25 is a good start

Yesterday Bernie Ebbers formerly CEO of WorldCom received a 25 year prison sentence from U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones. It's by far the harshest sentence for securities fraud to date. And a wonderful precedent to my way of thinking. According to the polling so far the general public agrees.

Ebbers received personal loans of 100s of millions in addition to the huge amounts of money he received due to the artificially raised price of his stock. When the dust settled over 180 billion in market valuation was eliminated when WorldCom went bankrupt. That affected WorldCom's many innocent employees in a big way and innumerable small investors in a small way.

Ebbers arrogance in this regard is fairly typical however. Witness Martha Stewart who due to her refusal to take a 5 figure loss on a stock caused a loss of confidence in her company's stock that led to over 100 billion in loss of valuation. And Martha Stewart was never even charged with a crime in that regard. THAT is shocking. In her own way she was even more arrogant than any other corporate executive because she never admitted any trace of guilt despite the smoking gun in her hand. Her short country club prison stay was due to her lying to investigators--not to her duplicious behavior with the ImClone Systems stock trading. How many small investors lost more on their Martha Stewart Inc stock than did Ms Stewart on her ill fated Imclone investment? I would guess there are quite a few.

Oh well, if you take all this stuff too seriously it'll drive you crazy. :-( But I am glad to see the judiciary taking so-called white collar crime more seriously!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Especial in todays world when times are tough. Need to see some of these cheaters put away.

In Jersey they turned Fort Dix into a white collar crime prison camp. Was funny driving by seeing all the suits out there picking up trash on the old base.
11:20 PM
utenzi said…
I knew a couple of guys that did their basic at Fort Dix a few decades ago. I didn't know it was one of the converted over bases. Things do change...
10:29 PM
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