But the accounting principles are supposed to be based on the convention that assets are income-generating property, or property with significant resale value, while liabilities are payments that will come due at some future date. The current treatment of contingent liabilities is inconsistent with that principle (as we have just seen).

Incidentally, if I remember my accounting class right, in the Danish version of reality you have to book the full expected value of your contingent liabilities. And I don't think inability to estimate the probability that the contingency occurs will allow you to set the expected value to zero...

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.