Disclosure. MSN's Slate magazine describes the beginning of 'annual report season' and the impact that recent corporate scandals are having on companies' disclosures.

American investors are about to be buried in paper. Annual report season is officially underway and this year is shaping up to be a contest of big, bigger, biggest. The encyclopedic reports are corporate America's showy response to the recent spate of business scandals. Their girth declares: Look how honest we are! But what's amazing in the new round of reports is that they often reveal the seamy, self-dealing, overpaying practices that created the scandals to begin with.