RE: [A-List] Arthur Andersen - The Next Generation: Ernst & Young

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Sabri, list

If we are going to run with the Star Trek allusion, the way things are
going with the financial regulatory apparatus we can entitle the
subsequent thread "Deep Shit Five".

On a more serious note, however, what does this continual erosion of
credibility, and therefore legitimacy, mean? How long before it becomes
essential that the state "intervenes" to administer, directly, the audit
services demanded by capitalism? Of course we know that the state
already "intervenes", or rather is in it up to its neck, but for
empiricists at least there is always the illusion that the "impartial"
state will bridge the credibility gap yawning ever wider thanks to the
Big Five. Nevertheless, the creation of an "independent" state-level
audit administration, to whatever extent, would open up some kind of new
front in the contested terrain that is the state. How to reconcile the
demands for commercial confidentiality with the equally strong demands
for transparency, accountability, etc.? In addition, as with all other
state organs, there will be some personnel who truly believe in the
impartiality, in the mission statements, in the "independence" of
whatever administration is established. That will add to the costs borne
by those who would otherwise get clean away with it. None of which is to
say that the system could not cope, or that there would be any
significant reduction in the scamming that is inherent to the system.
Nevertheless, it would be a marginal retreat of sorts for the
Thatcherites and even the Third Wayers, who are much more mentally
attuned to using the state in such ways but, until now at least, have
been content to emphasise "partnership" rather than either outright,
rhetorically anti-statist, privatisation, or nationalisation (witness
the UK Railtrack/air traffic control fiasco).

Just some "blue skies thinking" (© John Birt)

Michael Keaney