Spero Consulting

Posts Tagged ‘Bernie Madoff’

Con­gress is sup­posed to start its review of the SEC today, Jan­u­ary 5.

In the spirit of inquiry, we’re won­der­ing – only half jok­ingly – had Mr. Mad­off admit­ted only to los­ing vast sums of money in Sep­tem­ber, would the gov­ern­ment have pro­vided bailout money to him?

Why not? At the point reg­u­la­tors had inves­ti­gated his firm eight times over 16 years, and pre­sum­ably found very lit­tle that was sus­pi­cious. (Here’s our take on reg­u­la­tors as “wise” mon­keys.)

Were the actions of board and senior man­agers at many of the other firms that sought and received bailouts any less egre­gious? Pos­si­bly less (allegedly) crim­i­nal but less egregious?

Approx­i­mately ten days ago, after his release from jail, we caught a brief glimpse of Bernie Mad­off on the tele­vi­sion news. 

He was walk­ing along the side­walks of New York, pre­sum­ably near his apart­ment, and he was sur­rounded by a swarm of news reporters and cameramen.

It seemed that some­one accosted him – pushed him – but the episode didn’t last very long. We didn’t think much of it at the time and fig­ured that it was a dis­grun­tled neigh­bor who was also an investor in Mr. Madoff’s funds who had hap­pened upon him and his entourage, and that was that.

Upon fur­ther reflec­tion, we had our tit­u­lar thought: what a civ­i­lized coun­try we live in! 

Many very rich, clever, and rel­a­tively pow­er­ful peo­ple seem to have lost sub­stan­tial sums of money by invest­ing with Mr. Mad­off. Yet, he was arrested and arraigned and released on bail – all accord­ing to our laws – and upon his release he felt safe enough to ven­ture into public.

To date he has suf­fered noth­ing worse than a push.

Thus, so far, it seems that his investors have been con­tent to let the gov­ern­ment take the lead in pros­e­cut­ing him, and they have not imple­mented or acted on any vendet­tas or thoughts of revenge.

Now, this is the same coun­try that responded quite aggres­sively to 9/​11 – some say too aggres­sively – so, we don’t believe that we live in a sis­si­fied, effete country. (And it’s cer­tainly not that way out­side of the gun-​controlled cities and states where our media tend to reside.) So, we’d argue that it is sim­ply self-​control (of oth­ers) that per­mits Mr. Mad­off to walk the streets.

Of course, the future could prove us wrong and per­haps some folks are patient and want to serve their revenge cold. Until that time, we’ll mar­vel over the fact that West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion seems alive and impulses seem to be well-​controlled.