Perp Walk

We are going to see many more of them. Not the common thug or the drug lord, but Wall Street executives. This was my best guess on today’s 12pm show:

“Let the prosecutions begin……The public is thirsty for heads to roll and someone to blame for the credit crunch and the mortgage meltdown. Federal and state authorities are conducting independent investigations, and there will be a late summer rally in suits in handcuffs.”

If I could buy stock in SIH, I would pick up a hundred shares just to prove I’m right. I remember as a reporter covering Martha Stewart and Dennis Kozlowski. They were a little arrogant maybe, a little loose with their actions, or in Kozlowski’s case his company’s money, but this is going to an entire new level.

It was interesting reading the Bear indictment. They really thought they had gotten away with something. As in, they’d saved their own skins, while keeping their hedge fund afloat. Those one liners in that indictment are going to be quoted in every story, on the network newscasts tonight, and will get extra special attention when Lesley Stahl does the inevitable 60 Minutes piece a year from now, where she talks to the guys in jail, and asks them if they really said that, and what was going through their mind at the time.

Are they going to spend time behind bars? Probably. Email trails have undone the slickest CEO or stock analyst, and these guys will be no different.

Congress may get absolutely nowhere regulating investment banks and mortgage originators, but you can bet there will be some successful prosecutions out of the hundreds of indictments being handed out this week.

And yes, we’ll cover it. Perp walk and all.

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