Posted on 12/11/2008 7:14:49 PM PST by Sammy67
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bernard Madoff, a long-time fixture and powerful adviser on Wall Street, was arrested and charged on Thursday with allegedly running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, U.S. authorities said.
The former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market who remains a member of Nasdaq OMX Group Inc's nominating committee, is best known as the founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, the closely-held market-making firm he founded in 1960.
But the alleged fraud involved a hedge fund he ran from a separate floor of the building where his brokerage is based.
Madoff told senior employees of his firm on Wednesday that "it's all just one big lie" and that it was "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme," with estimated investor losses of about $50 billion, according to a criminal complaint against him.
A Ponzi scheme is a pyramid-type swindle in which very high returns are promised to early investors, who are
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
What isn’t a Ponzi scheme nowadays?
It’s has to be one of the largest Ponzi Scheme’s
This can’t damage anyONE. Get it?
These are only Leftists involved. Now if it was Enron, with any connection to EVILBUSHCOCHIMPYMCHITLER, it’d be above-the-fold front page.
So what is the downside of running a $50 billion dollar ponzi scheme?
Wall Street sure has a lot of dry-rot.
Compared to what the Federal Government is doing now, it's a pittance. Congress should rot in prison long before this guy does.
You are correct! Politians are doing the same.
The quote attributed to him may be uncharacteristically straightforward, but it just sounds like your typical highly leveraged hedge fund blowout, writ a bit large.
A pithy saying.
It breaks my heart to have to concur.
Onward. Financial markets are a strategic asset and something the US has always led in. It's time to focus on rebuilding them.
New money goes into one, and then the other, and back and forth over a long period of time.
It's kind of like the deal your broker wants to set up that gives you several investment quality stocks, and gives you a fall-back with bonds (preferably US securities in recent months). It also enables this kind of crook to point to how much money people are making in OTHER funds he controls. At the same time he doesn't tell new investors about the other fund where they're losing their shirts to the fund making the money.
Anyway, the next step is to convince your hedge fund managers to use ETIFs as an "operating bank". With $50 billion bucks supposedly under management, you get an idea of how he could do this ~ the largest ETIFs are far smaller, though numbers of them float around $5 billion to $10 billion.
There is NO WAY your clients can keep up with this by watching the market indices. They have to assume you've spread their assets around to reflect the markets, so they do.
Not surprising the guy ran this for years. He was also big enough to get away with "naked short-selling" for a very long time.
BTW, one reason to use an ETIF as a "bank" is that NO ONE IS WATChING. After all, these things are not businesses with real expenses ~ so the focus is entirely on the market indices. If the ETIF goes up $5 billion every now and then no one cares except the other guys moving in and out of that ETIF. They cash in, move on to other stuff, and keep their mouths shut.
No doubt there are other operators running the same scheme.
I will predict that confidence in the markets tomorrow will be shaken to the core!
Name that party.
So far inflation and expanding economic conditions have made it possible to keep on funding Social Security.
I stole a candy bar from the store when I was 7 (they cost 5 cents retail back then). Got caught by my Mom.
My Dad ‘whupped’ my posterior when he found out about it; my 25 cent a week allowance was suspended for three months. They made me go confess to the store owner, pay for the candy bar and volunteer to work three hours a day on Saturdays for a month cleaning up around the store “Just so I’d learn my lesson”.
Apparently the lesson I should have learned, at least by today’s standards is: If you are going to steal, steal BIG.
This is mind-boggling. How many more firms out there are doing the exact same thing? If Madoff is a crook, anyone could be a crook...
This can’t damage anyONE. Get it?
Yeah it will damage people like me who may not work tomorrow.
Nope, not even close. Social Security is a MULTI-TRILLION dollar Ponzi scheme.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.