Earning estimates are manipulated to dangle a carrot for the executives to act on short term signals for short term outcomes with zero regard for long term consequences. Short term investors love it, moving from stock to stock, like locusts, using up the resources like mobsters that takeover a business to create financial leverage to take over more businesses.

It's this irrational and unapologetic greed that Americans like to accuse other cultures of but guilty of themselves.