One of the tragic ironies to emerge from the collapse of Arthur Andersen, following its audit work for Sunbeam, WorldCom, and Enron, was that it had survived the 1980s savings-and-loan scandals unscathed. In Final Accounting: Ambition, Greed and the Fall of Arthur Andersen, the following poignant description appears:

“The savings-and-loan crisis, when it came, ensnared almost every one of the Big 8. But Arthur Andersen skated away virtually clean, because it had made the decision, years earlier[,] to resign all of its clients in the industry. S&Ls for years had taken advantage of a loophole that allowed them to boost earnings by recording the value of deferred taxes. Arthur Andersen accountants thought the rule was misleading and tried to convince their clients to change their accounting. When they refused, Andersen did what it felt it had to: It resigned all of its accounts rather than stand behind accounting that it felt to be wrong.”628 What takes a company from the gold standard to indictment and conviction?? p-9687