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The phenomenon in accounting practices that was dubbed the Earnings Game in the 1990's article by Justin Fox is the clever manipulation of earnings in order to consistently meet the projected earnings of a publicly traded company by the myriad of analysts who evaluate it. The goal, of course, is to not fail to meet your earnings by a penny, as well as to not exceed expectations by too much -- since doing so could dramatically later future expectations and throw off the smooth, regulated meeting of earnings. Companies play this game, of course, because it helps to bolster their stocks. The public and the financial community in general is greatly impressed by companies that meet their earnings over a sustained period of time. There are many different ways in which companies can subtly manipulate their earnings to meet the expectations of analysts. One is to defer recording revenue until it is advantageous to do so -- a similar process may involve losses. The point, of course, is to keep investors pleased by demonstrating stability.

I was astounded to find out that the history of writing and record keeping can be traced back to accounting and the management of pecuniary resources. I always thought that writing was created for some high literary pursuit of which I could not conceive. Moreover, I was almost certain that record keeping was began for the purpose of history -- such as to denote the fact that an ancient king had 27 wives or to trace the lineage of such a person. The bible certainly alludes to the latter fact, although that was written well after most of the events described in the article "Antecedents of the Accounting Profession."

I also believed that this same concept applied to Scribes, and was shocked to see that they dealt less with history than with pragmatic, monetary affairs.