If there's anyone who'd want to take Steve Rattner—the media-savvy financier-cum-auto-czar who is embroiled in a pay-to-play pension scandal—down a notch, it would be fearless Wall Street bulldog Eliot Spitzer, right? Wrong.

MSNBC's Morning Joe had the disgraced former New York governor on this morning to talk tough about all those Wall Street scoundrels and tell us how he'd be dragging them all to the Tombs by their starched collars right now if only he hadn't banged that hooker. But Spitzer dropped his Top Cop pose when Scarborough brought up Rattner, the extremely well-connected former New York Times Reporter and friend of Arthur Sulzberger Jr. whose former investment firm is under investigation by New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo for paying off middlemen in order to get state pension money.

"Every time I say Steve Rattner's name and ask why he's still working in any capacity while this investigation is going on, everybody looks down around the table," Scarborough told Spitzer. "Everybody's scared of him. And why is it that it looks like he and his firm was involved in a scheme that you would have busted up... and it seems like they're going after everybody but Steve Rattner?"

Instead of tapping into his legendary righteous indignation when it comes to Wall Street excess, Spitzer told an incredulous Scarborough that Rattner is "a very nice" and "extremely smart guy who appears to be doing a very good job" and who most certainly did not commit an "illegal abuse of power."

Of course not! How could the vice chair of Spitzer's 48th birthday party [pdf] be guilty of such shenanigans? (Dick Grasso should have kicked in). No, Joe, no one will go after Rattner. He knows everybody.