Wall Street, Girlfriends & Wives

Did the Girlfriend Already Get Everything??

A judge says that if Denny Hecker can afford a girlfriend, he must pay his estranged wife a nice amount, too.

--"At Issue: 2 Women, Money & Hecker"; Star Tribune (11/26/09)

What a perfect metaphor for our financial mess!

If you haven't been following the story, a Hennepin County judge just ordered Denny Hecker, a Minneapolis auto magnate/wheeler-dealer whose business empire crashed, to give his estranged wife a fraction of the money that he's illicitly been transferring to his girlfriend.

If a bankruptcy judge can force Hecker to support his wife, surely there's a way to make government "do the right thing" with respect to the reeling American middle class.

Unfortunately, there's ample evidence that the "girlfriend" (Wall Street) is still calling the shots.

Two other differences between Denny Hecker and Washington:

One. After Washington has lavished a virtually endless string of trillion dollar "baubles" on Wall Street -- much of it with borrowed money -- it's not entirely clear that there's anything left in the U.S. Treasury.

Two. The money Denny Hecker gave his girlfriend at his wife's expense putatively belongs to him. The money Washington is giving Wall Street comes straight from U.S. taxpayers.

P.S.: the bankruptcy code has something called a "fraudulent conveyance" which allows a judge to reclaim money from girlfriends and give it to wives. Hmm . . . perhaps that has some relevance for Wall Street.