Who watches the watchers?

First Enron, now WorldCom: two huge iconic companies brought low by accounting fiddles.
The consequent pressure on auditors and accountants - the guardians of a company's numbers - is intense.

But if it's bad for the beancounters, imagine what it must be like if your job is to keep an eye on them.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has that dubious honour in the US, and it's no surprise that it is squirming under the spotlight.

Oversight

Its chairman, Harvey Pitt, has accelerated proposals shaped post-Enron last year to institute a new oversight of the accountancy business.

On the table is a nine-person "Public Accountability Board", only three of whose members will be accountants, with the power to fine and censure transgressors.

The agency is in line for a 77%, $337m boost to its budget, rapidly approved by the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

He has also announced plans to make company bosses sign off personally on accounts, in an attempt to bar the "No-one told me" defence employed by executives at both Enron and WorldCom.

And the SEC has hurried to sue WorldCom for fraud, making sure, Mr Pitt said, that it is prohibited from indulging in an Enron-style paper shredding party.

Demanding a sworn report of how it came to announce that it had hidden $3.8bn in expenses, Mr Pitt told reporters that what had happened at WorldCom - "and we do not yet know all that has happened" - was an "outrage".

"What we also know we're looking at isn't a mistake, it's a fraud," he said.