"Under modern conditions, virtually all major fraud must be predicated
upon false and misleading financial statements. No officer of a large
corporation could walk away with his company's land, or its buildings, or
its inventories. He could not profit by taking its accounts or notes
receivable, because he would be unable to collect them. If he tried to
pocket its cash or its marketable securities, he would probably be
detected immediately, because these items are invariably protected with a
complicated system of internal checks, and accepted accounting procedures
requires their physical inspection at each audit. But with the advent of
the uninformed stock holder, accepted accounting principles permit new
types of exploitation on a scale that makes plain stealing look tame."
--What's Wrong with Accounting? by Kenneth MacNeal
  The Nation, October 7, 1939