I hadn't thought about the the short selling motive for whistle blowers.
And, I hadn't thought at all about the political calculus, namely, Madoff’s long and lucrative support of the Democratic Party. Very good catch. Completely missed it.
Re: Total Losses.....
Looks like you may be correct about that, too.
Bloomberg has apparently increased its estimate to $36 billion, but I can't find the story at their website.
However, some of that “loss” may be balanced by Madoff’s regular dividend.
Consider....the SP 500 is down 35% over the last decade, and QQQ is down more than 40%.
For those who were “lucky” enough to pull in Madoff’s 1% per month for an extended period of time, they might actually get close to break even, although their principal is now probably zero.
And, no doubt Madoff enticed many risk averse investors, people who would not have invested in equities, so your heart has to go out especially to that group, most of whom are probably elderly and have no way to recover.
I’ll be interested in knowing when someone is in a position to approach any kind of a tally on how much money was truly “lost” to investors vs. how much “profit” had already been redeemed in the past by people who went away or reduced their exposure, how much was “paper” profit on Madoff statements but not money that people had ever previously forked over to him (though there I suppose that estimates of income foregone from other potential investments must enter in somehow).....
If Madoff’s statements said your money doubled over a certain period of years, did you really lose all of the inflated amount or only your original investment? Or your original investment plus what you COULD have made from other investments with the same money? But who decides how to count that? Seems like a tough problem to come up with an accurate estimate of the losses, even if you had perfect access to Madoff’s records etc.????