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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

White House: Obamacare Writedowns Are CEO Conspiracy

Only in the minds of Democrats is it a conspiracy to abide by SEC and GAAP requirements even in the event that Obamacare shows the disastrous impact on company financial statements. From the WSJ:

A White House staffer told the American Spectator that "These are Republican CEOs who are trying to embarrass the President and Democrats in general. Where do you hear about this stuff? The Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative Web sites. No one else picked up on this but you guys. It's BS." (We called the White House for elaboration but got no response.)

In other words, CEOs who must abide by U.S. accounting laws under pain of SEC sanction, and who warned about such writedowns for months, are merely trying to ruin President Obama's moment of glory. Sure.

Presumably the White House is familiar with the Financial Standard Accounting Board's 1990 statement No. 106, which requires businesses to immediately restate their earnings in light of their expected future retiree health liabilities. AT&T, Deere & Co., AK Steel, Prudential and Caterpillar, among others, are simply reporting the corporate costs of the Democratic decision to raise taxes on retiree drug benefits to finance ObamaCare.

Yes, these bozos in the White House now direct trillions of dollars in the economy and they are completely clueless about accounting or business in general.