Will financial reporting ever have a Woodward and Bernstein, the two metro desk Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate Scandal? After attending last night's panel on Financial Journalism Under Fire: Did We Do Our Job?, hosted by the New York Financial Writers Association, the answer is clear: no. (Changes may and should happen, and I'll touch on a few of those).

I have a theory that if you took a psychological assessment of a sports writer, a political reporter, and a financial writer to see who was the most cynical, the answer would most definitely be the financial writer. They're reporting on an industry ruled by greed and people who make more money in a year than they'll see in a lifetime. The system is just too large, too shady, and too encouraged to be bad in the name of profits (deregulated) that reporting on any of this would be best reserved for some hippie outlet like Mother Jones, not the respectable Wall Street Journal. Big scoops in finance usually involve mergers and acquisitions, company and exec failures -- going after anything else is cute idealism. (In fact, someone last night compared it to steroids and baseball -- you don't want to know where those home runs are coming from, you just want to enjoy the game).

Topps' 2009 Allen & Ginter baseball card set will include the usual mix of all-stars and utility players, with a special twist: Fraudsters like Bernie Madoff, Charles Ponzi and Enron will also be inserted in some packs as part of the "World's Biggest Hoaxes, Hoodwinks & Bamboozles" subset.

No word yet on whether Alex Rodriguez will be in the set as a regular baseball player or as a fraudster.

One of the saddest stories to come out of the Bernie Madoff saga is that of Elie Wiesel. The Holocaust survivor, Nobel Laureate and activist saw nearly all of the assets of his foundation wiped out in the Ponzi scheme. Wiesel also lost a huge chunk of his personal wealth.

"This was a personal tragedy where we discovered all of a sudden what we had done in 40 years - my books, my lectures, everything - was gone," he said at a panel discussion on Thursday.

If you lost money with Bernie Madoff -- or are watching one of your favorite charities suffer because of his perfidy -- then ModelWorkshas a toy for you.

The "Smash-Me-Bernie" doll features Madoff in a devil-red suit carrying a pitchfork, and even comes with a hammer to help you smash him. The doll is making its debut at New York City's Toy Fair and when it's available to the public, will retail for $99.95.

You can watch some clips of the doll in the video below. It seems a little expensive for a recession toy -- I'd prefer a good-old fashioned Raggedy Fuld or Raggedy Bernie doll.

Bernard Madoff has claimed another high-profile victim.

A lawyer for Zsa Zsa Gabor tells (subscription required) The Wall Street Journal that the actress and socialite may have lost as much as $10 million investing with Madoff.

The money is believed to have been invested through a third-party money manager, and the missing funds were just noticed by her husband Prince Frederic von Anhalt. Forensic accountants have been brought in to try to figure out what happened.

The Prince is Gabor's eigth husband, but they've been together since 1986.

What will Zsa Zsa do about the schtunk who stole her money? Reuters reports that she isn't taking it well, but who can blame her? I propose that Madoff be tied to a chair where Gabor can slap him silly in a pay-per-view event to raise money for his victims.

Bernie Madoff, who wears a bullet-proof vest when he goes out thanks to his fear that someone wants to shoot him, has been getting the kind of obsessive media attention that used to be reserved for O.J. Simpson back in the 1990s. They cover the entrance to his apartment and the voyages he takes to lower Manhattan's courthouse.

Now it looks like the media has a new Madoff angle to chew on. He made up the account statements that he sent to his victims. And investigators can find no evidence that he conducted any trades. For example, one Madoff victim's November 2008 account statement showed all sorts of trades -- including the buying and selling of shares in Fidelity's Spartan US Treasury Money Market Fund. But Fidelity has no record that Madoff's firm dealt with the Fidelity unit the works with investment advisers like Madoff.

If Madoff was not making up account statements he could not have pulled off his fraud. Of course the same thing can be said for Satyam Computer Services (NYSE: SAY) and Enron. As I have posted, when you allow a company or an investment manager to write their own report card, you are just asking for trouble. Simply banning that practice and replacing it with a 100% independent group of financial statement preparers would save society uncounted misery.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and is the author of You Can't Order Change: Lessons from Jim McNerney's Turnaround at Boeing. He owns Fidelity's Spartan US Treasury Money Market Fund shares and has no financial interest in the other securities mentioned.

I'm not sure when it happened, but I think that I've slipped into a Charles Dickens novel.

I got my first clue that something was up back in September, when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Amid scandals over bailouts and backroom deals, congressional testimony and AIG retreats, one figure quickly emerged from the mass of bloated plutocrats and greedy execs clamoring for bonuses. Everything about Dick Fuld, from his cartoonishly aggressive management style, to his whining over Congress' refusal to bail out Lehman, to his striking resemblance to Rocky and Bullwinkle's Fearless Leader, made him the perfect poster boy for corporate greed. As more details leaked out, including the story about Fuld being pummeled by one of his employees, much was made of his name. In the public mind and this writer's heart, Richard Fuld was permanently transformed into a complete Dick. All in all, I was hardly surprised to see Lehman fold.

Another clue came when the story leaked out that Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain tried to collect a $10 million bonus. The fact that this bonus was, supposedly, based on Thain's performance in a year when Merrill lost billions of dollars made Thain's chutzpah almost legendary. My wife, who has had dealings with Thain in the past, noted that this aristocratic sense of entitlement permeated every single one of their interactions. I, on the other hand, couldn't help but remember the words of the witches in Macbeth, who hail the Scotsman as Thane of Cawdor, Thane of Glamis, and King hereafter. There seemed to be something ironic about an ambitious, clawing Thain who so clearly felt himself deserving of the spoils of war.

There have since been others. For example, when I first heard of Bernie Madoff, I thought nothing of his last name. However, when I learned that the proper pronunciation isn't "MAD-off" but rather "MADE-off," I couldn't help but laugh. For somebody who "made off" with billions of dollars, Bernie has a name that would put Dickens to shame. Following him, of course, there's been Joseph Forte, the Ponzi schemer who put on a "strong" front, but couldn't hide the fact that making money wasn't his forte. Frankly, punning off these guys is so easy that it's almost embarrassing.

Bernie Madoff -- who continues to luxuriate under house arrest in his East Side apartment -- keeps losing more of his camouflage. Specifically, prosecutors found checks totaling $173 million, which he had made out to his family members and friends prior to his arrest last month.

He had received a $250 million loan from Carl Shapiro, the 95 year old who lost $545 million with Madoff, around the same time. Did Madoff take Shapiro's cash and then write checks against it to his family members? That detail has not yet been revealed, but it could certainly have happened.

It seems a bit odd that Madoff is not in jail at the moment. Since he moved $160 million of his money into his UK operations, it would seem logical for him to leave the U.S. and go there. Unless he has even more money stashed away in some bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.

He may have passed a legal test to keep him free on bail. But morally, he definitely belongs in the clink.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College. His eighth book is You Can't Order Change: Lessons from Jim McNerney's Turnaround at Boeing.

Actor Kevin Bacon famous for the six degrees of separation theory -- that is, Kevin Bacon is connected by film role to every actor through at most six other actors. For instance, Bacon was a guest on NBC's Will and Grace when Will said to Bacon, "You did a movie with Val Kilmer?" and Bacon replied, "No, but Val was in Top Gun with Tom Cruise, and Tom was in A Few Good Men with me. Huh, that was a short one."

Why am I talking about this? Bernie Madoff, who claims he stole $50 billion from investors around the world in a Ponzi scheme, is a mere one degree of separation from Kevin Bacon and his wife Kyra Sedgwick. New York magazine reports that the two "lost everything except for their checking accounts and the land they own" thanks to Madoff.

How did Bacon get sucked into the Madoff network? I don't know. It could have been through his Hollywood connections -- after all Steven Speilberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg are among the other Madoff victims and it would surprise me if Bacon didn't know them. Fortunately, both Bacon and Sedgwick are still working actors so they can rebuild their savings at a relatively rapid rate.

This week a little story about a $50 billion investment fraud has metastasized. Madoff Securities, a brokerage firm that ran a secretive investment fund on the side, has closed down -- revealing that its steady 10% annual returns was a result of a Ponzi scheme. For some who trusted Madoff a week ago, they are today coming to grips with life without money. Is Madoff the only one out there? I doubt it. So you need to protect yourself.

How did Madoff accomplish this? That story has yet to be revealed. But founder Bernie Madoff revealed that he was using money from his most recent investors to pay off the earlier ones who requested their money. And a letter from hedge fund research and advisory firm, Aksia -- which steered its clients away from Madoff -- reveals five useful clues:

• Unknown accounting firm. Madoff used an accounting firm Friehling & Horowitz that employed three people -- one was a 78 year old living in Florida.
• Incomprehensible investment strategy too good to be true. Madoff employed a "split conversion strategy" which was never clearly defined and whose returns other traders could not duplicate.
• Deception about technology. Madoff claimed it was technologically sophisticated but a visitor to its offices found paper tickets sent through the mail.