The article I found on Yahoo! Finance, Financial Improprieties Abound as Stocks Rally, is dated November 04,2010. After you see the quotes below, you might understand why I have told you that the article is a current one.

It seems like survival of the fittest like forces have turned a government of, by and for the people into a government of, for and by special interest groups.

As stocks quickly tumbled to Dow 7,500, the government became desperate. Real estate related losses were piling up; investors lost confidence in the financial system and drove Washington Mutual out of business.

The problem was too big to fix, so the administration forced the Financial Accounting Standards Board to change rule 157. Obviously, the fix is only topical. If it wasn’t, why would Fannie and Freddie need an additional $215 billion in aid?

The ‘new and improved’ rule 157 allowed Banksters to value assets at what they might be worth in the future. If bank A purchased a portfolio of real estate (NYSEArca: IYR – News) for $10 million in 2006 and lost $6 million because the assets turned toxic, bank A is allowed to value the portfolio just below $10 million. The very real loss is not included in the current earnings numbers.

The real question is whether you can trust reported earnings? If Berkshire, along with most banks and financial conglomerates, has the legal right to fudge their earnings we may rightly wonder who else is employing this convenient accounting trick? Some would call them stupid if they didn’t.

To emphasize, Citigroup reducing its bad loan reserves would be like an insurance company reducing its natural disaster fund right before hurricane season.