Bernard Madoff’s Courtroom Confession About His Ponzi Scheme(bloomberg.com)
bloomberg.com
Bernard Madoff’s Courtroom Confession About His Ponzi Scheme
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601170&refer=special_report&sid=aPIRfDAqvRy8
This is clearly a reason greed is not that good.
7 comments
The statement was drafted with the help of his lawyer, undoubtedly, and according to people who heard it delivered in the courtroom, the expression in his voice and his demeanor didn't match his words. There is also evidence from the federal investigation in his business office that suggests the scheme went on much longer than Madoff has admitted. In other words, the confession is just more lies to cover his ass. I have less respect for him than ever after reading the statement.
And it's ludicrous to compare a guy who steals from a charity for Holocaust survivors to leading business founders. Madoff is as completely venal as anyone who has ever been convicted of a business crime anywhere.
And it's ludicrous to compare a guy who steals from a charity for Holocaust survivors to leading business founders. Madoff is as completely venal as anyone who has ever been convicted of a business crime anywhere.
It makes me wonder if he is pleading guilty to a ponzi scheme to hide something more criminal... I mean, taking investors' money and putting it in a bank is the least wrong you can do - you could just downright spend it, or use it in all manner of ways that could be off record and hidden by a 'fake split strike conversion' strategy.
Who knows, he may have been this close to curing cancer before investigators came in...
Who knows, he may have been this close to curing cancer before investigators came in...
Ofcourse he spent it. Where else can the money be gone ?!He just kept it in the bank to see it and bask in the glory !!
Does anybody know how much money he has with him, I mean, will anybody who invested with him get anything at all back ?! I mean where did all the 50 billion go ?
Does anybody know how much money he has with him, I mean, will anybody who invested with him get anything at all back ?! I mean where did all the 50 billion go ?
I find it completely unbelievable at this point that one man could execute a fraud on this scale for some 15 years or more.
Just producing the paperwork that was sent to each investor on a monthly basis would be more than a full time job. Add to that the lengthy SEC filings, etc.
And he was not working full time - he spent a lot of time schmoozing either in NYC or Palm Beach.
Just producing the paperwork that was sent to each investor on a monthly basis would be more than a full time job. Add to that the lengthy SEC filings, etc.
And he was not working full time - he spent a lot of time schmoozing either in NYC or Palm Beach.
I know someone who works for a ~1 billion dollar fund, and he says that mailing out (legit) quarterly reports on time is a 10-person job. So there's no way Madoff falsified a 65-billion dollar fund by himself.
Sending out legit reports must take manpower to collect all the data. But fake reports might be easy to generate semi-automatically.
I'm sure you're right, though: a lot of people must have been in on it, and he's covering for them.
I'm sure you're right, though: a lot of people must have been in on it, and he's covering for them.
yep...another reason against "secret" banking. Privacy is good, but should be limited to within the bounds of non-criminal behavior. In his "confession" he talks about the vast amounts of money sitting in Chase Manhattan Bank. Noone can park billions in a bank without the bank CEO knowing about it and closely monitoring what the depositor is doing (or not doing).
What I find hard to understand is why he did not even try to invest the money.
He had a parallel, successful and legit investment business, so it's not like he didn't know how to do it. He could have prolonged the scheme (and made it harder to detect) by doing real trades and just inflating the rate of return.
Was he just trying to get caught all these years?
He had a parallel, successful and legit investment business, so it's not like he didn't know how to do it. He could have prolonged the scheme (and made it harder to detect) by doing real trades and just inflating the rate of return.
Was he just trying to get caught all these years?
Those who are very greedy should read that.
Madoff is going to spend the rest of his life broke and in jail. For someone as rich as he was, he didn't live that swanky a lifestyle, and gave a lot to charity. Meanwhile, fantastically greedy people like Buffett and Gates are still out of jail and enjoying what they do.
Dishonest people with an insatiable need to be loved and accepted should read this. Unfortunately, they're generally told that their instincts are virtuous enough to compensate for the harm they cause, just as greedy people are told that they are so evil it negates the wealth they create.
Dishonest people with an insatiable need to be loved and accepted should read this. Unfortunately, they're generally told that their instincts are virtuous enough to compensate for the harm they cause, just as greedy people are told that they are so evil it negates the wealth they create.
Bill Gates and Buffet don't live that swanky a lifestyle considering the size of their wealth, and the amount they have pledged to charity is unprecedented.
Only because their fortunes are equally huge. They could give a lot more. Looking at Gates, I feel like his foundation is nothing more than a shelter for his money, he only gives just enough to meet the legal requirement for a foundation and invests the bulk of it to keep the fortune growing.
Gates spends about 0% of his fortune for his personal pleasure. He's not on the beach surrounded by bikini babes. He works hard on his current mission, and he deserves our respect.
His wealth is invested either in growing businesses (a good thing) or through his foundation to improve the world (a very good thing.) It's not clear that he could grow the foundation much faster than he has -- they're trying to do something novel and you can't just grow that from nothing overnight.
His wealth is invested either in growing businesses (a good thing) or through his foundation to improve the world (a very good thing.) It's not clear that he could grow the foundation much faster than he has -- they're trying to do something novel and you can't just grow that from nothing overnight.
From previous threads, I know you don't like rich people and are personally offended by income inequality. But attacking one of the world's largest charitable benefactors for not doing enough in your not-so-humble estimation strikes me as petty.
Gates has the wisdom and guts to tackle such unsexy causes as malaria in the third world. Because Bill Gates exists, there is substantially less suffering in the world. That's not something you can say about many individuals with any confidence.
We could take away his money and spread it among the masses, but I guarantee you those masses would not use his money in nearly as useful ways. We could take away his money and spend it through the government, but the government already has much larger aid programs that do much less good.
I understand criticizing Gates for his business practices. But attacking him for how he chooses to fight malaria - it boggles my mind.
Do you have any EVIDENCE that Gates is being anything less than sincere in his charitable projects?
Gates has the wisdom and guts to tackle such unsexy causes as malaria in the third world. Because Bill Gates exists, there is substantially less suffering in the world. That's not something you can say about many individuals with any confidence.
We could take away his money and spread it among the masses, but I guarantee you those masses would not use his money in nearly as useful ways. We could take away his money and spend it through the government, but the government already has much larger aid programs that do much less good.
I understand criticizing Gates for his business practices. But attacking him for how he chooses to fight malaria - it boggles my mind.
Do you have any EVIDENCE that Gates is being anything less than sincere in his charitable projects?
> From previous threads, I know you don't like rich people
You are mistaken.
> and are personally offended by income inequality
No, just excessive income inequality. There's something wrong with a system that allows one individual to amass more wealth than the bottom 40% of the population combined. That's a broken system that's far too tilted to favor the individual over the society as a whole. I don't have anything against rich people, I have something against the system that allows it to such excess.
Stating my opinion is not attacking, all I said was they could give more, which is a fact. The foundation is required to give 5% a year to avoid most taxes, which seems to be all they give, investing the other 95% to grow the endowment without taking into consideration of the harm that 95% could be bringing to the world...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx0...
That strikes me as them being more worried about making money than actually helping people.
> but I guarantee you those masses would not use his money in nearly as useful ways
No you can't, you can only guess.
> But attacking him for how he chooses to fight malaria - it boggles my mind.
You have a strange definition of attacking. I didn't attack them, and I'm not dissing the good they do but it's being blind to not see that they don't do as much as they can, they do as much as the law requires them too. That says something whether you want to see it or not.
You are mistaken.
> and are personally offended by income inequality
No, just excessive income inequality. There's something wrong with a system that allows one individual to amass more wealth than the bottom 40% of the population combined. That's a broken system that's far too tilted to favor the individual over the society as a whole. I don't have anything against rich people, I have something against the system that allows it to such excess.
Stating my opinion is not attacking, all I said was they could give more, which is a fact. The foundation is required to give 5% a year to avoid most taxes, which seems to be all they give, investing the other 95% to grow the endowment without taking into consideration of the harm that 95% could be bringing to the world...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx0...
That strikes me as them being more worried about making money than actually helping people.
> but I guarantee you those masses would not use his money in nearly as useful ways
No you can't, you can only guess.
> But attacking him for how he chooses to fight malaria - it boggles my mind.
You have a strange definition of attacking. I didn't attack them, and I'm not dissing the good they do but it's being blind to not see that they don't do as much as they can, they do as much as the law requires them too. That says something whether you want to see it or not.
Because Bill Gates exists, there is substantially less suffering in the world.
Hehe ... I don't think the windows vista users will agree with you !! [:D] ( sorry ! I couldn't resist it )
Hehe ... I don't think the windows vista users will agree with you !! [:D] ( sorry ! I couldn't resist it )
That's a really ignorant statement. His foundation has been doing unprecedented work in treating diseases and education. They not only donate a lot of money, but oversee it's spending and design programs out of their pocket. None of it is just simply a tax write-off.
So if he was not greedy, why did he started the Ponzi scheme in first place?
Read his testimony. He started it because investors expected him to be able to make money; when he couldn't do it, he faked it.
The guy charged zero fees on his money management business. He could have charged 2 and 20, and had an income of $1-$2 billion by this point.
If you look at how he spent the money he did have, it wasn't on whores and blow. He gave money away to charities, he got onto boards -- he made himself part of the establishment, because he wanted people to love him. If he'd stayed a market-maker and never given money away, people wouldn't have looked up to him for decades, but they wouldn't loathe him now, either. He'd just be another successful guy who created a lot of wealth and didn't particularly need approval.
The guy charged zero fees on his money management business. He could have charged 2 and 20, and had an income of $1-$2 billion by this point.
If you look at how he spent the money he did have, it wasn't on whores and blow. He gave money away to charities, he got onto boards -- he made himself part of the establishment, because he wanted people to love him. If he'd stayed a market-maker and never given money away, people wouldn't have looked up to him for decades, but they wouldn't loathe him now, either. He'd just be another successful guy who created a lot of wealth and didn't particularly need approval.
Don't know about Gates, but Buffet still lives in a small 2 bedroom apartment. Take your words at someone else - MTV Cribs, etc.
Whatever the hints of further covering by Madoff in this statement, will anyone from AIG make similarly stark admissions? For example:
Your honor, for years I sold investment 'insurance' policies that I knew would have no hope of paying off in exactly that situation where they would have been most valuable, a general deleveraging and asset price bust. Rather than creating suitable reserves and hedges with collected premiums, I paid myself and my employees richly. By systematically underpricing the 'guarantees' I was offering, I engaged in unfair competition, ensuring my firm a disproportionate amount of the global business in our markets.
I had full knowledge that in the case of a serious business reversal, the implicit 'systemic' guarantees by US federal institutions would cover our obligations. Thus, for years before the eventuality of tangible federal payment -- an eventuality my outsized and reckless business practices made certain except in the precise timing -- I was enriching myself by fraudulent misappropriation of federal funds.
Your honor, for years I sold investment 'insurance' policies that I knew would have no hope of paying off in exactly that situation where they would have been most valuable, a general deleveraging and asset price bust. Rather than creating suitable reserves and hedges with collected premiums, I paid myself and my employees richly. By systematically underpricing the 'guarantees' I was offering, I engaged in unfair competition, ensuring my firm a disproportionate amount of the global business in our markets.
I had full knowledge that in the case of a serious business reversal, the implicit 'systemic' guarantees by US federal institutions would cover our obligations. Thus, for years before the eventuality of tangible federal payment -- an eventuality my outsized and reckless business practices made certain except in the precise timing -- I was enriching myself by fraudulent misappropriation of federal funds.