I know I really shouldn’t relish in other people’s problems, but I can’t help it.  Apparently the good ol’ governor of New York got caught with his pants down.  Spitzer single handedly destroyed Strong Investments when I used to work there.  A lot of people lost jobs and Dick Strong and other members of the company paid huge fines that were supposed to go back to the shareholders.  To my knowledge that money is still sitting in the State of New York general fund and hasn’t gone to the shareholders.  I could be wrong, but I have not heard of anything going to the people it was supposed to.  Who knows, perhaps the governor spent the money on some programs so he didn’t have to raise taxes.

So, basically, the state of New York took money from a Wisconsin employer, put them out of business, 1,300 people lost their jobs, and the state of Wisconsin lost tax revenue all in the name of “Doing right!” and “standing up for the little guy against big bad business”.  Spitzer made his reputation going after corrupt business.  Or so he claimed.  By the way, Bank of America actually broke the law by engaging in late trading, yet they emerged from the whole thing unscatched.   Prudential also was implicated in widespread late trading.  Janus, Putnam and Invesco all were accused of market timing as well.  Only one company on that list went out of business, although I believe last year Putnam merged with another company.

Spitzer decided to make Dick Strong the poster child of the mutual fund scandal even though there were those whose infractions were far worse.  Dick made the mistake of putting his name on the door and being a privately held company.  And make no mistake, Dick Strong didn’t come out of this a pauper.  But, there were plenty of people that worked for him who didn’t make a lot of money in the first place and they ended up out of work.

A lot of cliches come to mind: what comes around, goes around; live by the sword, die by the sword;eye for an eye; etc.  Well, no matter which one you choose, I’ve sure got a smile on my face today.