GE Cooked the Books Too

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud and other charges against General Electric today for misleading investors through their preparation of financial statements (See the SEC official release). Apparently GE used deceptive accounting methods to artificially increase its earnings reports. GE has neither admitted nor denied culpability, but have agreed to pay a $50 million dollar penalty to settle the charges. The fairness of this settlement is difficult to grasp considering GE deceptively increased their earnings reports by nearly a billion dollars in 2002-2003, and avoided disclosing another $200 million in charges through the same intentionally misleading practices in 2003.