Earnings season is in full throttle, which means it’s time, yet again, to examine the expectations game and whether or not earnings season really matters.

The big takeaway from this season, so far, is that companies are beating estimates like never before. The Associated Press calculates that 81% of corporate reports so far have exceeded Wall Street’s expectations, while the Bespoke Investment Group finds that 74% have come in on the upside.

Beating the numbers is nothing new, of course. In fact, there has never been a quarter in which more companies missed the mark than beat it. But 74% or 81% -- either way you slice it, the third quarter of 2009 is turning out to be exceptionally exceptional for positive earnings surprises.

Which begs the obvious question: Why?

Last week, Doug Kass at TheStreet.com argued that this season’s numbers, while very good, were based on lowered expectations, so the number of upside surprises is less meaningful than the “chest-thumping bulls in the media” would have you believe.

An AP report over the weekend chalked it up to the familiar old earnings game tactics: Companies go to great lengths to guide analysts lower, thus giving them more room to pleasantly surprise investors.

Bespoke poked a hole in both arguments, citing statistics that show analysts actually raised their expectations for the companies they cover more often during the summer months than they lowered them. And in fact, they argue, high “beat rates” tend to signal a top in the market, so the great number is definitely meaningful when examined against historical data.

Case in point: The last quarter that saw a high beat rate (73%) was in the third quarter of 2006. And we know what happened next.

Over at Daily Finance, Peter Cohan revives another old and tired explanation for the high beat rate, one that many thought would go away after the research regulations following the Spitzer era. The reason why so many companies are exceeding expectations, Cohan argues, is because analysts are under pressure from their investment banking colleagues to avoid upsetting corporate clients.