The effect of Mr Donaldson's tenure is hard to disentangle from that of Mr Spitzer's.
Mr Goldschmid's keenness has been more than matched by Mr Spitzer's in New York.
For all his grandstanding and televised press conferences, Mr Spitzer seems to have some good points.
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The state attorney-general, who reports to Mr Spitzer, is looking into Mr Bruno's trips.
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Mr Spitzer has all but called for the chief executive of Marsh to step down.
Mr Spitzer is like the little boy announcing that the emperor has no clothes.
Yet Mr Spitzer's public naming and shaming may have a virtuous impact of its own.
Still, Mr Spitzer has been relentless in attacking Mr Bruno, who has been equally vitriolic in return.
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Mr Spitzer accused the firm of suppressing data showing a link between its product and teenage suicide.
If the behavioural and disclosure remedies imposed by Mr Spitzer help to expose such conflicts, they are welcome.
And Mr Spitzer's case, or one like it, says Ms Taylor, is inevitably headed to the Supreme Court.
Mr Spitzer is in settlement talks with Citigroup over potential conflicts of interest within its subsidiary Salomon Smith Barney.
Mr Spitzer, never one to be idle, is off to a running start.
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Soon after Mr Goldschmid returns to academia, Mr Spitzer will have to focus on his own attempt to change jobs.
Most of the doubts about creditworthiness have centred on car companies and, of late (thank you, Mr Spitzer), on insurers.
He has learned from his own mistakes (his stab at the governorship in 2002 was a disaster), but also Mr Spitzer's.
He, for his part, is accusing Mr Spitzer of ordering New York state police to keep detailed logs of his travels.
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Of the three men's legacies, Mr Spitzer's is especially hard to assess.
Mr Spitzer's prescriptions address a problem highlighted by Warren Buffett, America's best-known investor and a persistent critic of the mutual fund industry.
The SEC, which was made to look flat-footed by Mr Spitzer during the investment-banking probes, will not want to be left behind.
On paper, Mr Cuomo seems eerily like Mr Spitzer, minus the hookers.
Citigroup, top of Mr Spitzer's scourge-list, came top of the poll, incidentally.
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Mr O'Quinn and his ilk will hope that Wall Street, rattled by Mr Spitzer and a bad press, will now yield bigger payouts.
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For starters, Mr Spitzer has made it clear that he wishes to go after the executives who failed properly to supervise research departments.
Hence, Mr Grasso's compensation and benefits for 1999-2001 nearly equalled the exchange's total net income for the period, according to Mr Spitzer's office.
Sheldon Silver, the powerful Assembly speaker, supports Mr Spitzer, as does Richard Clarke, a former counter-terrorism expert in the Clinton and Bush White Houses.
"This agreement helps ensure that AOL will strive to keep its customers through quality service, not stealth retention programmes, " Mr Spitzer said in a statement.
As attorney-general (a post in which he succeeded Mr Spitzer), Mr Cuomo has taken on excessive executive pay, rating agencies, banks and the student-loan industry.
Worse, Mr Spitzer, the SEC and federal prosecutors suspect that AIG might have done deals with third parties to boost its own reserves and profits.
Mr Spitzer, who seems never to have seen a piece of turf that he did not want to make his own, vowed to challenge them.
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