TV shows and films depict big business to be a ruthless world, but the reality is a place even more full of intrigue and gossip

It's no coincidence that some of the most popular fictional dramas have been set in the world of business. Over-the-top 1980s shows like Dallas and Dynasty held viewers enthralled at the twisted personal and business relationships of oil company magnates, while movies such as Wall Street and Other People's Money showed the apparently ruthless side of the financial services industry.

We watched for entertainment value - most people believed big business to be more boring than its fictional counterparts. But it isn't. It's far, far more intriguing and it's full of rumour, gossip and all the other ingredients that make excellent drama.

Unfortunately, there are too many business people who believe that the drama is, somehow, self-contained. They think that business is divorced from reality and that what happens in the boardroom is irrelevant to the outside world. Being ruthless, pulling a stroke, finding a loophole - all these things are acceptable behind the opaque glass walls.

Over the past 10 years in particular, many seem to have seen themselves as a breed apart - just like the stars of the prime-time TV shows. Due, no doubt, to the relentless upward momentum of share prices and apparent company profitability, they have allowed themselves to believe their own publicity and to think they really are masters of the universe. The relationship between the masters and everyone else has been based on trust - or at least the semblance of trust.

Investors trusted the brokers. The brokers trusted the analysts. The analysts trusted the companies (and, even if they didn't entirely trust them, they were prepared to suspend their critical faculties because their firm was engaged in lucrative work on the company's behalf).

The companies trusted their senior executives. The senior executives trusted in their own ability to deliver what the investors wanted. Bigger companies. Acquisitive companies. Companies that were masters of the universe too.

While all this was going on, the companies trusted their advisers to keep them in touch with new opportunities - although they paid handsome fees to ensure they were kept in touch. The investors trusted those same advisers in the guise of auditors to keep them in touch with the reality of the companies' performances. And, caught up in that circle, the employees trusted their employers to ensure that the company was run in a manner that kept everyone's job safe.

Like so many things, the system only works when everything is moving in the same direction. When the investors suddenly want profit, when the advisers and the auditors are tugging at different ends of the same sheet of paper, and when the employees ask awkward questions, the whole damn hall of mirrors comes tumbling down and ultimately everyone is damaged.

The investors don't trust the auditors, the auditors don't trust the company executives and the company executives don't trust themselves. And the employees are suddenly left wondering how it is that they're left with worthless share options while the senior executives have seven-figure sums in their bank accounts.

We're seeing it in Argentina oa macro-level, where social unrest is a mild way of describing the state of the nation after years of economic mismanagement by people who promised much but have delivered nothing to those who trusted them.

Well, obviously they haven't delivered nothing. They've delivered worse than nothing. As a result, many Argentinian's lives have been destroyed and their savings wiped out.

At a corporate level we're seeing it with Enron, a company that few Europeans had even heard of until recently but which has now encapsulated all that we fear and distrust about big business.

I guess that if the Enron story was part of a Dynasty or Dallas sub-plot, there'd be a whole season of murder, mystery and suicides still to come.

There'd be the discovery that a senior board member was secretly married to someone in Pacific Gas & Electric, whose bankruptcy filing was caused by the relentless increase in Californian energy prices thanks to Enron; we'd find out that someone on the board was a closet environmentalist who wanted to bring down Enron forever; and there'd be further breathless revelations about the mind-boggling money-making activities of the company's senior executives.

Money-making at Enron was clearly an easy part of the equation for many of them anyway. It's now common knowledge that top executives created partnerships that earned them millions of dollars while the company was busy going down the tubes.

A recent report revealed that the former chief financial officer made about $4.5 million (€5.2 million) from a $25,000 investment while another executive made $10 million from a $125,000 stake. That's the sort of return that any investor in the company would have liked to make!

Of course, investors were still trusting the executives and the auditors at the time. Now investors aren't trusting anyone.

All over the US, companies are looking at their accounting practices as closely as their shareholders are now doing. The companies are worried that too much disclosure will give too much information to their competitors.

The investors are voting with their feet and selling shares in companies whose accounting practices are less than transparent (although, to be honest, it's difficult at the best of times to be convinced of the transparency of any set of accounts). Suddenly the accountancy firms want to be seen as totally vigilant in anything they do too.

Of course it's a difficult time for them, since it looks as though many will now have to give up the lucrative "consultancy" part of their contracts with clients if they also want to remain as auditors. The consultancies have been huge money spinners for the firms - Enron's accountants, Andersen, earned $27 million for non-audit work and $25 million for doing the books in the year 2000.

So they've had to engage in a bit of damage limitation by employing former Fed chairman Paul Volker to chair an independent board to review policies and procedures.

I remember well the days of Volker at the Fed - his impact then was as great as Alan Greenspan's now - and he has a solid reputation.

But for too many people, the damage is beyond one man's reputation. And the universe has already imploded.