By some accounts, traders had been doing that kind of thing for many years, until regulators and, particularly, Eliot Spitzer, the New York State attorney general, nabbed them. Through it all, regulators have relied mainly, though not exclusively, on monetary sanctions. Bear Stearns's wasn't even the largest -- Bank of America holds the record at $675 million. But while these large "fines," as they are usually called in the news media, are reassuring, it's arguable at best whether they mean very much to the companies being penalized. Just as the hedge fund giant Long-Term Capital Management was too big to fail in 1998, when it was bailed out to keep from torpedoing the entire financial system, the biggest Wall Street firms are simply too large to be effectively punished. At least, not by the kind of sanctions meted out to Bear Stearns.