Opinion: A Stimulus Plan And Some Satire

This stimulus bill won't touch the cash flow statement. This won't be an impediment because investors and creditors fixate on earnings. If investors can ignore Enron's free cash flows of negative $4.5 billion in 1998 and 1999, cash flow must be unimportant.

Auditors shouldn't mind this suggestion. As they gave us no early warning signals about the subprime mess, we won't make them evaluate these stimulus earnings numbers. Everybody will be happier with unqualified audit opinions.

And the cost of this program is zero. That's right, not one penny will be spent on this project because what we are doing is merely increasing corporate earnings.

The benefits of this bill are obvious. We goose accounting earnings, investors and creditors go wild. They buy stocks and bonds and everybody's retirement statements appear rosy. Optimism abounds everywhere. Stimulate the accounting, stimulate the economy.

>To order reprints of this article, click here: Reprints