What are the ethical and legal implications of using accounting practices such as the book-and-hold technique to inflate corporate earnings?

Will sales and profits meet the expectations of investors and Wall Street analysts? Managers at public corporations must answer this vitally important question quarter after quarter, year after year. In an ideal world—one in which the economy never contracts, expenses never go up, and customers never buy competing products—the corporation’s share price would soar, and investors would cheer as every financial report showed ever-higher sales revenues, profit margins, and earnings.