The ongoing investigation of Enron and Arthur Andersen has spurred much debate over the future of the securities and accounting industries. What has not been discussed is the massive fraud being perpetrated on the American people by the these industries, which have bilked some $4.75 trillion from the American public since 2000, an amount that makes the Savings and Loan crisis, which cost taxpayers $0.52 trillion by 1992, seem minor by comparison. Indeed, parasitic securities managers and their symbiotic auditors now treat public companies as their own private usufruct.

The government's response? An assault of similar, industry-sponsored bills currently slogging through the Senate Banking Committee that will make matters worse. From the language in these bills and from the rhetoric at legislative show hearings, one would think that investors and taxpayers existed solely to support incestuous auditors, self dealing securities managers, and the SEC in their cushy, conflicted relationships rather than auditors and the SEC existing to protect investors and taxpayers.

Indeed, the government's response is focused on completing the ongoing process of deregulation, which has transformed the SEC into what is now essentially a front organization for the securities and accounting industries, and has insured that crony auditors like Arthur Andersen continue to help prepare the tax returns of the firms they audit. That way, the SEC and the IRS will continue to get a consistent lie about a firm's financial condition and tax evasion, should the agencies ever compare notes. American taxpayers-not to mention employees, retirement account holders and investors-are already being asked to pick up the slack( with state tax increases, negative earnings, deflated securities prices, and by increases in national debt that effectively reverse the tax cut last year.

All of the similar bills currently under consideration in Congress, which I call 'Attack of the Clones,' perpetuate unreliable financial reporting by delegating securities oversight authority of the SEC to a publicly unaccountable private corporation, deliberately misnamed a 'public' oversight board (POB).

Resurrected from the failed POB, which disbanded in January, the new POB mandated in each clone is designed to keep the SEC unaccountable for fraudulent financial filings and to divert attention from the filings themselves onto the securities managers who write them or the auditors who falsely certify them. Under the various clones, neither the SEC nor the POB would systematically screen many(or even any(securities filings for deceptive or missing content, thus