Ms. Bruenn said she hoped that the increased threat of prosecution might deter executives from breaking accounting rules.
Power tools account for 62 percent of the market, while hand tools — less expensive to begin with and less likely to break — account for 38 percent.
Corporate executives have enormous financial incentives to stretch or break accounting rules, and accountants and lawyers, who are supposed to give their clients honest advice, too often sign off.
Accounting specialists said that the change stretched and may have broken accounting rules.
After Caesars broke accounting rules, its license was suspended for one day in 1985, Ms. Ford said.
An Accident Investigation Squad checklist within the police file indicates that the investigator's camera was broken, accounting for the lack of photo evidence of the crash.
Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, the Olympus chairman, told the Nikkei newspaper that the actual amount was about $391 million, and the company issued a statement denying that the payments broke accounting rules.
Douglas Foshee, Halliburton's chief financial officer, said the recent changes, like the earlier ones, did not break accounting rules and were not overly aggressive.
Federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission are now investigating whether the company broke accounting rules to inflate the sales and profits it reported to investors from 1997 to 2000.
The only logical way to interpret Khuzami's "bending the rules beyond the breaking point" comment is that GE broke accounting rules -- which is a crime.
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