As the insider trading trials heated up, much was made of the fact that the prosecution relied on techniques--mainly the use of wiretaps--that previously had been used on drug dealers and organized crime figures. Do prosecutors really think top Wall Street targets are akin to drug lords?

A Bloomberg columnist and former Wall Street executive raises the issue in the context of the MF Global scandal, as he pondered what motivated Jon Corzine.

"I have wondered why, for some people, enough is never enough. For example, what could have possibly motivated Jon Corzine--a respected former senator, governor and Wall Street big shot with hundreds of millions in the bank--to take the top job at MF Global Holdings in the first place?"

At some point, it is clear that some of the alpha dogs are, at some point, no longer motivated by money. The columnist quotes a prosecutor speaking about drug lords:

"These guys had more money than God. They had so much money that they would have to bury millions of dollars in cash because there was no place else to put it. So their house, their yard, their huge farms would be full of these graves of money. For these guys it was always about who got the most amount of dope from Colombia to Mexico to the U.S. It was about saying--when you're there with all the other heads of the cartels--‘I'm the biggest guy. I got the biggest load.'"

There are plenty of folks on Wall Street who are in it for similar bragging rights. Hopefully, they have the sense to stay on the right side of the law. In the case of MF Global, the prosecutors will have their say before too long.

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