Monday, June 8, 2015

Quote of the Day

June 8, 2015
Experts worry that 'phony numbers' are misleading investors

In a brief talk to analysts in April, the chief financial officer at Boston Scientific used the word "adjusted" in referring to results 34 times, twice every minute, on average. The word is also littered throughout the company's presentations and financial reports.

Emphasis added.

2 comments:

Mr Slippery said...

Wait, are you suggesting that corporations might report financial numbers that are less than accurate?

At least we can rely on the government to report true and accurate financial numbers, after double seasonal adjustments, heuristics, and trimmed mean inflation are taken into account.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Mr Slippery,

As one who worked for a corporation that was once actively cooking the books and got caught doing so, I would never suggest such a thing!

Suggest is too weak a word. I prefer accuse and/or claim lol. Sigh.

Members of the jury, you must find my client innocent of murder. Although the bullet fired from his gun did enter the head of the victim, you must look at the chart of the "adjusted" flight path. Note that if we remove the one-time trigger pull and other nonrecurring events, the bullet does not actually leave the gun. The alleged victim is therefore no victim at all! He's a perfectly "well-adjusted" individual!