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akunoniwa · 5 months

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Doctor's Note

Synopsis: In which you get diagnosed and treated by your local Dr. Demon

Pairing: Gaap (Ars Goetia) x fem!reader

Warnings: MDNI, essentially just... demon fucking...

WC: ~4.5k

He’d already know your body too well, exactly where to touch and how, seeing as he’s a seasoned doctor. It didn’t matter that you’d only visited him just this once, he knew exactly what ailed you.

An excuse.

You’d read all about him, as you’d heard he takes phenomenal care of his patients, but an unusual sense of pride kept you from submitting to your curiosity. Until now.

“It’s strange…” He began, his voice buoyant despite its density. He’d done all of the typical procedures, asking about your medical history, taking your blood pressure, but he feigned ignorance of your real intent. He wanted to entertain your coyness, as it’s nothing new… But you seemed particularly delectable, as he recognized you’re not one easily swayed.

His wanting to change the subject naturally had you alert, waiting for him to continue with suspended brows.

“You’d made this appointment with an air of reasoning as if I’d find something wrong?” His eyes did not raise, as his gaze was focused on his pen lacing ink into quick, ornate letters on the report. The sound of the dextrous and hasty ballpoint imprinting strings of words onto the page somehow spoke of his personality to you… It was oddly fascinating to watch.

You were skeptical of this remark, as you’d made no obvious note of this being your motive, it’s merely a regular physical, “I just haven’t been keeping up with my health, and you were recommended to me…”

He gently huffed out what almost seemed to be a smug scoff, setting his clipboard on the counter behind him. You still sat propped up on the observation table, feeling almost infantilized by the way your feet barely reached the step-down.

“There’s just one last step, I need to check your lungs and heart…” You noted that he didn’t keep the stethoscope around his neck but rather it was hung on the wall.

Within your reading up on him, you were quickly put on to why he was so ‘renowned’. Yes, he was genuinely an accomplished scholar, particularly in women’s health, but… Men and women alike would rave about how he’d ‘take care of them’ like no one else… You couldn’t snuff these thoughts out as he neared you from the side.

“If I may pry, who recommended me?” He hesitated to place the diaphragm against you. You felt disgusted by the way you were becoming increasingly aware of his proximity.

“Just a coworker, we were chatting about how negligent I am when it comes to my doctor visits… I know I need to pay more attention.” You gave an earnest response, trying to dilute any suggestive thoughts, though they were growing unbearably potent.

He hummed in acknowledgment with a considering pout, carrying on with checking your upper back, the cold of the bell piece cutting through your blouse, “Deep breath in…” He guided, almost lifting you with his voice

“And despite having a previous physician, you chose me?” He paused, “Breathe out.” He repositioned the diaphragm slowly against your back. He noticed your breath was tense instantly, trying to stifle any satisfaction in this. Your heart rate undeniably went up as he neared questionable territory with his interrogating.

“I was intrigued, my last doctor was not the most compassionate.” Your reasoning was quick, perhaps justified, but he liked the way your breath hitched as he moved around your back.

“One last breath in…” His voice rose as if he was holding the same breath, “And out.”

He rounded to your front, standing before you, “Just breathe as you normally would here.” He placed the piece in the center of your chest as you tried to avoid looking directly at his face. He was so close, you were in his sphere of scent, a delicately botanic, smoky kind.

“I said to breathe normally.” He asserted again with a small grin, “You just cannot seem to relax…”

“A doctor’s office isn’t particularly comforting.” Your eyes shot as far away from seeing his expression as possible, your cheeks tarnished with faint embarrassment.

“Is that what it is? Your blood pressure was entirely normal earlier… Perhaps there is something amiss with you…” His words dragged and coiled around you, reminiscent of his handwriting, aptly stringing you along.

You’ve been caught, pressing your lips together in a bashful attempt to not say something ridiculous, “And what might that be.” You maintained a level tone as best as you could.

He still held the scope in place, enjoying how you writhed, your breaths smaller, not so much frantic, but unsteady. He was surely staring at your face from his elevated angle, you could feel his gaze on you as if you were an ant under a magnifying glass.

His prior facade of professionalism dropped elegantly like a theater curtain, heavy as he leaned into you, his lips inches from your ear, “You know exactly why you came here, how long would you like to continue rehearsing this scene?”

Your frenzied heart rate was enough to drive him wild, but he knew how to keep tempo.

“... I…,” You were at a loss, not wanting to hear much more of your meek voice. His heat radiated over your whole body, voice seeping into you.

“I’ll show you compassion just this once,” His words were bowed with an audible grin, “Only if you can report to me what exactly brought you here. Truly.” He finally hung the scope to idle around his neck, wanting to hear your every syllable, even if they wavered.

Your words certainly didn’t come easily, “I was curious why you’d received such appraise… And I wanted to find out for myself.”

“You know what I am and what I do, and still sit here as if I have to evaluate you to find out your pitiful deficiencies.” You hadn’t noticed your legs instinctually parted to allow him closer, “You want me to assess your body, in more ways than one.”

“Is this not malpractice, you acting this way, doctor?” Your voice had surely withered under the weight of anticipation.

He was more moved by your calling him ‘doctor’ than he should have been, as it’s something he hears all the time… Your voice, strained and borderline needy, rearranged the word in his mind, “I’ll give you any version of malpractice you prefer, darling.” He finally distanced his face to align with yours, seeing your slipping guise from inches away.

“What would you prescribe to someone with my so-called pitiful deficiencies?” You playfully continued the bit, you both intertwined in the teasing like strands of a rope.

“Hmm… I may need a closer look, after all, just to ensure… May I?” You were caught off guard by his genuine concern about touching you.

“I can’t just go home untreated, can I? Whatever you need to do to cure me of these deficiencies, please…” You realized you’d properly left your decency and pride tied to a light post outside of the clinic.

He took in a breath himself, overwhelmed by your eager presence… No demon should have this much power without checks and balances… He salivated at the thought of ravaging you, tipped by your trailed ‘please’.

His hand, gloved in blue latex, rose to rest against your cheek as he showed you a doting look, “Stand up for me…”

You managed to still have a tinge of reservation, hesitating for barely a second. But, you both knew why you were here, there were no secrets to hang onto. You obliged as his hand fell, he stepped back allowing you some room. You had to admit, you were susceptible to his towering height as he scanned over you, somehow the silence served more to tension than awkwardness.

“To ascertain accurate results… These lovely clothes just won’t do, I regret to say…” He continued his character pretending to be upset by this. He stepped into you once again, an index finger pulling at your belt to undo the buckle, snaking it off of you through the loops. Even the mere sensation of this in tandem with your anticipation was starting to gnaw at you.

Along with the stethoscope, he hung your belt around his neck, “Perhaps this could be useful… Go ahead and strip for me darling, this could serve my research well.”

You committed to this energy, removing everything that clouded your bare form as he watched, head cocked observingly as he leaned back against the counter. Only the sound of clothes slipping against skin flooded the space. His eyes swayed and lingered over every detail, his hands anchored to the counter’s edge at either side of him, looking nonchalantly imposing.

“Any prognosis?” You called to him as he had to tear his eyes from your body.

“Oh, it’s severe, seeing as you just willingly stripped naked for someone of my ilk.” He closed in on you again, unable to resist playing with you.

His rubbery hands reached to entrap you, starting from your ribcage, thumbs briefly brushing over your nipples. He spared no specific attention to any one thing, sliding down over your waist, to your hips. He watched his hands as you watched his faded eyes, even his blinks were languid as he felt you observing him.

“Turn around.” It was an order, but his voice still floated above your head as you obeyed, turning in his grasp.

He hummed, pleased as his touch rose to your shoulders, then dragged torturously to your ass. Although you were not instructed, it felt as if you were once again holding onto a breath, releasing as composed as you could manage as his hands groped your flesh, “These are quite nice… Typically they look better in a red… Or maybe…” His words wandered off to somewhere unknown, a hand rising to push at your upper back, forcing you to bend forward.

“You’re very compliant, darling.” You felt an acidic wave of lust roll through you at his thoughtless praise.

By the silence, you judged he was certainly made aware of your most deficient parts, your cunt probably more obviously intrigued than anything else.

“Hmm… This is most likely where your problem lies…” A latex-clad finger made faint contact with your clit, causing your thighs to twitch at the attention, to which he chuckled through his nose, “Severe indeed.” His hand pushed you down further causing you to be on maximum display as his feather-light touch grazed up to find your glistening hole. You bit your lip, but harder on a groan you attempted to constrict.

“Don’t hold back, I need you to communicate with me so I can know what’s wrong.” You were still caught up by how nice his fanned hand forcing you down onto the observation table made you feel, let alone his meandering touch. You could envision how lewd it looked, the image making you falter.

His index finger still lingered around your hole in no particular manner, as if he was genuinely taking note of your anatomy, “Surely you’re aware… Typically when your cunt is this soaked…” His upper half leaned over your folded form, wringing you out with his heady demeanor, “It means you desire something desperately.”

Your head inadvertently raised to try and close any gap between you, craning up in aroused dejection. You could feel him pressed against you, he was undoubtedly having his fun.

“Does this align with your symptoms?” A hand wound under your left arm, snaking to wrap underneath your jaw, forcing you closer to his voice, “Tell me.”

“Yes, doctor.” You choked out, noticing his eyes bloom when you called him that earlier, you decided to use your own trump card.

He groaned above you, his voice blanketing you, “There’s only one thing I know of to treat cases like yours…” He pushed his hips ever so slightly into your backside causing your eyes to flicker, “But you self-diagnosed before you even came to my clinic… Dirty little thing.”

He lifted himself to straighten, “It’s phenomenal, this human form… But it seems you are more excited by my barbaric, obscene interior…” A pair of fingers played at your hole once again, barely pushing into you, “You can’t be satiated by just a human… You want something more. Something diabolic.” Slowly, his fingers progressed as he continued to whirl on, driving you mad with his words.

He could feel that you were clenching, smiling with amusement, “Is this true? You’d prefer to be fucked by a beast like myself?”

How you’d answer that outright, you were initially unsure, but his fingers curled down, adeptly pushing into a perfect spot, “I-I… Yes, I would.” You loved the idea of him fucking you with his latex gloves, something about how sterilizing and surgical it felt.

“You’d like that?” He pressed, establishing a crawling pace with his hand.

“Yes, I’d like that.”

“Your cunt is so hot and wet, darling, you may just melt these gloves off…” He mused, basking in your pleasure.

You couldn’t help but let your body sway into his fingers, meeting his pace. Your whole being was throbbing, letting your satisfaction leave you as pants. You were growing more desperate to cum, wanting to coat his fingers with your release, though he pulled his hand away.

“Stand and turn for me, darling,” You did so, though slowly so as to not underestimate your delirium, forced to make eyes with him as he tasted you, “Utterly divine, you taste so sweet…”

You couldn’t help but feel scorn towards him, being made to watch him clean your juices thoroughly from his fingers, “Jesus…” He looked gorgeous, just like that.

“Not quite.” He jested, his fingertips reaching to play at your bottom lip until you allowed access, taking his lithe fingers in your mouth. He watched you intently, beyond himself as it set in that such a pretty little human would stoop so eagerly down to his level.

He gradually pulled his hand away, watching the way your lips wrapped so nicely until the heat of your mouth was but a ghost. He painted a trail of your saliva down your chin, making a mess of you, “Your breasts are lovely too, I must say.”

He stretched his gloves off, exposing skin with markings that resembled black, veiny cracks. You were not repulsed, quite the contrary, his skin looked like a glass mosaic, his bare hands cupping your breasts. Feeling the rough texture of his skin against yours only amplified his effect.

“Your reactions are too much for me, it’s making it hard for me to keep composure…” He played at your nipples between his thumb and index, making you squirm.

“I didn’t come here for your composure.” You placed your hands on his kintsugi skin, hoping to urge him on.

“I am… well aware, darling.” His hands left you, shouldering off his lab coat, setting your belt to still be within reach, “You’ll need to be fucked back into health.”

As he continued to remove his work attire, he continued to reveal his increasingly onyx skin, the closer to his chest, the more dense the black. It was incredible, you couldn’t help but gawk, to which he smirked almost sheepishly, “Why don’t you sit pretty for me back on the table…”

You were balancing on his every command at this point, loving the feeling that embraced your body in this moment. You hopped back up on the table to face him, spreading your legs to taunt him. He moved routinely to his lower half, adoring how you watched as his trousers fell for him to push aside along with his shoes. You wouldn’t say you were shocked, but his cock was surely not human, three knots that staggered in increasing size from his tip to the base. Immediately, the irresistible thought of him pushing you open, feeling those crevices move your insides… You didn’t think you could grow any wetter.

“I love that expression you’re wearing… The only thing I’ll allow.” His hand wrapped around himself, pumping his bulbous length. You had a paradoxically innocent urge to simply stroke him, of course never having seen this before. You felt sordid for being turned on at the sight of him touching himself right before you.

You took it upon yourself to let a hand find your clit, seeing if this would induce any reaction from him. It most certainly did, an inferno sparked in his chest, let alone his cock, as he watched you play with yourself so deviantly. He was debating… Should he keep dragging you around with his antics… Or are you in such a grave state that you must be cured right this instant? His own heart raved at the possibilities, mind flooded with a mirage of your pretty body doing such horrific things for him.

“What’s on your mind…?” He asked, his hand still cycling in a fluid motion in a stalemate.

“You.” You grinned, “What’s this cure you spoke of?”

Your being direct stoked him, causing him to chuckle deep from his chest, “I think I need to cure you until you’re properly bedridden, darling.”

You pushed your middle and ring finger into your beckoning cunt as you propped a leg up on the table, causing his eyes to immediately shoot to yours, almost in warning, “Please, doctor, I’m at your mercy.”

He let out an undeniable scoff this time, taking a few steps to near you as he grabbed your wrist, pulling your hand away, “I fucking hate how you call me that.” He aligned the tip of his alien-looking cock with your hole, that being enough to send shockwaves through you, “Keep doing it.”

He decided to channel his teasing into you, only pushing his girthy tip inside at a molasses pace, finally coaxing out the most beautiful sounds from you. You both had unanimous thoughts of how good the other felt, your pussy was impossibly soft and plush, his length surprisingly velvety as he angled himself to hit that same delicious spot. You felt your hole stretch around his first, modest knot as he’d continuously remove himself completely to shove himself back inside you.

“Do you think you need more? How do you feel, darling?” His hand gripped your thigh that still rested on the table, squeezing out your reply.

“It feels so good, doctor, but…”

He was awed by the fact you could still be embarrassed to express your needs, he found it almost endearing, “But…?” He pulled out to admire his tip glistening with your creamy slick, waiting for you.

He was going to make you say it, regardless. Even just the sight of his shaft that curved upward so enticingly made you quiver, “I need more.” God, you sounded so whiny and small.

His strong grip on your thigh was alarming, but not unexpected as his first knot slid in with ease once more, though the second demanded more of you. Paired with the stretch, he was starting to push fairly deep into you, finally starting to reorganize your insides as you imagined. You couldn’t tie down a labored ‘fuck’ as he began to thrust at a steady pace. Every time he pushed back into you, an indescribably foreign feeling of being perfectly spread by each knot exploded inside you. You decided to place your hands on his shoulders to keep balance as he hunched over your starved form.

Your moans were of a heavenly timbre he’d never know otherwise as he experimented with pace and angle to see which would make you sing. Your wetness coated the very beginning of his final, large knot as he thrust into you, but you couldn’t imagine it actually managing to fit. Because of its shape, his cock accentuated the squelches from your cunt, the crude sounds seeming to bounce off the walls.

He found another spot deep inside you, concocting a burn, itch, smolder… Every sensation was being triggered as he sheathed into you repeatedly, knowing he had found your sweetest spot, “You can’t even cry… How adorable…” His hand found your cheek once more as his eyes seemed to reach into you, cradling your gaze.

He wasn’t unfazed, in fact, your broken moans were like shards of glassy pleasure in his lower abdomen, he felt deific as he took you. And you took him so well… He’d almost plead to the gods himself if it meant that you’d clench onto him like this eternally. For a demon, he was quite considerate, as he’d never force you, but he wanted so desperately for you to absorb all he had, his final knot prodding at your cunt.

His hands slid to your knees, urging you to wrap your legs around his torso, lifting you as soon as you followed. Gravity lent itself to the intensity as you were slammed down onto him, his hands spread on either side of your ass. While you found yourself nearly unable to make a sound, finally he seemed to begin to crack, his deep moans touching a whole new kind of place inside you.

“You look so cute, your wasted expression…” He held you with one arm wrapped around your back, his other hand playing with your lips, “I wonder how sweet you look when you cum…?”

You could only give him an imploring look, your body being split open.

“My sick little darling…” You felt his final knot manage to slip in a bit further, causing you to cry out in pleasure, “Cum on my cock…” His voice wavered in time with his thrusts.

If you were to refer to any orgasm as explosive, this could be the only one, having never been spread that wide. Luckily he could easily support your form as you convulsed and shattered around him. You could almost immediately be thrown over again as his last knot slipped entirely inside your cunt.

“F-fuck, darling–” He stammered, his face contorted with frustration as he tried not to cum just yet wanting to prolong this moment. You felt so complete as he held you, your head resting on his void for a chest, warming his knots. You wanted to feel his searing load paint your insides, but he merely held your hips in place as you felt his cock tremble inside you.

He managed to move, setting you back down on the table letting you lay back.

“How do you feel…?” His words sounded as if they were squashed and dragged under a shoe, so incredibly tense as he gave your gleaming body a once… or twice over.

You couldn’t control how your cunt continued to squeeze, “So good…”

He wanted more. More of your voice, more of your touch. He decided to pull out, painstakingly slow, somehow, much to his surprise, managing not to implode. You both shared a groan of delight as the sliding friction tore at each other. A ring of your creamy sweet decorated the base of his cock, he watched as your wetness seemed to pour from you as he vacated your hole.

You wanted him to feel good… You had a fiery urge to ensure he was satisfied, almost to a point of not being able to recognize your own mind’s voice.

“Can you stand up one last time… for me?” He sounded pathetic… No human had ever obliterated his senses like this before, he didn’t think it was possible. He found humans to be amusing little toys… Not that you weren’t, but…

You obliged without question, watching as he turned away briefly to grab your belt. Of course his body was chiseled, something he knew appealed to mortal toys like yourself, you got another chance to study him until he faced you again.

He grabbed your wrists, binding them with your belt, and raised them above your head in one hand. He turned you with his other, walking you to the landscape window in his third-story office, having always wanted to do something like this. A foot or two away, he stopped, pressing your top half forward at your wrists, the side of your face and breasts pressed against the freezing glass. You felt so shameless… And so empty as you waited for him to fill you.

“Do you like being humiliated?” His familiar tip danced at your used hole, “Answer.” His domineering words ignited you.

“By you.” You answered candidly, words slightly distorted from your face being held against the window.

“Such a good, slutty little patient you are.” He plunged the entirety of his cock back into you swiftly, obsessed with how his largest knot was absorbed so easily.

“I want you to cum inside me, doctor…” You whined impatiently, completely lost in him.

“I’m sure you fucking do.” His words were shredded between his teeth, “You’d love that. I wish someone could see how fucking bad you want my cum.”

“Please…” You urged him to move, still in disbelief that he buried himself so far.

He was nearly at his own wit’s end, thrusting himself up into you, his hips colliding forcefully against your ass. His free hand was soldered to your waist, ensuring you remain as a statue in this unpleasant pose, it being uncomfortable somehow adding to the storm surge brewing inside you.

“Are you going to cum again, darling?” Your eyes were squeezed shut, just nodding worthlessly against the glass as he cooed so sinfully. “I love seeing you dance so beautifully on my cock, give me all of you.”

His tactic of plunging his entire length into you repeatedly was something you were particularly susceptible to, his knots rolling effortlessly through you, “Fuck… Yes...” His voice was as smoky as his scent, fogging your mind. He slammed into you one final time, holding you tightly against him as you both reached your highs. His thick seed was so hot, coating your walls so deliciously, his pants raining down against your back. You felt strangely resolved like you had served a divine purpose by receiving his cum so impossibly deep.

He pulled your body close by your bound wrists, his chest flush with your back, potting sweet kisses from your neck to your shoulder. It felt as if you could nearly be bound to his pelvis from how tightly you were wound around his shaft. A hand dragged down, letting your arms finally rest as he delicately caressed your breasts, your head falling back against the top of his chest.

“I think you may need a follow-up evaluation,” He cracked softly near your ear, “Your case is particularly serious.”

#wrote this a while ago and tried putting it up on other past blogs...#gaap #ars goetia #monster fucker #monster smut #demon smut #demon x fem!reader #demon x reader #作文

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months

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The long sleep of capitalism’s watchdogs

There are only five more days left in my Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

One of the weirdest aspect of end-stage capitalism is the collapse of auditing, the lynchpin of investing. Auditors – independent professionals who sign off on a company's finances – are the only way that investors can be sure they're not handing their money over to failing businesses run by crooks.

It's just not feasible for investors to talk to supply-chain partners and retailers and verify that a company's orders and costs are real. Investors can't walk into a company's bank and demand to see their account histories. Auditors – who are paid by companies, but work for themselves – are how investors avoid shoveling money into Ponzi-pits.

Attentive readers will have noticed that there is an intrinsic tension in an arrangement where someone is paid by a company to certify its honesty. The company gets to decide who its auditors are, and those auditors are dependent on the company for future business. To manage this conflict of interest, auditors swear fealty to a professional code of ethics, and are themselves overseen by professional boards with the power to issue fines and ban cheaters.

Enter monopolization. Over the past 40 years, the US government conducted a failed experiment in allowing companies to form monopolies on the theory that these would be "efficient." From Boeing to Facebook, Cigna to InBev, Warner to Microsoft, it has been a catastrophe. The American corporate landscape is dominated by vast, crumbling, ghastly companies whose bad products and worse corporate conduct are locked in a race to see who can attain the most depraved enshittification quickest.

The accounting profession is no exception. A decades-long incestuous orgy of mergers and acquisitions yielded up an accounting sector dominated by just four firms: EY, KPMG, PWC and Deloitte (the last holdout from the alphabetsoupification of corporate identity). Virtually every major company relies on one of these companies for auditing, but that's only a small part of corporate America's relationship with these tottering behemoths. The real action comes from "consulting."

Each of the Big Four accounting firms is also a corporate consultancy. Some of those consulting services are the normal work of corporate consultants – cookie cutter advice to fire workers and reduce product quality, as well as supplying dangerously defecting enterprise software. But you can get that from the overpaid enablers at McKinsey or BCG. The advantage of contracting with a Big Four accounting firm for consulting is that they can help you commit finance fraud.

Remember: if you're an executive greenlighting fraud, you mostly just want to be sure it's not discovered until after you've pocketed your bonus and moved on. After all, the pro-monopoly experiment was also an experiment in tolerating corporate crime. Executives who cheat their investors, workers and suppliers typically generate fines for their companies, while escaping any personal liability.

By buying your cheating advice from the same company that is paid to certify that you're not cheating, you greatly improve your chances of avoiding detection until you've blown town.

Which brings me to the idea of the "bezzle." This is John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the weeks, months, or years that elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery." This is the period in which both the criminal and the victim feel like they're better off. The crook has the victim's money, and the victim doesn't know it. The Bezzle is that interval when you're still assuming that FTX isn't lying to you about the crazy returns they're generating for your crypto. It's the period between you getting the shrinkwrapped box with a 90% discounted PS5 in it from a guy in an alley, and getting home and discovering that it's full of bricks and styrofoam.

Big Accounting is a factory for producing bezzles at scale. The game is rigged, and they are the riggers. When banks fail and need a public bailout, chances are those banks were recently certified as healthy by one of the Big Four, whose audited bank financials failed 800 re-audits between 2009-17:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/28/cyberwar-tactics/#aligned-incentives

The Big Four dispute this, of course. They claim to be models of probity, adhering to the strictest possible ethical standards. This would be a lot easier to believe if KPMG hadn't been caught bribing its regulators to help its staff cheat on ethics exams:

https://www.nysscpa.org/news/publications/the-trusted-professional/article/sec-probe-finds-kpmg-auditors-cheating-on-training-exams-061819

Likewise, it would be easier to believe if their consulting arms didn't keep getting caught advising their clients on how to cheat their auditing arms:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/09/dingo-babysitter/#maybe-the-dingos-ate-your-nan

Big Accounting is a very weird phenomenon, even by the standards of End-Stage Capitalism. It's an organized system of millionaire-on-billionaire violence, a rare instance of the very richest people getting scammed the hardest:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/04/aaronsw/#crooked-ref

The collapse of accounting is such an ominous and fractally weird phenomenon, it inspired me to write a series of hard-boiled forensic accountancy novels about a two-fisted auditor named Martin Hench, starting with last year's Red Team Blues (out in paperback next week!):

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865854/redteamblues

The sequel to Red Team Blues is called (what else?) The Bezzle, and part of its ice-cold revenge plot involves a disillusioned EY auditor who can't bear to be part of the scam any longer:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-bezzle-a-martin-hench-audiobook-amazon-wont-sell

The Hench stories span a 40-year period, and are a chronicle of decades of corporate decay. Accountancy is the perfect lens for understanding our modern fraud economy. After all, it was crooked accountants who gave us the S&L crisis:

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10130&context=etd

Crooked auditors were at the center of the Great Financial Crisis, too:

https://francinemckenna.com/2009/12/07/they-werent-there-auditors-and-the-financial-crisis/

And of course, crooked auditors were behind the Enron fraud, a rare instance in which a fraud triggered a serious attempt to prevent future crimes, including the destruction of accounting giant Arthur Andersen. After Enron, Congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), which created a new oversight board called the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB).

The PCAOB is a watchdog for watchdogs, charged with auditing the auditors and punishing the incompetent and corrupt among them. Writing for The American Prospect and the Revolving Door Project, Timi Iwayemi describes the long-running failure of the PCAOB to do its job:

https://prospect.org/power/2024-01-26-corporate-self-oversight/

For example: from 2003-2019, the PCAOB undertook only 18 enforcement cases – even though the PCAOB also detected more than 800 "seriously defective audits" by the Big Four. And those 18 cases were purely ornamental: the PCAOB issued a mere $6.5m in fines for all 18, even though they could have fined the accounting companies $1.6 billion:

https://www.pogo.org/investigations/how-an-agency-youve-never-heard-of-is-leaving-the-economy-at-risk

Few people are better on this subject than the investigative journalist Francine McKenna, who has just co-authored a major paper on the PCAOB:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4227295

The paper uses a new data set – documents disclosed in a 2019 criminal trial – to identify the structural forces that cause the PCAOB to be such a weak watchdog whose employees didn't merely fail to do their jobs, but actually criminally abetted the misdeeds of the companies they were supposed to be keeping honest.

They put the blame – indirectly – on the SEC. The PCAOB has three missions: protecting investors, keeping markets running smoothly, and ensuring that businesses can raise capital. These missions come into conflict. For example, declaring one of the Big Four auditors ineligible would throw markets into chaos, removing a quarter of the auditing capacity that all public firms rely on. The Big Four are the auditors for 99.7% of the S&P 500, and certify the books for the majority of all listed companies:

https://blog.auditanalytics.com/audit-fee-trends-of-sp-500/

For the first two decades of the PCAOB's existence, the SEC insisted that conflicts be resolved in ways that let the auditing firms commit fraud, because the alternative would be bad for the market.

So: rather than cultivating an adversarial relationship to the Big Four, the PCAOB effectively merged with them. Two of its board seats are reserved for accountants, and those two seats have been occupied by Big Four veterans almost without exception:

https://www.pogo.org/investigations/captured-financial-regulator-at-risk

It was no better on the SEC side. The Office of the Chief Accountant is the SEC's overseer for the PCAOB, and it, too, has operated with a revolving door between the Big Four and their watchdog (indeed, the Chief Accountant is the watchdog for the watchdog for the watchdogs!). Meanwhile, staffers from the Office of the Chief Accountant routinely rotated out of government service and into the Big Four.

This corrupt arrangement reached a crescendo in 2019, with the appointment of William Duhnke – formerly of Senator Richard Shelby's [R-AL] staff – took over as Chief Accountant. Under Duhnke's leadership, the already-toothless watchdog was first neutered, then euthanized. Duhnke fired all four heads of the PCAOB's main division and then left their seats vacant for 18 months. He slashed the agency's budget, "weakened inspection requirements and auditor independence policies, and disregarded obligations to hold Board meetings and publicize its agenda."

All that ended in 2021, when SEC chair Gary Gensler fired Duhnke and replaced him with Erica Williams, at the insistence of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Within a year, Williams had issued 42 enforcement actions, the largest number since 2017, levying over $11m in sanctions:

https://www.dlapiper.com/en/insights/publications/2023/01/pcaob-sets-aggressive-agenda-for-2023-what-to-expect-as-agency-enforcement-expands

She was just getting warmed up: last year, PCAOB collected $20m in fines, with five cases seeing fines in excess of $2m each, a record:

https://www.dlapiper.com/en/insights/publications/2024/01/pcaobs-enforcement-and-standard-setting-rev-up-what-to-expect-in-2024

Williams isn't shy about condemning the Big Four, publicly sounding the alarm that 40% of the 2022 audits the PCAOB reviewed were deficient, up from 34% in 2021 and 29% in 2020:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-audit-the-auditors-and-we-found-trouble-accountability-capital-markets-c5587f05

Under Williams, the PCAOB has enacted new, muscular rules on lead auditors' duties, and they're now consulting on a rule that will make audit inspections much faster, shortening the documentation period from 45 days to 14:

https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/news/pcaob-rulemaking-could-lead-to-more-timely-issuance-of-audit-inspection-reports/

Williams is no fire-breathing leftist. She's an alum of the SEC and a BigLaw firm, creating modest, obvious technical improvements to a key system that capitalism requires for its orderly functioning. Moreover, she is competent, able to craft regulations that are effective and enforceable. This has been a motif within the Biden administration:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

But though these improvements are decidedly moderate, they are grounded in a truly radical break from business-as-usual in the age of monopoly auditors. It's a transition from self-regulation to regulation. As @40_Years on Twitter so aptly put it: "Self regulation is to regulation as self-importance is to importance":

https://twitter.com/40_Years/status/1750025605465178260

Berliners: Otherland has added a second date (Jan 28 - THIS SUNDAY!) for my book-talk after the first one sold out - book now!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/26/noclar-war/#millionaire-on-billionaire-violence