Financial world is swimming naked

His blunt, humorous words not only graphically describe the world's tumultuous economic scene caused by a “once-in-a-century” financial tsunami, but also applies to the political landscape in many parts of the world, including Taiwan. Just watch how many of the island's luminaries have been running in the buff during the “trial-of-the-century” of former president Chen Shui-bian for corruption since the change of power last May.

The center stage, of course, is occupied by the United States where the tsunami began on Wall Street six months ago and quickly engulfed Main Street and the rest of the world. We have seen a lot of naked swimmers, former financial barons and political movers and shakers who once ruled the financial universe.

Bernie Madoff, a former chairman of NASDAQ, is now behind bars for running the world's largest and longest ponzi scheme involving US$60 billion dollars.

He has pleaded guilty to all of the 11 charges against him and may face up to 130 years in jail. He told the judge that he did it all by himself, without the knowledge of his wife or children.

In contrast to Madoff's one-man heist, Wall Street has emerged as a naked symbiotic body of unscrupulous officials and greedy traders who believed in “greed is good,” as pronounced by Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, Michael Douglas Oscar-winning movie.

Nowadays, however, the real Wall Street makes the movie version a child's play to a certain degree.

Have you heard the name John Thain? He would have been treasury secretary if Senator John McCain had won the election last November.

As the CEO of Merril Lynch, the 53-year-old financial wizard (for loss-making) was the highest paid CEO in the S&P top 500 companies. But just before his bankrupting firm was acquired by Bank of America last fall, he dished out US$3.6 billion to Merrill Lynch executives as bonuses. He made international headlines last January for spending US$1.2 million to renovate his office at BofA, which later forced him to resign after discovering Merrill Lynch's losses were much higher than first estimated.

We are all familiar with the sound bite that “Citi Never Sleeps.” It was busy burning the taxpayers' money.

It's CEO, Vikram Pandit, better known as “Pandit the Bandit,” is busy spending US$10 million to renovate his Park Avenue office after getting US$45 billion of government funds last fall in order to keep the virtually bankrupt bank alive.

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