MORE accounting shenanigans? Say it ain't so, Bristol-Myers Squibb!

The drugmaker is reporting sales and profits in 2002 for products that were sold and probably shipped in 2001.

Sweetheart, get me the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Wait - the SEC already knows about Bristol-Myers' time-traveling revenue. Making the bookkeeping cops happy was the reason Bristol-Myers decided to shift some 2001 results into 2002. What in the name of Harvey L. Pitt is going on here?

Politically correct accounting, from what I can figure.

The yearlong focus on improper financial reports and the SEC's zeal to collect corporate scalps have apparently entered their overkill phase.

Financial statements are supposed to resemble reality. But the Bristol-Myers revision announced a few days ago takes what actually happened at the company and spins it into something prettier but less recognizable as fact.

It's true that the pre-revision Bristol-Myers ledgers weren't ready for any close-ups. Revenue surged in 2001 but dropped off a cliff after New Year's.

It turned out that management had increased 2001 sales by making advance announcements about price increases on several top drugs. Naturally, pharmacy wholesalers placed bigger-than-normal orders to stock up before the price increases kicked in. Naturally, Bristol-Myers recorded the transactions on the books.

This kind of "channel-stuffing" is common to many industries, including the pharmaceutical trade. Managers are always under pressure to hit their financial goals, and an attractive price promotion is a nice way to move some extra product before a quarter ends.

Unfortunately for Bristol-Myers, its wholesalers responded so enthusiastically that they became far overstocked and then sharply cut their purchases after prices increased. Bristol-Myers sales for the first six months of 2002 fell by 13 percent compared with the same period in 2001.

It was a disaster for the company's shares, especially after managers took their time informing investors about the drop in sales and the wholesaler inventory buildup. Bristol-Myers stock has fallen by half this year.

But dumb management and lumpy revenue are not securities violations.

Under well-established accounting standards, revenue goes on the books when products are delivered to willing, solvent customers - whether the customers are middlemen or end-users.

There is no evidence that Bristol-Myers drugs weren't shipped to wholesalers last year when the company said they were. Medicine piled high in wholesalers' warehouses suggests the sales were genuine. Certainly a $2.7 billion increase in Bristol-Myers' cash balance between Sept. 30 and Dec. 31 last year showed that a considerable bit of business was going on.

Yet, under pressure from the SEC, Bristol-Myers is restating its results and shifting hundreds of millions of dollars in sales originally recorded in 2001 into 2002. (Some 2000 results are being changed, too.) Details aren't available yet, but some of the 2001 revenue will be recorded for this quarter, more than nine months later.

Bristol-Myers declined to talk about this. So did the SEC. So did Richard J. Lane, the former president of Bristol-Myers' worldwide medicines group who left the company after the wholesale-inventory problem became public.

But apparently the SEC thinks Bristol-Myers' operations will be more comprehensible to investors if the sales figures on its income statement are more in line with the rate at which consumers gobble, drink or otherwise ingest its potions - no matter how many distributors, drugstores and doctors stand between company and patient.

What? Toshiba doesn't wait for its TVs to move out of Best Buy before it marks them up as sales. The biggest revenue period for many apparel manufacturers is not the fourth quarter - when consumers buy clothes for the holidays. It's the third quarter, when the companies ship the merchandise to stores.

Last year's sales-stoking at Bristol-Myers may have been prompted by bosses trying to hit bonus targets. But so what? It happened, and the company's books ought to reflect it. Fire managers if they misbehaved.

The economy is not tidy, stocks are dicey, and the SEC can't change that by rewriting history. Making people think corporate shares can be regulated into predictable, low-stress investments is almost as dangerous as no regulation at all. If you want a steady stream of income, buy a Treasury note.