The phrase "accounting failure" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a situation where there has been a mistake or oversight in financial reporting or record-keeping.
Example: "The company's recent accounting failure led to significant financial losses and a loss of investor confidence."
Alternatives: "financial mismanagement" or "bookkeeping error".
But it took the biggest accounting failure in history to overcome the legal protections auditors enjoy.
This has led some observers to say that this is less a European problem than yet another American accounting failure.
And as one accounting failure after another has unfolded in recent months, investors have begun to reward the stocks of companies whose results still look solid when subjected to scrutiny.
Housing finance giant Fannie Mae has suffered "collateral damage" from the accounting failure and management shake-up at its rival Freddie Mac, says Fannie Mae Chairman Franklin D. Raines Franklin D. Raines.
That was a useful tie: Reifler's grandfather was Ray Earl Friedman, the "Ref" in Refco, long America's first name in the commodity pits until a scandalous accounting failure last year brought it down.
Ms. Gorelick left the company just as it was coming under attack for huge accounting failures.
Accounting failures in the private sector have been big news lately.
She left the company just as it was coming under attack for huge accounting failures.
But whatever accounting failures have to be corrected then can probably be dealt with by Mr. Bush in a statement from his ranch outside Crawford, Tex.
But the granddaddy of accounting failures belongs to the public sector -- the federal government's handling of money held in trust for more than 300,000 Native Americans.
The indictment of Andersen came after the firm or its representatives had already faced litigation from the S.E.C. over accounting failures involving other clients, Waste Management and the Sunbeam Corporation.
