[Some of] All The News That's Fit To Print

I believe the vast majority of successful business people are honest. This posting is about a small, but influential, minority..

Martha Stewart
5 months soft prison time, 5 months house arrest, 2 years probation for inside trading ImClone stock then lying about her misdoings to prop up her own stock. She knew exactly what she was doing. In Martha's previous career she was a Wall Street stock broker, and in recent years held a seat on the board of the New York Stock Exchange.

"I do what I please, and I do it with ease"
- Martha Stewart, from her high school yearbook

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Bernie Ebbers, Forbes listed his net worth at $680, 000,000.

A couple days ago, Bernie was sentenced to 25 years in prison. While CEO of WorldCom, a huge telecom company, Bernie engineered an 11 billion dollar accounting fraud, the biggest fraud in US business history, leading to the largest bankruptcy in US history.

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Now, I see lots of pinheads on TV saying that Martha's and Bernie's sentences are too harsh. I wonder the opinion of the person(s) who bought the ImClone stock Martha sold. I wonder the opinion of the investors who, after listening to Martha lie, went out and bought Martha Stewart Living stock just before it's 70% plunge.

And this clown Bernie? He didn't know his canniving greed might cause some little guy to lose his little pension? Well, because of Bernie's criminal financial reporting, lots of little, and big, pensions were lost.

An even bigger casualty is the American financial system. When people lose faith in the system we're all hurt, even if we never owned shares of ImClone or WorldCom. Maybe "harsh" sentencing will help to restore faith that our investments are made on a level playing field.