So, we have two stories from Wall Street where it appears that the principals are just plain crooks.

It makes me feel good, because, unlike what people are saying about the rest of that lot, willful blindness in pursuit of an obscene payday is not grounds for some sort of criminal investigation, this is clearly criminal, and the people involved are likely to go to jail.

In a real way, it reflects far more poorly on me than it does on them.

First we have Bernard L. Madoff arrested for operating a Ponzi scheme that appears to exceed $50 billion dollars.

This guy is a big name, as he is, “a past chairman of the board of directors of the Nasdaq Stock Market as well as a member of the board of governors of the National Association of Securities Dealers,” which makes him a member of what could be described as the nobility of the financial system.

And then we have Mark Dryer, a high flying Wall Street lawyer accused of cheating his clients by selling false promissory notes, also arrested.

Some additional Schadenfreude comes from the fact that Henry Blodget, the smarmiest of the snake oil salesmen during the dotcom boom, got a haircut on this too.