The other, bigger lie, that CSCO was getting by with for a long time, was/is one of the largest investment portfolios in the tech sector, from which they were able to report as a kind of hyped revenue each quarter. As everyone knows, the glory days for these startups is over, and because of this CSCO is suffering more than most. Chambers used CSCO stock as proxy for almost all his acquistions.
Not all tech companies did anything to this extent, and hence CSCO is paying the price. It's because of this that tech will underperform for the better part of this year, but some stocks can be accumulated at/near their current prices if one has a longer time frame. You've got a lot of good companies in tech land with clean books that are trading at or under fair value.
It may also be viewed in hindsight that this was Chambers first big miscalculation, and that it wasn't prudent to knowingly expose his stock's price/value to largely, phantom earnings.
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