Bill Parish is a Portland area accountant, primarily known for his work on investigating the fiscal structure of Microsoft.
Although the ins and outs of the SEC are unknown to me personally, this is Mr. Parish's theory, as best as I can explain it:
The major reason that Microsoft's stock went up so much in the 90's is that they cut their costs by paying employees in stock options, and not in money.
Since the stock was bound to go up, employees opted for stock options instead of money. Thus, costs were cut further and the stock continued to jump.
If all of this sounds circular, and maybe like a pyramid scheme, then according to Bill Parish, you are exactly right. Eventually, Microsoft would have to stop expanding, after which its revenues would stop growing, its stock would stop going up, and it would have to start paying employees in real money and not stock options, causing their costs to go up, causing their stock to go down, and causing Microsoft, and the entire economy, to take a dive.
According to Bill Parish, it was this, and not the Justice Department judgement, that caused Microsoft, and the entire NASDAQ to skid.
Bill Parish also doesn't accuse Microsoft of doing anything purposefully fraudulent, but says that it is more of a case of unbridled optimism that stops them from looking too hard at their own financial structure.
Bill Parish has a set of detractors, and many people think of him as a loon, but whether or not he is, he may or may not be correct in his theories.
This is another writeup that I wonder greatly about the relevancy of. It came from my early days noding, when I was, as the term goes, a gargoyle. I keep it in showing what type of information was considered important in those early days, and also of how there were hints of financial trouble, so long ago.