It seems to be a misdemeanor nowadays to embezzle from people. I hear of it all the time. Financial advisors, financial managers, accountants, etc. Some of the biggest names in show business have had millions swindled from them.

I had money swindeled from me in the 1980s by a firm which I had grown up to believe was "solid as a rock." A friend of mine found her bank account emptied of all of her savings by her "fiance', who absconded to another state. The police told her there was nothing they could do.

The punishment for these crimes is barely existent. I read recently of a man sentenced to 5 years in prison for looking at naked pictures of adolescents on the internet. That's called "child porn." Though he did not personally harm a child himself, the belief is that he is an accesory to a crime which is harmful to a child. So he got 5 years. I agree with this sentence. Though someone may protest "But I didn't DO anything! I didn't kill anybody, I didn't physically harm anybody!" the courts have seen fit to punish people who are peripherally associated with a crime which does harm people, because they deliberately sought out something that was a crime.

I haven't seen that type of criminal responsibility leveled against finance criminals. In fact, they are called "white collar criminals" as if they are somehow clean. They're not clean. They harm people, whether they steal from the little old lady down the street or whether they steal from Paul McCartney, who has millions to spare. Witness Bernie Madoff being under house arrest in his multimillion dollar digs rather than in jail. Do you know what kind of food they serve in jail? That here is no privacy, anywhere, anytime? Why does Madoff, accused of swindling so much money that it will effect our economy (it has affected real estate in NYC already), get to stay home and eat and drink what he likes? He's already been accused of mailing a million dollars worth of jewelry while under house arrest.

Madoff has untold amounts of money securely stashed away abroad. Ankle bracelet or not, he could pull a Marc Rich and be gone pretty quickly, given the amount of money he can bribe an accomplice. His sons are legally in the clear because they turned him in once the jig was up (I doubt they had no idea something was amiss, as one of them had been recommended for a finance oversight organization). If Madoff can abscond, his whole family will be set for life, no worries. Yeah, they'll lose a mansion or two, but there's plenty that legally belongs to relatives of his and plenty he has legally stashed away, because our government allows wealthy people and corporations to legally stash money abroad. Ask Dick Cheney about Dubai.

It's time we started treating finance criminals as they lowlives they are. They should not get a break because they "didn't kill somebody." There's already one man dead that we know of because of Madoff's crimes. If a man did not physically harm a child, but gets 5 years in prison for looking at criminal photos, then a finance criminal should spend time in jail because of the human consequences of his actions. There should be a minimum jail term of 5 years for embezzelment, whether it's from a company, a wealthy person, a middle-class retiree or a poor person who has very little understanding of money.

Our jail population will briefly swell, but I think taxpayers would gladly pay for that. Until we treat finance crimes with the same level of zeal as we treat other crimes, people will continue to be victimized and criminals will do it over and over again, just like the guy who keeps robbing liquor stores and 711s as long as he can get away with it.