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Right here, right in my face, I can see the yellow Post-It Note screaming "Accounting Irregularities = Sell." No one has been more vocal about what fraud means to a company's books than I have. I have to be the only person who has ever risked the wrath of CEOs by calling them as I see them right in their faces on nationwide television.

So what am I doing defending Lucent (LU:NYSE - news - boards)? Because Lucent is one appointment away from being a stock I want to own. What's happening at Lucent now is that the company is cleaning up the books, getting things right and making it possible for a first-class chief executive officer to come in and make something happen.

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On the Level: The Great Debate, Part II

Let's go back five years ago when Lucent was just being spun out of AT&T (T:NYSE - news - boards). Going back that far makes sense; after all, the stock's trading about where it came public. Lucent had some legitimate businesses. It had some raison d'etre. And it never ruined its balance sheet, as it made a ton of acquisitions since the spinout.

I wonder if Lucent, while a tarnished franchise, doesn't have something that can make some money within its ranks. In particular, I am wondering if their service business isn't a totally viable business away from all of the obvious product problems this company has. A recent positive piece from Thomas Weisel Partners points out that Lucent still has 23 of the 25 top telecom companies as clients. It is extremely difficult to crack into these markets.

Look, if this company had a ton of debt and really was a total sham, then I would say, step aside, let it go to zero. But that is definitively not the case. In fact, the balance sheet is improving because of some of the equity financing Lucent is doing. This is a company that made stretch goals, missed them and then said it made them. That's wrong, but the wrongness seemed to stem right from the top, not from the ranks. The people who forced those projections and then said they were made when they weren't have all been broomed. Think forward, not backward.