The System Implodes

The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008

by Robert Weissman

2008 marks the 20th anniversary of Multinational Monitor’s annual list of the 10 Worst Corporations of the year. In the 20 years that we’ve published our annual list, we’ve covered corporate villains, scoundrels, criminals and miscreants. We’ve reported on some really bad stuff — from Exxon’s Valdez spill to Union Carbide and Dow’s effort to avoid responsibility for the Bhopal disaster; from oil companies coddling dictators (including Chevron and CNPC, both profiled this year) to a bank (Riggs) providing financial services for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet; from oil and auto companies threatening the future of the planet by blocking efforts to address climate change to duplicitous tobacco companies marketing cigarettes around the world by associating their product with images of freedom, sports, youthful energy and good health.

But we’ve never had a year like 2008. MORE>>

Carbon Market Fundamentalism

by Daphne Wysham

The waste-pickers of Delhi may soon rank among the world’s endangered species if carbon markets continue their rise. Now numbering in the tens if not hundreds of thousands, waste-pickers have plied the garbage of Delhi’s streets for decades. A disturbing spectacle, often including women and children in their ranks, they nonetheless provide a vital service: recycling. In a country like India, paper, plastic and metals are an increasingly valuable commodity. And for slum-dwellers, this may be their only source of income. And so they join the cows and dogs in a daily forage through garbage by the side of road, searching for plastic, paper, metals — anything that can be turned into cash. MORE>>

Plunge: How Banks Aim to Obscure Their Losses

An Interview with Lynn Turner

Lynn Turner served as chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1998 to 2001. In 2007, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson appointed him to the Treasury Committee on the Auditing Profession. MORE>>

The Financial Crisis and the Developing World

An Interview With Jomo K.S.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, better known as Jomo K.S., is the assistant secretary-general on economic development for the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. He is a visiting senior research fellow for the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and professor in the Applied Economics Department, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. He is founder and chair of IDEAs, or International Development Economics Associates. Jomo K.S. would like to thank his colleagues Rob Vos, Pingfan Hong, Richard Kozul-Wright and Alex Izurieta for their contributions to these responses. MORE>>