Bye bye American pie
Behind the crisis in corporate America is a combination of pernicious Southern conservatism and unadulterated greed, argues Will Hutton.

The US faces a grave economic crisis. The confidence in the balance sheets and reported profitability of American companies has been shattered by an orgy of unprecedented corporate fraud, plunder and malfeasance that has demanded the connivance of its most reputable accounting firms, business leaders and banks. Only last week news broke of the biggest ever accounting fraud in history at WorldCom, to be followed days later of an epic accounting swindle at Xerox.

Before them has been a string of others, with Enron the most famous collapse of all. The integrity of the entire system for channelling savings into investment is now in question as is that of corporate America, just as America's debts to foreigners and its own consumers indebtedness have reached unsustainable levels. The country has been living beyond its means and inventing value when none existed. No one can predict with certainty how this will unravel, although the faltering of American consumer confidence and the sell-off of the dollar are already pointers. The dollar is threatening to inherit the sobriquet of 'toilet currency' once borne by the euro.
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World Con
As angry American shareholders discover the rot at the heart of the corporate way of life, the Whitehouse is finding itself under fire. Ed Vulliamy in New York reports on the fallout of yet more big business fraud scandals