It really is hard to believe that is has been six weeks since BP's (BP) oil well exploded and sank in the gulf, and even harder to believe that the company has still not been able to stop oil from leaking out into the ocean.

Everyone wants answers to what exactly led to the to oil rig's explosion, and today the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder stated that a criminal investigation had been launched into the matter to determine which, if any, laws were broken leading up to the disaster.

Toyota Motor Company (TM) continues to find itself in arguably the biggest crisis in the auto maker's history, and today more accusations were made against the company. The company is back in the news today with accusations that Toyota tried to hide data in lawsuits filed by Toyota drivers injured in crashes.

The accusation came from New York Democrat, Edolphus Towns. Towns stated that the company deliberately shielded some of its design and testing data, and in many instances settled lawsuits in order to avoid turning over the information.

Across the country, college classes are starting. In each of these classrooms, students are struggling with calculus, trudging through Candide, and wondering just what the hell they're going to do with their degrees upon graduation. The last of these is characteristic of every college student, especially those of us, with the foresight fortitude recklessness zeal to major in liberal arts fields (in my case, Philosophy).

The anxiety is a bit higher this year, given a high rate of unemployment, the likelihood of a "jobless recovery" and the fact that it could take years for destroyed value to be recovered.

So, here's one for you -- according to Joseph Cotchett (a lawyer for some of Bernie Madoff's victims), Bernie Madoff is surprised that his Ponzi scheme lasted as long as it did. The revelation came during a 4.5 hour interview, wherein Madoff revealed how the scheme worked and how securities regulators didn't catch him. Madoff did apologize, repeatedly, for the harm he caused victims.

The most interesting part of the interview is when Madoff described meetings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) while he was committing the fraud and how the SEC was unable to catch him, which didn't surprise him. These comments lead Cotchett to theorize that "many people" were negligent, including the government watchdog agencies. Let's not forget that the SEC has seen no evidence of wrongdoing by its staff as far as the Madoff situation is concerned. Nevertheless, the SEC has undergone many changes in order to continue to protect investors and the market.

Bernie Madoff, the mastermind behind the world's largest ever Ponzi scheme, arrived at a federal prison in North Carolina to begin serving his 150 year prison sentence.

It will be hard to find anyone sympathetic to the 71 year old investor who will be spending the rest of his life behind bars. We still do not know if Madoff will serve out all of his time at the federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, but for now that is where he can call home.

According to a report released yesterday, U.S. mortgage fraud reports increased 36% last year. According to the FBI, suspicious activity reports increased to 63,713 during fiscal 2008 from 46,717 a year ago.

California and Florida had the highest number of suspicious reports, which some attribute to the fact that the housing market has dropped and credit has dried up in those regions.

According to the agency, reports filed through March put fraud reports on track to top 70,000 during the current fiscal year ... not a good sign.

Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE: XOM) announced today that it would not challenge the ruling of an appeals court stating that it was to pay $470 million in interest on the $507.5 million judgment related to the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill took place back in 1989, and victims have been trying to get some money from Exxon ever since. In 1994 the victims won a $5 billion judgment, but Exxon has fought that ruling for the past 15 years.

Bernie Madoff was in federal court today, where he was given a 150 year sentence for charges related to his Ponzi scheme.

Reports from the courtroom state that Madoff, the mastermind behind the largest ever Ponzi scheme, showed little to no emotion today when he learned that he would be spending the rest of his life in a jail cell. Due to federal sentencing guidelines, Madoff must serve at least 80% of his sentence, so he will not be eligible for parole until 2129.

Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford pleaded 'not guilty' today in a federal court arraignment to charges that he ran a $7 billion Ponzi scheme. Not only is Stanford being charged with running the Ponzi scheme, there are also allegations that he paid $100,000 to Leroy King, the former chief executive officer of Antigua's Financial Services Regulatory Commission.

This day has been coming for a while. It seems as though the government has been looking into Stanford's investment company since 2005, but it was only this past February that they shut down the Houston office of his investment company, Stanford Financial Group.

It doesn't take much imagination to see that banking could be a bit of a scam on the public. But to keep that scam going it takes big buildings, plush offices, corporate jets, complex product names . . . and a veil of secrecy. Secrecy is important because without it, the mystique is lost. And by mystique, we're sometimes talking about illegal money-making schemes.

That's what Switzerland's premier bank, UBS AG (NYSE: UBS) got caught running. And after forking over $780 million to U.S. authorities, it will have made only a small down payment on paying its penalties to society. How so? UBS is going to turn over the names of its clients to the U.S., which marks the end of a centuries-old franchise for Switzerland -- the inviolate secrecy of the Swiss bank account.

Altria (NYSE: MO - option chain) stock is falling today after a Florida jury found that the death of a smoker was caused by his addiction to cigarettes. MO's subsidiary Philip Morris now is involved in the second phase of the trial , which is to decide who is at fault for his addiction. This is the first case in which an individual smoker's family sued a tobacco company for death by cigarette addiction. This is a tough precedent for MO and the cigarette industry, as it opens the industry up to potentially limitless civil suits from individual smokers.

While I believe that cigarette stocks are well-suited to our current environment, Phillip Morris International (NYSE: PM), a former subsidiary of MO, looks much more attractive to me, due in part to its lower exposure to the American legal system. PM is off by only 0.6% today compared to MO' s 3.5%. If you think Altria stock won't be rising too far in the coming months, then it could be a good time to look at a bearish hedged play on MO.

After 15 years of earnings growth, the average law firm saw its profits tumble between 8% and 12% last year, according (subscription required) to The Wall Street Journal.

That decline is sparking layoffs, salary freezes and lower bonuses at law firms large and small, and a few former titans have closed their doors altogether. The firms that have been squeezed the most have been mid-sized practices that have cost structures that make it difficult to persevere through a downturn -- but lack the cache of the elite large-sized firms.

Investors will likely recoup only pennies on the dollar for their losses in this global meltdown, but it will be a godsend for lawyers.

A Louisiana appeals court upheld former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling's convctions, but ordered that he be resentenced because the judge made errors in applying sentencing guidelines.

According (subscription required) to The Wall Street Journal, "The ruling likely means Mr. Skilling will see several years shaved off his current sentence of 24 years and four months." A former federal prosecutor told that newspaper that he expects that Skilling's sentence could be cut as much as nine years. A sentence of less than fifteen years would give Skilling quite a few years of life after the pokey, if he can keep his weight down and stay healthy: He looked a little bloated last I saw him.

Mr. Skilling's lawyer expressed disappointment with the ruling and vowed to fight his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. With issues of accounting fraud and corporate malfeasance back in sharp focus with the collapse of several financial institutions and the unraveling of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, Skilling's timing could not be any worse.

There were 210 securities fraud class-action lawsuits filed in 2008, a rise of 19% over 2007 and 80% over 2006, according to a report issued jointly Tuesday by Stanford Law School and Cornerstone Research.

The bulk of the rise in lawsuits can be explained by the writedowns that took place at nearly every financial company: The lawsuits allege that the firms overvalued their mortgage related assets. But more importantly, people are suing companies because they lost money on stocks: Anytime the market goes down, the number of lawsuits goes up.

What will come of these lawsuits? Probably relatively little: Banks will look to settle to avoid the expense and risk of litigation, lawyers will get richer and shareholders will get back a few pennies. Securities attorney Robert Giuffra Jr told (subscription required) The Wall Street Journal that "Plaintiffs lawyers will face an uphill battle if they claim that every bank on Wall Street was engaged in a separate internal conspiracy to commit economic suicide."

Do the banks deserve to be sued? Absolutely! But litigation seems unlikely to solve much here and the expense and distraction may even make things worse.

Investors with Bernard Madoff who withdrew their money before the world's largest investment fraud should not celebrate their good fortune. According to Bloomberg News' Ann Woolner, these people may be sucked into the scandal even if they had no intention of ripping anyone off.

"Investors who benefit from fraud, even if they knew nothing of any misdeeds, can be called on to return the fictitious earnings from their investments, even their principal if they redeemed it before the fraud was exposed," Woolner writes. "That money would be added to Madoff assets, to be divvied up among creditors, including the very same investors who had been forced to contribute to the pool."

Remember, the Madoff investors who did not get wiped out benefited (unknowingly) from the proceeds of a fraud. They did not earn legitimate profits.

The question is what should happen next. Should the lucky Madoff investors be able to keep their gains even if technically they don't deserve them? I don't know. I am not a lawyer nor am I a clergyman. These are going to be tough, heart-breaking decisions.

But it seems to me that the Madoff "haves" are going to be called to help the "have-nots." Remember, Madoff's victims will be lucky if a fraction of their money is recovered. They still have not recouped all of money that people lost in Sam Israel's Bayou Fund.

The pain for Madoff's investors will last years.