WorldCom was the second biggest telecoms corporation in the USA, so trusted by the US government that it installed the hotline between Washington and Moscow.
Now it has crashed in the biggest accounting scandal in history.
Executives overstated the company's profits by £2.5 billion last year.
The company's auditors, Arthur Andersen, already found guilty of obstructing justice by a US court over the Enron debacle, failed to detect anything wrong at WorldCom.
It is becoming clear that the capitalist system is riddled with abuses and fraud.
The Economist magazine has claimed that almost 1000 US companies have had to restate their profits since 1997.
In other words, they lied about their profits.
International financier, George Soros, says that the international financial system is coming apart at the seams.
He is worried that the people around President Bush may not be committed to rooting out corruption.
No wonder.
The government lawyer responsible for prosecuting WorldCom used to work as a lobbyist for the accountancy industry (including Arthur Andersen) while Vice-President Dick Cheney was chief executive of another corporation, Haliburton, when it overstated its profits by $100 million.
WorldCom which employed 4000 in the UK, has sacked 17,000 of its 80,000 workforce worldwide.
Those still in jobs stand to lose 90 per cent of their company pensions.
Trading in its shares is now suspended, with the company owing the banks almost £40 billion.
News of the collapse started a panic.
The London stock market fell by 2 per cent in one day's trading last Wednesday (June 26), with £24 billion wiped off share values.
In New York on Thursday, trading was temporarily suspended in the shares of the US's biggest corporation, General Motors, amid rumours that it was in accounting difficulties.
As we were going to press, news was breaking that the Xerox corporation has admitted overstating its profits by $2 billion between 1997 and 2001.
There is a clear and serious danger of an international stock market collapse.