Re:Baoshang collapse threatens China's economy, may trigger ...
by ethbro on Sunday June 30, 2019 @04:57PM
(#20320476)
Garbage in, garbage out.
While Enrons happen, a fundamental aspect of Western-style accounting is legally-mandated transparency (at least to someone, somewhere).
Without a standards-based legal system, what's to stop anyone from cooking the books?
And if every ledger is a lie to some degree, then aggregating those just produces bigger lies. Until you're finally left with the "unable to calculate [...] with any level of certainty" answers to a host of important economic questions.
While Enrons happen, a fundamental aspect of Western-style accounting is legally-mandated transparency (at least to someone, somewhere).
Without a standards-based legal system, what's to stop anyone from cooking the books?
And if every ledger is a lie to some degree, then aggregating those just produces bigger lies. Until you're finally left with the "unable to calculate [...] with any level of certainty" answers to a host of important economic questions.
Sounds familiar from the 1980s...