This is one of those tales where you have to read between the lines. The first sentence from the AP story says it all:
“Texas financier R. Allen Stanford has been returned to a lockup after being hospitalized for treatment of a concussion following a jail fight.”
What happened is something reminiscent of Tom Wolfe’s novel “Bonfire of the Vanities.” A rich guy with manicured fingernails goes to jail, where he is brutalized by the street punks who populate most “correctional facilities.”
At one level, you feel sorry for the rich guy. He’s already behind bars, and now he has to deal with thugs and creeps who want to do bad things to him.
On the other hand, it’s kinda hard to feel much sympathy for sharpies like R. Allen Stanford. (And why do so many tycoons have first initials followed by an actual name?)
Stanford is charged with running a mind-boggling Ponzi scheme that sucked in $7 billion. Not million, billion.
Investors in the “Stanford Financial Group” have been reamed. They will see little of their money ever again. Maybe none of it.
Yeah, maybe some of them were greedy and believed the typically ridiculous claims of double-digit returns every year.
But darn it, the story behind the story on scams like this is people losing their life savings or money they planned to retire on. We're talking thousands and thousands of folks like your parents or that nice old couple down the street.
The scum who knowingly bilk decent people of money like that deserve to go behind bars for a long, long time.
And if they get roughed up by low-lifes and goons while they’re there, well, that’s just too bad.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Deal with it , Stanford
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2 comments:
Unfortunately, everyone in prison becomes a victim of the hierarchy of brutality. If a legal entity is going to imprison a man, then that entity bears a moral obligation to ensure that the deprivation of freedom is the only punishment, not the unpredictable savagery of a Chicago...um...I mean prison mob.
Also, Mack, a correlation may be made that everyone involved with Wall Street, AIG, Bernie Madoff, etc, etc,etc are ALL getting the same screwing that poor little old sweet cheeks Stanford is enjoying now. Not much sympathy on this bus I think.
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