Conrad Black has been released on bail but barred from leaving the United States.

Still, the arguments continue about Black's financial wherewithal with prosecutors claiming Black has repeatedly lied to them about his finances. They also claim the Canadian Government has refused to help, citing privacy concerns.

So Black's not going to jail, at least not yet. But he can't go to his home in Toronto until the court gets assurance that he will come back to be sentenced on November 30. His movements have also been restricted to northern Illinois and southern Florida, where he has a beachfront mansion.

With all that going on, Black's enemies have now lodged lawsuits seeking more than $1 billion from the fallen media magnate. They shouldn't hold their breath. "I'd be very surprised if he didn't have assets, but in other people's names, in other companies and in multiple jurisdictions around the world," forensic accountant Al Rosen told the Chicago Sun-Times.

We're not dealing with any fraudster. Conrad Black is one unusual beast but part of a special breed, says the New Statesman's Brian Cathcart.

The disgraced Telegraph proprietor is strange and unusual - until you put him among his historic peers, the mad, bad, sad people who owned papers, says Cathcart:

"Black is an extraordinary figure, an accomplished biographer who (we are told) plays with toy ships in the bath, a brilliant deal-maker who spent a fortune on a holiday in Bora Bora without taking the trouble to find out it was the sort of place he would hate, a political thinker who couldn't tell other people's money from his own.

"But in the company of his historical peers, from Robert Maxwell and Tiny Rowland to Lords Beaverbrook and Northcliffe, he isn't odd at all. Outright theft may be unusual, but folie de grandeur is almost the norm ... Lord Black of Crossharbour fits well into this crew, so well that his case draws attention to another proprietor who conspicuously does not fit: Rupert Murdoch. An outsider, yes, but both an acquisitive businessman and an artful newspaperman, with no title, no obvious trace of lunacy and a strong taste for influence. Scary. Our chief consolation with Rupert must be that he is 76 and, as with all the rest of them (and indeed the rest of us too), there is one circulation war that in the end he cannot win."

Still, with Murdoch about to snap up Dow Jones for $5 billion and one Dow Jones director resigning from the board in protest, Murdoch shows no sign of caving in. And whatever might be said about him, he's no Black.