A recent sacred cow of world economics has been unceremoniously slaughtered this year: that corporate America was the template for all that is great and good in business.

Or were they? Accounting scandals seem to emerge almost weekly. There was Enron, then Worldcom, then Merck, then Bristol-Myers Squibb. And so on. Those wonderful profits turned out to be illusory, as more than 1 000 US companies have had to restate their earnings figures in the last couple of years.