First published 2003
Alex Berenson tackles the financial corruption that swept through corporate America in the early 2000s. The New York Times investigative reporter traces a direct line connecting Enron, WorldCom, Halliburton, Computer Associates, and Tyco through their shared obsession with quarterly earnings per share. Berenson argues that this single metric became a dangerous fixation for 14,000 publicly traded companies reporting to shareholders every three months. He shows how the bull market starting in 1982 gradually transformed into a bubble where Wall Street cared only about predictable earnings reports, regardless of actual business health. Executives with soaring pay tied to stock prices happily manipulated numbers to meet expectations. Accountants, analysts, money managers, and investors all participated in the deception while the Securities and Exchange Commission struggled to keep pace. Berenson provides readers with practical tools to see through accounting manipulation, understand financial statements, and spot fraud patterns. His analysis reveals how decades of weak standards created systemic failure across corporate America.
Genres: business, political-science, economics, non-fiction, 21st-century, accounting
Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: investigative-journalism, systemic-failure
Period: Early 2000s
304 pages · Hardcover · Random House