"I Wanted To Know A Painless Way To Die"
Investor protection, courtesy of Chris Cox and his SEC. Until the first sentence of the last paragraph, I was steaming mad about what happened to her. Now I'm just really sympathetic.
posted by The Cunning Realist at Thursday, December 18, 2008
13 Comments:
OH MY GAWD, She's only got a lot of expensive jewels (etc), a 1 bdrm apt on 5th Ave, a studio in SoHo and a "cottage" in Palm Beach. HOW WILL SHE SURVIVE?
Riding the subway like hoi pollio? Heaven forefend! Next she'll be shopping at fairway like a schmuck.
Hankest
Welcome to my world lady.
I'm trying to reconcile these two statements:
“In the early 1980s, needing more money...”
“Yesterday, I took my first subway ride in 30 years....”
I don't know, maybe she's just bad at math.
"I’d have to sell the cottage in West Palm Beach immediately. I’d need to lay off Yolanda."
Sell the Palm Beach cottage AND lay off the full time help??? This really puts a human face on this financial nightmare. It seems real to me now.
So, are you all expecting her to be grateful for what's happened to her? Yes, the worst that will happen to her is the norm for everyone else, but she's still lost all the money she earned because someone else screwed her over. Wouldn't you be angry too? Maybe we can't all be sympathetic, but we shouldn't mock her.
hahaha sucker born every minute. She got exactly what she deserved. She could only trust her Ivy league educated buddies with her money. She handed over all her money and didn't bother trying to understand where any of it went. How stupid can you possibly be? Look at me for instance. I have some gold in my walls. I have some gold buried under my house. I have some gold in my safe. I have some gold in a safe deposit box. I have some gold buried at my place in Washington State. etc. Now that is a diversification strategy!!! If some criminal politician, or wall street banker, or bleeding heart liberal finds some of your gold and steals it... The rest is hidden elsewhere. LOL.
See the comments that followed her post?
ALOHA !!
It is too bad she lost most of her accumulated life savings and I can sympathize, but she does have some assets left to fall back on! A great PR for "diversification"!
Surely LEVERAGE is a sin in Heaven!
Bernie are you reading this? You are just another inmate Bernie!
With so many bank failures, and lets not forget the employees of Bear Stearns and Lehman's who have lost plenty of their life savings, I am disappointed there are not many more CEOs doing serious jail time! Perhaps now that Bernie has tripped up some of the more affluent "investors", maybe even a federal court judge or two, this will put more pressure on the SEC to prosecute. The Middle Class and the US TAXPAYER has always been expendable!
I have a question. Where are all the "whistle blowers"? Bernie did not operate alone and nor did he operate in a vacuum. Only his sole is vacuous! To me it is just as much a crime to witness fraud and not report it as it is to commit the fraud!
When we allow a monetary system to exist that does nothing but devalue it creates a World where maintaining one's lifestyle becomes all important and morality slips away as new ways to reconcile greed and fraud moves in. Once you have a corrupt monetary system then society becomes as corrupt as the money. After all FIAT is based on the worst of the human condition, otherwise we would not have endless printing and expansion of the money supply. As money supply expands so morality diminishes. You can see that unfold on TV every day!
As they say in AA(Alcoholics Anonymous) ...
ALL OUR BEST THINKING GOT US HERE!!
Hey, half of mine disappeared in the last 3 months and apparently no laws were broken. At least she gets to imagine Bernie in a cell with Big LeRoy trying to decide if he wants to be the husband or the wife.
There but for the grace of God goes I.
Sounds like she is going through the stages of grief. The death of one life, and the birth of another. It's not easy, but she certainly is not alone.
This situation reminds me of the movie, "An American Christmas Carol", with Henry Winkler. Lots of people work hard, do the right thing, and stuff happens. But multiple her financial experience by millions, and this is what most Americans deal with on a regular basis. Shameful isn't it. Luck isn't a retirement plan.
This sort of thing should not have happened, to her or anyone, rich or not rich. Madoff's behavior and anyone like Madoff, is absolutely unacceptable. Enough already! We've allowed our Representatives to louse things up royally. Now that the wealthy are feeding off the wealthy, maybe there's a prayer things will change.
"Indeed, he did. More than a decade ago, when I was in my late 40s, I handed over my life savings to Madoff’s firm."
Handed it over! Yes, many would like you to do that. The ads, books, marketing, will tell you just that. But reality is so different today. The environment, laws, fees, the ethics, all working against the individual, working and saving for a secure retirement. I think the CFP has made things worse. They are not much more than glorified marketers.
What did Madoff do with the money? $50 billion is a lot of dough. Is it sitting in some Caymen Island bank? Did he pool it into some organization, out of this country? How many more Madoff's are on Wall Street? It's beginning to look like an epidemic, a cancer that's metastasizing.
To be clear, I do understand that for anyone, no matter what your standard of living, having it reduced dramatically and unexpectedly is an awful experience. Whether it means losing your house in the Hamptons, or just losing your house, period-- it's all relative I suppose. That said, even the "innocent" victims of a guy like Maddoff are not truly without blame, and any sympathy has to be tempered somewhat by the complicity of those who benefitted for years from his crimes. Who the fuck thinks you can stick all of your money in a black box, have no idea what is being done with it, and get the same nice and steady rate of return for years and years, with hardly a losing month, let alone a losing year, irrespective of the broader economy? There were some of these investors who knew something was up, and then there were the rest, who should have known but did not want to.
I meant to add earlier that I am not particularly sympathetic toward Bernie’s victims. Not because they were wealthy, but because I THINK they pulled the trigger based on a “Palm Beach Wink;” they thought they were being let in on a sure thing, the inside track, and they was just fine with that. Of course that is absolute speculation on my part.
One other speculation: Bernie may be like a lot of con-men and fooled himself first. “These are my peers and friends and I ought to be able to do well for them.” But the market turns and he just doesn’t want to disappoint so he works some things around to buy a little time. His customers just needed a quarterly statement to assure them they were wealthy. He’d have time to get it squared away unless everybody started to need the money—which they finally did. Ka-boom.
This article reminded me of this blog entry:
Madoff's Willing Partners
"There seems to be little doubt that Bernard Madoff is a cheat. His apparent Ponzi scheme, in which capital from new investors would have been used to pay "dividends" to earlier investors, ultimately cost the participants many billions of dollars. But was it all Madoff's fault? I contend that the losses would have been less severe, and might not have occurred at all, if many of the Madoff's investors had not been cast from the same mold that Madoff was.
...
Only one answer makes sense. Some of those investors must have suspected that he was a cheat but continued to invest because they thought they were benefiting from that cheating."
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