However, mutual funds, to which very many Americans trust their retirement accounts because they are supposed to be expert and ethical, have been cutting special deals to their wealthier investors, as revealed by the investigations of Eliot Spitzer, New York State attorney general. These deals have cost smaller investors $5 billion a year, according to The Wall Street Journal's editorial, "Revenge of the Investor Class" [23 Oct 2003, p. A20]. $5 billion buys a lot of peanut butter.

These are just the people who have been caught.

The WSJ had, up to that point, considered Spitzer a political opportunist, because he was going after their friends the big boys. But even they finally figured out that defrauding small investors to offer advantages to people who didn't need them was not healthy for people's confidence in the financial markets or in American society as a whole.

Yet, when I bring this up, I'm told that I must be ignorant of economics. Well, I don't hold a degree in the subject, but I know that giving unfair advantage to people because they're wealthy undercuts the whole idea of wise investing and self-reliance. I wish I could say I'm surprised that radcons don't see a problem.

Maybe if they spent as much time looking at corporate accounting practices as they do private sexual practices, they would understand why theft is evil.

Nice feint with MoveOn.org, btw. Not on a par with Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, who deliberately talked up GoTo.com to small investors while warning their big customers away, but a noble try.