People In Glass Houses...

I don't usually make a foray into politics here, but today I will make an exception. What was Eliot Spitzer thinking? I think I know what he was thinking, but, come on. Here's a guy that made his whole life on being holier than thou gets mixed up with prostitution, and money laundering to boot. I think Ken Langone, major Spitzer target over the years and probably the only one that didn't back down in the face of his prosecutorial harassment, said it best when he said something to the effect that he hoped that Spitzer's hell would be a little hotter than everyone else. He has to go, he should do it voluntarily and do it now. This morning, the comparison was made on TV to Bill Clinton lying under oath. While the general public (not me) was under the opinion that lying under oath on matters not of national security was acceptable, I would generally agree with the panel that what Spitzer did was worse. With Bill Clinton, his supporters (again, not me) accepted or at least tolerated the idea that he was morally challenged from day one and were willing to operate on that basis. Spitzer, on the other hand, made his mark going after corruption and ethics violations, and made a lot of enemies in the process (In an ironic twist, it was a top-down degradation of standards in the Nineties that gave rise to a crusading Eliot Spitzer.). Spitzer, by always operating from the moral high ground, had and has to be cleaner than everyone else out there.

Eliot Spitzer's actions over this decade forced a lot of change on Wall Street. It cost a lot of business in the United States, as operations were shifted offshore to less restrictive environments. As mentioned before, he made a lot of enemies. Still, many of the changes have now become accepted practice. There is no going back. Part of the market mess today can be traced back to the movement offshore of a lot of this business. The lack of rules and transparency have been a major contributor to the uncertainty in the markets, particularly fixed income. There should be some effort, now while this is fresh in everyone's mind, to standardize the rules of the game globally.

Eliot Spitzer will always be remembered for the actions of the past few days. His methods of achieving results were at times zealous and, at other times, harassing. In some cases, he went too far. However, he did shed light on Wall Street procedures that needed to be illuminated. It is too bad that he couldn't maintain those high standards in his personal life.