Garbage in, garbage out. While Enrons happen, a fundamental aspect of Western-style accounting is legally-mandated transparency (at least to someone, somewhere

Garbage in, garbage out. While Enrons happen, a fundamental aspect of Western-style accounting is legally-mandated transparency (at least to someone, somewhere). Without a standards-based legal system, what's to stop anyone from cooking the books? And if every ledger is a lie to some degree, then aggregating those just produces bigger lies. Until you're finally left with the "unable to calculate [...] with any level of certainty" answers to a host of important economic questions. Sounds familiar from the 1980s...