KnuthIsGod 9 hours ago

"Aggressive classification of operating expenses as investment can be used to artificially boost reported profits."

The author of this article is Dan Crum a FT journalist respected for his investigations of financial fraud.

Dan Crum was responsible for uncovering the Wirecard fraud.

https://www.ft.com/stream/ffd38f36-a94c-43f7-8a62-2f45caf1be...

a_bonobo 15 hours ago

The author linking to Cockroach Theory at the end is hilarious

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cockroach-theory.asp

>The cockroach theory refers to a market theory that states when a company reveals bad news to the public, many more related, negative events may be revealed in the future. Bad news may come in the form of an earnings miss, a lawsuit, or some other unexpected, negative event. The term cockroach theory comes from the common belief that seeing one cockroach is usually evidence there are many more.

TheAlchemist 13 hours ago

I must admit, this is quite exciting. Serious people are starting to ask some questions. And we already know what kind of answers Elon will give - the same that Wirecard and Enron CEO's gave !

(The author of this article, is not a random guy)

bediger4000 15 hours ago

I'm not an accountant. What does this mean? Reading the article, it sounded like just sloppy books prep, but again, I'm not an accountant.

  • a_bonobo 15 hours ago

    They're being a bit intentionally unclear to not attract the lawyers, but the link to Wirecard makes it clear:

    >Wirecard was a German payment processor and financial services provider that collapsed in 2020 amidst a major accounting scandal, revealing a €1.9 billion hole in its finances and leading to the arrest of its CEO and other executives.

    • rasz 14 hours ago

      Plus Wirecard had russian spy COO.

  • dmsayer 14 hours ago

    i am not an accountant either, but this line stuck out to me as quite important to grasp the overall picture of what the article is getting at: "Aggressive classification of operating expenses as investment can be used to artificially boost reported profits."