Bill Parish, investment manager for Parish & Co., explained the collapse of Enron, World Com, and others with this insight: “There’s massive corruption of the system. Earnings are grossly overstated.”426 Accounting Professor Brent Trueman at the University of California, Berkeley, added, “Reported numbers may not reflect the true income from operations.” The phenomenon accompanies bubbles. “It is absolutely what almost invariably happens after every bubble.

You should expect them [bankruptcies, scandals, and accounting disclosures], but that doesn’t mean that people who haven’t been through it before aren’t going to be surprised. The bigger the binge, the longer and more severe the hangover.”427 Is he right? Is fraud inevitable in a fast-paced market? Are these just natural market corrections? Is this

“everyone does it”?? p-9687