These cheers are about an issue on which Barney Frank and the editors of The Wall Street Journal agree. And I agree, too. On most matters of high finance I'm more on Barney's side than that of Paul Gigot or my old friend Daniel Henninger. But this question is less a matter of politics than of honor and honesty.

There are two sub-groups in the financial services industry that have yet to face the music. But I wouldn't be a bit surprised if executives in these groups are experiencing bouts of panic in the night.

One sub-set is the auditing firms of which Ernst & Young, Peat Marwick, KPMG and Deloitte are the top four. Then there are perhaps a half dozen below them and another ten below them. Many of these accounting combines are in trouble with various legal agencies for giving tax advice to companies and executives on how actually to break or evade the laws. Some partners will ultimately find themselves in the clink for performing a function that was not essential to being a CPA. But given the larger fees charged for consulting than for auditing the incentive to maneuver and fabricate investment-and-tax strategies was clearly there. Raw greed did the rest. Sarbanes-Oxley has turned out to be an extremely expensive, time-consuming and burdensome set of regulations, especially for small public corporations, that prevent virtually nothing that violates the law.

The two issues that face the auditing partnerships are:

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

By Alice Schroeder

(Bantam Books, 960 pp., $35)