Shoe Me The Money

That 'orrible little man Bernie Madoff: his personal possessions, shoes and other crap, were quietly auctioned off these last couple of weeks by the U.S. Marshals at the Sheraton Hotel here in Manhattan. Size 8 and a half loafers in abundance... and Rolex watches... and other tat and junk.

The response to Bernard Madoff's crimes struck me as odd. People went out of their way to describe him as monstrous, worse than Satan, a real bastard. His victims were the type of people who would say: "can you believe we only took seven vacations this year, that's how much money we lost!"

With next to no expert knowledge and equally limited access to Madoff's mind, I still feel as if his scam perpetuated itself more than that he worked actively to rip off the semi-stinking rich. Isn't it possible that he screwed up one or two or three times, but was able to paper over the gaping shortfalls created by some bad investments, with money from other areas of his investing which had done well. He may have just kept on doing this, hoping to one day fix it, but pedaling forward and being pushed forward by the thing he had created. Above left, note the uncanny physical similarity between Bernie and George Washington.