Corporate earnings and losses?

[ZipSnipe]

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but to me when a company reports a quarterly loss it should be compared to how much they spent and their loss should be what they didn't make or had to spend beyond budget.

I used to work at a huge corporation who held qtrly meetings in which they explained to us how we had to meet budget and hopefully profit beyond budget. And what I noticed was that each year the budget got higher and higher, I also noticed that the Board of Directors got higher and higher salaries and stock bonuses and such.

So to me when a company reports a loss , I would love to see what they are comparing their loss to. For example are they comparing it to what they made in profit the quarters before or what they spent and didn't make? And do all companies report their losses with the same standard calculations?

Where am I going with this? Well I am very suspicious of companies who report losses, especially when we have these CEO's bankrupting their companies into the ground. It's also weird to me that the law is not tougher against this. This causes me to wonder why? Why are these CEO's doing this when they are pretty much wealthy already, I mean how much money does one man really need? Well just some thoughts!!!