Dumbest business moments of the decade

As the first 10 years of the century draw to a close, we take a long hard look at exactly what got us into this mess.

In 2002, AOL Time Warner posted the largest-ever U.S. corporate loss as it wrote off most of the value of the merger. The next year, the company bid adieu to the managers who created it and stripped AOL from the corporate letterhead.

This month, Time Warner and AOL finally parted ways, nine years later and more than $100 billion poorer. So much for the deal Ted Turner once gushed was better than sex.