy Accounting?"
About twenty years ago I won a bid to computerize company in Grand Island, NE. About three weeks into the project, while I was setting up his GAAP CofA, Ledger, etc..., he started talking about a 'special set' of books. "One that would tell me a quick bottom line". Cutting out the dancing and getting to the bottom he wanted me to write a secret set of books, one that told him how his business was *really* doing, not the set he used to bamboozle the IRS.
JLK