Posted on 12/19/2008 10:42:35 AM PST by NormsRevenge
BOSTON – His repeated warnings that Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff was running a giant Ponzi scheme have cast Harry Markopolos as an unheeded prophet.
But people who know or worked with Markopolos say it wasn't prescience that helped him foresee the collapse of Madoff's alleged $50 billion fraud. Instead, they say diligence and a strong moral sense drove his quixotic, nine-year quest to alert regulators about Madoff.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I think it is worse that ignoring it. I think someone in the NYC, Boston or DC SEC offices ran interference for Bernie.
I read the WSJ version of this article, and it looks like the SEC offices in New York and Washington deserve most of the blame. SEC Boston comes out ok. What do you mean with your comment in parentheses?
Linking this in for background.
Thanks , modhom.
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Interesting 2005 stuff from whistleblower Harry Markopolos (note: easily read with the full screen button there)
http://www.slideshare.net/hblodget/markopolos-madoff-complaint-presentation?type=document
I believe that an SEC investigator who was looking into Madoff in the lat 90's ended up marrying his niece.
I’m guessing that *someone* out there is writing letters just like these to the SEC about just about any investment adviser or fund manager you can name.
the parens comment?
This was Obama in one of his ‘lucid’ moments... proving the old busted clock is right twice a day.
The SEC definitely stepped in it.
The Wall Street Journal posted the “letter”, which by 2005 was twenty closely-argued and persuasive pages.
Obama says government ‘asleep at the switch’
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2150879/posts
12/18/2008 9:03:48 AM PST · by NormsRevenge · 60 replies · 950+ views
AP on Yahoo ^ | 12/18/08 | AP
CHICAGO – President-elect Barack Obama says the government has been “asleep at the switch” when it comes to overseeing the nation’s financial system. He says Americans are “feeling frustrated that there’s not a lot of adult supervision.” ... Obama called for a “shift in ethics” on Wall Street.
yea.. I think it was 28 or 29 arguments.. I think this guy should be put in charge of SEC..
The SEC definitely stepped in it.
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Just more Washington corruption and gross incompetence — all driven by a total lack of accountability for same.
And now this mass of corruption is being taken over by more mobsters....nice job libs.
The best “letters” are the internal ones written by Risk Managers to their bosses telling them to take a pass when faced with something too good to be true. The people who invested in Madoff were well-off enough and had all the choice in the world to pass, how much would it cost the rest of us taxpayers to protect them against (in most cases), their greed and stupidity.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/111347-meet-mary-schapiro-obama-s-horrendous-pick-for-sec-chairman
The future SEC chairperson gracing a stock promotion rag
Barack Obama calls his transition website change.gov, and his campaign slogan used “change” about a million times, so I am utterly flummoxed — and disgusted — by his selection of Mary Schapiro as SEC chairman, to replace the awful Chris Cox.
What that signals to me is that Obama wants no change at all in the desultory regulatory apparatus that has utterly failed the American people. Either that, or he is a victim of a con job that would do Bernie Madoff proud by his establishmentarian finance advisors.
Schapiro is a career bureaucrat who served on the SEC during the Artie Levitt era, and is now head of FINRA, the big self-non-regulatory apparatus.
To give you an idea of how out to lunch this lady is, she let her puss be plastered on the cover of Equities Magazine last year. As if that’s not bad enough, as I pointed out in a blog item at the time, she praised this stock-promotion rag.
The chances of Schapiro shaking things up in the securities industry — instituting real, meaningful, desperately desired change — are about the same as the chances you can make a black bear curtsey and serve tea. This is a terribly disappointing selection.”
We still have the fox watching the hen house!
What the SEC needs is a law enforcement officer. Someone like Rudy G. would do.
I will bet my newly purchasd hand gun that Madoff was a democrate and/or a big demrat contributor. Anybody out there know for sure?
[from the article]
“He used to challenge the teachers,” his mother said with a laugh. “He’d tell them he had the right answers, but they had the wrong questions.”
Reminds me of someone I know, LOL.
He should have reported it on line and inspired a letter writing campaign. It’s hard to ignor and all writers have a record of the letter that they sent.
He was a crook, but he was our crook!
Well, up until last week.
Hey, I got robbed! Call the cops, I know who did it!
Already did some checking, he was a predominantly Dem donor the last few cycles, he tossed some chump change to a few Republicans but that isn’t that surprising.
Big time. Gave Chuck Shumer a quarter of a mil.
Not to mention his brother Pete Madoff, the two sons, other relations and their wives.
Say, maybe twenty Madoff family members kicking out to various pols.
A lot of the people invested in Madoff’s scheme were not very wealthy, and some of the very wealthy ones WERE invested on the advice of respected financial advisers. Top hedge fund administrators Citco and BISYS, as well as units of Ernst&Young and PWC, are in this thing up to their necks — a lot of people and financial institutions very *reasonably* relied on them, and they were asleep at the wheel while collecting fat fees for their somnolence.
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