Profits overstated

Reading Hazlitt's "Economics In One Lesson" today. Realized that corporations always have incentives to overstate their profits rather than understate. If they really were greedy, they'd try to hide thier profits, but the more imediate incentive is to please their shareholders, so they overstate profits regularly. The Enron scandal wasn't about greedt corporations, it was about insecure little men trying to keep stockholders happy, while fleecing them at the same time.
JN

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