Another Shoe Drops. Too Bad a Centipede Lives Upstairs
Pilgrim Baxter has settled, leaving Pilgrim and Baxter to face the SEC. There are still civil actions against them, so they may have to bring that jar of pennies to the bank. Or not.
Pondering the Imponderables
Do Junior Mints imply a Senior Mints?
Not according to the
history on the manufacturer's website. The candy was named for a Broadway show,
Junior Miss. (The link is to the movie. Consult your local high school drama club for the stage script.)
So was there an Absorbine Sr.?
Closer. The original Absorbine was a horse liniment. Farmers started using it themselves, similar to the Bag Balm marketing accident.
OK, how about a sanitary tablecloth?
Don't push it.
Product Endorsement
No, no one is offering money for me to wear athletic shoes — or loafers, for that matter. I want to recommend the SanDisk Cruzer, a USB flash memory unit. It's slightly smaller than a pack a gum, which means I keep losing it. Usually it turns up next to the driver's seat, in the wrong pants, under the sofa cushions, etc. This time it reappeared in the clothes dryer, having been subjected to the permanent press wash cycle and the low heat setting of the washer. I brought it upstairs, plugged it in, and was able to access my files. Great!
It wasn't until later that I realized it had shrunk from 256 Mb to 128 Mb. <rimshot> Next time, cold water wash, hang to dry.
Sarbanes-Oxley Update
There is no link available, but the dead tree edition of the Wall Street Journal had a guest editorial by Paul Volker and Arthur Levitt (if you don't recognize these names, consider yourself excused from reading any further). I'm not posting this to Chicago Boyz because we covered it last month. Don't skip the comments.
The central argument they raise is that SarBox requires companies to institute and maintain a system of internal controls. This is fine, but it still seems to me that it is solving the wrong problem. Internal controls only work if management lets them work. Remember the Putnam fiasco? It turns out that their compliance department (which is very good) found the market timing issue two years ago, and management failed to act on the information.
If Enron and WorldComm had not known what the right numbers were, SarBox would have made them put a system in place so they would know. Unfortunately, they knew only too well what the numbers should have been. That's why they changed them.
