(FORTUNE Magazine) – There's a cynical yet credible take on the rash of horrible earnings warnings and announcements--from companies like CVS, Eastman Kodak, and Internet equipment maker Redback Networks--since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Corporate America has found the perfect scapegoat for poor performance.

Before the incident, earnings for the S&P 500 were expected to fall 15% from the same period last year. By late September, forecasters put that figure at around 19%. "Some managements are writing off questionable inventories, closing down ineffectual units, and generally cleaning house in 2001 to show better results and be more competitive in 2002," says Bob Stovall, a market strategist at Prudential Securities.

This isn't to deny the real pain that many industries are feeling. Airlines, financial services, and tourism, in particular, are suffering badly. But some companies seem to be making gratuitous mention of the incident to hide what's really going on. Energy concern AES, for example, was hurt by currency problems and low power prices in the U.K. Shoe retailer Footstar, which took a $67 million charge this quarter, was plagued by too much inventory and poorly performing stores. Yet both companies fingered the attacks.

AOL Time Warner (parent of FORTUNE's publisher), which lowered earnings estimates for this year by one-third after the disaster, was facing problems before Sept. 11: The ad recession was cutting into revenues. The attack seems to have provided the company an opportunity to lower what many believed to be overly optimistic growth forecasts. "It would have taken a Herculean effort in the fourth quarter for AOL Time Warner to have made its numbers," says John Corcoran, an analyst at CIBC World Markets. "The Sept. 11 tragedy put some additional pressure on several of their businesses, but it also gave them a convenient opportunity to say mea culpa about a 12% to 15% revenue growth estimate."

The practice highlights a new trend in business: the reverse makeover. Gone are the days when companies tried to inflate earnings with aggressive revenue recognition, notes Howard Schilit, the renowned accountant at the Center for Financial Research & Analysis in Rockville, Md. Says Schilit: "Now, instead of trying to look pretty today when nobody looks pretty, companies are trying to make themselves look uglier so that they'll look pretty tomorrow."