ExxonMobil: In the face of a virtually complete scientific consensus that global warming is real and happening — and considerable agreement that it is happening faster than expected just a few years ago — ExxonMobil continues to insist that “scientific evidence remains inconclusive.” So far, the cynical, profit-motivated, short-term and self-interested views of ExxonMobil have mattered more than the evidence-based perspective of the world’s climatologists. That’s because the most profitable corporation on earth has lots of political power and is skilled at amplifying its views (see ExposeExxon.org for details), and the climatologists do not and are not. While the world burns, ExxonMobil is raking in record profits — more than $36 billion in 2005, the highest ever earned for a single company in one year.

KPMG: KPMG “admitted to criminal wrongdoing in the largest-ever tax
shelter fraud,” said U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in August.
KPMG managed to escape with no conviction or plea agreement, thanks to
a “deferred prosecution” agreement by which the firm promised to pay
$456 million in fines, restitution and penalties and do better in the
future. That won’t quite make up for the harm the company inflicted.
According to the government, “KPMG has admitted that it engaged in a
fraud that generated at least $11 billion in phony tax losses which,
according to court papers, cost the United States at least $2.5 billion
in evaded taxes.”

San Francisco Bay Guardian