Corporations

"Phony earnings, inflated revenues, conflicted Wall Street analysts, directors asleep at the switch--this isn't just a few bad apples we're talking about here," writes Fortune magazine. "This, my friends, is a systemic breakdown. Nearly every known check on corporate behavior--moral, regulatory, you name it--fell by the wayside, replaced by the stupendous greed that marked the end of the bubble. And that has created a crisis of investor confidence the likes of which hasn't been seen since--well, since the Great Depression." And the crisis hasn't even peaked yet.

"Despite the colder realities of the business, the gun industry packages firearms in the sepia tint of nostalgia, conjuring up the Western frontier, fathers and sons hunting at the turn of the century, and grand moments of martial history," writes Tom Diaz of the Violence Policy Center. "For decades, the gun industry has portrayed itself in this way as a repository and guardian of fundamental U.S. cultural values.

Gary Winnick, the Global Crossing founder/chairman who is trying to raise $1 billion to rescue his once-mighty company from bankruptcy, has hired Rubenstein and Associates, the PR firm that specializes in "reputation management" for clients such as Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, Leona Helmsley, Adnan Khashoggi, Kathie Lee Gifford and the state of Israel.

"A series of revelations of corporate malpractice and number fiddling" have destroyed investor faith in Wall Street, reports the Economist. "Investors have not only lost patience with corporate America's greed and its inability to do what it says it is doing; they have also lost confidence in Wall Street's ability to act as an honest broker between them, the providers of capital, and the corporate users of it.