This is territory where honesty is at a premium, where words mean only what I say they mean, writes Kathy Sheridan.
It's not quite an obsession yet; more a deep exasperation with yet another obstacle to my understanding of the world. I have a sudden yearning to understand company balance sheets. By "understand", I mean the ability to skim through the figures, stroke my chin, nod sagely and coolly pronounce: ah yes, but of course that two billion in Engone's profit column doesn't actually exist, never did.
I would know this, you see, because at accountancy school I would have learned - in the be-creative-while-managing-to-stay-out-of-prison module - that if Engone's guys had decided to overestimate by a couple of billion how much it was going to cost them to take over WorldGone, and they had actually spent only a quarter of a billion, the couple of billion they didn't spend (and didn't have in the first place anyway) could now be called profit and, hey presto, shimmy on over there to the profit margin. Fab.
Look, Mavis, look! Two billion dollars of Engone profits winking at you there - aren't they the smart, hard-working lads, get out there and scoop up those shares for your little pension fund, you poor stupid old sucker.
So Mavis buys; the shares soar; the Engone guys collect a few hundred million by cashing in their (free or dirt cheap) share options at a high; and collect another few trillion in company bonuses which they will award themselves as a gift from the elite band of institutional shareholders who would eat their own livers rather than inquire just where the "profits" came from, despite the "difficult trading climates" that even my mutt Bill knows about.
Meanwhile, Mavis is relying on her broker to do the right thing by her; the broker is relying on the investment analyst who - oh, dear me, is that him being escorted into court to be questioned about unsavoury links with Engone, whose shares he was still recommending on Thursday morning, just before they collapsed at lunchtime?
And didn't I read somewhere that he worked for the same bank that was making squillions out of Engone by underwriting its . . . Oh it's too much, I can't go on, I must go on.
But will we destroy Mavis entirely if we tell her that only six months before Engone filed for bankruptcy protection, Sven Svennick, its hip, chino-wearing CEO, suddenly sold a truckload of his share options and bagged $350 million? Must be some kind of visionary, our Sven. But what's Mavis to do? This is territory where honesty is at a premium, where words mean only what I say they mean.
WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers is a prime example, the one who played the market for all it was worth, knowing that the people in power had no interest in taming it. He's the man on whose watch, the company "overstated" its profits by an amount bigger than the national incomes of Zimbabwe and Gambia combined. Then evoked the Fifth when asked to explain himself.
You see how this yearning to understand balance sheets could become an obsession? This is more than idle curiosity from a non-numerate, non-portfolio-holding dumbo. Companies that enrich themselves by playing around with figures and language wreak serious damage on little lives: they destroy economies, strip workers of their jobs and savings, deprive children of hope and choices, condemn decent, careful people to miserable, impoverished old age.
The need to get to grips with a balance sheet is linked with something else. In a world infested with spin-doctors shamelessly spinning their half-lies, endlessly obfuscating and abusing language, a world full of head-wrecking grey areas where nothing comes in black or white any more, figures on a balance sheet and the besuited men of gravitas responsible for putting them there must have seemed like certainty's last stand to Mavis and ordinary folk who never dared to question these masters of the universe.
Now she knows there is no such thing as certainty anywhere. Nothing and no one is believable any more. Which organisation or group has NOT been found guilty of abusing trust and language in recent times? It has become as relentless and oppressive as a smog cloud. Sometimes, the assumption that everyone is eyeing her up as fast-food makes life too wearisome and challenging to bear.
This is of more than passing relevance to the politicians who have been leading us a merry dance in recent months. Whether they and their spin-doctors know it or not, there is a gathering storm out here. In a time when people are angry and frightened, they look for people whom they can trust. This should be a time when those elected to govern and guide us should come into their own.
But what have the past few months taught us about those same leaders? In these uncertain times, is there even one among them who we can trust, who will speak without obfuscation, refrain from telling half-truths, desist from abusing the language, treat us like the intelligent, rational beings that we are (even if we can't read balance sheets) ?
Answers to the address below.