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Throw these business buffoons in the stocks

Give the perps the humiliation they deserve

By Sam Allis
Globe Columnist / October 26, 2008
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See what happens when the Observer is away?

Georgia invades South Ossetia. Russia invades Georgia. McCain picks Palin. Wall Street scum destroy our economy and then watch their handiwork spread like an oil slick across the globe. The Pats lose Brady. The Sox lose the seventh game. That's what happens.

But I'm back, so let's look at the bright side. House Speaker Sal DiMasi is finally being investigated for his gamy relationship with his accountant. Palin is now a major drag on the Republican ticket. And, hey, no need to check the market anymore.

No sentient person can avoid the terror of money today. I have neither the competence nor the interest to plumb the depths of this nightmare. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was supposed to do that, but the man is living proof that just because you ran Goldman Sachs doesn't mean you can cut it in Washington.

I don't care why the meltdown happened. I care how it happened. I gave up ""Why"" long ago. I thought it was the Rosetta Stone of life. It's not. ""How"" is the new ""Why."" Forget why the odious Richard Fuld drove Lehman Brothers into the ground. How did he do it? He needs to explain this under extended cross examination in court. Congressional hearings are worthless.

High among the scary things in all this are derivatives. There has been a lot written about them lately. I defy anyone to tell me in layman's terms what a derivative is. Someone attempted to do so over a decade ago and he still sports the facial tic he developed while trying. All I know is that Warren Buffett called derivatives ""financial weapons of mass destruction.""

When I think of my financial future, I'm reminded of the cartoonist Jules Feiffer. Some years ago, when he was in his sixties with a kid under 10, he was asked about his finances. Feiffer replied, ""Every time I think about money I black out.""

So my new game plan is to work right into the nursing home. My dateline will be something like ""Whispering Pines,"" a cozy spot above a biker bar at an interstate cloverleaf. I'll handicap the weekly wheelchair races and chronicle what happens after lights out.

But this I know: We must assuage the white rage we all harbor against the plutocrats who are getting much of the $700 billion worth of our tax dollars. We can't begin to put the meltdown behind us emotionally - forget financially - until we inflict some pain of our own. You call this blood lust. I call it catharsis. There is a time for forgiveness, folks, and this ain't it.

The Observer has the answer to this critical challenge: show trials.

Show trials are sham affairs held to make a point. They sure worked for Stalin in the late '30s. Granted, he convicted untold numbers of innocent people in absurdist courts who were taken out and summarily shot. Our show trials would be different. No guns.

We begin with a profusion of long frog marches at noon into police cars. No more 5 a.m. courtesy arrests for the big cheese to avoid those irritating flashbulbs and rude reporters. These walks will be advertised in advance, much like boxing events, and carried out amid ugly crowds for maximum effect. (Remember the roar of the masses as the tumbrels laden with aristocrats rolled to the guillotine during the French Revolution.)

The maximum penalty, of course, is humiliation. This is what these people dread most. It would be nice if prosecutors got some convictions, but that's almost beside the point. The process is more important than the outcome. We can't get back the billions they blew, but we can take from them what they value most - whatever is left of their good names.

We need to see the perps in court for yeasty two-week trials, alone in the witness chair, subjected to brutal questions from nasty prosecutors. All of this will be reported in detail by the media. Day after day.

Joseph Cassano was the AIG cowboy in London who lost $25 billion. Sweet, but I'm more interested in AIG management. Where were they? If this isn't a case of criminal negligence by management, I don't know what is. Let's take the company poobahs to court and listen to Cassano's aria.

(Federal regulators apparently were in a cryogenic state these last eight years, and the SEC was living in Tuscany.)

The Puritans figured this humiliation thing out early. They put miscreants in stocks, where they were subjected to sustained public ridicule. (I've always wondered whether they got bathroom breaks.) They weren't thrown in jail. They weren't even hanged by the neck until dead. That wasn't the point. The stocks were early show trials.

I suppose we really do need some convictions, and I'm sure the feds can get a few. More important, though, I want these people to become pariahs wherever they go. I want them shunned at Bergdorf, hissed at Starbucks. I want their mug shots posted in grocery check-out lines across the country.

Legal types caution that much of what these people did was unethical, not illegal. OK, let's talk nuisance suits.

Grudges get a bad name. I revel in them. Vengeance is considered primitive.

Not this time. I say Americans get major humiliation satisfaction or we march on Washington with pitchforks.

Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com.

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
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