Yesterday, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley suggested the executives of AIG who drove the company into near bankruptcy and the need for government bailouts, should "take a deep bow, apologize, and then either resign or commit suicide.
Last week a student asked what I thought should happen to Bernard Madoff who ran a Ponzi scheme which defrauded investors of 60 to 70 billion dollars, helping to create, or at least add to the current economic crisis. Honestly I don't know what should happen to him. He is 70 years old, so sentencing him to 150 years in prison doesn't seem all that helpful. But the question got me to thinking.
There is an old Pete Seeger, or maybe it is a Woody Guthrie, song where he says if you are going to rob a bank it is better to do it with a fountain pen then a gun. People who embezzle from banks usually steal a lot more money than your typical bank robber, and they generally do less prison time when they are caught. Bernard Madhoff is a theif who stole peoples money, a lot of money, with a "fountain pen," not a gun.
I believe the death penalty is wrong, but since our country uses it, why not use it on someone like Madoff. Take him to Wall Street and have a firing squad put a bullet or two in his head. If people who support the death penalty are correct that it is a deterrant, what better way to clean up the economic shennanigans on Wall Street then executing Madoff, a couple of AIG executives, along with someone from Bear Sterns, Merril Lynch, and Wachovia. When I suggested this to one class, one which includes several kids who believe the death penalty is a good thing, they argued that Madoff and the others "didn't hurt anyone." I asked what about those folks who lost all their investment or retirement funds, and the answer was, "he didn't take it by force," taking us back to the fountain pen approach to theivery. The kids seemed quite all right putting someone to death who used force to hurt someone, or someone who did something "really perverted." But, as they said, Madoff "only took people's moneyand he didn't threaten them."
So the old folk song is still valid. Steal money, lots of it, without using force and you do some time in jail. Use a gun or force, and spend the rest of your life in jail.
