A reporter came up to me the other day asking if I knew any accountants she could interview for a story about Utahns' confidence in various institutions.
I asked her what kind of accountant she was hoping to talk to, and she said she wanted one "with a sense of humor."
Needless to say, she went away empty-handed.
(Rim-shot.)
Just kidding. I'm sure plenty of accountants are laugh riots, but the profession as a whole hasn't had much to laugh about lately.
On the other hand, the corporate fiascoes that have been making news also have encouraged creative individuals to fill their friends' e-mail inboxes with jokes and humorous stories. I don't know where these things come from, but they spread like wildfire, and they are just the ticket for brightening an otherwise gloomy financial world.
For example, a list of corporate definitions landed in my inbox the other day, and it featured a few gems. Among them:
- CEO — Chief embezzlement officer.
CFO — Corporate fraud officer.
P/E — Parole entitlement.
EPS — Eventual prison sentence.
Momentum investing — The fine art of buying high and selling low.
Value investing — The art of buying low and selling lower.
Broker — What my broker has made me.
Standard & Poor — Your life in a nutshell.
Institutional investor — Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse.
I especially like the Standard and Poor comment.
But this is not the only financial joke I've received. Especially when the Enron situation was first flaring up, I got some classics.
My father-in-law — who lives in Enron's hometown of Houston — sent me this variation on a classic economic statement:
Capitalism — You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.
Socialism — You have two cows. The government takes the milk and gives it to people too lazy to work.
Communism — You have two cows. The government takes the two cows. They die for lack of care. No one has any milk or cows.
Enronism — You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report states that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
And here's another one, no doubt offered up by an accountant who has a sense of humor:
It turns out the Enron shredding was all just a case of bad cellular. The Arthur Andersen partner was on his cell phone when he said, "Ship the Enron documents to the Feds." But his secretary heard, "Rip the Enron documents to shreds."
But wait, there's more. In fact, there's far more than I can include in this column. There are Web sites full of this stuff. Just point your browser to www.google.com and do a search on "Enron humor" or "Andersen humor."
For example, you can find out how many Arthur Andersen accountants it takes to change a light bulb. (Answer: Eleven. One to reach up and change the light bulb. Ten to try to find out why they didn't know until now that the bulb was burned out.)
So go ahead, have a little fun and pass what you find on to your favorite accountants. You just might make them laugh.
E-MAIL: gkratz@desnews.com