Ping!
And now we have the Madoff of presidents
(Elie) Wiesel expressed, better than I’ve ever heard it, why people gave Madoff their money. “I remember that it was a myth that he created around him,” Wiesel said, “that everything was so special, so unique, that it had to be secret. It was like a mystical mythology that nobody could understand.” Wiesel added: “He gave the impression that maybe 100 people belonged to the club. Now we know thousands of them were cheated by him.”
snip
“Hedges said: ‘It’s like trying to do your own dentistry. It is a real lesson that people cannot abdicate personal responsibility when it comes to their personal finances.’
And that’s the point. People did abdicate responsibility — and now, rather than face that fact, many of them are blaming the government for not, in effect, saving them from themselves. Indeed, what you discover when you talk to victims is that they harbor an anger toward the SEC that is as deep or deeper than the anger they feel toward Madoff. There is a powerful sense that because the agency was asleep at the switch, they have been doubly victimized. And they want the government to do something about it.”
Gee, this sounds a lot like mortgagees or credit card or debtors we’re hearing about now.
We have a serious problem when government stands to benefit by turning a blind eye to illegal activity. A government that profits from immoral behavior is likewise immoral.
[...] It is a real lesson that people cannot abdicate personal responsibility when it comes to their personal finances."The audacity of these multimillionaires wanting me to pay for their losses astounds me.
And that's the point. People did abdicate responsibility — and now, rather than face that fact, many of them are blaming the government for not, in effect, saving them from themselves. Indeed, what you discover when you talk to victims is that they harbor an anger toward the SEC that is as deep or deeper than the anger they feel toward Madoff. There is a powerful sense that because the agency was asleep at the switch, they have been doubly victimized. And they want the government to do something about it.
As the saying goes, “you can’t cheat an honest man”. Many of the victims in this case were a victim of their own greed. It is very tragic and I wish them all the best, but from the media coverage you would think Madoff is worse than Hitler. Way over the top. A bunch of greedy people getting burned in a ponzi scheme and a market crash. It has been happening since the beginning of time.
I see our social security as a bigger fraud than Madoff’s. If you hate what Madoff did, you should really really hate what the federal government is doing to future retirees. It won’t be long until the government trough is not big enough to take even modest care of our retirees, and millions and millions of people who rely on social secuity to feed them, will be out in the cold. Really, who is more evil than Madoff? All of members in Congress, that is who.
“...should give the victims more than the $500,000 maximum...”
Welcome to the free ride on someone else’s strained back.
IMHO
Tragically, Breeden said, some people who had invested in the Ponzi scheme that he helped clean up turned around and gave their money to Mr. Madoff. "I guess some people never learn," Breeden said.
From what I had read earlier it was mainly bigotry and personal bias. I guess he really was a self hating you know what...
After all regardless of how profligate a person is, you just cannot blow that much money of on the old "booze and broads and baubles" and even then the "baubles" would still be of value.
I mean even if one were to "blow" a cool Million a day, it would still take about 2 years and 8 months to get to a Billion and multiply that times 50, well.........?
Thus my curiosity is WHAT happened or what did he do with all that money?
Now there are two legal principles operating here:
LEGAL PRINCIPLE ONE Under the legal doctrine of "fraudulent conveyance" . investors who withdrew their money before the fraud was revealed, must return their profits or even part of their initial investments. Legally, one cannot profit from a fraud. The recovery process identifies remaining assets that are then redustributed to those who were defrauded.
Some of Madoff's clients should be facing serious legal problems----some investors were writing personal checks that were placed with a separate Madoff financial entity that was not listed on the SEC. That might be construed as money-laundering and tax evasion.
Keep in mind Bernie‘s investors were savvy, astute successful business people, accustomed to constructing, picking apart and analyzing financial statements. One investor who spoke to reporters was a stockbroker (her family invested with Bernie for generations---the family's patriarch founded the wildly successful Stop and Shop supermarket chain). Other inevstors gave Madoff $100-500 millions to "invest" for years and years.
LEGAL PRINCIPLE TWO The compelling legal principle of . “condonation” ---implied forgiveness for certain behavior. . This should foreclose any cockamamie ideas that taxpayers are gonna bailout these mega-millionaires (who most assuredly have money stashed offshore). Investors implicitly “condoned” Madoff’s actions over a period of time--sometimes for decades---- willingly acquiescing to Madoff's activities in several ways:
(1) Sending Madoff enormous sums of money, sums that were spread out over time (some families invested for generations), even AFTER they had the opportunity to assess their investments;
(2) Referring other investors to Madoff (if the investment was so bad, why did they bring in other investors?);
(3) Taking profits out of the investment, rolling it over, or putting more money in;
(4) Writing PERSONAL checks to Madoff's subrosa spinoff vehicle that was not listed on the Securities Exchange (tax evasion modus);
(5) Accepting, without question, Madoff’s obviously flawed monthly statements.
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REFERENCE BY Ronald D. Orol, a MarketWatch reporter, based in Washington.
EXCERPT There were several things that alerted some in the hedge-fund industry that an investment with Madoff may not have been as safe as it initially appeared. Aksia LLC, which researches hedge funds and advises institutions about investing in the industry, said that it never recommended that clients put money in some of the "feeder funds" that allocated their capital to Madoff. On the surface, these feeder funds looked like institutional-quality vehicles, but there were "a host of red flags," Aksia Chief Executive Jim Vos and colleague Jake Walthour wrote in a letter to clients after the Madoff scandal erupted last week.
The funds were marketed as using a "split-strike conversion" investment strategy that is "remarkably" simple, but the returns it purportedly generated could not be replicated by Aksia's quantitative analyst, Vos and Walthour wrote.
The Madoff funds supposedly traded in the Standard & Poor's 100 index options market, but that market is relatively small and may not have been able to handle trading by vehicles with roughly $13 billion in assets, they said. The feeder funds had almost all their assets custodied with Madoff Securities, the brokerage unit of Madoff's firm.
Aksia checked into the auditor of Madoff Securities and discovered it was a firm called Friehling & Horowitz, which had three employees -- one of whom was 78 years old and another was a secretary. The firm's office in upstate New York was 13 feet by 18 feet. Madoff's Web site claimed the firm was technologically-advanced, but it sent paper confirmations of trades via US mail at the end of each day, rather than providing electronic access to this important information.
Paper copies provide a hedge-fund manager with the end-of-the-day ability to manufacture trade tickets that confirm the investment results.
These people were almost 100% Democrats, who thought they were better than everyone else. They thought they were smarter than everyone else. They were "speshul."
The "rules" didn't apply to them.
Now, they are spewing this "It's the fault of the SEC" garbage because they want you and me to pay back some of their millions.
Typical Democrats!
Who pays taxes on unrealized income? Either you got a dividend check or cashed out, or you didn't. You only pay income/capital gains on one of those events. Can a tax specialist help me out?
According to the SIPC's own website, it does not cover fraud.
Most of Madoff’s victims were also his accomplices, when you pick up the dice and place your bet your on you own.
Anyone know how much SPIELBERG lost???
Seems like this was some sort of a swindle on many of his FELLOW Jewish friends/colleagues/connections.
If the government is stupid enough to pay these people, then the rest of us need to divide ourselves up into ponzi scammers and victims - the ponzi people will pay us all 18% until they get caught then we'll all "cash out" with Uncle Sam.
One person goes to jail - and the wify-poos gets the penthouse.