We believe that the problems catalogued by Ralph and Tony this morning are not anomalies. Instead, we believe that the roots of these financial failures and frauds are found in the regulatory, social and economic institutions that characterize the current corporate reporting and accounting environment.

This weekend the Association for Integrity in Accounting held its founding conference. The Association's members include accountants from private, public, and academic accounting sectors (as well as students and others), both domestic and international, who are interested in advancing accounting to support a more informed public. The Association intends to provide an independent initiative to work in the public interest on what we see as the systemic issues facing the profession.

Our mission is to provide an independent forum to present and advance positions on a wide range of critical accounting and auditing issues, standards and regulations affecting the accountability and integrity of the profession and the public interest in maintaining trust and confidence in accounting.

Specifically, we have identified four starting components as our initial operating priorities:

First, watching the watchdogs. We believe that current patchwork of financial standard development and regulatory structures must be reevaluated from square one. Our preliminary evaluation suggests that the Financial Accounting Standards Board should be eliminated and the SEC required to live up to its original mandate for establishing financial reporting standards. The evaluation and development of alternative structures for accomplishing fair and adequate financial reporting is our underlying top priority for the coming year.

Second, restoring professional independence. During the coming months, we intend to propose changes to the conflict of interest issues that are pervasive in the current funding and selection of CPAs and consultants. We will also address issues of auditor rotation within this priority area.

Third, assuring corporate accountability and disclosure. We believe in, and plan to promote, an expanded concept of corporate accountability. Corporations are public institutions whose license to exist comes from the public. Shareholder value is simply too narrow a perspective for the measurement of accountability within corporations. The mantra of maximizing shareholder value is a limited -- and limiting -- notion of the role of the corporation within our society. One pressing disclosure issue involves developing increased transparency for the reporting of stock options and derivatives. Another important issue is expanded environmental reporting, known as sustainability reports, which already exists in many countries around the World. This kind of reporting is a further example of the type of public interest accountability that we seek for American taxpayers and citizens.

Our fourth priority focus is to redeem accounting education. We believe that the Association of Integrity in Accounting must be a voice for open and transparent reporting in order to educate students and the public on the lessons of Enron and other corporate frauds. We must work to gain access to archival information that will enable us to understand how these frauds could be perpetuated in order that we might prevent further failures. Opening up the files on Enron and other like cases to permit a thorough analysis of their causes is analogous to performing a post-mortem in medicine and is crucial for the proper functioning of a democratic society.

We welcome the opportunity to engage the media and others in continued dialogue on these and other related points as we develop our agenda. We invite everyone sharing our concerns to participate in our activities.