The judge just sentenced Bernie Madoff to 150 years @ Club Fed for his egregious financial chicanery.
Take a look at an article from last spring:
Ponzi Schemes for Dummies by Bernard Madoff Published April 01, 2009
Learn how to grow rich and make enemies. Follow my 10 steps to create your own Ponzi scheme and be fabulously wealthy without working or contributing to society. Learn from the best - learn from me.
Authored by: pjmelton on Monday, June 29 2009 @ 08:39 PM GMT+4
He did get off easy, but I'm not sure what else would suffice beyond life in prison. I don't think capital punishment is really appropriate for this crime, so what else is there? Maybe full-time community service instead.... Personally, I think if he had any guts he would have capital-punished himself before the feds got to him. But if he were that sort of person, he never would have done this to begin with.
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"Economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings." -- FDR
Authored by: cgrotke on Monday, June 29 2009 @ 09:42 PM GMT+4
I was thinking he got off easy by going to jail, rather than being ripped
to shreds, tar and feathered, and his head put on a pike by angry people
who lost everything to him.
(A non-violent punishment: Bring him to Vermont and make him catalog
and come up with names for every shade of green.)
Authored by: darqmatr on Monday, June 29 2009 @ 08:48 PM GMT+4
More smoke and mirrors... to "show" that we are tough on crime. In doing so it takes the heat off the real criminals, the ones that steal life in the greatest ponzi scheme, called war.
Besides, the Fed and the banking system have been running a slow-motion ponzi scheme for years. They just do it in a gentle fashion. Those that invested with Madoff took a risk and were responsible to check out his background. Apparently, they were more interested in making big bucks at anyone else's expense. Madoff should make retribution for his ways, and be allowed to do so. But to sentence someone for this length of time just shows that the crime for stealing money is worse than killing people for flag/democracy/etc..
If... we ever regain our economic freedom, Madoff will come across as a shoplifter compared to what the gov't is doing.
Authored by: tomaidh on Tuesday, June 30 2009 @ 01:43 AM GMT+4
There's a rumor floating that Alex Jones has a video of Ken Lay and he's alive and well and living in Paraguay.
Will Madoff suffer a "fatal" attack and surface sipping Martinis with Lay in Iguacu Falls?
Authored by: Mr. Buddy Love on Tuesday, June 30 2009 @ 10:11 AM GMT+4
Ah, but there's another rumor that Alex Jones isn't a real human, but an
alien living on our Earth, sent to confuse us and distort the truth, all part
of an evil plan by his sponsors at Planet Zotar to take over humankind!
muwahahahahahah!
Authored by: xteeth on Tuesday, June 30 2009 @ 08:31 AM GMT+4
I'm sorry, I just don't get it. I lost a bunch of money (not with Madoff but as a result of the financial collapse) and I don't want to lose more. While it is titallating to imagine drawing and quartering etc. do you see this as anything other than us having to spend more money putting him up in what is very expensive accomodations for the rest of his life with great health care benefits. This is the same kind of short sighted vengence that motivates the death penalty debate. Grow up. Get over it. Pay attention to what causes harm. Just who do you think is going to invest with Maddoff now? If he were able to do this evil for all these years do you think now he is going to start feeling guilty or something? I think, like with O.J. just make sure that if he does make any money that it is siphoned off immediately and given to those he robbed. It is as good as we can do. Much as we have decided that pulling out fingernails is not allowed, it hurts us to operate on the basis of vengence and gets us nothing.
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"Some people cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go." Oscar Wilde
Authored by: Mr. Buddy Love on Tuesday, June 30 2009 @ 10:07 AM GMT+4
One man is guilty of milking people for lots of money and for
destroying their finances/lives. He should be punished, and is. But it
always stops with just "a few bad apples" (like Ken Lay).
Instead of focusing our collective wrath on "a few bad apples" why not
show some intelligence as a society and fix the system that allows
crooks to legally get away with these crimes? That would be the
civilized, adult way to deal with the problem. The childish way is to
skapegoat one or two people, and parade them all over cable TV like
some bad kind of public stoning event in the electronic media.
America: GROW UP. Face the structural and institutional problems in
our system and REFORM THEM. That's my take on this.
Authored by: jayd65 on Monday, July 20 2009 @ 04:22 PM GMT+4
We can try one of those really cool systems where a few people oversea and divey up all of what we need so that everyone can share equally!!!!!!!!!!
Really, we have a system that is not perfect, but it allows us the freedoms that most of us cherish, and although is has its flaws it has shown itself to be the best funtioning system so far in history. (note Chinese, and Russians are emulating it, along with countless other societys)
remember sombody has to come up with and control the system you talk of, and people are weak and fallable.
i.e. power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutly.
Authored by: spoon on Tuesday, June 30 2009 @ 01:19 PM GMT+4
I agree with Buddylove and all the others pointing out that there are so many more people who should be serving sentences similar to Madoff's. Madoff ripped off a lot of people but, percentage wise not many who will suffer too greatly from the losses. After all, having money to invest is not a typical situation among those in real need. Madoff largely screwed the wealthy and affluent and they have seen to it that he will pay. But pick up yesterday's (Monday July 30) Times. A front page story concerns the millions of people who continue to lose their homes through foreclosure while mortgage companies are "losing their records through glitches" in their computers. But these are largely the middle and working classes who have none of their power harnessed.
To me Madoff is simply the ultimate expression of capitalism and excess in whatever forms they take. It almost doesn't matter that he amassed his billions illegally. Is the effects of one person controlling that much of the wealth much different when it is done by someone like Madoff (two billion) or like Bill Gates(ten billion)?
Instead of hissing and spitting and kicking and getting self-righteous about a schmuck like Madoff (for whom, of course, exoneration is not an option) we should be more actively examining the culture we live in and talking about how we can start changing it. And that probably means beginning with changes right here in little old Brattleboro.
Authored by: cgrotke on Tuesday, June 30 2009 @ 01:55 PM GMT+4
An anti-retirement-pension-stealing ordinance!
Or maybe we make Ponzi Schemes especially illegal in the downtown
area. Billionaires are on notice that they will be detained and
questioned.
Seriously, though, it seems to me that greed is at the root of so many
of these things - from pressure on Michael Jackson, to Bernie Madoff,
to buying houses that one can't afford, to lenders preying on people
who don't understand what they can afford, to credit card woes, and
so on.
Authored by: tomaidh on Tuesday, June 30 2009 @ 02:47 PM GMT+4
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again Read this article THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE By MATT TAIBBI here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/16752803/The-Great-American-Bubble-Machine
(Article appears in Rolling Stone's current issue: July 9-23, 2009.)
Authored by: darqmatr on Tuesday, June 30 2009 @ 09:45 PM GMT+4
Or, Debtors prison for all who fail to honor their monetary obligations.
Walk away from a home mortgage? How many years should you get?
Default on a car payment? Or student loans?
Madoff only got attention because the numbers were big. But there are bigger thiefs than Madoff and he was made an example to "show" that our Justice system works. Pay no attention to how torture is overlooked in favor of debating baseball stars using steroids. Or how a leader can invade/steal another country's autonomy, killing innocents all the time. Mom, Dad, children, people just like you and me.
Oops-- our 10 million dollar bomb missed the target. That's okay. Here's more money to do it again. One of those bombs just must have the guiding hand of Jesus gently placing it on someone's head. Afterall, we are the favored race. Just don't mess with my "investments" that make the world a better place.
Down the road... once we've solidified the idea of debtor's prison for monetary mistakes, it won't be long before all of us are getting three meals a day courtesy of the State.
Restitution, mercy, an opportunity to fix one's mistakes. These are what makes a society great. All we've done is enforced the law. Of which, none are innocent. May the great spirit help us if our children decide to hold us accountable down the road when the bills come due. I can see it now... Rest Camps, where the aged are forced to do labor for the dreams and promises they stole.
