Word: scandalizer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Soon after worldcom CEO John Sidgmore revealed the most sweeping bookkeeping deception in history, a marked-up copy of his internal memo on the scandal was e-mailed to folks around the telecom industry. Under his predecessor, Sidgmore announced, WorldCom had overstated a key measure of earnings by more than $3.8 billion over five quarters, dating back to January 2001. The company's reported profits, it turned out, were really losses. In his memo to employees explaining America's latest corporate disgrace, Sidgmore wrote last Wednesday, "Our customers can count on WorldCom to meet their communications needs today and tomorrow...
...accounting irregularities at WorldCom are much more than a continuation of a trend. This scandal sharply raises the stakes. When Enron filed for bankruptcy in December, it employed 28,000, of whom 12,600 have been let go. WorldCom employs 80,000 and will eliminate a fifth of those jobs almost immediately. The Enron-stock meltdown wiped out $67 billion of shareholder wealth, less than half what WorldCom investors have lost...
WorldCom's misdeeds are so big and brazen--and investor confidence is so fragile--that politicians can no longer afford to treat the accumulating scandals as anomalies in an otherwise healthy system. "The tipping point has been reached," says lobbyist Kenneth Duberstein, who served as chief of staff for Ronald Reagan. When the Senate Banking Committee passed new accounting regulations on June 18, few thought the bill would get the 60 votes it needed to overcome an almost certain filibuster. But after the WorldCom scandal broke, Daschle announced that the bill would be the first order of business when...
...Democrats have begun pondering even tougher provisions, such as imposing criminal penalties for securities fraud now treated as a civil offense. And it seems a good bet that the Senate bill will prevail in conference over a weaker measure that the Republican-led House passed in April. The latest scandal has also breathed new life into legislation that would protect worker retirement accounts and change the way corporations report stock options...
...consolation for Republicans is that the Democrats have not yet found a way to use this rising public anxiety to their advantage. Democratic efforts to exploit the Enron scandal failed to resonate with voters. Nor have they found a way to sell the return of the deficit as an election issue: while many Democrats have been critical of President Bush's tax cut, few have been brave enough to call for scaling it back...