The Economic Times in an otherwise rambling attempt at back-handed character assassination admits that Preet Bharara might have his own motives:

Other ambitions could well ride on the outcome as well. Although the prosecutor who brought the case, Punjab-born and New Jersey-raised Preet Bharara, has claimed not to be interested in politics, it’s just such high-profile cases that have launched political careers for some of his predecessors as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, most recently Rudolph Giuliani, who parlayed his successes in sending New York mobsters to jail and in prosecuting financeers Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken on insider-trading charges into a successful candidacy for mayor of New York in the 1990s.

I mean, it can’t only be defendants who suffer from envy, right?

And “envy of the richer” might have its counterpart in “envy of the more powerful” and envy of many other things, including simply the limelight. Preet Bharara, after all, has got the dubious distinction of being on the cover of Time Magazine.

Preet Bharara is said to be a savvy operator who is in the running for Eric Holder’s job and has been having discussions, reportedly, about how much he could earn in the private sector ($6 million), which is pretty good going for such a young guy.  Rajat Gupta, remember, only started earning multiple millions in his forties.

You remember before they helped destroy the global economy, Rubin, Summers, and Greenspan were also on the cover of Time.  Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize….so he could go bomb Pakistan and start a cyberwar against Iran.

The prize is like putting a nice shiny sticker on something and dangling it in front of a two-year old. It’s to make sure baby keeps his eye on the bright stuff, while you rob him of his milk.

But all that aside, why does the Economic Times miss the single most important reason people go to trial, which is not that they become so arrogant they think they can win not matter what.

It is that they think they’re innocent and they have the means to prove it.

Maybe, unfortunately,  they also believe in the American legal system.

Maybe they think they won’t be tried in the media.

Maybe they don’t know how dumb jurors can be.

Maybe they don’t know how biased  people can be.

Maybe they think success isn’t ENVIED by a lot of people.

Especially the success of foreigners.

And Rajat Gupta was always a foreigner, no matter how high he rose in corporate America.

The only good thing about this verdict is that for the first time, Gupta, and a lot of his Indian friends in the business world, will wake up to the fact that no matter what their passport says,  no matter what the sign on the door says, when the chips are down, they are, finally, just another wog…

And maybe Time Magazine should put that on its next cover.