<HTML>In a message dated 7/20/02 12:59:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time, nathan@newman.org writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">If stocks are plunging, it's because investors have finally decided that all of the investment pablum they've been fed for a decade was bullshit.  Stocks are going to find the bottom where that skepticism meets some more reasonable standard of stock valuation. </BLOCKQUOTE> If the inputs to any evaluation are phony, the conclusions are meaningless. The major growth companies of the late 90's (energy, telecom and technology) were (among many other gimmicks) able to manipulate balance sheet revenues with mere projections of growth or customer flow, sometimes of real or fabricated subsidiaries. None of the current proposals will deter or capture this in the future, once the market and sentiment heads north, though I am all for increased disclosure. Heightened skepticism seems linked to weekly crops of new corporate scandals -  like Johnson and Johnson and AOL Time Warner this week and the perception that proposed legislation is inadequate, not only for capturing yesterday's crimes but for detecting tomorrow's. Nomi</HTML>