Posted on 12/11/2008 4:00:15 PM PST by joinedafterattack
Bernard L. Madoff, the founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities and a fixture of the Wall Street trading world for decades, was arrested Thursday morning by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and charged with criminal securities fraud by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
Press Release of Bernard Madoff's ArrestThe criminal complaint filed against Mr. Madoff alleges that he told senior employees Wednesday that his business was "a giant Ponzi scheme," according to a person familiar with the matter. The alleged scheme involved tens of billions of dollars, but the extent of investor losses wasn't immediately clear.
The disclosure came after Mr. Madoff tried to distribute early bonuses to employees of his firm, prompting questions by senior employees, a person familiar with the situation said.
Mr. Madoff, 70 years old, allegedly told employees he had a couple of hundred million dollars left and wanted to distribute it before turning himself in to authorities, this person said.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to file parallel civil charges against Mr. Madoff.
The alleged scheme apparently involved an asset-management unit of Madoff Securities. The New York firm is primarily known for its business of market-making in stocks. The asset-management group at Madoff oversaw money for high net-worth individuals, hedge funds and other institutions, according to another person familiar with the matter.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
“I used to think Chris Cox was a decent So Cal conservative Congressman but he has sucked at the SEC. People have begged him to reinstitute the uptick rule on shorting but he and Bush have been in a fog.”
I actually don’t agree on the uptick rule UNLESS Price increments are increased to a nickel or whatever (I guess steenths are gone forever). Penny-increments give too many meaningless upticks that can make other prior upticks with larger size not able to be hit by short sales. It must just be chaotic at the system-programming level, many active stocks have price updates multiple times a second.
Of course, I didn’t agree either with decimalization and use of penny increments, as the only purpose I can see it served was destroy the nasdaq market making business and deliver it to ECN’s completely, which the major exchanges proceeded to buy (nyse -> arca, INET/INCA (containing former ISLD) and BRUT —> nasdaq)
When you look at it from the viewpoint of who benefited, it is quite interesting.
“Now that the One is in office, and he helped put key dems in place, he can come clean and lay off the employees. “
He was going to come clean now no matter the election outcome, because apparently he could not meet redemption demands despite lowering the minimal investment to try to bring more pied piper funds in recently.
I cannot imagine how folks on the market-making/trading side of the business must feel, in a matter of days they discover they will have NO bonus (they may have expected one, as I don’t believe MADF has the types of issues major investment banks had re toxic assets) and quite possibly no job soon.
oh yeah, and their boss has just become the biggest ponzi scheme-master in human history, defrauding a sum greater than most countries’ annual budgets.
Nice job in compiling all the money he gave to Dems. No you can see why the SEC does not regulate hedge funds. Hedge funds own Congress. Bernie apparently wiped out the Palm Beach Country Club membership which is a very Dem. Everyone at the club invested with Bernie.
Nice job in compiling all the money he gave to Dems. No you can see why the SEC does not regulate hedge funds. Hedge funds own Congress. Bernie apparently wiped out the Palm Beach Country Club membership which is a very Dem. Everyone at the club invested with Bernie.
Don’t miss my post #33.
With just a little practice and playing with it to figure it out, you can do that, too.
Sorry, I meant #37.
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