The Bear Stearns Poster Boy Walks

Writing about Bear, Stearns a few months back, I said that:

If there is a central villain in the piece, I suppose it is Ralph Cioffi, who structured the hedge funds that loaded up on subprime--the collapse of which funds led to the ultimate collapse of the firm. Cioffi ...appears to bear all the earmarks of a good salesman: insane optimism, poor impulse control, and a knack for manipulation.

Link. Well, maybe. But at least I did not add "and obviously a felon." A jury in Brooklyn has acquitted Cioffii (and a colleague) of all charges, and apparently it wasn't even close. Per Bloomberg, a juror said that the government's case was "so weak she'd invest with defendants" (link). The jury spent a month hearing testimony and took just nine hours to set them free. Evidently being a good salesman is not a crime in Brooklyn (Joel adds: looks like he made the sale of his life).

Afterthought: I also wrote:

[A]ny institution that is going to make any money has to put up with at least a few of these guys: the point is that you keep them cabined in; surround them with a net of bean-counters, auditors, and execution clerks who save them from the full consequences of their own megalomania. The real flaw in Bear Stearns seems to be that nobody knew how to do it and so Cioffi drove the bus off the cliff.

I think I'll stand by that.