an accountancy corporation

                                   

Member
American Institute of
Certified Public Accountants

• 95 million American mutual fund-investors have a total of $4.26 trillion invested in stock and band funds.

• Libya's Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son and probably heir apparent to dictator Moammar Gadhafi, says Libya has cut a good deal in exchange for its recent surprising pledge to give up its banned weapons.  He says Libya expects the U.S. and Britain to provide his country with economic advice, foreign investment and military training and protection.  "It's a package deal," he says.  "They have to reward us in order to make us an example" for others that might be tempted to come in from cold, such as Iran, Syria and North Korea.

• The brightest future is always based on a forgotten past.

• Cyber cafés are sprouting up around the metropolitan Los Angeles and local officials are taking a hard look at them and their activities.  Why?  86% of individuals arrested at cyber cafés are juveniles.  93% of charges against them were truancy or curfew violations.  And virtually all of the cyber cafés in LA opened in the last three years while many of them are near schools including elementary schools. 

• Iraqi oil industry has now been fully recovered: Iraq has been pumping 2.6 million barrels of oil a day, recently.  That's about the same as the prewar output capacity.

• theGeneralist, a one-page monthly publication of the accounting firm of A. R. Kakhsaz Company, is in its ninth year of providing information, presented fairly and accurately, from sources we can depend upon and trust.

• Here's the status of prosecutions of major corporate scandals:

Enron: Guilty plea by former CEO Andrew Fastow allowed indictment of former CEO Jeffrey Skilling, while former Chairman Kenneth Lay is the only top executive in the major corporate scandals who hasn't been indicted.

Tyco: Former CFO Mark Swartz and CEO Dennis Kazlowski on trial in NY state court on charges of looting the company of $600 million in unauthorized compensation and illicit stock sales.

Adelphia: Trial of founder John Rigas, his sons Michael and Timothy and a fourth defendant is on-going in the federal court.

Martha Stewart: Martha Stewart was convicted on all four counts of obstructing justice by a jury in the federal court on March 5, 2003.

HealthSouth: 17 executives have pled guilty and are cooperating with prosecutors.  Former CEO Richard Scrushy goes on trial this summer on charges of leading the scheme to overstate earnings.

• President George W. Bush has been quoted as saying:  "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."

• Blacks, as opposed to whites, have a much lower survival rate for heart failure. However, such disparities disappear, if their medical insurance coverage is equal, found  a study in the American Medical Association Journal.

• What a shame: 1.2 million children are sold every year into servitude ranging from domestic to sexual.  It's a $10 billion trade, according to UNICEF.

• In 2002 a total of 34.7 million individuals lived below the poverty level in the U.S.  That's 12.4% of the total population as compared with 11.9% in 2001.

We see more in numbers than just numbers… 

Ali R. Kakhsaz, CPA, MAcc

www.arkpca.com