A swindler, welsher, or cheat. A worthless thing; a failure.
I have no exposure to the Bernard Madoff scheme, nor am I aware of anyone I know affected by it, but I have followed the case with great interest.
To me the Madoff affair crystallizes the Wall Street economy of greed, entitlement, and illusory profits enriching those who most skillfully game the system. I expect more such schemes to be exposed in the coming months and years as regulators smart from being out-foxed by Madoff. I expect federal regulators to prosecute to the fullest extent those individuals responsible for even the most innocent accounting vagaries as Madoff, like Ken Lay before him, escapes through the ultimate loophole of death.
I think that this affair will only substantiate Main Street’s distrust of Wall Street, and the wealth that formerly poured into the canyon of heroes will go elsewhere in search of immediate riches.
It is hard to say how I might feel if all my money was extinguished by fraud. In fact the question may be moot, as I simply can not imagine myself investing everything in one place. Call me financially promiscuous but I simply do not trust financial professionals, banks or federal regulators enough to trust any one of them.
If I found myself in the position of Madoff’s former clients I can imagine being fooled by solid returns in a depression-like economy. While other investors perished I can imagine thinking "Hey, I’m smart enough to outwit most investors" and I would lay low, staying quiet about my good fortune.
By no means do I mean to suggest that I *do* think I’m smart enough to outwit the markets. I am imagining myself in the position of a Madoff investor. If my holdings did well through the worst of times I imagine that suspicion of the broker’s techniques would not immediately top my list of concerns.
If television news coverage is to be believed (a dicey assumption at best) then it appears there is widespread indignity over Madoff being allowed to stay in his luxury Manhattan apartment while the case is pending. Madoff has not been formally charged with anything, and most of what the public knows about the allegations is that he confessed the details of his scheme to his sons. We do not know the substance of that confession but talking heads and insta-pundits repeatedly declare that we do not need to know, and that the substance of Madoff’s confession is irrelevant.
The Madoff case, we hear, is so extreme that the legal process should be skipped and Madoff sent to prison immediately and for the rest of his life.
Prosecutors seem to be courting public opinion and dualing with newspaper headlines by repeatedly bringing the matter before a judge only to be refused.
The consequences and reach of Madoff’s fraud are extreme, but at the risk of sounding sympathetic to the man (I AM NOT) I think the judge’s rulings on these matters are sound. The integrity of the legal system is a greater cause for prudence than the incarceration of one individual, however satisfying that imprisonment might be to those who have lost money to this man. Should judges choose to selectively skip the legal process for high-profile individuals then the system would be compromised and judges in other cases forced to consider the precedent in their caseloads.
