The Australian media clearly has a thing for crooks. The Bali executees, now Bond.

The slather of TV footage about Bond; the America's cup; his dumped wife racing to his bedside, all of these things were sickening. Then there was the headline: 'No State Funeral for Bond', as if there could ever be any suggestion that taxpayers should stand a state funeral for a convicted fraudster and gaol bird.

The Australian media is completely lacking in entegrity.

The author is trying to draw lessons from what happened back in the 1980s - Bond's heyday - and getting them wrong. Basically Bond was a salesman with enormous front who took advantage of the very loose corporate law and corporate law enforcement of the time to build up a corporate empire which collapsed the moment circumstances turned against it. He also had an astonishing ability to get money from banks, in part because he simply had no scruples. None.

There are people like Bond all the time but now the corporate and financial systems are better at keeping them out - confined to property speculation where he should have stayed.

But the author obviously has very little clue about what is going on when he complains about blue collar workers being turned into "white collar accumulators". Of course they are - this is an ongoing trend known for decades and welcomed by all but a fringe on the hard-core left who want a return to the simpler world of class warfare.

I guess the cynic's takeout lesson here is; you don't need to be a born again narcissistic criminal bereft of a conscience or normal human empathy to succeed at the highest levels of business; but it surely has to help?

And what else was he going to do in jail to impress those on the parole board?
Rhrosty.

Curmudgeon,

Good post.

It never ceases to amaze how the increasingly tabloid media including the taxpayer-funded, 'fact-finding' ABC can spruik for, re-write history and make 'heroes' out of the jackals and wolves who preyed on the vulnerable public.

No reputable business owner or manager that I have ever come across would ever say anything positive about Alan Bond, or WA Inc.

The lenders, investment advisers, lawyers, politicians and others who allowed and encouraged the trusting public to speculate their hard won nest eggs are escaping attention, but they shouldn't be. Not that the feckless media that depend on such rogues for advertising income and support would ever be concerned about that.

Bond University was a splendid idea though and I would like to see more private universities.

Yeah, Bond was as shonky as they come.

"Crude capital, quick gains, minimal lasting investments, and personal gratification."

Baa Humbug!

This article is but the ravings of a Communist signifying nought. Binoy need be careful to respect his betters lest he twixt by tongue on stool amok.

We shall have Binoy know that the stockbrokers of Wall Street are known as "Masters of the Universe" on whom every US$ in the world economy depends. Such is their proximity to Heaven that none did time for the World Financial Crisis.

Mr Bond the Great was the sainted disciple of these Mighty Men.

Respect