In January Barack Obama will take over the executive position of what is akin to a large and complex corporation, the United States of America. In his campaign, he promised to go through the federal budget ‘line-by-line’. He’ll be sitting in the oval office come January, but will he really tackle our over-spending in such detail?
American CEOs Sign Off on the Bottom Line
In 2002, after a slurry of accounting scandals resulting in the fall of Enron among others, we got a new law: Sarbanes Oxley (SOX). This legislation aims to decrease the sketchy accounting practices of many companies caused their stock prices to collapse, resulting in what was at that time a huge loss of public confidence in Wall Street. (The stock market works better for the rest of us when executives don’t cook the books.)
Part of SOX requires that CEOs be held accountable for their company’s financial statements. They now have to sign a statement that the statements accurately reflect the financial position and performance. The buck stops at the corner office. It may seem like common sense, but before this requirement, many CEOs grasped at the excuse that they just didn’t understand all that accounting mumbo jumbo.
More Than a Promise?
A lot of people don’t think Obama will really go through the budget like he said he will. They say it’s not practical, it’s impossible even, to tackle the tens of thousands of line items in our national budget. But it’s not like he doesn’t have a staff. And he is our CEO after all.
What do you think? Should the executive branch of government really be responsible for our country’s bottom line?
译文:
美国有了新的CEO
巴拉克•奥巴马将在一月接下一个近似于规模巨大的业务复杂的企业——美国的行政交椅。他在竞选中承诺会一行一行地检查联邦预算。未来的一月他将坐进白宫总统办公室，但他真的会如此认真地处理超支问题吗？
美国首席执行官在账本底线上签字
2002年，财务丑闻导致安然的衰落以后美国就颁布了一条新的法令：萨班斯• 奥克雷法案。这条法律旨在减少许多公司概略的计算导致其股票价格暴跌的发生，股票价格暴跌严重打击了华尔街的公众自信。(首席执行官不造假账的话股票市的场运行会对我们有利.)
萨班斯• 奥克雷法案的部分要求首席执行官要对其公司的财政决算负责。现在他们必须要签一个准确反映了公司的财政状况和运行情况的报表。这样，问题就被拦截在主管办公室了。这看起来像是常识，但在这项法令颁布之前，很多首席执行官都抓住个借口说他们不懂那复杂的计算。
不只是一个承诺？
很多人认为奥巴马不会真的像他说的那样检查财政预算。他们说那不实际，要去检查数以万计行的条目的国家预算甚至是不可能的。但不是说他就没有帮手。毕竟他是我们的首席执行官。
你认为呢？行政部门真的应该对我们国家的账本底线负责吗？