Court watchers of a certain age will crack a rueful smile at the report — brought in by our Colin Miner on page one today — about the not-so-subtle remarks the chairman of J.P. Morgan Chase made to Governor Pataki the other day. J.P. Morgan’s chairman, Wm. Harrison, pointed out how many thousands of people Morgan employs in New York, this in a conversation in which he also mentioned the investigation being conducted by the district attorney of New York County into Morgan’s dealings with Enron Corp. A generation ago, warnings were being thundered much more publicly about the damage being wreaked on employment in Wall Street by the white collar prosecutions being mounted by an ambitious young United States attorney in Manhattan named Rudolph Giuliani.

Mr. Giuliani came under criticism for using the infamous Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, passed by Congress as a tool for fighting organized crime, to go after white collar businessmen. He subsequently argued that the appeals courts approved his tactics, if not always the convictions he won. Mr. Giuliani was also accused of using high profile cases to advance a political career then in its takeoff stages. It’s a remarkable thing to think that after all these years, the district attorney of New York County, Robert Morgenthau, is still doing the same thing he was then, quietly going after criminals with all different colors of collar. Mr. Morgenthau isn’t going anywhere — meaning, he doesn’t want to be mayor, or governor, or senator, or president.

Whatever danger there is to New York’s employment picture, in any event, it isn’t coming from the crusty old prosecutor. If big corporate crimes turn out to have been committed, blame will attach to the perpetrators. And the way to promote employment in the city and state is not to complain about law enforcement but to turn to supply-side measures, such as tax cuts and deregulation of the economy. Whatever Mr. Harrison muttered to Mr. Pataki is far less relevant to employment in the city than the commuter tax the politicians are talking about raising, and the draconian excise taxes being piled onto tobacco users, cell phone users, and others in the city. And the second guessing by the state of private enterprises’ efforts to rebuild the World Trade Center and other businesses in Lower Manhattan. Get these things right and the captains of high finance won’t have time or need to worry about what impact legitimate law enforcement may have on employment.