He's pretty rotten, but is Robert Allen Stanford a scoundrel America can fall in hate with?

/Home/Notorious Frauds and Tips on Avoiding them/Meet Texas Billionaire (And Mini-Madoff?)

He's pretty rotten, but is Robert Allen Stanford a scoundrel America can fall in hate with?
Stanford is the alleged leader of the most recent Ponzi-esque scheme to come to light under the intense scrutiny of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Bureau of Investigation. But if we've learned anything during the last year, it's that dubious fame is fleeting on Wall Street these days.
In January, the SEC launched investigations into six suspected investment frauds, and 70 cases have been prosecuted in the last two years. It's getting harder to distinguish yourself in the crowd of fellow fraudsters.

After all, who remembers Arthur Nadel, Nicholas Cosmo, Al Cioffi and Matthew Tanin?
In an industry that used to be known for its cutthroat business practices, the dirtiest fighting is happening on the perp walks near big banks. Competition has become so fierce, it's pitted family members against each other. Sure, Bernie Madoff ran the business. But it was his wife, Ruth, who took out $15 million just before her beloved turned himself in.
You can't teach that kind of timing.
In contrast, Stanford would have benefited by creating a bigger scam. Just $8 billion? Where is the star-studded client list? If you can't get Steven Spielberg to invest, how about Chris Columbus?
The problem for Stanford is that his scam is pedestrian by comparison. Maybe it's that he was based in Dallas. It's very important to New Yorkers that they do things bigger than people from everywhere else.
Consider our bailout tab.
Stanford doesn't even have a body count. His indulgences were cricket (the game, not the insect) and political contributions. Sure, he may have swindled charities out of tens of millions of dollars, but does he really compare to Madoff, a Jew swindling foundations set up to aid Holocaust survivors? That's a special kind of evil.
Everyone knows that until you have a few Russian mobsters chasing your associates, you're small time.
This new game of one-upmanship on Wall Street isn't limited to strictly illegal activity. Merrill Lynch's former chief John Thain scored big with his decorating tastes.

Even the analysts are getting into the act. Witness the end-of-the-world squabbling between Nouriel Roubini, also known as "Dr. Doom," and Nassim Taleb, whose alias is "the Black Swan." Theirs is a friendly competition to predict the financial collapse and its fallout. Next up: They'll be forecasting locusts.
Anyway, good luck to you, Stanford. Here's hoping you were managing money for Miley Cyrus.
More Shakespeare
Last week's First Take commentary about what advice William Shakespeare might give the eight bank chiefs who testified before Congress elicited a big response from readers, who, unsurprisingly, are well versed in the Bard.

Michael Silverstein, the self-appointed poet of Wall Street, provided multiple stanzas from his own pen that attempt to make art of today's economic tragedies. Here's my favorite below; the rest can be found at on his Web site. Go to Silverstein's site.
"Their quantity of earnings is not strained / A droppeth in their comp'ny's stock, though brutal, / Toucheth not those above; comp here's twice blessed; / It bloateth in good times and when sales tank; / It's embedded for the embedded; it rewards / Enthroned execs better than a crown ..."
Others chose to update the classics. A reader who goes by the handle "FrancSwiss" modified a famous line from "Henry V": "The first thing we do, let's kill all the bankers and politicians and take over the Federal Reserve Banks."
"Runningstops" wrote "neither a borrower or lender be -- but trade puts and calls."
But the most appropriate line may have been the one from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" recited by "ParisianRefugee": "Lord, what fools these mortals be."