Considering the enormous volume of filings and corporate information forms our dynamic capitalist powerhouse of an economy generates for them! On the single day of Friday alone, over 2,900 forms were filed with the SEC, such as:

Quarterly and Annual Reports
Initial Public Offerings
Institutional & Individual Ownership
Insider Trading
Proxy Statements
Mergers & Acquisitions
Material Unscheduled Events
and late filing forms, among others

It's only the Enron type debacles you hear about in the news. I'd consider the financial accounting proposals in this light - we're taking the best system in the world and just trying to make it a little better.

As for the accountants, I'm not one of them, but I believe that if a company went so far in disorting their financial statements as to constitute an act of fraud, and not just taking advantage of dubious yet legal loopholes, then yes, the accountant would definitely have a responsibility to report that.

But moreover, accountants must be concerned about their reputations, and their profession must have some kind of professional code of conduct. And they've got to be very concerned about the marketplace punishing them, losing investment in their firms (if public), and losing clients who are dismayed at the shady accounting and the perceived conflict of interest. Arthur Andersen, Deloitte & Touche, PricewatershouseCoopers, they've all lost clients in the wake of the Enron scandal.