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Don't look now, but your stock market investments are shrinking fast. The crisis of corporate corruption and the erosion of investor confidence are of epic proportions and the damage done may take decades to repair.

The terrorists of Sept. 11 wanted to destroy symbols of our financial strength in an effort to undermine our financial economy and confidence. But it is apparent that our corporate integrity had already been destroyed from within, eaten away by excessive corporate greed and lack of any semblance of corporate ethics. The major market averages are slicing through post-terror-attack lows like a hot knife through butter, as investors throw in the towel instead.

After seeing the steady stream of scandals ranging from obscure companies to household names, Enron to Imclone, Tyco to WorldCom, it is apparent to me that the link between Wall Street and Main Street has broken, and Main Street is getting the short end of the stick.

When did the corporate raison d'etre change from providing goods and services that raised the general standard of living and improved quality of life to just funding a way of life for a privileged few?

Did all these highly compensated CEOs and CFOs all attend the University of Robert Brennan? You may remember the high-flying founder and CEO of First Jersey Securities, and those commercials of him alighting from a helicopter, and offering you the chance to "come grow with" his company? Did they all learn to cheat, con and bamboozle before reinventing themselves into yet an even more amoral executive with yet another scam designed to part honest employees and unsuspecting investors from their hard-earned dollars?

A lot of this corporate scandal mess could be of our own making. We made it very easy for the foxes to enter the chicken coop when Congress, in 1995, passed a law blocking investor lawsuits. If management is not held accountable to its shareholders, what prevents them from succumbing to temptation? And if they make financials so difficult that even CPAs can't decipher them, how do you expect the average investor to make any sense out of them?

We also made a distinction between "white-collar" crime and the garden variety. Because white-collar crimes are committed by men and women in expensive suits sitting in corner offices, they are deemed not as detrimental as, and therefore not subject to, as severe a punishment as good old robbery, rape and murder. The punishment for many white-collar crimes is a slap on the wrist and, if particularly creative, a monetary fine. Rarely are white-collar criminals sentenced to jail time, and even then it's not hard time. It's a few months at Club Fed, a minimum security facility (read: no barbed wire, gates or guard tower) and provides a commissary stocked with high-end goods, cable TV and maybe a nine-hole golf course. And when paroled, they get to return to their own private Idaho to continue a lavish lifestyle that the rest of us can only dream of.

But take a look at what's happened to your hard-earned dough. It's painful. Many a 401k has been robbed. Many retirement funds have been raped. Even more dreams for the future have been murdered.

The effect of this corporate corruption may mean that a decade of investor interest will be lost. What does that mean for baby boomers that may have, at best, 15 years to recoup a small percentage of their lost nest eggs? Do they have to become ambulance chasers, selling into the next disaster du jour to avoid eating cat food in their golden years? Not all of us want caviar; a good chuck steak would suffice.

And what will the future hold for our children and grandchildren? Who will invest in companies trying to find a cure for cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, diabetes and birth defects?

Forget about another oversight committee or another layer of regulation. These jokers have proven that there is no law enacted that they won't try and get around, no oversight or special investigative committee they won't try and stonewall.

Isn't it time for the punishment to fit the crime? Drunk drivers have their vehicles impounded and sold, with the proceeds going to some good cause. Drug dealers forfeit everything suspected of being purchased with their ill-gotten gains. It's time we revisit the punishment of these so called white-collar crimes.

Lose all the profits from those dastardly deeds. Give up the real estate. Sell off the luxury car collection. Find some way to repay the poor employees who toiled to finance the fun of a chosen few, to pay for the pleasure of a protected class of criminals. Make them spend a few years in Big Max (a maximum security prison) with a really scary cellmate. That might make these ethically-challenged executives think twice about their actions.

Martha Stewart, maybe you should have dollar-cost averaged like the rest of us when the stock of Imclone fell below $60 per share, if as you reminded us, you invested in the company to find a cure for cancer.

Maybe Ken Lay of Enron infamy could take a few of those Aspen properties that are sitting idle and turn them into bed-and-breakfast inns, or better yet, time shares for the investors and employees that are unable to afford a vacation thanks to Enron's deceit. But please turn over the management to an independent and impartial team.

And Dennis Kozlowski, formerly of Tyco, you've ruined it for the rest of us who believed the government surplus was created from our tax dollars and wanted it back, especially when it turned out you tried to avoid paying taxes on fine-art purchases in the first place.

The government surplus is long gone, thanks to the war on terrorism and that tax cut. But maybe by going after the corporate crooks, we can make a dent in the deficit.