"an alarm bell after the building is ashes"
Yes and no. With respect to the restatements that will need to be done, Yes. But that's never been the issue in my mind, and I've posted repeatedly that I don't see that as a particularly serious downside risk.
The risk that has the potential to hurt the stock in a permanent way is the potential departure of one or more members of the management team, with the obvious nightmare being if Steve is forced to step down, or worse, faces criminal charges.
It's all speculation at this point, but the problem is, you HAVE to speculate. By the time you know for sure and aren't speculating, it's too late to hit the exit if that's necessary.
I think you've nicely summed up the qualitative nature of how fiduciary responsibilities have been carried out (or not as the case may be). If you're asking me to speculate aloud, I think there's at least a 50/50 chance of somebody going down, with Fred Anderson at the top of the list. I believe Peter Oppenheimer and Nancy Heinen rank as #s 2 and 3, respectively.
I don't know why, but something in my gut tells me Steve is going to manage to escape with nothing serious other than a lot of stress and a lot of distraction. He's about as slick an operator as I've seen. He's a tremendously compelling salesman. He's gifted a lot of wealth to people who know the "unwritten code of ethics" and who is supposed to take the fall. And he's an icon. In matters of corporate corruption, the recent history of our corrupt democracy is clear.
You find a couple scapegoats, you grandstand and hang them with great ceremony, but you cover up for the people who make the machine go. That's why in the WorldCON mess, Elliot Spitzer went after little Jack Grubman and hapless Bernie Ebbers, while cutting a backroom deal of mutual convenience to cover up for Sandy Weill and the rest of the real power players who were the one who designed and built the machines that defrauded hundreds of billions from average investors.
In other words, I think there would be many who view Jobs as too important to "sacrifice" in the game of "let's hang someone and make a big deal out of it so the investors who just got fleeced out of another few hundred billion feel a bit better about themselves ... while the power establishment laughs all the way to the bank".
That may be imagining dynamics that don't exist, but that's my take.
Admittedly, I may simply have a bit of blind spot where AAPL and Jobs are concerned. As much as the periodic game of Let's burn at the stake the first guy that doesn't properly worship Jobs to the full Macolyte standard of adoration occasionally likes to characterize me as "anti-Jobs", the truth is, I'm still a "homer". I still root for Apple. I still root for Jobs to kick ass for Apple. And I still think he's the best there's ever been in Silicon Valley when it comes to selling tech dreams and doing product demos and keynotes and generally selling the world.
