CBS: List of Madoff's Victims Keeps Growing

[Hissyspit]

Run time: 02:04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5XUjqfuaw0   Posted on YouTube: December 31, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: December 31, 2008 By DU Member: Hissyspit Views on DU: 2254

 
CBS Evening News - Dec. 30, 2008: The list of those who were swindled in Bernard Madoff's $50 billion ponzi scheme keeps growing, including actor Kevin Bacon. Jeff Glor reports on the losses felt by the charities Madoff scammed.

[MindMatter]

1. This is what happens when you leave Repblicans in charge.

At some point, people have to be accountable for their own stupidity.

Foundations with hundreds of millions of dollars should be expected to do the most basic due diligence, and they should also be expected to follow the very most basic rule of investing: DIVERSITY.

Frankly I'm getting sick of hearing all theses stories that show just how poorly many of these foundations are run, although that isn't the purpose of these newsreels.

[.... callchet ....]

2. Blind eye

Is it simply a matter of being a complacent co-conspirator. Did Bernie's investors turn a blind eye with a wink because they thought, well he must be a crook, but he is connected and "we going to be all right" wink wink . I can't think of any other explanation. People have been calling him a fraud for years. What happens when it turns out that the mob or some terrorist group realize they have been taken. Just like you can't own an atom bomb, private people should not be able to handle that much money. They could stat a war.

[bstender]

3. of course they did due diligence

this is not a ponzi scheme in the normal sense. it is being called that in order to qualify for federal insurance payouts to the "victims".

hopefully this will make the mainstream news in time to stop any payouts.

google "madoff double-bluff"

[.... callchet ....]

4. bstender

what do you think of my question

[bstender]

5. nod and a wink?

i'm not clear on your exact question there, but if it is "did they just go with a nod and a wink" i'd say no, not any big players anyway. (other than the general 'nod and wink' that permeates the elite investment world. referring to the insider access, offshore tax shenanigans and such)

i think that it was a standard professional investment operation with massive leverage that has gotten caught out like every other investment house.

[MindMatter]

9. What kind of a charitable foundation puts all of there money in such an instrument?

Even if the operator isn't a crook, it makes no sense on the face of it that any charitable foundation -- particularly those responsible for managing an endowment -- would put more than 5% of their assets in this kind of investment.

The fact that many did tells me that they are either co-conspirators or else completely incompetent, and I'm guessing the former more than the later.

[MindMatter]

8. I think it is a classic Ponzi scheme

The only difference is that he had the patience to work the con slowly with only slightly outrageous returns for the beneficiaries. And that's an important point. Many of these "victims" got a 10% return (Ponzi-or whatever, but it was real money). So even though they may not show a loss of capital, many of them would have been co-conspirators who already got a good portion of their investment back as "profits" on the investment.

And anybody who was stupid enough to put all of their money in one uninsured investment deserves to lose it.

A few years back, my wife and I bought some CDs with a guy who turned out to be running a Ponzi scheme. He was paying 17% at the time when the riskiest real investments were returning 10-12%. Of course we had some suspicions and put up an amount of money we could afford to lose if it turned bad. In our case, we got out before the guy got arrested.

There is no excuse for these people losing all their money in this case. I have very little sympathy for them.

[truedelphi]

15. I have found that most people in our society totally succumb to peer pressure

And hype. Look at the bubbles we have had. During the dot com stock bubble, I had so many friends buying even as the stocks were at their height. And the housing bubble - same thing.

No one seems to have ever heard of the concept of diversifying, or of "buy low sell high."
People mostly buy high and sell low.

In fact, from what I have seen and heard, even many the financial advisers seem unaware of these two tenets of basic economic common sense.

[cynthia]

6. Thanks for the tip

I hadn't seen that coming.

[truedelphi]

11. If they did due diligence, then where is the diversity??

Like the previous poster says, a basic tenet of economics states: "Never put all your eggs in one basket!!"

And if you do, then please don't claim this is a Holocaust or that somehow someone was out to get an entire block of people based on their ethnicitiy.

[bstender]

18. PR

I saw a news story about some charity that put their entire 5 million dollars into him and now they are destitute...i would say that if true (doubtful) that they are the extreme minority. but the M$M is fully on board with selling the story that they are all "victims'. First, bc it is a juicy yarn, and the yarn, created to sell the whole idea that it qualifies for fraud insurance. (and sell the idea that the govt should probably raise the limit as well!)

[MindMatter]

23. This is enough to make me a conservative

But ironically, it is the "conservatives" that are first on board with giving trillions of dollars to these bastards.

It just reinforces that the battle lines are not conservative versus liberal. The real rift line hear is fascism versus government accountable to the people. True conservatives agree with us on this one.

[russspeakeasy]

7. And we should care because.......................

they went for the fast buck....made a bad bet and
lost................

[pilsner]

10. Greedy people

Madoff's scheme had scam written all over itself.

[EFerrari]

12. Well, some of the people who lost big were charitable organizations

who helped a lot of people.

[truedelphi]

13. Ever read "Toxic waste is good for you" A truly great book

They don't go on about my big objection to at least half the foundations out there - my objection being so many foundations only have the money they have because the workers are not paid as well as they could be. Then that excess is set aside to allow the company owners to have a foundation. It gets their name on the society pages, etc. It's a shame that the Corporate Owners would rather pay the workers less, and save on paycheck taxes normally paid to Uncle Sam, and then set up foundations.

Wouldn't it be a great world if the workers made enough to cough up money for the Symphony or Opera donations, rather than trying to live paycheck to paycheck??

But in "Toxic Waste" they devote at least three or four pages discussing how all the Big Name non profits and bigger charities get so much money just on the over exposure of their name. And often the Bigger Name non profits are swayed by the Corporations' money - look at how the Sierra Club said that MTBE was safe (They deny it now but I spent hours on the phone one summer trying to get the SC lawyers to tell me how they could justify the support they offered the MTBE lobby at the time. A totally toxic substance, and supported by Sierra Club for at least a year after everyone else denounced it!)

Meanwhile the little grass roots activists still have to have bake sales etc to try and get funding for their projects.

In any event the amounts of monies these foundations were diverting to a single source of financial investment shows how little common sense "the educated elite" and their "sophisticated" financial advisers have possessed recently.

[EFerrari]

14. I haven't read it but I get it. The American Red Cross is the poster child

for that kind of rip off.

[underpants]

16. VICTIMS!!! oh those poor widdle victims

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/underpants/137

[truedelphi]

17. But these people are rich!! uber rich

Of course they cannot be held accountable to the same standards as the poor white trash and those people of color, who were, in the minds of the rich, too uneducated to read their sub prime mortgage paperwork.

WHy should rich people have to concern themselves with the pettiness of whether it made any sense or not? Their inclusion into the ultimate lifestyle means that the rest of us should WEEP at the sad sorry lot that they now find themselves in.

Anyway, I for one am becoming hardened enough to find some humor in your excellent journal post. Especially at the list of names - people heading up the university law school and people who are financial advisers got suckered just like us poor white trash!

Perhaps there will be an amendment to the Constitution - only the poor can lose at the investment game, never the rich.

oh wait - they already did that one. It's called the BailOut Bill...

[underpants]

20. Here's my question on the Madoff thing

What happened to the money?


I am not sure if they even know where it went to...hmm bunch of uber rich people suddenly have $50 Billion disappear-not taxed or anything

hmmm :think:

Oh and another one-how much time would YOU be willing to do to keep say 5% of that missing money??? An older guy already filthy rich could do a little time and then some for really GOOD time with all that money huh?

Thanks for reading my post :hi:

[truedelphi]

21. I have asked one or two "financial adviser" types that I am acquainted with

About what happened to the money.

To a man, they all said the same thing: "It never existed in the first place."

But does that make sense? Obviously if it was a Ponzi scheme, and then Madoff was cooking the books, so his alleged "investment portfolio" may not have existed.

But certainly the $250,000 Plus that allowed you into his financial pyramid - those monies had to exist.

So like you say, where did the money go?

The only fair thing is to keep the guy in jail until he tells us where it is. Then and only then should he get out.

BTW a couple of years ago, a guy contacted me to help him ghost write a book. I googled his name and found out that about four or five years earlier he had been indicted for creating a financial scheme, such that he managed to take in and swindle over 47 million dollars from the investors that he lured into his scheme.

He got probation and a $ 151,000 fine.

How did he do that? Well, I am thinking that a certain judge probably got their own private island, with a luxury yacht and heli port, to say nothing of a fancy pants House.

Meanwhile if you or I were caught embezzling $ 5,000 from that judge, we'd undoubtedly do ten years.

[underpants]

22. As for the book guy from my experience you have to pay one way or another

in cases like that especially you can either pay the court and do the jurisdiciton's time OR you can pay a lawyer and professional courtesy of a sort takes over amongst the lawyer types-it is basically "time served" in the judge's eyes, he HAD paid as they see it.

[edc]

19. Hmmmm

Maybe we need SEC swat teams that kick your door down in the middle of the night and come in ready to shoot. If it's good law enforcement for a guy growing a real pot plant in his basement, it should also be appropriate for people who pull fake money out of their asses.