After i finished the book, i was speaking with the former head of the dutch archives, eric, who is a brilliant guy, and he showed me that i had missed, no one pointed it out, there are huge number of accounting paintings which im going to show you in a second. This was a big tradition. So he had this tradition, warning paintings. This is quite fascinating. What happens though, 1681, the seven provinces from north break off from spain from the empire in become the first modern republic to emerge. Its a commercial republic. Its a fascinating place because it is partially managed by not only a famous humanist who is also a master of the waterworks but who is the most important teacher and the most influential accounting offer in holland in the late 1500s. Simon stevin assessing no because did he teach accounting to the prince who was the stockholder of republic, hes he taught it to prince maurice, he writes about his relationship with prince maurice where he teaches and he says this is incredibly hard. Its important and very hard. This is the first time winner of a prince taking part in this. Is not adequately powerful brands but he is nonetheless a prince. But its more than that. Essentially in his accounting, simon stevin says the head of state needs to know how to keep books because the head of state has to do audits of the state otherwise will never get a clear view of anything. He even goes further. He said citizens are going to need to know how did accounting to be good citizens. This is fascinating. Not only to have the earlier culture of prowess in accounting, of art, of celebrating, but warning of the dangers. But here we have a leading manager of a country making accounting and accounting education for princes and other citizens a major state policy. We know its a state policy because the state and cities like amsterdam start paying accounted masters to come in and teach citizens how did accounting. They have a program to teach accounting, which is quite remarkable. I can tell you the germans and others are watching them do this. The spread of accounting and doesnt flow out from italy as historians approved said. If you do the book history and of all the manuals and books, they come to holland and its all in the county manuals actually spread. This idea you need to do accounting, and the english and the germans and the french are slowly watching this go on. Prince maurice, quite remarkable, learns to to double entry. It was only in 2006 they found books in the archives i cant, the hague commend sensually come he didnt keep these books but he oversaw the books. They were his. They have his seal on them and he insisted that his personal books and is administer a books have double entry. High, high level. Double entry accounting being debits and credits in parallel columns. They have to balance. So theres this idea balance. If you sell a goat, in the end it all has to balance out. You have to balance your books. Theres a kind of moral rhetoric within the story of accounting. You either have or you havent balance things out. On the moral is they should be balanced or you should have a profit. Everybody knows financial history know that the dutch invent modern capitalism. They found the east india company, the first publicly traded firm, 1602, and also found the amsterdam stockmarket. Again, why did they do this . If you go and study the history, new research is being done on the dutch in the country right now, and also other books because its a funny obstreperous success and failure. Whats remarkable is that the dutch create this in great part because of trust. Theres a great trust in holland that most people can keep double entry books and that most people do it quite well. We have evidence of people from all levels of society. Theres a famous book actually a prostitute described in the city of doing good accounting and in the process she does good accounting of where merchants, artists, everyone talking about how did accounting. So this is quite impressive. We also know that the dutch have this old tradition of municipal management. Why . They have great hospitals. There are some merchant cultures of people to have to do this but also 40 of the country is under water and they manage the water boards, local administration has to manage these water boards. If people mess up the management of the water boards, they go underwater and they died. So there is great pressure for local people to do good administration. People have to trust their local provincial tax collectors as well as the administrators of this waterboarded. So trusting the bookkeeping and management of these localities is a matter of life and death for the dutch. I cant say its a causal thing that it causes the dutch to do this but its definitely on their mind. Would also know that dutch provincial tax collecting is some of the best, in many cases they keep the best records and, in fact, dutch provincial tax collection is so stable and so trusted that Interest Rates around europe are paid on these tax returns were i think 150 years. A very long time. So holland has this prince maurice knows how to audit the books. How to do it by the most important accounting figure i would say at the time in europe. But he is also the stockholder and holland is fighting wars and is also doing massive World Trade Program and basically what maurice says is fine. Ill do an audit of the book for National Security or the reason of state it has to be a secret audit. I will audit them but he cant do it publicly. And whats amazing is the citizens of holland accept it, they trust them to do it and he doesnt. The books are mildly reform. Take him make his back on its feet and those practices stop. Thats amazing, that theres this culture not just of trust but a demanding audits. Thats what comes out of the culture of accounting. The citizens new we should demand an audit, we want to see the books, we know how to read them. He shows them but in this case itll get the books. The princes i will do it. The guy knows accounting, we trust them. We trust the people around him. This is a small country so its not care for suppressing Everybody Knows each other and no so good each of them is or is not at doing Financial Management of the trust him and he does okay. That is a remarkable thing. This i then this idea of being a good manager becomes a phenomenon. It remains a phenomenon in culture and what happens is people in positions of Public Management start having themselves painted with their books open, and there are about 100 of these paintings all around holland. This is a completely unknown chandra. Its the managers with open books painting. Whats interesting is in some of the cases the numbers work out and you see them doing accounting. There are literally dozens and dozens of these things, and theyre holding their books open so you can see that they have done it. Women do it, too, and that is very unusual. One of the reasons ben franklin loved one of his workers is that she can keep a great books. The dutch are valued because even the women know how to keep books which means you can run a business. Its valuable for Family Business but in holland even the women are showing with open books, looks, look, shes got her hand showing the keeping the books. This is amazing and we also, this is from where did that one go . Sorry. Nobody knew they were there. Is nothinis not the bench go ton museums. They are often still in these administrative houses or in state buildings. They are not exciting paintings. Once again people overlook accounting its an odd thing. Its so essential. But culturally with unelected behind. The dutch didnt. The dutch spend a lot of money and time painting and thinking about these things. During the 17th century, you can go for the. One of my favorite political theorists rights one of the most remarkable books on political theory is a book which is about republican liberty. Its also about the need for free market, a very photo early version of free market thought but also holland which he says we need republican liberty. Me freedom of thought, we need tolerance but we also need good Financial Management. After he talks about classical republican rome he goes on to spend most of the vouchers providing trade numbers. Essentially past accounts of each city to show the wealth of holland. And so he greets this genre and which actually shows the power of the country and its political effectiveness by showing calculated numbers of tax receipts. This is a very unusual book of political theory. But it even goes further than that. The dutch create the grand engineer. Thats the sort of Prime Minister figure under the stockholder and he gets into fights with us talk older. A financial whiz, a mathematical expert, a radical artesian. He writes a treatise on the mathematics kurds, very important i think in building waterworks. And that is actually published with day starts works. So this is a mathematician. Is no port and his running the country pagosa writes the first truly great treatise on states and newbies which is an amazing thing. And so one could stop the institutes, the dutch do it. Victory this aside, master accounting, they even know that its failed. They put in sort i cultural watching and Warning System for these failures against hubris, but, of course, this great mathematician comes up again and he and his brother end up getting killed, slaughtered, gutted, named by a crowd who take the guts and the hearts and put them into a little container, paid by the nasa family to kill the to with brothers because during conflict with them. Wow, this moment would get complete but dirty. When you put this this doesnt always happen. This was no time this happened but its a rare occurrence. But this is the first moment we get a financial expert at more or less the head of the stupid its a remarkable thing and they do find quite remarkable today, when he gets completely gutted in such a brutal way. Look at his work which is so fine and sophisticated, the contrast is quite remarkable. Now, what happens is that we know that holland decline in 18th century and the dutch will often say that. They start thinking more those paintings again but no one just anybody. The bookkeeping is not as good as it used to be. In fact, england emerges as the center of bookkeeping. By the late beginning of the 18th century the are about 30 what are called writing schools which are schools we learn to write well and to write well to keep accounts but you also learned to entry accounting. By the end of 18th century britain had 1000 of these schools. Is are advertised for being for gentlemen as well as normal citizens, and even or ladies. They get over this noble distaste of doing accounting and theres lot of accounting being done in britain. This culture expand up in britain. I dont want to go into a full discourse on it but it also enters into their artistic tradition. They celebrate accounting. To our huge number of pictures of british merchants smiling over their books. They are not showing them like in holland. Its a national hubristic moment of empire. Some merchants dont keep books, very unusual, because they are making so much money they have never seen it and i literally stopped keeping books. They just had the money coming in. But theres whole bunch of these paintings of the smiling look at this guy. His books are a mess but hes in control. He is lord of the world and there is account books, his poverty so good at them, he can give me nonchalant about it. Even more sophisticated, this accounting. He also warns there are many british people who ignore accounting so theyre still doing warning pictures and in this case their account walks with a ledger which was unbalanced and frustration. Obviously has thrown his hands up. These people dont want accountable to but its still art and still and culture. My book goes into much more detail and explains 18th Century America in the 19th Century America but also talks about for me the most important figure in all this who is charles dickens. Is consciousness, his cultural consciousness about accounting is deep in dickens work. Dickens father was an accountant and was a good accountant who was robbed by a bad account. And dickens struggles with the good and bad account. There are good accounts and that accounts and, of course, in Christmas Carol we have this whole story of these kind of accounting Business Owners with scrooge and jacob marley who keep books but can also be imprisonedand also keep bad books and marley comes back and our numbers engravings of marley held by change by his ledgers. Again this consciousness is there. Dickens talks about and friends. We have many of the writers of the 18th century writing about accounting. There are songs about accounting. Poems about accounting but its very much on peoples minds. There are stories from household stories about accounting, about family fights. For example, women were allowed to keep accounts but they couldnt keep accounts for groceries. All these strange things within the culture of accounting but in 18th 18th century britain and the 19th century britain people actually still discussed it. This is a very shortened version of my argument in the book, and dickens is my favorite character but what really strikes me and im leaping over years and years and years of accounting history and history of accountability, but if you want to bring this up to the 20th century in our own issues. Still in the 1960s, arthur and young could show this madman brochure. This is a good job were the guy is clueless scoping out the possibilities that his job offers him as an accountant and a little bit of glamour involved in this. But with all the scandals that will follow accounting and actually the loss of social prestige of accounting, Arthur Andersen was accounted to the midwest and goes through this midwestern middleclass people leads to accounting. It loses much of its cultural clash it to that is followed by numerous accounting scandals and now accounts are out of view. We dont see them. We dont talk about them. The modern image of an accountant is kind of that. Thats the sauce photo of an accountant. Its not a great image, okay, and, in fact, accounts, there are other pictures that are in the accounting school, accounts in dark suits looking very, very grim but theres none of this great art surrounding accounts but theres none of this cultural awareness. That seems to me to be a huge problem but we dont talk about accounts. In fact we feel uncountable talking about accounts. Today Bloomberg News say they want to write about accounting but its not sexy but it doesnt go on the front page. And also gloomy because many cases its warning about fraud. People dont want to hear it. We dont have that many accounting journalists. Financial journalism is a park revived financial accounts and the publication of the ledgers of Balance Sheets, of company accounts. And what we see in the 18th century is the circulation of these things and the leaking of account books of companies and states. That becomes news in the becomes proto journalism and later in the 1830s when the budget emerges you get financial journalism growing out of this state accounting tradition. Today we barely have any accounting journalists. That is very scary. Went 800,000 accountants in the big four accounting firms. All are alive in one way or another. Very quickly in one quick transaction a will go through one of those big four firms. Somehow through, at some point a computer but eventually through an account and get these people remain invisible. We had this massive crisis. No one talked about the accounts. The Balance Sheets were brought out in public and discuss the way to work in the 18th century but in many ways we have gone backwards and that has expired his book and thats what i wrote it inspired this book. And thats why i wrote it. [applause] sure. Id be delighted to take questions. Im just wondering, i would have thought [inaudible] ease in there. Obviously is the most fun because hes accounts are part of his diaries and the accounts were everything, and he does it using the language which he uses. He lives in great fear and he claims to learn accounting from a one eyed sailor, which showed its still hard to learn accounting but when he deals with the early the earl of sandwich and the king and they dont know how to keep account books, he writes i fear for this country. Its quite remarkable, i wish we had accounting like in france. So funny because france had such an unaccountable system but he is an accountant for while france was run by professional trained accountant. He is in there for sure. Anyone of these topics you have to bring them in. He is therefore that. This is a much a western story and im thinking of, especially talk about the waterworks, the chinese have the same kind of life or death dependence on management. Is there a great diversion aspect to what you are doing, or how does accounting put out in that culture . We have all across the world people are keeping account. Only in the west do you get double entry accounting, which is the most accurate and really is the linchpin of capitalism. Why does capitalism emerged in the west indies the European Countries . Accounts have done the double entry. Up with tha that stupid pelletse there particular western culture mixed with the scriptures about accountability and about warnings and about balancing and about the reckoning of god. Remember, god is an accountant, too. He keeps the books of life and of death and he ends up that and i do is write. Its interesting to a lot of people think better to stick with the americans in spite of everything that happened. So decide to go on in the background. Most people dont know about it. They are big, big discussions. Sorry. I would take exception to your comments that accounting is not discussed. I, for instance, started a Company Called great nationals were rated the finances of Public Companies started in the 90s. There were several of us doing it, comparable firms. So in the profession and then the Financial Analysis wall street and then the Specialized Business publications and even the journal you see the articles and the is a lively discussion about the accounting rules and about the impact of it and the complexity of it and whether the sec is enforcing the or not. So there is a discussion and its very lively but its in an environment that most people are just absolutely confused by the whole thing, if you know anything about it at all. And i will tell you a story, about four or five years ago i met the comptroller general of the united states. And as a statute is to do an audit each year. We havent done an audit for the past 10 or 12 years because he cant get a clean audit because of the pentagon. And there it is. National security. This is one of the real issues but i think people who lived know about it. I couldnt agree with you more. We talked about this all afternoon with this just some special snow, think about this, there are that many accountant the journalist. Bloomberg combination felt they wanted one and they do have right is doing it and they limited there was more interest in the most people dont know anything about it. It was still part of the curriculum up until world war ii. Double edge account is not in the greg oden anymore. People dont know what does. You go to the best schools of the country and never do anything about accounting. In the renaissance can be lightly, people wouldve thought that quite terrifying if any householder did not know accounting. My suggestion in the book is, since the crisis is not necessary there with the experts, although part of it is, but in the general population which is completely ignorant of this basic thing. People take mortgages without knowing what appreciation, without knowing how to balance a book at all. That wont work. In the middle ages they warned about that. They said if he could hold on to your house or to your property unless you knew how to manage these things. [inaudible] language of Financial Literacy which transcends even the accounting. So when you talk about Financial Literacy, it is very low in this country. Absolutely. I think its a crisis. I think we are in deep by the way, when churchill, i think 1913 comes in to take over the navy, he finds it completely cooking the books. They are brokered this is always the case in the navy. The navy says National Security, we can talk about. He finds out in 1913 that he has someone and thats one of the reasons the military, that he starts building submarines rather than battleships because he has no money. Cheaper. The history of submarines starts out with bad accounting practices. Abdulla[inaudible] doing well, not doing well. Id like to talk more about the normative [inaudible] sometime those books are beautifully balance. Is that good accounting . What accounting can make us do. [inaudible] its in the book. Its a lot easier to do slave trading when youre only looking at the books and its only in numbers. And by the way, i go through the account books of people like jefferson and i point out its absolutely horrific to read the passages about slavery and the way he talked about in his account books. Theres been only thing thats good but its good that many of the Founding Fathers knew a lot about county, believe me. Dessel project wouldnt have worked very, very creepy when they spent around, people Like Washington and others and go through it for slavery. [inaudible] accounting can go both ways. Its the same will, because there is a morality today. In the books that are books which balanced out and show profit and dont necessarily, that doesnt us and come from human suffering and their books in which there is human suffering. The books show it just as numbers and they do clean it up and they fixed that. I mean, i talk about a lot in the book. What im also talking about is a nonnormative thing in which we constantly in the dropping these books or ignoring them. There was a study, i forget what its called, i wrote about it in a new york stein piece in which people get phobia of their own accounts. I can tell you at tax time, i have a phobia of my accounts. There wa was another study that just came out recently that said the worst your accounts are, theres a phenomenon, people get poorer and poorer, they stop doing it again because its a horrible. Louis xiv of the same problem except at a different level. Theres a whole other story of dysfunction in and of human nature and then cultural management where they cant deal with it and its a very odd thing. I hope that came across that i find accounting to be incredible strange rather than simply at the same time really do need to do it in order to run a business and to manage a household. [inaudible] is there a reckoning coming . I cant answer those questions but i can do this. I can tell you that from the earliest publications of the budget, the numbers were fudged. I do think the Congressional Budget Office does a pretty impressive job with what it gets. I think there are some numbers out there, i think those who are trained and get the sense, but accounts will always tell you remember, this is an inexact art and our valuations might not be completely accurate. They are not always allowed to say that by the way in their statements, imbalance should have this but theres a large tradition of fudging the books. Is a reckoning coming . After talking to somebody financial after chose today i got word that there was one coming. I was deeply concerned, but thats just me. You do right, i guess you do write about in the book but as you were talking about gradual [inaudible] comes along with the rise in providence of [inaudible] the accounting schools fret about this. They fret about their image. If their image is tarnished, and if youre honest again you probably not make as much as a family. Accounting schools struggle with giving students to go into banking. They struggle with this. Those are big, Big Questions but the image of the towns across the to century is a fascinating story of the mismanagement of a brand that was greeted by the british around 1904 as the impartial Sherlock Holmes of finances who didnt care about the money. He was there for a reason, and that image was very strong in 1904. Not here 100 years later. Thank you very much on your book. Its amazing. [inaudible] [inaudible] absolutely. [inaudible] they are still arguing about these. [inaudible] [inaudible] first of all, i go over it briefly. To talk about but not in enormous detail. It is so complicated, the history of modern accounting over the past 40 years, its so complex that, that is really something i couldnt do. I look at and read about and i was startled by these things. And also theyre still an argument about historical accounting market to market accounting. They dont agree on one of the interesting things about talking to real accounts, we can to be exact. We are all about doubt. The accounts themselves useful theres a postmodern language without even knowing it. Its impressive to go talk to a counselor after. They will tell you a remarkable story. The people you least expected to be a story about doubt and about questioning numbers, they do it because they have to and they say, we always try and tell people what we do is inexact and they can never be exact. And so fascinating. That gets back to his paintings were have to try and do a good a job as you can but know they cant fully control it. Its such a remarkable hold true realization to get to that point. I find that just amazing. [inaudible] absolutely. They really are. More than i would have thought. [inaudible] i wanted you to take it apart a little bit. It seems to me accounting is described as different strategies and practices. Theres the physical practices adding up numbers in collins is kind of a moral discourse surrounding it. Theres a cultural game where you project the image to the public but to what extent though is that an integrated package talks to those have to go together . Are they stuck together . If theyre not stuck together, this goes back to the question of the country as having slaves, is there a moral favor of having the books . In other words, does your story depend on having an integrated package of different kinds of [inaudible] but locked together . All i can say is i think it would help. In the perfect world. But certainly it helps to have that greater view. You know, thats why i find 18 Century America so fascinating. Most americans, you help me with that chapter so you know the information better than i do, but most americans did know how to do accounting but a lot of the leading citizens, many of them were forming the government and other things knew how to do this accounting and a lot of the people who have plantations were really good at doing it a double edged sword were people who were doing plantation accounting, which is horrific are also the people are doing the counting to create this recovery. But thats the story of america. Thats also jefferson in a nutshell, i think there is the internal tension in accounting but the dutch get it. This is something th to keep the books of the republic, because they believe its the only way to do that. We will not see a system like that again until around 1720. Thats not effective in 1720. You dont see it as standardize governmental practice in the west until the 19th century. What we do is we lose from hundreds and hundreds of years. I found that sobering. [inaudible] spent the chicken and egg thing, right. Absolutely. [inaudible] when . Look at the italian time, the dutch time spent they didnt have which the profession . Now its a profession which means that everybody does it. I dont know what works better. A general culture where everybody does it and then they are also professionals, or this thing where now were just the professionals do it. We do know that having government oversight of accounting can help. They can also week habit. The accounts will tell you they feel their hands are tied behind the back. Against the banks indicated good audits right now. Its not completely clear who is right on this. Its very complicated stuff. We are in a very, we are in a hyper financial moment that is so complex that its very, very hard to figure out. The danger and hubris section [inaudible] what is that danger . It comes off of this idea from st. Matthew, yes, you should earn a profit and you should keep your books but be careful with worshiping that, with trusting it too much. Thats just from the scripture, thats the whole message but the dutch really picked that up in that sense that you have to be careful with thinking [inaudible] fraud. Fraud fraud by great accountants. Thats what those warning pictures are. They show the tools are fantastic and theyre doing everything theyre supposed to do, but theres something wrong. Be careful with the numbers. Do you think double entry books and how do what could solve the present i feel it. I talked about this today. Again, its a long time. I think learning how to keep the books is very important. Even though you can have an app or something doesnt for you, you can also learn how it works. You learn the moral of balance. You learn the dangers of not being disciplined. In medieval italy, it was another long tradition of people keeping moral accounts, experts on that and all of the christian tradition. Ben franklin keeps a moral account books. They keep accounts but they dont teach accounting. All the fun of relationships with the loss of the moral account book, i follow that as well. People kept moral account books. I cant say if thats a good idea or not. Cultural practice that we have lost. [inaudible] i totally agree, but its a start. Where does it start . We want of a conversation to remember this, i dont have i mentioned this, i dont want to compliment myself because you can read the book and you can think whether its good or not but theres a history of accountability. I looked. This was the first sort of long attempt to write history of accountability. I find that scary. Where do we start . My Research Shows learning this is one place, you got to go back to the fund events and then youve got to talk about dozen function and how terrifying it is but we cant even get there. People dont know what this is. People dont know what double entry accounting is. Most people, remarkable. [inaudible] the moral to the story, right in your account book each night and thats what people talk about in the 18th century. Some of my peoples go to that in egypt at the end of the day youre supposed to balance your books and then you go to sleep. Then you pray afterwards. But the point is, not to a certain extent i think in a hyper financial world, it might be a great place to start conversing because it allows you to converse about capitalization and even begin to Start Talking about the crazy financial world we live in. We live in a crazy financial literate world and most people are financially illiterate. So this was a star about education and culture. The were many of the stories that could be told as well. [inaudible] unique double edge first, he reads initiative cost the county which is fascinating and i talk about some of it. It comes out a double edge bookkeeping and then you get the more complex thing, that depreciation really is a fascinating concept. The italians have it early on to Cost Accounting is rudimentary Cost Accounting in the middle ages but it gets in the midlands in britain during the First Industrial revolution. [inaudible] nobody does that and you cant run a business doing that. [inaudible] if you go back and read the article on Cost Accounting, you can see the profit by which he starts losing money, goes back to audit is double entry books and realizes at the time thats his problem. Then he does the famous thing when he puts up the clock and start clucking peoples hours the one of the biggest moments. Its pretty rough and intense and if effective and effective. Im trying to work up the exact difference between the states and the merchants in this story. Im struck we started talking about and centered on states, almost always begun with merchants. So i wonder if that was something that was an intervention on your part to think about this, the rise of accounting is dependent on states and yet when it comes to the dutch come your argument goes in the other direction. The dutch culture that youre able to then get to a state that works [inaudible] i dont make sweeping judgments like that but what is very, very interesting is to see the states try and try again and fail. One of the reasons that the spanish bill and the french bill is they just dont have any accounts that will work for them. And to train accounts would take so long. The medieval italians they get to start with a child, yet to be beaten and that everybody ive one of those, have you ever seen that . If you dont put the entry in you have to be hit. Thats just a renaissance educational tool. Nothing special in there. But disciplined business and. Guess what . If your state and get a spanish empire, big, big state and unique accounts, you cant get them. You cant convince we go to civilians and you get a couple people, not enough. Nobody knows anything about it. A few italians coming and they wont do it for you. Its wild to see france, for example, in the 1726 after their stockmarket bubble. There was a proposal, and internal mom memo, quite interesting by the brothers were trying to double entry put into the state and there are enemies who dont want to be passed the say its much too expensive for the states to train accounts and that when a mistress as if its expensive and would lead anyone in become where not going to drink the accounts. And you lose on the cost of doing this. Is a competent a story. Again i do have a chicken and an eight. I dont have the pure causality i do see historically some incredible moments where these elements work together. Thats the historians job. Could you sell but more about [inaudible] spent thinking of starting a think about accounting whether its good or bad, its both, should be discussed. Everything goes in and nothing comes out. Its the art of not doing it. Its this remarkable thing, this world where we have all these rational account books and yet nothing works. Thats a dickens world. Its his early modern world which is very nightmarish for him. The thing that strikes me about dickens is that it is a moral and social problems ties or happens to be one of the greatest novelists of all times, and by that i know some people dont like a dickens. It staggers me, and he thinks and writes a lot about accounting. I find that remarkable. Hes not the other one. Tolstoy doesnt write about that. What i think is doing is trying to make a point about this. He struggled with the. I dont think he i has the full answer but declared he wants people to be aware of how it does and doesnt work. I havent scanned [inaudible] they are thinking about it. I would think dickens is very aware of that. Go back, i havent done the entire works of dickens for this. [inaudible] yes. His father, all these good accounts. They are up against the bad ones. Its the sort of good and evil, to choices in accounting. That awareness i think is very important. I think dickens sophistication is grand. As a financial figure, so it is also using language [inaudible] weve also lost do we have writers of this quality and with the writings about financial problems like accounting . I dont think the. I think that could be helpful but that is an ideal of utopia. Probably not, doesnt exist. Theres a shortterm solution. [inaudible] we talked about this this morning at Bloomberg News. We thought both, both. [inaudible] i think just begin the discussion and journalists are the ones who can begin the discussion. They are the only one to can put back in curriculum. If you want to be a country that spent on australian. So[inaudible] spent in austria they put in homeowner grants. Is complete market distortion. I said before you go into it, just look at your money. Soundtrac[inaudible] theres an old maxim of early medieval finance that the householder must know good accounting. By the way, one journalist told me that australia rather than having the big four firms has wanted for so competing firms and lead to better Financial Accounting during the crisis. That was a claim i heard in london last week. I dont know if its true but i found it fascinating. I wont comment. One of the issues that ive seen over the past perhaps 5075 years has been the growth of the footnotes of the Financial Statements. And so not just the numbers. It look at the National Statement of the turnofthecentury, the footnotes were just a very minor portion of the statement. If you look at major corporations, lets say a citicorp and we are looking at 250 pages of a Financial Statement of which probably 20 pages are the numbers, and 230 our footnotes. And so the footnotes really have taken over from the numbers. I mean, understand any of the Financial Statements today you have to do it is whats so funny, the accounts what more explanations to say that were not totally sure. Its a remarkable form of writing and expression. One that we dont talk about very much. That alone is a great story of the footnotes and how these things even more. People dont have an id of this. People argue about, those are for the issues, especially her auditors. [inaudible] it seems to me that the county, even good accounting, has fundamental problems, including the fact that a Balance Sheet hides much more than it reveals. Accounts have always been aware that even if theyre doing their best, theres a certain amount of discretion involved in a. So that creates, enshrines sort of perfected picture. Even when its done according to the hubris rule. Doesnt that itself began to generate problems . The fact that you get a picture that then people believe, people forget whats behind it and creates the sure, absolutely, thats one of the things i talk about, the Balance Sheet in 1929, there were no rules and they started producing fake Balance Sheets. There were warnings about the great crash. There are better and worse Balance Sheets by the also problems. But to understand a failed policy you have to have discussions about them. I think its almost important having those. The problem is can we exception being there. People in the business know. They have friends or in private equity, and so when you go to buy a company can do you trust the books . Of course not. We have our own people analyzing the company and then i use instinct. Thats a big business lesson right there. A gradual destruction, the rise of accounting [inaudible] you go from everyone doing the accounting, professionals doing it, and you go from 100 companies to for companies. Its an increasing blackbox. Thats what we need some kind of literacy. We have no handle on it. Weve got to start somewhere. Thats my only true conclusion as historian. But i believe thats the case. We have to start the discussion. And yes, its going to be a long, complicated one. Its tricky out there and a tricky tricky time. We are in new york city. Isnt there still [inaudible] [laughter] according to the journalists, yes, people who want to blow the whistle can find themselves in deep trouble. Clear audits are a dangerous thing sometimes. Thank you very much. [applause] wil[inaudible conversations] you are watching booktv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Booktv, television for serious readers. Shell be speaking to students e forest university. She was dismissed from her position last week and replaced by the papers managing editor. Wake forest president nathan hatch reaffirmed the universitys invitation last week saying, i cannot think of a better message for the class of 2014 than that of resilience. Jill abramsons accomplishments speak for themselves, and im confident shell have an inspiring message for our graduates. We plan to bring you her remarks later today at 1 00 eastern right here on cspan2. Cspan, created by americas Cable Companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a Public Service by your local cable or satellite provider. Host well, its been 18 years since the 1996 Telecommunications Act was enacted by congress and signed by president clinton. Today on the communicators were going to discuss that act, its goals and whether or not it should be rewritten. Joining us are two of the authors of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, rick boucher who was a democrat from virginia, served in congress from 19832011, jack fields was a republican of texas from 198197. Congressman fields, what was your role in the development of the 96 Telecommunications Act . Guest well, i i was actually very fortunate. I was the chairman of the subcommittee on telecommunication and finance, and, you know, telecommunication policy had not been reformed since 1934. So there was really a compelling need in 1995 to begin a process of massive telecommunication reform, and at that time you basically had boxes. You had a box for broadcasters, a box for telephone companies, a box for long distance, you know,