Senator wants spot checks on accounting of public companies

Senator Charles Grassley wants federal officials to start doing spot-checks of accounting practices at publicly traded companies. Grassley’ll introduce that idea as an amendment next week to a Senate bill drafted in response to the Enron accounting mess.Grassley says WorldCom’s problems might have been caught earlier had the feds been monitoring the books.Grassley says better auditing standards won’t go far enough to correct the problems in the industry. He says company brass and accountants won’t “sharpen their pencils” until they know federal regulators from the Securities and Exchange Commission are watching their every move.