Meet Me In St. Louis

Dang 'em! We ought to take a rope and hang 'em! From higher than the tallest tree!

Who might be the targeted recipients of such a suggested act of vengeance? No doubt Bernie Madoff, the $65 billion rip-off artist of thousands of gullibly stupid get-rich-quick investors, would be at the top the list. This firestorm of lost fortunes exceeds any single maelstrom of losses on Wall Street demands the man pay a just price for his extravagant lifestyle of nearly two decades.

The silver-haired, fork-tongued magistrate of greed has brought financial ruin to thousands of individuals, banks and, yes, charitable organizations that have subsequently had to close their doors due to lost funds. In the name of "tearorism," how about saltwater-boarding Bernie with 65 billion tear drops streaming from the red and swollen eyes of the donors whose generosities will be denied of reaching their intended beneficiaries? And what of the multitudes of misty-eyed would-be recipients who may never realize the gifts that were meant to provide hope for those with physical and mental handicaps?

To a lesser extent, there are other Ponzi-schemers who have also caused financial ruin to too many lives. Take for instance, Lou Pearlman, the boy band mogul currently serving a 25-year sentence for jilting investors in an admitted sum of $300 million, although a more realistic figure is said to be $500 million, of which only $3.5 million has been recovered. If the gravity of the situation weren't so despicable, the offer from Judge G. Kendall Sharp would be laughable - one month taken off the sentence for every $1 million paid back to investors.

Then there's the likes of Robert Stanford/Stanford Financial Group/Stanford International Bank in off-shore Antigua that siphoned off more than $8 billion from 50,000 dimwitted folks who actually believed riches could be had with CDs earning nearly twice the rate at American banks.

Merrill-Lynch. Citigroup. Morgan Stanley. Fannie. Freddie. Executive compensations in the hundreds of millions of dollars are justly criticized and loathed. AIG is a prime target of scorn. Executive retention is more of an excuse for continued abuse of investor and American taxpayer funds. This is an example of corporate protectionism in the context that boards of directors are hand-picked by their CEOs whereby each reap the benefits by scratching one another's backs to keep the spandex money belts tightly harnessed around their fat-cat bellies.

In a broader sense, Congress, the SEC and the Fed can all be considered cohorts in the meltdown of financial institutions and the domino affect orchestrated by their corporate cohorts of wealthy campaign contributions. They've all made lackeys out of investors and taxpayers alike. Their oversights have led to this point of near-Depression era statistics. You ask: How did we get to this point of despair?

The 1999 repeal of the Banking Act of 1933, the Glass-Steagall Act, was the culmination of two decades of a concerted effort to deregulate banking and investment vehicles.

The Depository Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 allowed banks to merge and charge any interest rates they chose, although it also increased FDIC guarantees from $40,000 to $100,000.

The Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 deregulated the savings and loan industry and proved to be one of the many factors that led to the S&L crisis less than a decade later. One provision, the Alternative Mortgage Transactions Parity Act, loosened decades-long conventional loan mortgage lending practices to allow adjustable rate, balloon payment and interest-only mortgages. Call them anything you want, but they're all sub-prime boohoo home investment schemes.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, the Financial Services Modernization Act, allowed banks to engage in previously prohibited crossover activities such as financial services, securities investments, mortgage lending and insurance underwriting. It led to a one-stop shopping opportunity for these unregulated institutions to guarantee seemingly endless fortunes without disclosure of the high risks of becoming the debtor's fool.

Fortunately, or not, in today's society, lynching isn't an accepted means to bring villains to a just end. But what about bungee-jumping as an alternative to the ways of the bygone days of the Wild West? At 630 feet and the tallest monument in the U.S., the Gateway Arch in St. Louis may be the perfect execution site. Yes, sir, watch 'em go down head first, on their way to Purgatory down below.

From the Old Courthouse the unscrupulous money-mongers would walk the 1076 steps to the top of the Arch whilst the rest of us would leisurely start from the Old Courthouse, continue our journey aboard the Arch's Unique Tram System and follow the procession to the Observation Deck. Let the retribution begin!

Meet me in St. Louis.