I suppose it's just as well I've been away for the last month - I could only have written weekly about the angst-ridden state of the markets and, since investors' traumas are now being given space in the Living sections of newspapers (How To Live With The Slump, How Not To Feel Depressed Because You're Going To Have To Work For Another 10 Years), I'm not sure what more I could've added to the global gloom-fest.

In some ways it was nice to be out of the country while I knew that my pension plan was turning to dust. Since there was nothing I could do about it I felt I might as well just ignore it. Which is probably the way many other investors are feeling too. We're all in denial.

I did get jolted back to reality when I looked at the hit list of companies under investigation though and realised that probably all of them had been selected by my global fund manager as good buys at some point.

When Enron was first accused of corporate corruption, there was a hope that it was the only one. Or at least that it would be the only big company to be investigated. But since then we've had WorldCom, Tyco, Dynergy, Xerox, ImClone and AOL Time Warner.

So it seems that all these big corporations are only big because they tell us that they are, courtesy of their accountants, not because they were so brilliant at their business at all. And, of course, my lefty socialist persona gets really furious at the fact that it is the chief executives of these corporations who manage to inflate their "compensation" packages to stratospheric levels while only making profits through fancy accounting procedures.

I gave up on my accountancy studies two years into the course feeling that there was more to life than reading the latest SSAP announcement. I didn't realise that what I should have been doing was thinking of ways to adapt the accounting standards so that any company I dealt with would be able to inflate its profits, write off everything as a tax loss and pay its management a fortune. Whether my failure to complete accountancy was a good or bad move I'll never know, but at least I'm not currently in one of the world's most reviled professions.

In the US, where investors and workers alike are reeling at the continuous stream of malpractice stories, the authorities have rushed through stringent rules for corporate governance. Capitalists hate rules which, they say, stifle their entrepreneurial spirit and make it difficult to do business. For every rule to protect the consumer or the investor, you'll find someone, somewhere with a reason that it shouldn't be implemented because it could harm the business. And you'll find an accountant or a lawyer with a way around it.

There's nothing wrong with an entrepreneur who takes a risk and makes a lot of money when the gamble pays off. The problem with some corporations is that they want someone else to take the risk while the top people get all the rewards anyway. And those taking the risk are the investors who believed what they were told in the good times because share prices were rising and who are now unable to believe anything, especially how far those prices have fallen.

I've written before about the tendency of chief executives to consider the companies for whom they work as their personal domains - insisting on having their whole lives paid for by the company, blurring the distinction between what they should pay for themselves and what is actually owned by their shareholders. The most recent example of this is John Rigas, founder of Adelphia, the (now bankrupt) cable company.

Basically the Rigas family got loans from the company, used shareholder funds to build a golf course, used company jets for personal travel - you know the type of thing. Rigas, the entrepreneur, built up the company but forgot that when you take it public and receive money from shareholders it's not yours any more. History is littered with chief executives who thought exactly the same way.

We're currently in the darkest days of this particular shake-up. The twilight zone, when things almost get better, will probably last a very long time. But - and because I don't like to go along with the herd the whole time - there are good things happening too. And in surprising places.

When the company launched at the height of the dotcom boom I was more than scathing about the valuations being placed on Lastminute.com. And, indeed, the share price plummeted almost immediately. But believe it or not, Lastminute has been the best performing share on the British market this year. From a low of just under 19p, it's now trading up at 94p (€1.50). I checked out the site recently and it's much quicker and fresher than it was when it first launched. It's clearly been working hard in the past couple of years.

Another good performer - ebookers.com - made a profit last year and has traded up to 172p from a low in the past year of 68p. And although Amazon.com hasn't managed to continue its profitability of last year, it's maintaining its position as the most recognisable online retailer, while rivals, such as BOL, have retrenched.

There is still trauma to come though. Particularly, I think, when chief executives and chief financial officers in the US have to swear to the accuracy of their companies' accounts from the middle of August. Even the squeakiest clean chief executives and chief financial officers will be a little worried. And for those who are not blameless, there's a good chance that they'll let the bad stuff out before they have to pledge that everything's OK. Because if they say it is and they're lying, then they face stiff jail sentences.

Will we have better regulated, more transparent and more honest markets at the end of all this? Possibly. Will shareholders feel confident about company reports and analysts' recommendations? Not enough to risk the family silver on. Will my pension fund recover? I hope so, but another month's holiday is out of the question!