Well, this lowly trader has to pony up $6 billion, having compromised his French bank’s trading systems six ways to Sunday on his way to wracking up huge losses.  Maybe he can get a payday loan. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/business/global/court-in-france-upholds-kerviel-sentence-and-fine.html?smid=pl-share

In wartime or for overseas conflicts, national guard units get federalized but otherwise are state operations reporting to the governor–though commanding officers and most members generally have a strong U.S. military acculturation.  These structural issues often leave the Guard in a twilight zone, where bad things can happen.

Experts: Arizona National Guard reform hard even with Brewer’s support.

So, perhaps. foul?  When government starts running things like insurance, the corruption potential can rise as executives with fewer market constraints get to think and act like moguls, can dismiss internal critics and discuss deals over fancy meals at classy clubs.

TALLAHASSEE: Citizens eliminates ‘corporate integrity’ office – Florida – MiamiHerald.com.

Pennsylvania public officials usually draw their salaries as their prosecution for alleged corruption drags on, sometimes for years.  Not State Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin, however.  The ruling stopping her pay may signal that Pennsylvania is growing less blase’ about corruption.  http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/state/justice-orie-melvin-should-not-get-salary-judicial-panel-rules-651305/

Cash-strapped Shaoyang, a city in southeast China, has redirected the energy of busybody seniors by making them minor-infraction police who get a cut of the fines.  Result: An untrained policing mob with zero sense of discretion whose neighbors are afraid to venture out.  Coming soon to a bankrupt city near you? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/world/asia/chinese-city-gives-retirees-license-to-ticket.html?smid=pl-share

So the economic storm of 2008 almost sunk a flotilla of banks operating on the edge.  Lesson learned?  Apparently not. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/nyregion/in-the-financial-world-a-less-scrupulous-class-of-lawbreaker.html?smid=pl-share

Surprise, Surprise!  Workplace wierdos are never a secret.  When they are also lifers in insulated institutions like Penn State, the benefit of the doubt is theirs and management’s biggest problem is how to look the other way so what’s known isn’t “seen.”  Report: Paterno, PSU officials in 14-year cover-up.

I’ve posted several pension and disability pay stories but this one, focused on public safety personnel, underscores the pervasiveness of the pension dilemma.  Cops and firefighters across the country are due generous life-time retirement payouts that, if they are not to eat up ever more revenue capacity of their jurisdictions, will have to be reduced drastically for junior or incoming employees–effectively cannibalizing the young to feed the old. No easy way out.  http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/07/29/us/29reuters-usa-pensions-policeandfire.html?smid=pl-share

An untenable operating structure fails.  20-20 hindsight? Perhaps, except that similarly structured law firms had collapsed previously. Law firms seem generally to have fallen from the pedestal that once allowed them to extract unlimited fees from reverential clients for often unexamined work of uneven quality. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/dewey-leboeuf-files-for-bankruptcy/