I'll confess to being perplexed by this $4 billion fraud at Worldcom for the past day or so. Either1) There wasn't actually a fraud, and an accounting decision is being cast that way by angry investors, or2) ????????But I think I figured out what the problem is. You people - you money managers, you investors - are a bunch of sissies. It's just like with income taxes, which you lay down for every day.See, point is, this guy lied to you, JUST AS IF he had lied to you face-to-face. So what do you do? You punch him. You go to his house, wrap up his security guard with duct tape, and throttle everything he owns with a sledge hammer.I never owned Worldcom, because I am not a big silly, and I don't do business like that. But if I had, and if the reason I did is because somebody lied to me, I'd go get him. I'd be morally obligated to, for the sake of the next victim.But you people don't see it that way, you have no sense of duty. You don't realize that if you let a guy rob you, he'll be able to buy twice as much equipment to rob the next guy. People who are lied to, they just go sniveling off, and feel guilty for something.But if you're not willing to go find this CFO guy, and pull his teeth out yourself - even in the face of him costing you and your investors zillions of dollars - then you are a joke. The whole thing is a joke, and I can only laugh.MP

Just to clarify - all that right-to-trial, and innocent-until-proven-guilty crap? That was designed to protect citizens from the government, not from each other.Meaning, the US legal system evolved against a backdrop of local justice. They have just branched out horizontally, into all these other marketplaces.So, the question you have to ask yourself, is are you getting your money's worth? You're demanding the SEC and the US attorney do this and that, but is it really practical?The way I see it, people are spending money on hustlers both coming and going. And why? Because trial lawyers are the big fleecers at the end of it all, is that it?Pretty pathetic.MP

Just to be even more clear: It was totally plain to the Founding Fathers that the government wouldn't be able to get the job done.Their program was not one of empowerment, but one of restraint on Federal powers. Ours is, apparently, one of throwing money at the salesman.MP

Originally I am from a small town in Mississippi not far from Worldcom's current headquarters, and also not far from a state prison. I comfort myself in this situation knowing that the white collar crime population is not seperate from other criminals in the state of Mississippi. Sullivan, a slender, healthy, young male, unencumbered with mezomorphic strength or gang affiliation, will have plenty of admirers as he tries to pick up the soap. Ouch.