On Wall Street: On Wednesday last John Rigas was arrested by US Postal Service investigators at 6.00 a.m. and made to do the "perp walk" outside his Manhattan apartment. He was stripped of his tie, belt and shoelaces, paraded in handcuffs as a crime "perpetrator" in front of the cameras, and had his head shoved down as he was bundled into a car.

The 78-year-old founder of Adelphia, who has had triple heart by-pass surgery and had offered to give himself up voluntarily, was driven off to be charged with corporate fraud and then released pending trial.

On Thursday, US President Bush told an "Elizabeth Dole for Senate" dinner in North Carolina: "What took place yesterday will continue to take place. This administration will investigate, will arrest and will prosecute chief executive officers who break the law." (Applause!)

On Friday Mr Bush boasted at the White House: "The American people saw this week that this administration and the Justice Department will track down those, prosecute those CEOs who break the law. We're making good progress here."

On Saturday Mr Bush began his radio address: "Good morning. This week, the federal government took decisive action against corporate fraud and abuse. The Justice Department arrested several executives. . ."

On Monday Mr Bush told a "Sanford for Governor" luncheon in South Carolina: "This administration will investigate, arrest and prosecute corporate executives who break the law."

From all this, one might conclude that the US president himself was behind the subjugation of Mr Rigas to the US equivalent of medieval stocks, as part of a nationwide programme against corporate villains - which, in a way, he was.

Two weeks ago, Mr Bush set up a Corporate Fraud Task Force under Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson. He wanted fast, visible action. The country was boiling with indignation about corporate fraud.

He told the new taskforce an anecdote that he has been repeating since; how after a speech on Wall Street a "regular guy" interrupted someone lecturing the president about what he should be doing to say, "if you want more corporate responsibility, start throwing some of them in jail".

The "capture" of John Rigas was carefully planned. On Tuesday evening last week, Thompson telephoned the White House. "A sensitive law enforcement action will take place tomorrow morning regarding Adelphia," he told Bush's counsel, Alberto Gonzales.

White House officials monitored the next day's dawn action on Manhattan's sidewalk as closely as an air strike on Baghdad. The "perp walk" accomplished, the president was immediately told. "Good," he said.

"Wait till you see what's next," laughed presidential adviser Karl Rove at a Republican fund-raiser the following evening, "orange jumpsuits"!

Yesterday at a lavish ceremony in the White House, President Bush signed the "Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002" introducing a new corporate code. Under it, securities fraud becomes a crime, punishable by 25 years in jail; shredding documents and signing false accounts get 20 years.

"We will continue to arrest and prosecute corporate officials who break the law," Mr Bush said in his remarks. "No more easy money for corporate criminals - just hard time."

With mid-term elections only three months away, the most pro-business president in generations is determined to show he can be tough on crooked business people - just as liberal Arkansas governor Bill Clinton showed he could be tough on crime in the 1992 presidential election, by refusing to stay the execution of mentally retarded black convict Rickey Ray Rector.

The issue has become a political minefield for the Administration. Mr Bush is on the defensive because of his own corporate shenanigans in Texas, and the Democratic opposition is fixing its sights on other former chief executives in the cabinet.

He is doing the unthinkable for a Republican president - like Nixon going to China.

In his counter-offensive, Mr Bush pointed out that most of the big frauds began during the Clinton era. He said he had to appoint lawyer Harvey Pitt as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to "clean up a mess".

Clinton retorted that he began warning about corporate accounting problems in 1998 and that, when his SEC tried to prevent Enron using the same accountants for auditing and consulting, the Republicans "stopped us and their main lobbyist was Harvey Pitt".

Taskforce leader Larry Thompson is now on the offensive to show that the Administration understands why investors are furious and is doing something about it.

Thompson is leaning on prosecutors across the country to find more guilty executives and have their ties and shoe-laces removed for the cameras.

Next on the list could be Scott Sullivan, former chief financial officer of WorldCom, and Andrew Fastow, the architect of Enron's fraudulent web of shell companies.

The big test for the Administration will come when the corporate fraud cops get around to Kenneth Lay, the biggest single contributor to the Bush presidential campaign.

In the eyes of many Americans, the former chief executive of Enron, who sold millions in company stock while employees were prohibited from unloading their pension-fund shares, symbolises the very worst in corporate greed.

The sight of Kenneth Lay doing the "perp walk", say critics, would be much more convincing than the humiliation of someone like John Rigas, who looted his company but didn't use the money to get politicians elected.