Germany Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 13

Germany - Essay Example Controversies also were caused because some companies doing work on the memorial colluded with the Nazi’s and other Jewish groups felt the memorial was unnecessary. Another surprising controversy was the inclusion of an underground information center. Some Jewish groups felt that the inclusion of this center was designed to make the memorial a tourist destination. They said that the memorial speaks for itself and there is no need for a special center. The underground location was praised because it did not detract from the purpose of the memorial visually, but it still created controversy. In the United States, many memorials and monuments serve a dual purpose. They try to commemorate or bring to remembrance the tragic or joyful events of a culture or civilization, while focusing on the current state of that civilization as well. There is a Jewish Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. but no museum for American genocide because there is a National Native American Museum. The genocide is featured, but not the focus of the exhibit. Maybe Americans have a hard time facing the fact that we have made horrible mistakes in how we have behaved in the past. That is why we do not focus solely on one tragic aspect of the past when building our monuments, museums and

Corporate governance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words - 1

Corporate governance - Essay Example A staff of executives used of the American energy company. This prompted the adoption of the Corporate and Auditing Accountability, Responsibility and Transparency Act (commonly known as the SOX). Essentially, the Act was to mandate reforms that would fight corporate accounting fraud by enhancing corporate responsibility and financial disclosures. Further, for the sake of overseeing auditors, the Public Companies Accounting Oversight Board was also created by the Act. This paper will discuss the Enron case and research academic literature to evaluate the amendments to the code/legislation and determine whether they will resolve the issues of corporate governance as well as assessing the effectiveness of the changes. For the purpose of discussion, an overview of the Enron Scandal and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act will be given, followed by the evaluation of amendments to the code/legislation. The most notable causes of Enron’s downfall were associated with corporate governance, revenue recognition, special purpose entities and mark-to-market accounting. When the sale of natural gas was deregulated via legislation passed by Congress, Enron increased its prices and soon became the North America’s largest seller by 1992, earning $122 million before taxes and interest. However, poor financial reporting and accounting loopholes were used by the chief executive officer and the chief financial officer to conceal billions of dollars that had accrued as debt from projects and deals that had failed. Eventually, this led to the bankruptcy as the company executives continuously misled the audit committee and board of directors on matters concerning high-risk practices of accounting. Further, they also pressured their auditors, Arthur Andersen, to ignore such matters. Enron reported the entire value of all trades it conducted as revenue as opposed to reporting the cost of the products as the cost of goods sold and selling price as revenue (Salter 2008, p. 104). This aggressive