Is it worse to be an environmental polluter or a moral one?

So farewell Bernie Ebbers, former chief executive of WorldCom, the long–distance phone operator that became America’s biggest-ever bankruptcy case in 2002. Ebbers has died aged 78, having been released on health grounds in December from a 25-year jail sentence for his part in an accounting fraud that concealed the perilous state of WorldCom’s finances, misleading investors after a series of high-risk acquisitions by the bejewelled ‘telecom cowboy’ Ebbers during the dotcom boom.

By repute, US justice aims to make examples of high-profile corporate miscreants, starting with the humiliating ‘perp walk’ into court and concluding with harsh sentences and scant hope of parole. But in actuality Ebbers was one of a surprisingly short list of top executives convicted for all the financial shenanigans of the pre-2008 era and may be the last to leave prison. Enron chief Jeff Skilling cut a deal which got him out last year (his chairman Ken Lay, convicted in the same trial, died before sentencing).