VIEW FROM THE GROUND FLOOR: As more news of business scandals emerges, the markets go lower and it will take time for investor confidence to return

It hasn't been a particularly good month for pundits - against the forecasts England beat Argentina, Japan beat Russia, the US hammered Portugal and Ireland's performances have left the cognoscenti tired and emotional.

Meanwhile, in the financial world, despite myriad predictions that the fortunes of the markets would improve in the second quarter, the main indices fell back to levels last seen in October 2001, leaving traders tired and emotional too.

I was at a presentation a few weeks ago where the analysts were telling us that October had been the ideal time to load up the shopping basket with shares - but clearly only if you offloaded them again in the past few weeks.

So far this year I've been fairly philosophical about the fact that equities needed a good bath and that it would be the end of the year before we saw any real improvement. And I thought that eventually conditions would improve so that even if markets didn't go roaring up there'd be a reasonable chance that they could sustain certain lower levels.

But I've been really downhearted the past few weeks because it seems so difficult to envision them even holding steady. Analysts love saying that investors are spooked but this time they're spooked not only because of difficult trading conditions, which would be bad enough, but because of the unending stream of headlines about corporate mismanagement and fraud.

There have always been tales of smaller companies where practices were doubtful and profitability dubious. And then Enron came and took the whole thing global, bringing Andersen into the boiling pit with it.

Now Tyco has shuddered into our consciousness with the resignation of Dennis Kozlowski as chief executive for "personal reasons". Those personal reasons were due to his imminent indictment on 12 criminal charges relating to tax evasion.

Tyco - once a $120 billion (€127 billion) conglomerate - saw its share price halved as investors reacted to the allegations that Kozlowski was using the company to avoid paying sales tax. It all sounds horribly familiar.

Like some famous Irish politicians, the distinction between the business and personal lives of these executives is "seamless". They are company men from the moment they get up to the moment they go to bed at night, and everything they do and say is, therefore, on company time and should be paid for by the company. Meanwhile, you'll find, some poor drone on the third floor is still waiting for an expense chit to be authorised.

So, what with a natural downward focus in markets and with feeling totally unable to trust a line of print on any company's accounts these days, investors have stepped back and held onto what little cash is left.

Nobody is left unscathed - even if you, personally, didn't buy equities your pension fund did and doubtless had its share of once high-flying companies in its portfolio. If a fund manager didn't have a holding in a star company then he or she would've been yelled at by the trustees and would've seen performance suffer a couple of years ago.

Those fund managers that stuck to their guns saw investors shun their products, which in turn put them under pressure to capitulate and load up with a few cash-burn companies at expensive levels.

We talk a lot about long-term in the industry, but sometimes the industry itself has the shortest view of all. If your fund isn't performing you don't have that much time to change things before some chief executive is breathing down your neck wondering why you haven't invested in the sure thing that's made everyone else so much money.

And if you think that by not having a pension you've been left untouched, you're wrong there too. Insurance premiums have rocketed because the insurance companies, all of whom must invest in the markets, have seen the value of those investments decimated and are having to replenish the coffers through higher premiums. It is, of course, also to do with higher risk but that's only a small part of the story.

I'm not certain what it will take before professional and personal investors alike look at a set of accounts again without a healthy degree of scepticism. And with confidence in industry truly shaky, those people who finance it are feeling equally grim. Every second week the investment banks announce job cuts. Until now the feeling was that these were the jobs that had been created as part of the initial public offering frenzy a couple of years ago.

But long-term staffers and highly paid executives are now being let go too so it looks very much like some investment banks, who previously beefed up those areas, may now forsake them altogether. Obviously, when things get better those same banks will be scrambling round looking for qualified people, but it's shaping up to be a dismal second half of the year for most of them.

The only thing that will bring investors back to the market is confidence. But how can anyone be confident in a system that has seen global companies manipulate their earnings and profitability while aided by their auditors? A system that has seen many chief executives take out far more than they've ever put in? A system that praises big deals of dubious quality, the results of which are usually to leave hundreds of people without jobs?

And the problem is that good companies suffer along with bad ones.

As I've said before, I find it difficult to imagine that any one person is worth a nine-figure salary plus bonuses no matter how brilliant, but at least some of them preside over firms that have produced profit for their shareholders. Yet even those companies are finding it harder to attract investors because so many of us are prepared to believe that somehow, somewhere, it's all a lie.

Is there a way for all this to change? Probably not. Some heads will roll, more people will lose their jobs, once-huge companies will get broken up.

There'll be new laws, new supervisory bodies and pious talk about how things will be different. And then there'll be the next big thing - wristwatch telephones, nano-technology, jet-powered cars - and it'll start again. It always does.