Allan Sloan, in his On Wall Street column today, likens the recent Richard Grasso compensation scandal to a game from the old Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, Calvinball: "make up your own rules, and then decide whether you've won or lost." According to Sloan, Grasso's less-than-apologetic resignation was just another example of "how powerful people can rationalize anything, bending or rewriting rules to fit the game they want to play..."

The game isn't only Grasso's to play. Sloan writes that many more in corporate America, and even those in George W. Bush's fundraising camp, have spots on the Calvinball team.

(And I couldn't mention Calvin and Hobbes without linking to this website. Here's a an appropriate comic strip for today: May 5, 1990.)