Moose head on the wall

Sir Allen Stanford has come out fighting - literally. 

The man who (allegedly) means there's a full one degree of separation between Giles Clarke and a Mexican drug cartel has given an interview outside a restaurant in Houston. 'If you say that to my face again, I'll punch you,' he told the reporter who'd asked if he was a money launderer.

Highlights came thick and fast. Unlike Michael Vaughan, Sir Allen gives good interview. 'I've always lived very frugally,' he said. 'I flew around in a private jet, I had a boat, but I lived frugally. I'm the maverick rich Texan where they can put the moose head on the wall.'

The idea that the Stanford Bank was a Ponzi scheme was 'baloney, baloney, baloney,' and the rumour that he is a CIA spy was 'foreign to every bone in my body'.

But he did say something enlightening, too. Talking about the queues that formed outside Caribbean banks when news of his arrest came, he said, 'it broke my heart, but nobody lost a dollar'.

The queues were widely televised, as was the 'hunt' for Stanford. But if what he says is true, and all bank deposits were backed, then that fact has been somewhat under-reported, as has the news that yesterday he had another $100m in assets frozen.

Stanford's money, or some of it at least, seems to exist, unlike Madoff's. I have no idea whether he's defrauded anyone or not, but his story is as much about how the media handles it as it is about the money now. He is, as he says, the moose head on the wall, the guy with the Mexican drug cartels and the CIA forever attached to his name.  And Giles Clarke, too.