That's one way to look at 2005, the fourth consecutive year in which corporate chicanery loomed large.

As for adults, one need only read headlines about corporate chicanery involving consumer fraud to understand the pervasive acceptance of shoddy behavior.

In the end he describes so many financial casualties and details so much corporate chicanery that the only place poor Aunt Edna will want to invest is under her mattress.

Like many other politicians, Mr. Oxley sensed that after WorldCom's collapse in an accounting scandal, Washington had to do something to protect shareholders from corporate and accounting chicanery.

Investor advocates say the current influence of the financial services industry in Washington leaves Main Street Americans vulnerable to continued corporate chicanery or unfair Wall Street practices.

Reports of corporate chicanery have come all too regularly since the discovery of arcane and esoteric accounting schemes at Enron more than two years ago.

If anything, recent headlines about corporate chicanery and the travails of Western fortune hunters who head East only make the action more topical.

Ms. Paretsky's hotshot private eye doesn't really mind taking a break from her investigations of industrial fraud and other corporate chicanery to make a benefit appearance with her old championship basketball team.

LIKE the universe itself, corporate chicanery just seems to keep on expanding.

These revelations of trouble at individual companies will continue to rattle the entire stock market so long as Congress and regulators refuse to shore up safeguards against corporate chicanery.