Good morning, All.  As you can tell, I didn't find anything to comment on yesterday.  I didn't watch the Oscars and I don't think the awards are worth the news time they have been getting for the last two months. I am so tired of Angelina Jolie's leg. The morning news has been going on about the line up for the new Dancing With The Stars season.  I don't watch it and I really wish I could hear less of it but they seem to think the program is worth repeated stories.  Last season we got the pre-show, show, post-show, post-post show stories and a repeat on Sunday afternoons.  In between we get a sprinkling of real news much of which we have already read on-line.

However, this should get interesting.  I have thought for some time that we should have a 'corporate death penalty.'  There are corporations that exhibit a predatory and corrupt culture--take a look at the accounts of Murdoch's News Corp.  Yet we have no legal way to deal with that.  At best a few 'sacrificial lambs' are prosecuted, get slaps on their wrists, and the company continues on its way having learned new ways to cover up its crimes.  I agree with one blogger (I'm sorry I don't remember who) who said he would believe corporations were persons when Texas executed one.  Amen!!  For more see this from NPR.

For the 'they keep telling us the economy is getting better but...' file--the local (Chicago) news last night carried a story about a major theft from a local cemetery.  It seems someone (or several someones) blitzed through and stole every kind of metal they could find--urns, grave markers, and so on.  The police are investigating but even if they find who did it the families of the dead are still stuck with the expense of replacing what was stolen which will be expensive.

I commented when I first read about this scandal that Japan seems to have its own MF Global mess.  Jess' Cafe Americain has more info and I may have been more accurate than I thought.  I wonder which 'major European bank' got the money by way of the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Hong Kong.

Barry Ritholtz wrote this commentary for the Washington Post which rather nicely sums up the so-called settlement between the big banks and the (now) 49 states' attorneys general.  They used to say that justice delayed is justice denied.  But that was when we had a government of laws.  Instead we now have a government of corporate 'persons' not laws.  To continue with a related theme this story on Fox Business really pisses me off.  Once upon a time there was another saying: ignorance of the law is no excuse.  Now, it seems, if the boys at MF Global didn't know they were committing fraud by raiding supposedly sequestered customer accounts they aren't criminally liable.  First, it was their job to know what they were doing.  Second,  WTF does 'sequestered' mean besides keep your hands off?