In case some of you missed it, PwC and E&Y have been hired by the Treasury Department to help the government implement the $700 billion Wall Street bailout program.  According to the story , PwC will act as the auditor for the program, under which Treasury will buy billions of dollars worth of preferred bank stock in a move to help recapitalize struggling banks, while E&Y will provide general accounting support.  So basically these firms are being paid to help fix the problems they helped cause, and make no mistake, all of the Big 4 firms are complicit. 

Let's take a look though at the two "winners" shall we?  PwC is the auditor of AIG and has been sued by AIG’s shareholders.  PwC is also the auditor of Freddie Mac and now JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America, as well as Goldman Sachs and Northern Rock.  Ernst & Young was the auditor of Lehman Brothers and IndyMac Bank, both bankrupt and now taken over.  E&Y was also recently fined by the SEC for independence violations relating to paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to someone who sat on the Board of Directors of three of their audit clients, including on an audit committee responsible for retaining Ernst & Young.

The cozy relationships that the Big 4 firms have with politicians and corporations is patently obvious, and there is no way to fix it, at least that I can see.  To quote Queen Amidala in Star Wars: Episode I, "It is clear to me now that the Republic no longer functions as a democracy."

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