Financial Euphamisms

At TechCrunch, Alex Wilhelm on Microsoft’s quarterly 10-Q document:

Microsoft made waves recently by disclosing in its quarterly 10-Q document that its Phone business, which generates billions in yearly revenue, isn’t performing as well as it expected. As Microsoft is carrying billions of dollars of goodwill related to the Nokia purchase on its books, the warning landed like a brick in a puddle of lukewarm slop.

What the hell is goodwill?

Good question. According to Investopedia, goodwill is “[a]n intangible asset that arises as a result of the acquisition of one company by another for a premium value.” Or, put more simply, it’s the value you doodle onto your balance sheet after you buy something and can’t count every dollar you paid for as resulting in material assets.

I guess when you reach the point when you’re working with billions of dollars (be it real or made up) you view as Monopoly money.

There are some real cocksuckers in the financial world.

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