This is the first website I helped produce and then manage. Prior to developing the site online, we did a draft website using Pages and Keynote. The website, which is no longer online, looked similar to this mock-up. 

And while I probably wrote well over 100 blogs for that first website, I have somehow managed to lose the computer file containing drafts of those blogs. However, I did manage to find this one, which I think was fairly creative.

A Smidgeon of Justice Served on Wall Street

Finally!

A tiny sliver of justice served on Wall Street avarice as Bernie Madoff {with your money} was sentenced today to 150 years in prison.

But what of the others?

Yes, it looks as of “Sir” (pshaw!) Allen Stanford will face his day in court for his fraud and ponzi-ing.  And perhaps prosecutors may go after other Madoff and Stanford associates….

But what of the hundreds–or is it thousands?–of Wall Street executives who orchestrated the near collapse of the U.S. Banking system, and subsequent near annihilation of the world’s economy.

Okay, so these guys aren’t necessarily criminals on the level of Madoff and (allegedly for now) Stanford, but by all appearances–i.e., money disappeared just as efficiently, not to mention more quickly–they are close.  And, even if not technically criminal, their sheer incompetence warrants some kind of sanction (in China such executive incompetence generally leads to a bullet in the back of the head, followed by a bill to the surviving family for the cost of the bullet).

The executives at AIG (“Arrogance, Incompetence and Greed”) are certainly the most egregious examples of Wall Street avarice that borders on the criminal.  The absurd amount (more than $500 million in 2008 and the first half of 2009) of bonuses these executives received for making money disappear boggles the mind, as does the fact that AIG claims that the executives deserved their bonuses, and to retain their jobs, because they are the only ones who can unravel the complex derivative deals that made the money disappear.

Okay, so they are responsible for making the money disappear, but they’re the only ones who might be able to get it back, but they won’t try to get it back unless they are handsomely rewarded….  Doesn’t this concept border on extortion? And, isn’t extortion illegal?

And we have the best and brightest fine minds of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Bear Stearns who received some $2 billion worth of bonuses during the year in which they quite successfully drove their respective companies into the ground.  Add in another $2 billion or so to executives at the other big Wall Street firms, which managed to lose tons of money, but somehow survived.  How can gross incompetence garner such rich rewards?

The media furor over executive bonuses, the Congressional hearings, the pontificating for change in executive culture, has passed.  The Wall Street incompetents who brought us to the brink of ruin are still “Masters of the Universe,” and still quite capable of inflicting economic catastrophe.

However, they’re probably treading lightly as bonus season is nearing again, and no doubt these “Masters” are anticipating that they will be even more richly rewarded than ever for keeping us away from the very brink that they created.

Unreal … and unjust.