Time to Blame Our Own Greed For the Madoff Mess
The mass hysteria surrounding Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme just leaves me with one question. When are we going to stop talking about Madoff's "victims" or "foolish investors" and instead ask investors to take responsibility for their own actions?
Madoff's scheme was alluring. The guy was low-key and likeable; he was hard to get to. To gain access to his fund you had to go through one of his so-called "gate-keepers': Walter Noel, Carlos Grasso and Charles Fix. Once in you got steady returns even in the most volatile markets.
If you asked how he managed to pull this off, sources tell me, you got told simply: "Bernie knows..."
It appears none of his investors ventured further and asked the obvious sequitur: "Bernie knows what precisely? And how?"
"In a bull market no one bothers to ask how the returns are met, they just like the returns," Jake Walthour Jr of Aksia LLC, an investment advisory firm told me Friday. In other words we are greedy. Or we were.
Aksia sent out a letter to potential Bernie investors many months ago warning them of the blatant red flags they'd found in Madoff's operation.
But, just like so many people got suckered into purchasing mortgages they could not afford, or who allowed themselves to follow Wall Street banker's so-called advice when making risky investments, people invested with Madoff regardless. If the returns were good - then who were they to worry, if the math or logic didn't quite make sense to them?
For the past few years a friend made less than $50,000 per year, but nonetheless had a mortgage that put him in a house worth over $1 million. He thought this a bit strange - but heck, he had a great house.
Now, he's got to move out, cannot afford the debt...who should he blame, the mortgage broker? Wall St.? The Government? Well, maybe - but what about himself?
If any good is to come out of the economic crisis, it has to be surely this: that as all the filth and corruption of Madoff and his ilk is unveiled, we too need to take a long hard look at ourselves and actually start to take accountability for our actions.
We can't max out our credit cards every month or overspend without consequences. We can rant and rave about other people's failings - and sure, they deserve it - but the first person who made a bad decision - and deep down if we thought about, we knew it - was us.
Follow Vicky Ward on Twitter: www.twitter.com/VickyPJWard
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An old saying: You can't cheat an honest man.
People invest their money with people who have a good reputation in the financial sector.
The government of the United States is supposed to provide oversight. That's supposed to be a respected endorsement.
To blame people who trust companies vouched for by the government is mean-spirited.
It is to blame the victim.
It is cruel.
How many of us have the time or resources to investigate people like Madoff?
The run-up to the war demonstrated that the press and politicians actively encourage the citizenry to believe in the government and what it tells us. The regulatory agencies said this guy was OK.
Why don't you attack the government? Why don't you just say that we should not believe anything coming out of Washington, D.C. You wouldn't be far off the mark and you would be doing us a favor. Soon we're going to be told that we're fighting for democracy in Afghanistan. Good time to question authority don't you think?
Blaming the powerful takes guts.
Blaming the weak is sickening.
As W.C. Fields said, "You can't cheat an honest man."
Blame the victim? Are you kidding me?
(1) This man should serve the rest of his life in jail. He ruined the lives of thousands of people.
(2) Our regulatory system is broken. As Keenan Thompson's SNL character proclaims: FIX IT!
(3) Until our system is fixed, people will be overly cautious with their investments. Boy, doesn't that sound like a recipe for recovery..
But blame the victim? I haven't lost a cent to Madoff, that I know of, but I work in the field of education, and to see universities and non profits going under because of this wretch's greed absolutely disgusts me. And, why are we making comparisons (in comments) to Martha Stewart? How about John Gotti? Do we not comprehend the mortal danger to our economy that has resulted from this kind of malfeasance?
Let's wake up, esteem our best values, FIX IT!, and put slime like Madoff away. We need to send a signal to crooks like him that their time is up. I don't care how nice his suit or his resume or his golf foursome..
Blame the victims? Really?
The only thing you can blame the ones who lost ALL of their life savings is failure to diversify. The rest is totally on the perpetrator of the crime. Period.
Nonsense. Time to blame
1) the repealing of the 1933 Glass-Steagall by three crooks in 1999 ( the Grahmm-Leach-Bliley act ).
2) the unregulated market of derivatives
3) the unchecked powers of the Fed, that only represents the interests of the bankers.
Dear Vicky, you are wrong. This is the same as to excuse the rapist and say that the victim must be blamed for a revealing dress.
Financial money managers and planners take tests to ensure they know the rules of investing and will perform due diligence insuring the investments they recommend are what they appear to be, Regular people don't. The lawsuits will-and should-be flying fast. There is a deep seated culture of greed and corruption in the financial industry and regular folk do have a right to expect something in return for paying large fees.
It's not unreasonable to blame individuals for being greedy and imprudent. But it's also true that the individual voters of the United States elected governments that were given the power, resources, and responsibilitiy of insuring that the markets were not a crooked game. That responsibility was shamefully converted into those agencies using their power to cover up for the predators. And I don't think it was just during the Bush administration.
Deregulation is the religion of the GOP.
Always has been.
I used to work for a very rich woman who was never satisfied. She was 70 years old and still running around looking for the 'it bag of the moment'. I learned to have compassion for her as her insecuritys were so apparent, and her inner hollowness sang loudly. Bottom line she was without any meaning in her life, she was always comparing herself to others, and was jealous of every female who was richer and thinner. Would you like to live her existence.
I'm insecure, hollow, lack meaning in my life and am jealous of everyone who is thinner or richer than I am and I'm not rich. Feel sorry for me.
Not everyone has been behaving the same way. Some people max out their credit cards every month, while others (more, actually) pay them off in full every month.
I find this article to be incredibly naive. There is nothing inherently wrong with investing your money and wanting to make more with what you have. Many people didn't even know their money was being invested with Maddoff. Many extremely smart, and extremely generous people have been damaged and several important non profit agencies and a tremendous amount of philanthropic giving will disappear because of Maddoff. This was one man, evil incarnate who engineered this. Should everyone be re-evaluating what is important in terms of what really matters in life? Probably. But, when there are individuals who make real money based on real work, it is their business what they do with it - if they decide to buy seven houses that is their decision. I think you would be hard put to fault many of the wealthier people who were damaged by this scheme when you look at their foundations and personal charities. Get some perspective.
Greed has been running rampant in this country for several years and along with this negative value has been our society's acceptance of greed and this is especially true among the wealthy. Schemes have abounded in the name of greed (i.e., making money) and while there is absolutely nothing wrong in improving our lifestyles or livelihoods it becomes a different story when greed is the motivator. Madoff and those like him need to be prosecuted and put in jail. Karen A Duncan
Curious how articles like the above sign off with the "spread the blame bit". Me? I got out of the mutual fund lie and as such have little care for the media, and culturally driven greed thing. At best even in times like this it's barely explored and on those odd occasions only as far as the entry level way under sharp editing of the reporter or some other string-puller. I can't believe Madoff managed to con so many for so long but thats an angle on greed. Funny no one esp them "flag waving, head in the sand law and order types" seem to be to interested in really doing anything about it or other convenient "crisises" that will also come along. Instead there are complaints about unions and over paid workers. I suggest anyone who willfully or knowingly destroys..
We are now ready to look at what we create with overintensive worship of physical creation, the more we gets, the better we are.
What needs to be evalutated is the penetration and consequence of such a greed ethic.
The contrast of a long prison term for the armed robbery of small amounts and the scratching of heads as to "Is mad Madoff really guilty, as he threatened no one with bodily harm"?
We dig the money hole deeper as it finally collapses into our knowing and allowing that the accrual of assets is at the core of assuming another can do it for us.
In an age of shifting consciousness we gather our awareness into a self-sustainability done because we begin to realize none can do it for us even if we allowed such as we must provide for ourselves and as we do this we will find the best path toward automatically shoring up anothers well-being.
Service to others may be a good half-way measure but still a step away from the true service to self coming aware of what we each need is trust and acceptance of our ability to create our own reality.
It's very difficult to cheat an honest person
All this reminds me of what Diogenes the Cynic said when his clay cup was stolen. It was one of the very few things he owned. When finding out it had been stolen, he observed that "Someone has traded their honor for a clay cup." Among those more animal than human, such as Makoff, possession and power -- sex, food, shelter and cunning are valued above all else. Human ends are discounted -- love, beauty, knowledge, and, above all, -- honor. But Makoff is no worse, and perhaps he is even better, than the dishonorable dogs who drew our nation into bloody wars for their miserable ends of political power, perhaps even better than those who, for the sake of a "market share", will do anything and everything dishonorable and "corrupt the youth" -- and keep them corrupted. Well, for all those who want to "take the money and run" -- you can expect to keep running forever.
There's greed, irresponsibility, and being willfully stupid. But there's also being too trusting, and not unreasonably trusting. I'm sure many should have known better, but some were bamboozled.
(Hmm, nice word - bamboozled. Hoodwinked is good, too).
ANd then there's the SEC that completely failed to do their job even when they had reports going back years that there was something wrong with this whole scheme. Perhaps members of that astute organization should be held personally responsible for the losses along with that slime bag Maddoff who should rot in jail for the rest of his life. No one expectgs consequences, so they don't care about the results of their actions.
it was some of us... because i know many people who are not into a lot of debt... they don't max out credit cards... and now they have no jobs. there is soooo much blame to go around, and yes, for a lot of years we as a society have been focused on how we could get our share of the dream, not realizing that the dream was here already... living in a free country. but damn, now our jobs have been shipped overseas so the corporations could make a little more profit... the bottom line - you know? and now what are we going to do... Any bail out though should go DIRECTLY to the taxpayers of this country.
You can scold people for being conned if it makes you fell better. But the con is perpetrated by the con man. Not the mark.
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