Look at the history of Wall Street and you will see a major theme: conflicts of interest. After all, the business is based on relationships.

Conflicts of interest are not necessarily bad. So long as there is disclosure – and clients understand the dynamics – it should be fine.

But, there should still be vigilance. That's the take from a recent piece in the New York Times.

In fact, with the surge in private equity deals, it's getting tough to see who's representing who.

Perhaps the biggest issue is when investment banks engage in their own deals and also advise the client. This is actually becoming common for firms like Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), and Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER)

But in this scenario, is the client really getting good advice? Or is the investment bank just trying to get a juicy deal?

One way to manage this has been for investment banks to invest alongside others. Thus, there would be no control position.

But with Goldman raising a $20 billion fund and other investment banks in the process of forming mega funds, is this realistic?

In other words, investment banks are going to start looking more and more like private equity funds – that, incidentally, provide advisory services.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

The old expression is "He who lives by the sword, shall die by the sword." To paraphrase, he who lives by his (big) mouth, shall die by his (big) mouth. A fate that might also await me if I'm not careful. Cramer bragged about his unaudited, never proven 24% annual return when he managed a hedge fund for 13 years. I have questioned this on many occasions for many reasons.

Nevertheless, James Cramer has put his credibility on the line and it has disappearerd recently when he bragged (or came clean, which ever you prefer) that he had manipulated information in the press with surgical precision and timing to create shorting opportunities and other advantaged trades. He tried to backtrack and un-ring the bell and he failed miserably as noted by Zac Bissonnette in "It wasn't me" says Cramer.

There is an old expression I keep learning anew: It's the first law of holes -- if you're in one stop digging. I must have used this before in one of my posts somewhere but it is worth repeating. And if Attorney General Alberto Gonzales does not see this post I hope one of his friends points it out to him. He too seems to be digging deeper when it comes to his forthrightness relative to his role in the politically motivated firing of federal attorneys.

Some of you may be bored with my American Idol fascination by now, and still others do not share my view that studying this show has any relation to the stock market. In either case I will continue to follow the Sanjaya saga as if I were following a possible acquisition.

Sanjaya survives again!? For those of us who were originally perplexed, along with Simon Cowell, as to how he could be voted into the top twelve -- Holy Cow Batman! -- Sanjaya is now in the top eleven.

When I first tried to rationalize his success I posted: American Idol: Are Indian call centers skewing the vote? Which created as much a stir as Sanjaya's success. One of my detractors was VR, who expressed his displessure with my post. I used his comments in the: Sunday Funnies: American Idol - Indian Idle, although he was not that funny. Out of respect for a contrary opinion and his right to have one I asked him if he would like to comment further and here is what he said: