After its involvement in the shooting of 17 Iraqi citizens last year, a criminal investigation by the FBI, internal investigations by the State Department and the Pentagon, and high-profile Congressional hearings, the people at Blackwater walk free with reports that it won't face criminal charges.

And just to fill it out, the State Department has just renewed its contract with Blackwater to provide security for American diplomats in Iraq for another year, reports the Seattle Times.

The sad truth is that Blackwater has been cleared because the US Government can't afford not to have it providing services when it is hell-bent on staying in Iraq. So much for ethics at government level.

"We cannot operate without private security firms in Iraq," Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management told the New York Times. "If the contractors were removed, we would have to leave Iraq."

Tribune Media Services writer Bob Koehler accuses the media of colluding with the Bush administration's greatest evil.

"It's hard for me to read anything about Iraq in the mainstream media without being tormented by the way it's written: especially by what I would call the requisite spin and omission. Thus every travesty of our occupation, every hellish mishap, every stealth brutality that somehow finds its way into the spotlight, is presented to us context-free. This is the media's ongoing gift to George Bush (and John McCain),'' writes Koehler. "The Los Angeles Times, for instance, in its May 4 story about the investigation of the Nisoor Square massacre, doesn't trouble us with references to other Blackwater shooting sprees; much less the larger context of invasion, mission accomplished, and five years of occupation in which more than a million Iraqis have died; much less the ample testimony of returning vets that "the hadjis" of occupied Iraq are routinely belittled, mistreated and dehumanized. If it had done so, the massacre in question would suddenly be a piece in a far larger picture that would make almost all Americans recoil in shame."

AIG, in combination with the soaring oil price, managed to drag down the US market after it posted a first quarter loss of $7.8 billion on the back of the mortgage-related downturn. And the reality is that they don't know whether they've hit the bottom. AIG is raising $12.5 billion in capital for one reason: to prop up its balance sheet and that's a real indictment of the company.

The reality is that AIG's fortunes won't improve until the US credit and housing markets pick up and no-one knows for sure when that's going to happen. And analysts now warn that the insurer is likely to be in for a period of instability and a management shake-up. "Management capability issues, which have been smoldering for a while, are likely to flare up,'' David Havens, a credit analyst at UBS AG in Stamford, Connecticut, said in a note to investors, reports Bloomberg. "One of AIG's constant weaknesses has been its complexity. It's come back to bite them.''

That might explain why The Street.com's Jim Cramer says that the latest debacle is of Enron proportions. Cramer also wants the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate. Oh yes, and he wants chief executive officer Martin Sullivan's head.

"This company's in trouble, and not just because of the capital raising. You don't raise capital and raise the dividend,'' writes Cramer. "That's so obvious as to be painful. Clearly, AIG has no idea what it owns, so any amount of capital it raises is pure conjecture. Everyone at the top is over his head. They don't know what they are doing ... I would stay away from anything AIG. If I were them, I would have cut the dividend and raised $20 billion. Why not? Oh, and keeping Marty Sullivan at the top? Hysterically funny."

Fair point. But even if Sullivan goes, this company will need a miracle turnaround in the housing and credit market, not just another leader, to find its way back. Investors shouldn't hold their breath.

With the world's banks bleeding from their over-exposure to bone-headed investments and bad loans, the latest hot job is the Chief Risk Officer.

Bank of America, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley have all announced that they have a Chief Risk Officer, not before time given the way they have blown money, and many more are expected to follow suit. More to the point, it's likely to spread to other sectors.

Financial Week reports that 25 individuals at public companies were hired as or promoted to CRO in 2007. That's a 25 per cent increase over the previous year. And hires and promotions in 2008 are on track to outpace last year's number by 140 per cent. And this might be just the beginning.

Why does the boss rake in obscene amounts of money while the rest of us toil for what feels like little reward? Apparently it's for your own good.

That's the line of economists when they explain what's called tournament theory. According to this argument, it's all about inspiring the ones at the bottom of the food chain. Maybe one day, they can become fat cats. More of an explanation in Forbes.

So it's not like the boss deserves it, it's just for the greater good. Work that one out when you read this LA Times piece on America's best paid CEOs. The top 500 executives received earned $6.4 billion in 2007, an average of $12.8 million apiece. Which makes the 15 per cent pay cut look academic. And a lot of it comes from exercising vested options granted in previous years.

Read it and weep.

After the hammering it's received in the Saudi bribe scandal, BAE Systems is now putting out the line that it will be ethical from now on. Don't hold your breath.

A new report into the defense company's conduct has brought in a swag of recommendations including developing and publishing a code of ethical business conduct, scrapping facilitation payments and keeping a register of money spent on gifts and hospitality.

Still, the idea of arming the world ethically is hard to believe. The bottom line is that Britain has to sell arms to the Saudis because what would otherwise be its best market, the US, is hardly open because of the protectionist attitudes at Congress. And it doesn't say much for BAE either. As Campaign Against Arms Trade spokesperson, Symon Hill said: "This report will do nothing to reverse BAE's unpopularity with the British public. It is absurd to ask a committee to report on the ethics of an arms company without even considering whether it is ethical to arm dictatorships, or to engage in the arms trade at all."

In any case, it's hard to think this report amounts to anything when its author, Lord Woolf, the former lord chief justice, who was hired by the company to review its conduct, only did it on BAE's terms that he would not investigate the details of allegedly corrupt deals of the past, nor BAE's system of making secret payments to middlemen through offshore accounts. More from The Guardian.

With more pressure on companies over environmental issues, it's no surprise that complaints about greenwashing are up. A report released by Britain's Advertising Standards Authority found that complaints about greenwashing rose nearly 480 per cent in one year.

Worst offenders included Shell, which ran an ad showing industrial chimneys emitting flowers instead of smoke, Ryanair which made the dubious claim that aviation accounts for just 2 per cent of emissions and Lexus which claimed its cars caused little or no harm to the environment.

What are the tell-tale signs of greenwash? Look out for suggestive pictures (like shell's flowers), too much jargon, fluffy and meaningless language, over-emphasizing green products when the company itself still pollutes, making claims without any proof and downright lies.