New York Post:
Members of a posh Upper East Side synagogue suffered a $2 billion bloodbath in Bernie Madoff's epic Ponzi scheme.
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Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Madoff's Guilty Plea Scam
Bernie Madoff may have one last scam in him. And this one may be the biggest and most infuriating of all. He may sleaze his way out of rotting away his last days in prison.
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Charles H. Green: Madoff: Investment Fund, or Virtual Reality Game?
It's beginning to look like Madoff's business model had less in common with a hedge fund or investment management firm than it did with an online virtual reality game.
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Vicky Ward: Take That Smug Smile Off Madoff Now
Even if Madoff goes to jail today, he still doesn't face indictment for at least another 30 days. The grand jury has been given an extension to deliberate -- and some of us are baffled as to why.
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Sunny Hostin: Ponzi Schemes and How to Spot Them
As news spreads of Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion fraud, many are wondering what exactly a Ponzi scheme is and how to avoid becoming a victim.
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Alec Baldwin: The Inauguration Cannot Come Quickly Enough
In a sense, we made Madoff. This society and its desire for results and more results. The disease of more. The Bush legacy: No regulation. A free-for-all.
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Richard B. Woodward: Bernard Madoff and Anton Chigurh: the Con Man as Serial Killer
How has Madoff coped over the last five months as he watched the financial markets collapse? Carrying a time bomb can be fatal for you and everyone in your vicinity.
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Alan Schram: Abolish the SEC
The mere existence of the SEC gives investors false confidence, lulling them into reduced vigilance and making them think they are protected when they are not.
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How come you had to buy a ticket to get into this place for the High Holy Days when they were sitting with 2 billion pre-scandal bucks? This year they'll have a better reason for charging admission.
The Hand of Fate?
Georgie Porgie?
Yep, Babs baby?
Next month, when you're not the President of the United States, will we be...you know...OK?
Sure thing, Honey Bunny. A few months ago, I put all we got with that there Madoff fella I been hearin' folks talkin' about.
Oh! Georgie! You are just the smartest, bravest president there ever was!
No problemo, Barb-o. I always said you was a lucky gal and the purtiest, smartest First Lady ever, for gettin hitched to the ole "G-man.
To be continued...
What's a synagogue, even a Manhattan one, doing with over $2 billion?
Spurned by his family, Madoff spent the first night of Hannukah with an alien, wept over lost chocolate coins during dreidel game.
http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/alien-alert/madoff-spends-hannukah-with-alien/
Madoff is the result of pure unadulterated Reaganomics, you can't have a Bernie Madoff without Bill Kristol, Grover Norquist, David Brooks and all the other Free Trade, "deregulation junkies" et al...
Sorta like eight days of lamp oil burning for only one?
What amazes me is that there are people commenting on this that don't think that bilking the wealthy is a crime....that even if they lost 10 mil, it's ok...it's not ok... none of this is ok...this guy is a crook, plain and simple...weather he stole $1000.00 or $50 bil, it's all bad, all wrong, all unacceptable...yet he walks out of court with a smirk...sick guy!
He's not the only crook in corporate America that has taken people's money. He is one of many parasites who have drained the average American's finances dry. The irony of it all is that he also included some of his own fellow comrads.
I feel sorry for all the people who lost money with him and all those who have lost jobs, savings, and homes with this government that is still in power. Before all the smoke clears, Bush will have a legacy of allowing the rich and famous to play FREE OF CHARGE with people's lives and aspirations. Madoff is just another nail in the Bush regime coffin.
Yeah, Obama, who is currentky on a 2 week vacation in some rich guy's multi-million dollar estate, will never favor the rich! Come Jan 20, he will just turn his back on all of that.
I think the best part is, the people who have raped the coffers have had theirs raped back.
Somebody made big bucks here......more and more this idiot looks like someone's patsy.
A smirking patsy at that.
Economic hitman.
umm...so where's the $$$$?
Paid to those who DID get some of it and the rest he lived on I'm sure. Ponzi schemes never pay the last people in, only the first at the top.
From the article: "Ira Rennert, chairman of the synagogue's board and owner of the priciest mansion in the Hamptons, had $200 million staked in Madoff's fund, Fortune magazine reported."
Too bad, so sad. Bernie Madoff is the great equalizer and may actually be doing some of these megalomaniacs a favor by helping them down from their gilded pedestals. Living like the rest of us isn't really so bad, is it?
The people in this sphere will NEVER live like the "rest of us." If after "losing all of it," they will far out bank-roll us.
Can anyone tell me what he bought for 50 Billion?
Track down what he purchased with the cash and you find not only the assets, but you find the beneficiaries of the loot!
AnthonyLee: I hope you don't have any money in the stock market because you clearly don't understand the very basics of how the market works. He did "buy" anything.
No need to shout down. The question is a natural one - follow the money up the food chain and figure out who all is connected. It's much more complex than that in practice, but the trail is there to follow.
White collar criminals get nothing when it comes to jail time. The Houston Chronicle has featured every Enron crook leaving jail with a big whopping smile after a few years. (the retirement money they stole is well hidden) If i could live the life of luxury, and to have tasted the fine wines and the great meals that these thieves have tasted, and to have traveled ...Then I would happily serve a couple of years. I would like for Madoff to sit in traffic for an hour, brown bag a lunch at his desk and to fill out a time card and to fill up the gas tank in a rain storm. Now that would be punishment.
texadonkey: wow! you're really in into revenge! It would be cruel and unusual punishment to even suggest that these execs perform even one day of life as an "average" citizen.
Ugh, you disgust me Becca
Punishment? There are several million Americans right now who would love to have even that back.
Talk about getting "scre8ed"........
how 'bout that BIG inheirtance the Madoff boys were counting on ? DOH
The whole family was likely in on it. I suspect they made some hefty offshore deposits over at least the past year. Papa Madoff saw the coming collapse of the economy and knew investors would need to pull out some cash. With his permission, they then turned him to mask their own involvement. Their inheritance sits in a succession of Swiss safe deposit boxes surrounded by forgotten Nazi loot. They'll assign emissaries, perhaps their own children when they reach age, to discreetly invest it over seas in amounts small enough to not generate suspicion.
do you think 50 bil past through his hands and he wasnt smart enough to set up offshore for his family? They will be well taken care of.
Also is this "real money" or thye monopoly money they were supposedly making from their initial investments? How much did they pull out in residuals over thye years?
A Ponzi scheme basically PAYS earlier investors with the money supplied by the new investors. Without the great payback ("Hey Benny! Get this! I made 20% on my investment in Maddoff...bet'ya can't beat that!") there isn't any "street". Thus a lot of these folks may have not only made back their initial investment, but also made a nice profit. It's unlikely that Madoff actually had real investments. If he had the fund would have had losses, but not gone entirely bust.
So a lot of these folks claiming they've lost "millions" have really only lost some or their initial investment, if that. Those that rolled over everything and kept dumping more in have lost whatever the initially invested. But they can't argue that the "value" of their investment account WITHIN the scheme is what they lost. They NEVER WERE making those 20%/annum gains. They were making nothing but Madoff Monopoly Money!
If he was only paying the lucky ones the yearly "return" (i.e. 8% that was really coming from new investor money) then they lost their principle--their millions.
If you're depleting someone's principle for other things, and giving them only 8% of it back each year, you don't even really NEED new investors to keep up the scam--at least for a while.
Hey - that sounds like a fun and timely new board game! "PONZI" - the fun game for the new millennium!
Ha. That will be our contribution for the ages, a board game named after every economic crime against humanity that the West has invented.
I wonder what a synagogue is doing with 2 billion dollars!
_Members_ of the congregation... Not the congregation itself.
oh come on....it's some kind of money club with a synagogue front! give me a break.
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New York Post | STEFANIE COHEN and KELLY MAGEE | 12/21/08