The year 2008 was like herpes, very hard to get rid of; 2009 will be worse, trust me, as Bernie Madoff used to tell the suckers. This one, incidentally, is not over. The greatest scam ever perpetrated will go on and on. Madoff was not alone, and if the crooks in the SEC who turned a blind eye to his Ponzi scheme are ever forced to come clean, some pretty big names will hopefully end up in striped suits sewing buttons. Madoff scammed small investors, billionaires, hedge fund idiots, charities, pension funds and multinational banks. What is incredible is that his fund was repeatedly brought to the attention of the SEC, and every time he was given a clean bill of health. Libel laws prevent me from naming names, but they’re out there, being talked about by everyone who can smell a rat after the fact. The SEC never subpoenaed the firm’s records but ‘relied on information voluntarily produced by the Madoff family…’ That’s like asking Al Capone if he had anything to do with a massacre that took place on St Valentine’s Day, and letting him off the hook once he had denied it. Which come to think of it is exactly what happened.
There is something rotten in Wall Street and the rot starts at the top. Greenspan, Rubin, Levitt, the main architects of the financial disaster, are cashing in daily. The evil Madoff is skulking around free in the Bagel, and smirking at the paparazzi even after failing to come up with his $10 million bond. (This was an obvious trick. His stolen billions, I suspect, are safely deposited in offshore accounts to be passed on later to his numerous grandchildren.)
Here’s my crystal ball for 2009: the Madoff swindle is the first major scam of the current financial crisis.
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