Founding fathers were among first auditors
The Pilgrims’ story from a business history side had an accounting scandal that was the ancestor of Enron and Tyco. Pilgrims sought financing and a charter to settle in America that were supplied by a group of early venture capitalists. The details of the agreement were unclear and no bookkeeper accompanied the group to America. A business manager sent to America by the financiers to run the business returned to England and borrowed money on behalf of the Pilgrims, and then spent it on travel, gifts and a London pub.
Sort of like the Adelphia folks building golf courses for themselves.
Colonization efforts—Sir Walter Raleigh’s “lost” colony in North Carolina, the Jamestown colony, the Pilgrims’ colony and the Puritans’ colony in Massachusetts—were all done as “joint-stock” ventures with wealthy capitalists in London financing the colonial efforts.
Hmm, a grumpy Socialist might opine that the American colonies were then just an investment scheme, and all the hoopla about “freedom from taxation” which justified the Revolutionary War was just a cover for the American ruling class grabbing the spoils from the British ruling class.