We come to you live from the 23rd Annual ABA White Collar Crime Conference at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. The festivities began last night with an afternoon nuts and bolts session for beginners and an evening of dinners and receptions. The level of excitement among participants was stratospheric at the hotel, as everyone eagerly anticipated another scintillating opening speech by conference organizer Raymond Banoun. It was all everyone was talking about. Really.
In past years, Banoun’s speeches were so powerful that droves of conference-goers emptied the room. Ray promised to tone down his speech this year, and, having just sat through it, I can report that he definitely kept his promise. Oddly, however, people still emptied the room.
There is absolutely no truth to the rumour that Ray laces his coffee with LSD 30 minutes before the speech begins. Valium, maybe. LSD, never.
I am now sitting through a panel discussion of last year’s allegedly major trials–at least one of which took place in 2007 and all of which resulted in convictions.
Banoun also writes an annual essay, printed in the conference materials book, highlighting the past year’s white collar world highlights. Somehow he forgot to include the government’s decision to drop all criminal charges in the alleged $900 million David Stockman securities fraud case. I guess it wasn’t important enough.
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