Everybody has heard of Martha Stewart.

You probably have never heard of John Youngdahl.

Stewart's the one who created a homemaking empire called Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

But then she got involved in an insider trading scandal.

Back in June, she had to resign as chairman and CEO of the company she founded.

The resignation followed a federal indictment that claimed she and her former stockbroker lied to investigators who were probing her profitable sale of ImClone stock.

So the case is about lying to Securities Exchange Commission investigators.

The indictment came a year after it was revealed that Stewart sold 3,928 shares of ImClone, which netted Stewart about $229,000.

The sale came one day before a federal regulatory ruling that sent ImClone shares tumbling.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejected ImClone's application for a cancer drug called Erbitux.

By selling the shares when she did, Stewart avoided about $45,000 in losses, the SEC maintains.

Of course, that's pocket change to somebody like Stewart, who made Forbes Magazine's list of the 400 wealthiest Americans in 2000 and 2001.

Stewart was buddies with the CEO of ImClone, and SEC probers wanted to know how much Stewart knew ahead of time about the ruling.

Apparently, not much, or at least they couldn't prove it, because they didn't indict her for inside trading.

They indicted her for lying to investigators, which, still is, of course, illegal and indictable.

A guilty conviction on all counts could mean a prison sentence of as much as 30 years for Stewart.

Shares of her company's stock also tumbled.

I realize Martha Stewart is a bit of a celebrity, so I guess she got all the publicity she so richly deserved.

But wouldn't it seem that a venerable brokerage house like Goldman-Sachs deserves at least a little publicity when one of its traders goes awry.

Enter Youngdahl.

He was a senior trader for Goldman-Sachs.

The Feds say that on Oct. 31, 2001, the U.S. Treasury Department held a 9 a.m. press conference to announce its decision to no longer issue 30-year government bonds.

The info was supposed to be embargoed until 10 a.m., when reporters could release it to the public.

About 9:35 a.m., according to the indictment against Youngdahl, a consultant phoned Youngdahl with the news.

Youngdahl relayed the news to Goldman traders, who began trading like madmen.

At 9:43 a.m., the Treasury Department inadvertently posted the information on its Web site, sparking the biggest bond rally since 1987.

But in the previous eight minutes, Goldman traders bought up $84 million in 30-year bonds and $233.6 million in bond futures.

The feds say that netted Goldman-Sachs a profit of $4.3 million. Not bad for eight minutes work. Nothing like making a little money off the taxpayers.

Youngdahl faces up to 71 months in prison if convicted of all seven counts in his indictment.

Goldman-Sachs paid back the $4.3 million in profit and also got hit with a $5 million fine to settle up with the feds.

Seems a little weird that Stewart could get 30 years, doesn't it?

And it also seems a little weird that a case like Youngdahl's doesn't even get noticed by the mainstream media.

But then again, when you consider the level of corporate corruption and scandal in this country, a lousy $84 million inside trade deal almost becomes mundane, doesn't it?

I think capitalism is wonderful, but for crying out loud, we really need to get a handle on this greed thing. It's hard not to become a raging cynic.

Think about the virtual cascade of corporate scandals.

Go online. Read the headlines.

Enron 'bribed tax officials'

Qwest admits improper accounts

Senior AOL executive resigns

Bosses resign at battered Elan

ABB sacks managers over hidden losses

Merck 'exaggerated' revenue in accounts

Accounting panic hits Xerox

Accounting concerns focus on GE

Problems mount for Tyco

FBI investigates Kmart

FBI launches Global Crossing probe

Accounts probe at Haliburton

Cable TV operator Adelphia goes bust.

'Serious Problems' Topple Executives at Freddie Mac

And then there's Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, Vivendi, Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Harken Energy.

There are more firms being investigated; I, frankly, got tired of looking.

We've got airline CEOs hiding multimillion-dollar executive benefit packages from workers and simultaneously asking workers for $1.8 billion in wage and benefit concessions.

Executive compensation is stratospheric - the average CEO makes $7 million a year. That's average.

Columnist Arnoud de Bourchgrave, writing for United Press International, points out that there have been more corporate scandals in the past five years than in all of the 20th century and that they have "inflicted more harm to the world's greatest free enterprise system since Sept. 11 than al-Qaida's terrorists did."

And, he writes, "With 20/20 hindsight, we now know that it was corruption that fueled the stock market's giddy climb in the late 1990s and that transferred the combined wealth of small investors at the bottom of the food chain to Wall Street bankers - and their CEO weekend friends."

Remember in 1992 when Bill Clinton called the 1980s the decade of greed? That, I'm afraid, was only the beginning.

Oh, and, by the way, that's you and me at the bottom of the food chain. [[In-content Ad]]