No room for the real crooks?

Tomgram: Nick Turse, A Silent (and Violent) Epidemic

In a recent interview about our economic meltdown moment, economist James Galbraith spoke of widespread fraud in the financial system, pointing out that, in response to the Savings and Loan scandals of the 1980s, "there were 1,000 felony convictions for S&L insiders and about 700 or so went to jail. This is a bigger crisis, so you could easily be talking about a larger number of convictions."

Here's what's strange, though, at least for now: The only significant person to be brought up on charges, tried, and sent to jail, as far as I know, has been Ponzi-schemer par excellence Bernie Madoff. A few smaller-scale Ponzi-schemers are lined up behind him, possibly on their way to jail as well. As for the rest of the looters at the top of our semi-collapsed financial system, all of them, as far as I can tell, have either been allowed to go about their business or, at least, take their booty, including bonuses, and head for home to await better times.

Glorious leader appears on TV

QUENTIN LETTS watches the PM's fightback on TV

We had a lot of hand movements. He might, I think, have been doing some cat's cradle games with his family of late. His hands certainly seemed to be doing that sort of thing in front of the camera yesterday morning. It was like watching a man doing charades, trying to convey the idea of changing a car's headlights. Or maybe fiddling with an old TV set's horizontal control knobs.

He then started doing synchronised pointing, both forefingers stabbing the air. Toro! Ole! I think it was intended to make him look assertive; Gordon the man of action. It worked pretty well. From time to time his left eyebrow went walkabout but otherwise this was a more convincingly statesmanlike premier than we saw in that awful YouTube film.

'To be honest, what I've seen offends my Presbyterian conscience,' he said, talking about the MPs' expenses fiddles. He returned to this theme, talking about how he had been brought up in a family where 'integrity and telling the truth was what mattered'. Those who have longed for Mr Brown to show the electorate more of his 'back story' will be pleased by this development. Others might worry that the voters will look at the way he has squandered so many billions of pounds of our money in the past year and think, 'so how come THAT didn't offend your Presbyterian conscience, chum?'