Lately, former governor Eliot Spitzer has been edging back into the public eye, perhaps beckoned by the siren song of public unhappiness with financial firms. He was, after all, the "Sheriff of Wall Street" during his Attorney General days, so he's parlayed that into a column for Slate, a Washington Post editorial, an appearance on Fareed Zakaria's CNN show and now a one-on-one with Matt Lauer on the Today Show.

Naturally, before discussing the economy, Lauer asked Spitzer about his super-public fall from grace. Spitzer said of the whole Hookergate scandal, "This is something that has caused excruciating pain to [my wife] and my daughters. What I did was an egregious violation of trust to my family and my colleagues and the state, and I’ve paid for it.” Lauer pointed out that since Spitzer isn't being prosecuted for his activities, people won't know the extent of his hooker proclivities...so Lauer asked for a "ballpark" figure on how often Spitzer did pay for sex. To which Spitzer replied, "Not frequently, not long in the grand context of my life," before launching into the "there's no excuse" explanation. Hmm, "not long in the grand context of my life" is a cop-out—what about in the "grand context" of his life as an elected official? Anyway, kudos to Lauer for at least asking—here's the interview.

Oh, and on the financial mess: Spitzer said, “We should give them enough liquidity so they do not drag down the entire economy, and then we should break them up. If they’re too big to fail, break them up.”