In 1991, John Meriwether lost his job at Salomon Brothers in the wake of a government bond scandal; he then proceeded to open up his own hedge fund: Long-Term Capital Management. After the collapse of that fund nearly torpedoed the entire global economy -- and was chronicled in the highly readable When Genius Failed -- Meriwether has gone through a string of less notable ventures.

His latest is now coming to an end. Bloomberg reports that "JWM Partners LLC is closing its main Relative Value Opportunity II fund after losing 44% from September 2007 to February 2009."

It's hard to have much sympathy for the investors who lost their money putting their faith in the mastermind of one of the biggest disasters in the history of global finance, although he was more conservative this time around: The Relative Value Opportunity II fund was leveraged just 15 to 1 instead of the more than 25 to 1 that led to the demise of Long-Term Capital. This time though, Meriwether's fund was a victim of market problems instead of a cause of them.

Everyone is trying to figure out the roots of the current financial crisis. You can trace it back to one man, Mr. Li, and a formula that was very misused by Wall Street. Let me start by telling you a story that took place some 30 years ago.

I was sitting in my statistics class and the professor walked in and said, "Today we are going to learn about correlations." He explained that correlation is very simple. It is a single number that describes the degree of relationship between two variables, and that there was a formula in our book we could use. "But right now," he said " it's more important that you learn the concept that a correlation is a single number that describes the degree of relationship between two variables," he repeated, as professors often do. "Your answer will therefore always range between -1 and +1."

Some of you will remember this story from last November when the door to our current world-wide financial industry meltdown was just beginning to crack open. At that time, we were facing tens of billions of dollars in losses and write-downs, but now we have witnessed hundreds of billions of dollars of the same and the government is telling us that it will take another $700 billion to shore up the industry.

Naturally, most of the people that got us into this mess are receiving golden parachutes as they abandon or are ejected from their burning empires. President Bush has been in over his head for years and turned a blind eye, (I think blind in both eyes) see: The George W. Bush economic plan? The shame does not end with Bush, though he has shown no leadership on the subject.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, said of the recent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout, "Americans deserve to know if this proposal will help keep mortgages affordable, stabilize the markets and protect taxpayer interests."

Where were Bush and Dodd when the foundation for this crises was being developed See: SEC opens the gates and the world drowns.

The entire political system is jam-packed with conflicts of interest. Here are Senators Dodd's contributors by firm and industry as reported by OpenSecrets.org:

• Top 5 Contributors, 2003-2008: Citigroup Inc. $310,294, SAC Capital Partners $282,000, United Technologies $263,400, American International Group 224,678, Bear Stearns $205,600.
• Top 5 Industries, 2003-2008: Securities & Investment $,245,796; Lawyer/Law Firms 1,976, 063; Insurance $1,416,972; Real Estate $1,262,791; Commercial Banks $850, 544.