http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2008/05/funny_money.html The Law, the Universe, and Everything Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:31:00 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.3 hourly 1 http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2008/05/funny_money.html/comment-page-1#comment-49292 FJP Fri, 16 May 2008 00:11:08 +0000 http://www.solove.org/archives/2008/05/pollyanna-creep.html#comment-49292 In reporting "inflation ex-inflation" and the like, government accounting is no better or worse than private business. I always get a kick out of the corporate annual reports that tout how well the company is doing "after excluding one-time items," only it seems they have a new set of bad one-time items every year. Following closely on that is the use of "EBITDA" and the like, which is in essence "earnings before bad stuff," or "let's just overlook the fact that we aren't making enough money to service our debt and replace the capital assets we are using up." In reporting “inflation ex-inflation” and the like, government accounting is no better or worse than private business. I always get a kick out of the corporate annual reports that tout how well the company is doing “after excluding one-time items,” only it seems they have a new set of bad one-time items every year. Following closely on that is the use of “EBITDA” and the like, which is in essence “earnings before bad stuff,” or “let’s just overlook the fact that we aren’t making enough money to service our debt and replace the capital assets we are using up.”

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