To support the data collection and control systems necessary to operate this intervention, the imperial government recruited a large number of accountants charged with introducing a vast accounting apparatus to Ireland.
Mr. Skilling and Kenneth L. Lay were convicted in 2006 of a vast accounting fraud that led to Enron's collapse.
When a vast accounting fraud is disclosed, or when a chief executive is caught looting a company, it is to be expected that the Securities and Exchange Commission will bring civil charges against the responsible executives.
"We competed effectively against WorldCom when they were cheating, making up their numbers and their own rules," said Paul Kranhold, an spokesman for AT&T, in a written statement, referring to the vast accounting irregularities that helped throw WorldCom into bankruptcy.
"They're in a no-win situation if what they're trying to do is stiff-arm Rakoff," said David Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied how Judge Rakoff overruled the S.E.C.'s settlement with WorldCom, the phone company that committed a vast accounting fraud.
Suddenly they became small and scrappy without the huge accounts, vast office space and bottomless expenses of yesteryear.
Even in this era of cuts, the Pentagon's budget is vast: America accounts for about four of every ten dollars spent on defence worldwide.
As for the program's vast bank accounts, the public is told only that letters of credit are issued by a French bank, BNP Paribas.
In all of them vast current-account deficits were financed by huge capital inflows.
Bring down Germany's exports and its vast current account surpluses?
