Is nothing sacred? Wall Street's enthusiasm for dodgy dealing has extended as far as the Million Dollar Challenge – a fun stock-picking contest organised by the business television channel CNBC.
In a grave tone, a CNBC announcer this week told viewers that some of the 20 finalists in the competition are suspected of fiddling the rules.
For the world of financial telly, this is perhaps akin to Janet Ellis's shocking disclosure in 1983 that vandals had smashed up the Blue Peter garden. CNBC intoned that it took the matter "very seriously" and had "immediately launched a thorough investigation".
CNBC's competition is straightforward – contestants start with a float of a million imaginary "CNBC bucks". They can buy and sell shares in any American company worth more than $500m. There are weekly prizes of $10,000 for the canniest investor and a grand final prize of $1m – in real dollars.
The exact form of the suspected nefarious activities is not at all clear. Insider knowledge? Shorting stocks? Ramping prices on internet messageboards?
The finalists are a motley bunch. They include a waitress at an Italian restaurant in Ohio who cheerfully admits she owns no shares in real life. There's a radiologist from a Detroit hospital and a retired engineer mixed among a handful of serious-looking professional traders.
Some of them already show signs of an over-enthusiasm for gambling. Asked what he would do with the $1m winnings, student John Tepichin of Southern Methodist University in Dallas replies that he would "buy my mom a present and then put the rest [back] into my trading account".
CNBC is hoping to clear up the matter by early July. If Eliot Spitzer was still policing Wall Street, nobody would dare to do such a thing.
