National Affairs: Arithmetic

In Washington, SEC last week accused Associated Gas & Electric Co.—company of Howard Hopson, roly-poly bad boy of utilitarians—of deceiving the public by whopping accounting errors (see p. 39).

To the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants, New York City’s bouncing Comptroller Joseph D. McGoldrick last week boasted that in five years the LaGuardia unco-honest Fusion Administration had cost taxpayers $325,664,347 less than the last five years of Tammany rule. The Citizens Budget Commission looked at his figures, said he must have meant $125,664,347. So he did, replied Mr. McGoldrick, confessing a $200,000,000 error of his own.