The emperor *was* naked

What if a company lost $54 billion and nobody noticed ?
AOL wrote down $54billion as a paper loss on revaluation of its acquisition of TimeWarner.
As Kevin Werbach points out, "This wasn't Enron-style chicanery; all the information was there in plain view. When you think about it, though, the fact that these accounting mechanisms were pervasive makes the situation even shadier. If "everyone" really appreciated that the most admired companies in America routinely reported numbers they knew were illusory, why did those companies bother to go through the exercise? "