DISSIDENT VOICE- What a year for corporate criminality and malfeasance! As the Multinational Monitor compiled its annual list of the 10 Worst Corporations, it would have been easy to restrict the 2008 awardees to Wall Street firms.

But the rest of the corporate sector was not on good behavior during 2008 either, and didn’t deserve to escape justified scrutiny. So, in keeping with the tradition of highlighting diverse forms of corporate wrongdoing, the list includes only one financial company out of the 10 worst. Here, presented in alphabetical order, are the 10 Worst Corporations of 2008.

1. AIG: Money for Nothing

There’s surely no one party responsible for the ongoing global financial crisis. But if you had to pick a single responsible corporation, there’s a very strong case to make for American International Group (AIG), which has already sucked up more than $150 billion in taxpayer support. Through “credit default swaps,” AIG basically collected insurance premiums while making the ridiculous assumption that it would never pay out on a failure — let alone a collapse of the entire market it was insuring. When reality set in, the roof caved in.

2. Cargill: Food Profiteers

When food prices spiked in late 2007 and through the beginning of 2008, countries and poor consumers found themselves at the mercy of the global market and the giant trading companies that dominate it. As hunger rose and food riots broke out around the world, Cargill saw profits soar, tallying more than $1 billion in the second quarter of 2008 alone.

In a competitive market, a grain-trading middleman would not make super-profits. In fact, rising prices would crimp the middleman’s profit margin. But the global grain trade is not competitive, and the legal rules of the global economy — devised at the behest of Cargill and friends — ensure that poor countries will be dependent on, and at the mercy of, the global grain traders.

3. Chevron: “We Can’t Let Little Countries Screw Around With Big Companies”

In 2001, Chevron swallowed up Texaco. It was happy to absorb Texaco’s revenue streams. It has been less willing to take responsibility for Texaco’s ecological and human-rights abuses.

In 1993, 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorians filed a class-action suit in U.S. courts, alleging that over a 20-year period Texaco had poisoned the land where they live and the waterways on which they rely, allowing billions of gallons of waste to spill and leaving hundreds of waste pits unlined and uncovered. Chevron had the case thrown out of U.S. courts on the grounds that it should be litigated in Ecuador, closer to where the alleged harms occurred. But now the case is going badly for Chevron in Ecuador — Chevron may be liable for more than $7 billion. So, the company is lobbying the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to impose trade sanctions on Ecuador if the Ecuadorian government does not make the case go away.

“We can’t let little countries screw around with big companies like this — companies that have made big investments around the world,” a Chevron lobbyist said to Newsweek in August. (Chevron subsequently stated that the comments were not approved.)

4. CNPC: Fueling Violence in Darfur

Sudan has been able to laugh off existing and threatened sanctions for the slaughter it has perpetrated in Darfur because of the huge support it receives from China, channeled above all through the Sudanese relationship with the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC).

“The relationship between CNPC and Sudan is symbiotic,” notes the Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights First in a March 2008 report, “Investing in Tragedy.” “Not only is CNPC the largest foreign investor in the Sudanese oil sector, but Sudan is CNPC’s largest market for overseas investment.”

Oil money may have fueled violence in Darfur. “The profitability of Sudan’s oil sector has developed in close chronological step with the violence in Darfur,” notes Human Rights First.

5. Constellation Energy Group: Nuclear Operators

Although it seems too dangerous, too expensive and too centralized to make sense as an energy source, nuclear power won’t go away, thanks to equipment makers and utilities that find ways to make the public pay and pay.

Constellation Energy Group, the operator of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Maryland — a company recently involved in a startling, partially derailed scheme to price-gouge Maryland consumers — plans to build a new reactor at Calvert Cliffs, potentially the first new reactor built in the United States since the near-meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979.

It has lined up to take advantage of U.S. government-guaranteed loans for new nuclear construction, available under the terms of the 2005 Energy Act. The company acknowledges it could not proceed with construction without the government guarantee.

6. Dole: The Sour Taste of Pineapple

A 1988 land reform effort in the Philippines has proven to be a fraud. Plantation owners helped to draft the law and invented ways to circumvent its alleged purpose. Dole pineapple workers are among those paying the price.

Under the land reform, Dole’s land was divided among its workers and others who had claims on the land prior to the pineapple giant. Workers were then required to form labor cooperatives. However, wealthy landlords maneuvered to gain control of these cooperatives, and then focused more on maximizing profits than providing fair wages and healthy working conditions, according to an October report by Washington, D.C.-based International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF).

Dole has since slashed its regular workforce and replaced them with contract workers from these labor cooperatives. Contract workers are paid under a quota system, and earn about $1.85 a day, according to ILRF.

7. GE: Creative Accounting

In June, former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston reported on internal General Electric (GE) documents that appeared to show the company had engaged in a long-running effort to evade taxes in Brazil. In a lengthy report in Tax Notes International, Johnston reported on a GE subsidiary’s scheme to invoice suspiciously high sales volume for lighting equipment in lightly populated Amazon River regions of the country. These sales would avoid the higher value added taxes (VAT) of urban states, where sales would be expected to be greater.

Johnston wrote that the state-level VAT at issue, based on the internal documents he reviewed, appeared to be less than $100 million. But, he speculated, the overall scheme could have involved much more. Johnston did not identify the source that gave him the internal GE documents, but GE has alleged it was a former company attorney, Adriana Koeck. GE fired Koeck in January 2007 for what it says were “performance reasons.”

8. Imperial Sugar: 14 Dead

On Feb. 7, 2008, an explosion rocked the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Ga., near Savannah. Days later, when the fire was finally extinguished and search-and-rescue operations completed, the horrible human toll was finally known: 14 dead, dozens badly burned and injured. As with almost every industrial disaster, it turns out the tragedy was preventable. The cause was accumulated sugar dust, which, like other forms of dust, is highly combustible.

A month after the Port Wentworth explosion, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspectors investigated another Imperial Sugar plant, in Gramercy, La. They found one-fourth-inch to 2-inch accumulations of dust on electrical wiring and machinery. They found as much as 48inch accumulations on workroom floors.

Imperial Sugar knew of the conditions in its plants. It had in fact taken some measures to address its operations prior to the explosion. The company brought in a new vice president to clean up operations in November 2007, and he took some important measures to improve conditions. But it wasn’t enough. The vice president told a congressional committee that top-level management had told him to tone down his demands for immediate action.

9. Philip Morris International: Unshackled

The old Philip Morris no longer exists. In March, the company formally divided itself into two separate entities: Philip Morris USA, which remains a part of the parent company Altria, and Philip Morris International. Philip Morris USA sells Marlboro and other cigarettes in the United States. Philip Morris International tramples the rest of the world.

Philip Morris International has already signaled its initial plans to subvert the most important policies to reduce smoking and the death toll from tobacco-related disease (now at 5 million lives a year). The company has announced plans to inflict on the world an array of new products, packages and marketing efforts. These are designed to undermine smoke-free workplace rules, defeat tobacco taxes, segment markets with specially flavored products, offer flavored cigarettes to appeal to youth and overcome marketing restrictions.

10. Roche: “Saving Lives Is Not Our Business”

The Swiss company Roche makes a range of HIV-related drugs. One of them is enfuvirtide, sold under the brandname Fuzeon. Fuzeon brought in $266 million to Roche in 2007, though sales are declining.

Roche charges $25,000 a year for Fuzeon. It does not offer a discount price for developing countries.

Like most industrialized countries, South Korea maintains a form of price controls. The national health insurance program sets prices for medicines, and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs listed Fuzeon at $18,000 a year. South Korea’s per capita income is roughly half that of the United States. Instead of providing Fuzeon at South Korea’s listed level — and still turning a profit — Roche refuses to make the drug available in South Korea.

South Korean activists report that the head of Roche Korea told them, “We are not in business to save lives, but to make money. Saving lives is not our business.”

Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, and director of Essential Action. Copyright © 2007 Robert Weissman Read other articles by Robert, or visit Robert’s website.

© COPYRIGHT DISSIDENT VOICE, 2009

Photo by flickr user Internets_dairy

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THE GUARDIAN– Children in Malawi who are forced to work as tobacco pickers are exposed to nicotine poisoning equivalent to smoking 50 cigarettes a day, an investigation has found. Child labourers as young as five are suffering severe health problems from a daily skin absorption of up to 54 milligrams of dissolved nicotine, according to the international children’s organisation Plan.

Malawian tobacco is found in the blend of almost every cigarette smoked in the west. The low-grade, high-nicotine tobacco is often used as a filler by manufacturers, reflecting a long-term global shift in production. Tobacco farms in America declined by 89% between 1954 and 2002. Three-quarters of production has migrated to developing countries, with Malawi the world’s fifth biggest producer. Seventy per cent of its export income comes from tobacco and the country is economically dependent on it.

Plan cites research showing that Malawi has the highest incidence of child labour in southern Africa, with 88.9% of five to 14-year-olds working in the agricultural sector. It is estimated that more than 78,000 children work on tobacco estates – some up to 12 hours a day, many for less than 1p an hour and without protective clothing.

Plan’s researchers invited 44 children from tobacco farms in three districts to take part in a series of workshops. They revealed a catalogue of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and spoke about the need to work to support themselves and their families and pay school fees.

The children reported common symptoms of green tobacco sickness (GTS), or nicotine poisoning, including severe headaches, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, coughing and breathlessness.”Sometimes it feels like you don’t have enough breath, you don’t have enough oxygen,” one child said. “You reach a point where you cannot breathe because of the pain in your chest. Then the blood comes when you vomit. At the end, most of this dies and then you remain with a headache.”

GTS is a common hazard of workers coming into contact with tobacco leaves and absorbing nicotine through their skin, particularly when harvesting. It is made worse by humid and wet conditions, which are prevalent in Malawi, as residual moisture on the leaves helps nicotine to be absorbed quicker. Everyday symptoms of GTS are more severe in children than adults as they have not built up a tolerance to nicotine through smoking and because of their physical size. There is a lack of research into the long-term effects of GTS in children, but experts believe that it could seriously impair their development.

Continue reading about Malawi Child Laborers for Tobacco Farms.

© COPYRIGHT THE GUARDIAN, 2009

RTE NEWS– Here are people Barack Obama has chosen for key posts in his administration after he takes office on 20 January.

Secretary of State– New York Senator Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama’s former Democratic Party rival for the White House, was named to the top diplomatic post. The move is seen as part of Mr Obama’s effort to rebuild the country’s reputation abroad. Aides have said Mr Obama admires Ms Clinton’s work ethic and also believes the former first lady’s star power would boost his vision of improving the country’s global standing.

Secretary of Defense- Current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, named by President George W Bush in late 2006, is considered a moderate voice on the Republican’s national security team and embodies an important signal of continuity. Mr Obama had said early on he would include Republicans in his Cabinet and the 65-year-old Mr Gates has been lauded by members of both parties since taking over the Pentagon from Donald Rumsfeld.

Treasury Secretary- Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, is Mr Obama’s choice for the Treasury Department, making him Mr Obama’s point person in dealing with the economic crisis. Mr Geithner has helped lead efforts to stabilize financial markets and argued that banks crucial to the global financial system should operate under a unified regulatory framework.

Homeland Security- Janet Napolitano, the Democratic Governor of Arizona, was named to head the US Homeland Security Department, a sprawling agency formed to bolster civil defence following the 11 September attacks.

National Economic Council- Lawrence Summers, 53, has been chosen to head the council. He was treasury secretary for the final 1-1/2 years of the Clinton Administration and has been a senior adviser to Mr Obama for several months, helping to guide his response to the financial meltdown.

National Security Advisor- Retired Marine General James Jones, the former top operational commander of NATO, was named by Mr Obama to be his national security adviser. Mr Jones is widely respected by both Democrats and Republicans and has avoided aligning himself with either party but is known to have been a strong critic of the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war.

CIA Director- Former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta has received the nod to head the CIA. Mr Panetta, best known for imposing order on President Bill Clinton’s White House during his 1994-1997 stint as chief of staff, has relatively little experience in national security matters. But his choice could appease some liberal activists who have said that Mr Obama’s other picks for key national-security posts are too hawkish.

Attorney General- Eric Holder, a former Justice Department official in the Clinton Administration, will run the Justice Department. Mr Holder has been a senior legal adviser to Mr Obama’s campaign and helped vet his vice presidential candidates.

Secretary of Energy- Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics, is Mr Obama’s choice for secretary of energy. Mr Chu was an early advocate for finding scientific solutions to climate change and guided the Lawrence Berkeley laboratory to become the world leader in alternative and renewable energy research.

Secretary of Interior- Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado, who once practiced as an environmental lawyer, was named to head the Interior Department. The son of Americans of Mexican descent, he will be a key member of Mr Obama’s energy team who would oversee the leasing of federal lands for oil and gas drilling.

Energy, Environment Coordinator- Carol Browner, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton Administration, was named to a new position coordinating White House policy on energy, climate and environmental issues. The new position was expected to spearhead climate change policy.

Secretary of Health and Human Services- Tom Daschle, a key early supporter and savvy former US Senate leader, was selected by Mr Obama as Secretary of Health and Human Services. The high-profile selection signals that the push to extend health coverage to the 46 million uninsured Americans will be a high priority for Mr Obama.

Secretary of Education- Arne Duncan, head of the Chicago public school system, is Mr Obama’s pick for Secretary of Education. Mr Duncan, a fellow Harvard graduate and long-time friend of Mr Obama’s, has earned a strong reputation at the helm of the country’s third-largest public school district, tackling problems including teacher quality and failing schools.

Secretary of Agriculture- Tom Vilsack, a former governor from the major US farm state Iowa, is Mr Obama’s choice to be agriculture secretary. Mr Vilsack backs tighter farm subsidy rules and new-generation biofuels. One of his major issues as governor was bringing more high-tech agribusiness to Iowa.

Secretary of Transportation- Representative Ray LaHood, a Republican, has been offered the job of transportation secretary. Mr LaHood hails from Mr Obama’s home state of Illinois and is said to have a rapport with the president-elect.

Securities and Exchange Commission- Mary Schapiro, a veteran financial market regulator, is Mr Obama’s pick to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ms Schapiro currently leads the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the largest nongovernmental regulator for all securities firms doing business with the US public. She is a former SEC commissioner and former chairwoman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Secretary of Labor- California Democratic Representative Hilda Solis, 51, has been chosen to lead the Department of Labor. Ms Solis, who represents a Southern California district made up largely of Hispanic and Asian voters, is among the most liberal members of the US House of Representatives and has taken a lead on both environmental and labour issues.

US Trade Representative- Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk has been selected to be US trade representative. Mr Kirk, a partner at the Houston-based law firm of Vinson and Elkins, is little known in Washington trade circles and became Mr Obama’s pick after his first choice, Representative Xavier Becerra, a California Democrat and member of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, turned down the job.

Director of National Intelligence– Retired Navy Admiral Dennis Blair is Mr Obama’s choice to be the top US intelligence official. As director of national intelligence, Mr Blair would oversee the entire US intelligence apparatus and be responsible for delivering Mr Obama’s daily intelligence briefing. His nomination would keep an experienced military leader in the post. Mr Blair is a four-star admiral and former top US military commander in the Pacific region.

Photo by flickr user Ethan

© RTE NEWS 2009

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MONEYNEWS- The Federal Reserve apparently can’t account for $9 trillion in off-balance sheet transactions. When Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Orlando) asked Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman of the Federal Reserve some very basic questions about where the trillions of dollars that have come from the Fed’s expanded balance sheet, the IG didn’t know.

Worse, nobody at the Fed seems to have any idea what the losses on its $2 trillion portfolio really are. “I am shocked to find out that nobody at the Federal Reserve is keeping track of anything,” Grayson says. Grayson asked Coleman if her agency had done any research into the decision not to save Lehman Brothers, which “sent shockwaves through the entire financial system,” Coleman said it had not.

“What about the $1 trillion plus expansion of the Federal reserve’s balance sheet since last September?” Grayson asked.

“We have different connotations,” Coleman replied. “We’re actually conducting a fairly high-level review of the various lending facilities collectively.” Translation: Nobody at the Fed knows where the money went.

Do you know what who got the $1 trillion or more in the Fed’s expansion of its balance, Grayson pressed. “I do not know. We have not looked at this specific area at the particular point on that specific review,” Coleman answer.

What about the trillions of off-balance transactions since last September, Grayson asked. Coleman demurred again, saying the IG does not have jurisdiction to audit the Federal Reserve.

Grayson pointed out that it was the inspector general’s job to audit such spending and asked again if the office had done any investigation at all. Coleman’s answer: Not enough yet to even respond. “We are in not a position to say if there losses.”

Grayson concluded, “I am shocked to find out that nobody at the Federal Reserve, including the inspector general, is keeping track of this.”

Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says the bank is working on ways to rein in the massive balance sheet commitments. “A majority of the members who made these projections just recently took 2 percent as being an appropriate number” for inflation, Bernanke said Monday.

“Somewhere between 1-1/2 to 2 percent is basically the number that our committee has individually stated is the appropriate medium-term inflation rate. To achieve that we need to demonstrate that we will be able to exit from the balance sheet position that we currently have, and have been working on this intensively,” Bernanke said in response to questions after a speech to a conference organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, reported by Reuters.

© MONEYNEWS, 2009

Photo by flickr user Late Night Tasks Force