Thursday, October 13, 2005

Financial Fog

Words can obscure as well as inform. A business journalist recently reporting on Nortel's (NT on the NYSE) continuing executive suite turnover (apparently the lawyers are now leaving ....hmm) casually mentions that "Nortel recently returned to a regular financial reporting schedule". The sentence softens the intense financial pain that occured. Billions were lost. Thousands of jobs disappeared. Pain of every description imaginable occurred on a grand scale. But now Nortel is supposedly returning to a regular financial reporting schedule.
Call a spade a spade. Substantial malfeasance occurred to the point where executives could not properly report what their accounting position was. Investor trust was eroded. Financial fog terminology is laughable.