Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Spitzer Busted - Wall Street Rejoices

Alright, so this is old news. I just didn't feel like writing about it yesterday.

New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, a Democrat and former state Attorney General, who rose to prominence prosecuting Wall Street analysts, using an obscure 1921 law to punish what had long been accepted industry practices, and a Long Island prostitution ring was implicated in a prostitution scandal of his own yesterday. It may also involve a form of money laundering in which a series of transactions are conducted in order to prevent the reporting of large sum transfers to the federal government.

From what I am seeing on the stock ticker Wall Street is seeming pretty happy about it. The Dow is up about 226 pts at the time of this writing.

Personally I always found Spitzer to be annoyingly holier than thou so I am not really surprised that there was some dirt just the type and manner in which he was caught. Financial misdealings caught by an electronic trail - The same sort of thing he made his name tracking down.

What Spitzer did you think you were so much smarter than the rest of us, or did you think you could bully and intimidate anyone who might catch on? That's possible. Ask Joe Bruno, a Republican legislator who Spitzer's staff sicced the State Police on. Or ask John C. Whitehead, who alleges that Spitzer threatened him after an April 2005 letter in the Wall Street Journal questions some of his prosecutorial tactics.

In any case the mighty one has fallen, and while Spitzer may have helped resolve some wrongs tha manner in which he went about it makes me incredibly happy that he has.

Updated: Well apparently the Fed loaned banks another 200 Frazillion dollars so that might account for some of the Dow gains but I am pretty sure they are still celebrating and probably sending flowers and chocolates to the hooker who made it all possible.

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