Saving Chrysler: the use and non-use of accounting information by the US Congress

In the late 1970s, the US government’s approval of a program of loan guarantees on behalf of the Chrysler Corporation was an unprecedented intervention into the logic of capitalism. The discourse that made this possible involved a large set of sometimes conflicting rationales. Because the proposed intervention was intimately connected to the past and future performance of a single company, accounting information should have been a major element of the decision making. This paper discusses where accounting information was used, where it could have been used better and where it would have no role in this particular historical episode. Whereas accounting could not have been the only form of information involved in this major decision, it could have been used more extensively and more imaginatively. The case points out that when accounting is primarily used as ammunition and rationalisation, individuals do not necessarily want to explore the limits of its usefulness.