Waitin' on the Horiemon

Well, in just over an hour, we'll get to find out what the judge thinks of the case presented by the prosecutors in the Livedoor case.

My guess is that Horie Takafumi walks for lack of evidence, while Miyauchi and company are convicted on their confessions of wrongdoing.

Horie's ability to sue the government for a host of civil crimes (defamation, destruction of property, false arrest, et cetera) is kept on hold through the threat by prosecutors to appeal their criminal case against Horie to the District Court. The criminal convictions of Miyauchi & Co. serve as a firebreak against Livedoor stockholders suing the government for destroying the company.

The targeting and killing of Livedoor has been a sordid, disheartening bit of business (as I type, the air is filled with the sound of news helicopters hovering over Roppongi Hills). If the laws on accounting violations had been applied to the nation's banks with the same fervor, tens of thousands of executives would be behind bars.

As I said at the beginning, this was a set up--more properly, a takedown . Pour l'example.

We'll see if (let's hope that) the judge agrees.