“No,” he said. “I’m not manipulating earnings. Let me tell you how it works. I had stretch targets. You’ve heard of a stretch target? We never made a stretch target that was an internal target. Everybody missed somewhere, but the stretch target was always five percent more than we promised Wall Street. I’m not going to promise Wall Street my last child, okay? You have to be an idiot to miss a Wall Street estimate. You tell them what the fuck you’re going to make, two weeks or four weeks in advance. I had forty businesses. If I can’t get a penny here or a penny there for a shortfall, then I’m
...more