ABSTRACT
Accounting is the language of finance. Members of the accounting profession are interpreters upon whom the vast majority of people must rely for information relating to any business or project with which they are not intimately and personally familiar. If interpreters do not tell the truth, or do not tell the whole truth, or tell truths intermixed with half truths, many people may be deceived to their hurt. Doubtless few accountants or business men would contend that present accounting principles are perfect, or that all financial statements prepared in accordance therewith state truly and without misrepresentation the facts that they purport to state. In the quite recent past the owner of a business could not be deceived by an untruthful balance sheet or profit and loss statement pertaining to his own business because he ran the business himself and was familiar with every phase of it at first hand.
