Auditors, analysts, and earnings reports are supposed to help you. Too often they don't With financial markets in Tokyo, Seoul, and Moscow imploding, investors are flocking to the U.S., where they know certain bedrock principles still apply. Here, companies adhere to universally accepted accounting standards. Auditors scour the books to keep management honest.
Regulators ensure that ''sunshine'' is applied through regular disclosure.
And analysts parse the numbers on behalf of investors for information that will make them money. Or at least that's the way the checks and balances are supposed to work. But lately, questions have begun to be raised about the integrity of the U.S. financial markets, too. Nothing on the order of what has been happening overseas, of course, but disturbing questions nonetheless. Cendant Corp. It's the gnawing sense that companies that should know better are regularly pushing the limit, accountants are AWOL, and analysts are too enmeshed with their investment-banking brethren to provide objective advice.