an accountancy corporation

                                   

Member
American Institute of
Certified Public Accountants

• Sir Alfred has lived in a lost dimension of absurd bureaucratic entanglement.  He has spent 16 years living on a bench in Terminal One of the Chares de Gaulle International Airport, in Paris, France.  For a series of insanely complicated reasons, this Iranian-born refugee arrived in the airport in 1988 as a man without a country and any other documented internationally accepted identity status.  Sir Alfred couldn't enter or leave France because he didn't have papers.  The authorities told him to wait, there, while they sorted the paradox out.  That he did - for years and years.  Recently and finally, he was told that he could leave and go where he wants.  But he refused.  "One of the airport's passengers.  I'm always a passenger," says Sir Alfred.  Apparently, he had received a check of several hundred thousand dollars for his life story as it had been deposited with an airport's bank.  But he never cared much about money.  According to Sir Alfred's lawyer, at some point along the way - no one knows quite when - Sir Alfred tipped over into madness.  Incidentally, Sir Alfred's real name is Mr. Mehran Karimi Nasseri. 

• The ill-effects of exuberant gasoline prices: First-time claims fell to a six-week low of 331,000 in mid-August.  The leading economic indicators declined 0.3% in July, The consumer-confidence index dropped to 98.2 in August from 105.7 in July...

Meanwhile, California's median price of homes slipped 1.1% to $463,500 in July as the number of houses on the market increased.  Even so, the median price is still up 21% from a year ago. 

• 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.

• The Athens Olympics leading medal winners

	Total	Gold
United States	103	35
Russia	92	27
China	63	32

• High gasoline prices and safety concerns have made many Americans to rethink their passion for SUVs.  The slowdown in sales of SUVs is a remarkable turnabout for a segment of the auto industry that was once one of the auto makers' strongest profit centers.  About 40% of buyers are now trading-in their SUVs for something else.  That compares with about 8% in 1999.

• Tax simplification "remains everyone's favorite orphan," says a former IRS commissioner.  "All of us involved in the tax system - Congress, the executive branch, practitioners and taxpayers - proclaim our affection for this child of our dreams, but few are willing to adopt her as our own.

• The U.S. population is estimated to grow 43% to 420 million by 2050 while Germany's is to shrink 9%, Japan's 20% and Russia's 17%.

• American doctors do twice as many tests to find the same number of breast-cancer cases as physicians in Britain, reflecting inferior mammogram training and greater fear of malpractice law-suits in the U.S.

• FASB must remain independent: Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission wants Congress to stay out of the stock-options expensing debate.  Mr. William Donaldson who himself supports stock-options expensing said any legislation "would remove certain decision-making responsibility from the FASB and thereby disrupt the independent, private-sector accounting standard-setting process."

• We see more in numbers than just numbers…  

Ali R. Kakhsaz, CPA, MAcc

www.arkpca.com