Your company's dying and you're to blame

Is your money disappearing down the pan that is this blasted downturn? Here's an internet company that's a guaranteed winner. It's called myScapegoat.com, but its sister site someone2blame4mylosses.co.uk is coming soon to a browser near you.

Everyone is looking for someone to blame for the recession, redundancies and the stock market collapse.

Following the Enron scandal and the fibre swapping fiasco, accountants seem to be the bogeyman du jour.

Now we'd be the last people to stick up for accountants. It's not really a profession dedicated to openness. If PR men speak with a forked tongue, accountants usually sound like they've swallowed half of Sheffield.

Anyone in a suit has seen mud flying towards them recently. So, how about the auditors who are meant to keep corporate accountants at bay? Are they to blame? Or how about the investment banks, which pumped internet valuations and made millions on ludicrous stock flotations? Is it their fault?

What about the analysts who failed to read the balance sheets of their target companies carefully enough and spot that all that cash they were making was imaginary? They should have known better. Even the journalists, perhaps - are we guilty of failing to spot it?

Well, you can forget blaming us for a start!

Some of the suits belong behind bars, that's for sure. It's difficult to see how the folks in the Enron case could emerge from it without some kind of blame.

Because greed is what it's all about and the blame lies with everyone from executives, investors, accountants and anyone who ever bought a high-tech share.

They say that a recession is a time when money is returned to its rightful owners and to an extent that's true. But recessions have innocent victims, too. People who lose their jobs through no fault of their own. People who lose their life savings through acting on bad advice.

Still, lots of losers in this recession have only themselves to blame. But will they realise that? Not likely. That's why myScapegoat.com is guaranteed to make money. At least, that's what my accountant said...