Increasingly, companies would pretty much write their own accounting rules when they put together their earnings releases. We said to ourselves, let's figure out how to do this the right way so the earnings number really tells us something about what's going on and the number is consistent from company to company.

David Blitzer

Related Quotes

It was standard operating procedure at Enron. We tended to be pretty fast and loose with the rules.

— David Delainey

EnronPrettyRules

there's nothing here that really points to any near-term inflationary dangers.

— David Blitzer

DangersInflationaryNear

The problem is that instead of having one way to calculate corporate earnings that everybody understands, we have two or three methods. And the one that most people use, there is virtually no agreement at all about what it means.

— David Blitzer

CalculateCorporateEarnings

As long as Alan Greenspan's not frowning, I'm not too worried.

— David Blitzer

FrowningNotWorried

The market seemed to think [the Fed's bias] was a note of panic, but I didn't see that at all. It's a note of caution. If the Fed saw a boom coming, it would shift to a neutral bias. I don't think it should scare [companies] completely, but I certainly wouldn't go spend like a drunken sailor.

— David Blitzer