The Nation's Worst CEOs

In the late 1990s, investors deified corporate chief executives. In the first few years of the 2000s, CEOs were vilified. And now they seem largely ignored, seldom appearing in the financial media unless they're in handcuffs. They are the forgotten souls of Wall Street's remodeled machine.

But that doesn't mean that the overpaid and underachieving heads of many public companies aren't just as lame as ever. It simply means that we've become complacent about the hardships they cause shareholders when they pursue bad strategies, bad communications, bad hiring, bad products and bad marketing -- and then blame their problems on the weather, world politics or traders.

Who are the worst chief executives out there at the moment? You could probably name the CEO of every company you've lost money on. But a handful should be at the top of every capitalist cynic's list.

David Dorman

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