Bernard Madoff's story has been all over the media landscape. (Here's the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and there is an Associated Press video embedded above - to cite a few sources.)
I find it strange that someone could get away with a scam of this magnitude for such a long period of time, without getting much attention from the SEC at all - in spite of the overwhelming amount of tips over several years.
Madoff's alleged scam was for $50 Billion. Compare that with the attention and punishment doled out to Martha Stewart - Martha served jail time for receiving a tip for a relatively meager $300k. In terms of amount, that's 150,000 times less severe a crime.
This kind of disproportionate attention makes me think something is seriously amiss.
What do you think?
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Madoff and Martha
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4 comments:
Esp. with such high profile clients like J. Ezra Merkin, chaiman of GMAC; Fred Wilpon, principal owner of the New York Mets; and Norman Braman, former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles. Also, I think Spielberg either invested with him or had a charitable organization that invested with him.
The problem, of course, is that Martha IZ A GURL! Girls aren't supposed to do bad things like that. Cf when a man kills a kid -- you never see the word "unnatural" in there, but you certainly do if the murderer was a woman.
Mukesh you raise an excellent point of comparison here. One would assume nothing short of summary execution of Maddoff is required based on the Martha situation, which I thought was $30K? - but I might be wrong.
Madoff was in bed with FEC, Martha was not.
Madoff was known as money machine,
Martha played with dough machine.
Madoff skied on the slopes of Switzerland, Martha skied on a wet kitchen floor.
Madoff fooled the whole world, Martha fooled herself only.
You see, the relations from the above illustrated the inequality of life.
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