may the circle be...

Here's a couple of stories from the Times of London, seemingly unrelated except for the fact they both touch on what bastards some people can be.

This first one (there seems to be some editing probs at the end but the main gist is evident by then) really cuts to the bone of what it means to be a family. In the wake of the people who died in the 9/11 attacks, some grandparents have lost contact with their grandchildren when the remaining partner has prevented access. Of course every story is individual and there may be another side to the ones cited, but that aside it must be utterly heartbreaking to lose not only your child but their children. You only need to look at grandparents out in the park with their grandkids, or talk to someone who has become a grandparent to realise that another strand, another depth of humanity suddenly kicks in. Grandparenting is an experience that is still in front of Chateau VVB so that's why I can only comment from observation.

These people are surely hidden victims of what happened on that day.

The second story is about something closer to Chateau VVB's heart, namely corporate governance. Now, even the normally placid Mrs VVB gets a bit riled when the next story about enormous corporate salaries comes on the news. So this sotry about the effect that greater corporate regulation is having on CEOs, in particular the substantial criminal penalties that can be imposed, raises another twist. Suppose the enormous salaries are in fact not about performance, but about the risks associated with getting it wrong. The story compares the penalties for some corporate crimes as being worse than for murder.

It would be easy and quite naughty to make a direct link by characterising high level corporate crime (eg fraud that affects lots of people) as a deliberate risk akin to, say, breaking into a bank and killing the guard while robbing the place. On the other hand, the laxer or more opaque the regulatory environment, the more people get tempted to do exactly the wrong thing. Is AWB such an example? And what would be an appropriate penalty (note to smartarses: not the bonuses they actually got).

Taking the link back to the intro, is it necessarily bastardry to commit fraud, or is it something else?