When you're hit with any kind of penalty, I think the obvious course of action is to clean house. The problem is adult webmasters' sense of a "clean house", in general, is way dirtier than what Google considers clean.
For example, link list owners try to boost their ranking with identical anchor text on recip links. When you have thousands of recips with identical anchor text you have a problem. More you have them, more they're likely devalued. Then add the fact that those recip links are reciprocated and you have a bigger problem. New link list owners try to compete by accepting more and more free sites, but more links doesn't mean higher ranking. In fact, more links may lead to greater link devaluation.
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If you take what he says about Google practices as gospel, you have to believe there is a penalty.
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I don't necessarily take Matt's word as gospel, but I believe he is honest. And since his main responsibility is fighting spam, he's the man when it comes to ranking penalties.