Second, private-sector decisions about saving and investment may sometimes be based on false hopes about profits and stockmarket returns hard to believe, given Wall Street's fine record these past few years, but true nonetheless.
Ms Watkins was not slow to blame former Enron boss Jeffrey Skilling and chief finance officer Andrew Fastow as the villains of the piece, who deliberately sought by false accounting to inflate Enron's profits and conceal its losses.
The problem at HCA results from a combination of mis-diagnosis (treating people for coronary artery disease who did not have the disease) and self-referral (the provider who makes the false diagnosis then performs the treatment and profits by it).
The decision is important for future False Claims Act cases because it requires the government to prove more than just a corporate effort to increase profits.