I heard today that you are sentenced to serve 150 years. It would be ironic if medical breakthroughs over the years let you serve half that time behind bars. Either way, you got what you deserved. How many lives did you ruin? How many retirees will need to return to work after thinking they had don’t the right thing investing with someone of you caliber?
And yet, too many questions remain. Why did you do it? How could those around you not have known? How did the SEC miss this, twenty years of your Ponzi scheme, no trades, who’s minding the store?
And yet, in a different view of this tragedy, Joe Nocera suggests “Madoff Victims, Get Over It” claiming that his investors were greedy, chasing the promise of higher returns in an elite investing club. With greater returns comes greater risk. The returns Bernie Madoff claimed were beyond reasonable and that should have set off some red flags. But this is hindsight.
Tomorrow, College Financial Aid.
Joe
Whenever an unpopular guy who’s murdered no one, but has merely committed fraud, albeit in the billions, gets 150 years of jail, much more than your average murderer, it indicates that he didn’t get a fair trial.
If his crime therefore was being unpopular, who’s next? How long until it gets to me? So, yes, I’ll stand up for a despicable man who’s been judged by prejudice, because a time might come when there’d be no one to stand up for me.
Augustine, I hear you, and you raise an interesting point. Yet, we put a value on life every day. There are treatments that may save a dying person, but cost tradeoffs are considered. I’d give all the money in the world to save a loved one’s life, but in court, it’s a different story. Each charge adds up, so a thief can get far more prison time than a killer.