Wall Street salivating over Eliot Spitzer's downfall

DealBook reports that many on Wall Street are experiencing a heavy dose of schadenfreude at the demise of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's political career. After all, this is a guy who made his name as the "sheriff of Wall Street," conducting a high-profile campaign of charges and settlements that exposed widespread malfeasance in the financial markets.

Disgraced former analyst Henry Blodget, who was exposed as a shill for investment bankers, posted a New York Post story on Spitzer's downfall on his blog, and other enemies Spitzer made during his anti-corruption crusade are coming out of the woodwork to cast their stones.

But here's the thing: the fact that Eliot Spitzer has a fondness for unsafe sex with $5000 prostitutes doesn't make Henry Blodget any less of a cheater, nor does it detract from the tremendous public good that Spitzer did in exposing self-serving shenanigans in the New York financial district -- even if his motives and character were less than pure.

Spitzer was 100% right when he said in his brief statement that "politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas, the public good and doing what's best for the state of New York."

As Herb Greenberg wrote on his blog, this scandal is an "absolutely pathetic end to a brilliant career."

Let's not allow a prostitution ring to distract us from the need to expose corruption on Wall Street