Fired in Dispute, Accounting Firm Rebuts New Overseer on His Role

By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 — A large accounting firm released documents today that it said showed that William H. Webster had fired it as the auditor of U.S. Technologies after the firm warned him about financial problems at the company. The accounting firm said the documents challenged Mr. Webster's description of his role at the company.

Mr. Webster, who has been named by the Securities and Exchange Commission to head a new board overseeing the accounting industry, has said he has no recollection of being told of any significant accounting problems before U.S. Technologies dismissed the accounting firm, BDO Seidman, in August 2001.

This is just ridiculous.  First Bush appoints Harvey Pitt, a lawyer who spent most of his recent past fighting the rules and regulations of the SEC, to run the SEC - and now we find out that Pitt, in turn, appointed a man who had apparently helped a company hide their accounting flim-flammery to oversee a board to ensure that the accounting industry is on the up-and-up.  Putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse on a grand scale.

Bush's response?  He wants to wait until they can "investigate" everything.  The problem is, though, that right now even the appearance of impropriety is bad - or at least it should be.  There have been nothing but questions raised about how Bush wants to see the SEC run - as an agency that will actually serve to enforce the business regulations or one that will turn a blind eye to the corporate hanky-panky that's emptying employee's 401ks while filling the pockets of upper management.

He has a chance, now, to do it right.  Here's to hoping that he'll pick someone who will actually run the SEC as a regulatory agency and start holding businesses accountable for the actions - or inactions.

I'm trying a new layout for different strings - please leave comments with your thoughts or feedback on it, ok?  :)

The one problem I can see right off the bat is that the first item in the middle column starts too far down, but I haven't figure out where to fix that yet.  If you have any suggestions, that would be great!  *g*