In some present effect the printing and disbursement of "currency money" now in a deflatation acts as the fine (the piper to be paid) for all the lousy, tinkerbell,pie-eyed "investing" that has occurred in the past 10 years, once people forgot dividends and genuine hard profit and chased and put a grand premium on outright lies and vain promises.
Exactly. It's not very difficult to cook the books to inflate a corporate valuation. But dividends have to be paid in cold cash, and it's hard to generate that through creative accounting. Dividends enforce discipline.