The real scandal - and Gibney's triumph


America yawned, and the media went to sleep, while the base tactics typical of Third World dictatorships were used to oust a mighty political (and class) enemy of Wall Street.

Congratulations to Alex Gibney for making a film that needed to be made, with courage, humanity, intelligence and panache.

You've just redeemed America's soul.

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Really? I thought Spitzer's resignation had everything to do with his hypocrisy: prosecuting several prostitution rings throughout his career while at the same time patronizing them.

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Spitzer had to resign because prostitution is still criminalized. There is hypocrisy involved here too, but not as much as you might think.

Spitzer went after two kinds of prostitution rings: those that involved abuse of minors in SE Asia, and those involved in money-laundering and corruption.

Note that the Emperor's Club VIP was shut down by the Justice Department solely because it was a prostitution ring, not because it was engaged in any of the things Spitzer specifically targeted: corruption and abuse.

Although Spitzer himself was thoroughly investigated on charges including use of campaign money for visits to call girls, he came out unscathed. He was never prosecuted.

So Spitzer is indeed guilty of garden-variety hypocrisy, the kind most of us, even politicians are capable of on a near-daily basis. Worthy of destroying a stellar career? Then why hasn't the FBI gone after any other politician who has hypocritically sought to crack down on prostitution while patronizing call girls?

Because Spitzer reformed Wall Street in ways that cost some big players money and changed the rules of the game indefinitely , and they don't take kindly to that.

Why Spitzer was enemy #1 to Wall Street:
http://www.slate.com/id/2108509/

On prostitution:
http://www.ajc.com/search/content/opinion/2008/03/13/spitzered_0314.ht ml

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um, do you actually believe that the emperor's club wasn't laundering money? geesh. do us all a favor and wake up.

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Tell that to the FBI, which came up empty-handed.

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Isn't money laundering inherent to running an illegal enterprise?

Or was this business running "legitimately" other than the fact that the actual services involved were prostitution? It's plausible that prostitution more than other illegal enterprises could list their services rendered as a non sexual personal service and just carry on banking, paying taxes and whatnot as if it was an otherwise legal business.

But something tells me it's not that easy, either, or a lot of illegal enterprises would operate that way and money laundering would be confined to a narrow sector of cash-centric businesses.

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They make an interestingly similar case briefly in Inside Job. There they argue that illegal activities were involved in the US financial collapse. They had previously established that there's widespread use of drugs and prostitutes among high powered Wall Street players and they ask Spitzer, who is interviewed throughout the film, why US authorities didn't use the prostitution connection to go after mid level wall street players and then flip them up to get the heads of some of these companies which were involved in illegal activity. Spitzer says he doesn't know, except that there seems to be an unspoken rule that you don't use personal indiscretions like that. The film then observes that the government had no problem using Spitzer's involvement in prostitution to bring him down.


"Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I don't think Hugo can track anything."

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[deleted]

Just curious...why not speak english?

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Thanks There_Is_No_Sayid . I have Inside Job high on my list of must-sees.

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