Comments on: Why Might a Madoff Plea Deal Take Place?

By: Lee85710

Lee85710 — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:08:19 +0000

Madoff won’t make a deal for anything meaningful. He’ll skip off to Israel like other Jewish con artists and fugitives have. Israel gives scum like him a place to hide, and they refuse to extradite.

By: Moss

Moss — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:15:28 +0000

Funds-of-Funds sounds a lot like the securitization scheme. No real ownership, no skin in the game, thus no real responsibility, thus no real accountability. Are we sure the lawyers did not think this whole thing up. This free market stuff really did take off. WOW who would thunk!

By: bcasey

bcasey — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:55:57 +0000

Coming late to this thread, but I want to suggest that the judge may have something gained or to gain here. I heard his arguments about house arrest, and monitoring Madoff’s mail packages, and I think what the hey! Who ever heard of such a thing? Who is going to pay to inspect every piece of mail? Also who thinks that the only way something can go in or out of a residence is by mail? Madoff is obviously devious, and he or his wife already shipped out a bunch of jewels, who’s to say the maid, or the butler or the maintenance man or even his innocent looking neice or somesuch would not deliver something for the right price? So I look at the judge with quite a jaundiced eye, he can’t be serious when he asserts these things. So I think he has to have received something either recently or in the past from Madoff, that is the only way his bias can be put in perspective.

By: philipat

philipat — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:52:12 +0000

Point of information, Mr Chairman. As confirmed on the Chatham House website, there is only one rule, so a meeting is conducted under the Chatham House rule.

By: howard0339

howard0339 — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:33:00 +0000

I used to raise money for Tudor Jones and John Henry. They were huge and astonishingly successful with returns that outpaced the market. All investors were sophisticated and ALL of us relied in part on government rules and regs being enforced and followed as a prime protection against fraud. Having said this, all these funds are nearly imp0ssible to evaluate on a trade by trade basis due to the monster volume they do. A block trade of ten million shares cannot be executed at a single price, the shares are broken up into much smaller amounts of shares being traded. Determining a price is next to impossible. The trader will randomly assign price to the accounts. I also find it next to impossible to believe that any actual bank deliberately put money into the hands of a trader who didn’t check out. This guy was head of NASAQ, he was a power on other exchanges, he gave lectures on markets to sophisticated people. What’s not to trust? Only the CFTC or SEC has the clout to examine accounts trade by trade and we assume that after ten years or so the government has gone over the books with a fine tooth comb. In Madoff’s case a significant red flag was posted in “Managed Accounts Reports,” back in 2000. MAR is a virtually inknown publication read only by equity raisers like me. Nobody else would possibly know. I agree that the investors bear some responsibility but only in the sense a person wandering in the ghetto looking for a cheap whore gets in the way of a bullet being fired. My experience of ten years tells me that 1: the rich don’t know their asses from a hole in the head when it comes to investing, and 2: they have a herd mentality; meaning that if a friend invests then it follows that it must be good. Combine this with the totally ignorant inherited money (look at the New York Times under the Trust Fund baby), organizations like charities and university endowment funds being involved (I used to pitch the fact that the Harvard Endowment Fund was invested) and the thing looks like gold. Combine this with the always trustworthy bond rating firms and you have something that seems to check out.

I honestly feel that the government bears the most responsibility in this swindle because they didn’t do the job we depend on them to do.

By: the0ther

the0ther — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:47:47 +0000

“We nary have anyone left on Wall Street or Connecticut.”

AWESOME!!!

Both of those places were fucking disgusting anyway.

By: Mannwich

Mannwich — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:14:35 +0000

One tidbit of anecdotal evidence that the retail investor hasn’t stopped pulling his/her investments out for a while (and maybe for good) – an older gentleman (about 60-62, I think) who runs the little gym I go told me after watching his only source of retirement (plus social security) go from $110K or so to $61K has finally decided to pull everything out. The thing is – he and I had several conversations about this and saw this coming back in ‘07 and he still didn’t pull anything out until now. Not sure why. Maybe he didn’t really trust his instincts like many of us didn’t (I didn’t totally trust mine but I do now). There are more of these folks out there. Trust me. More carnage is coming in the markets and it’s laughable to think that Wall Street is counting on the retail investor (as per the WSJ yesterday) to help them stabilize and grow their business in the coming years. Good luck with that.

By: Transor Z

Transor Z — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:30:08 +0000

@ Marcus Aurelius:

“In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all’s equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain’t pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught ‘em
And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom. . .”

-The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, Bob Dylan (1963)

Cynicism about law enforcement and administration of justice is something new???

By: Greg0658

Greg0658 — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:08:57 +0000

this concept didn’t make it to Squawkbox this morning … and the fact the penthouse may be a safehouse protection

By: Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:00:56 +0000

Mannwich Says:

There is basically close to zero confidence in the markets right now, especially by the retail investor. If this is proven to be a more systematic, wider scheme, they’ll never come back.
________

There is basically close to zero confidence in our courts and law enforcement agencies right now, especially by those who believe in the fair and impartial administration and execution of our laws.