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Let’s Be Cynical About $65 Billion Going Missing

September 7, 2009

Let’s Be Cynical About Big Money Going Missing. Can One Man Steal $65 Billion? Bernie Maddof, who is serving 150 years in the slammer, has been talked about in recent days a lot. Some people even call him the biggest fraudster in the history of mankind. It is a scandal, they are saying, that Maddof was allowed to swindle so many peeple out of so much money.

But, of course, the real scandal is the fact that everybody is pretending that Maddof was alone on this. Stealing sixty five billion from his investors, that is. One man operation it was. No one else knew about it and no one else was involved. Even his family was unaware where the cash was coming from.

What rubbish! Of course it was a team effort. Big names must have been involved. Regulators were obviously paid off. Senior bankers must have been sharing the illegal proceeds. Some ministers must have been aware of what was happening but were looking the other way. Shame, shame on the U.S. justice system. Whom are they kidding?

Anyway, today we repeat our piece about Maddof that we posted some time ago. We are sort of bringing it back to your attention to entertain  you a bit. And please pay attention to the humour and sarcasm in the article.

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Let us be cynical about huge amounts of money going missing. Billions and billions of dollars. Sixty five billion U.S. dollars , to be precise.

You may have already heard that Bernard Madoff, the American crooked financier, who ran a pyramid scheme for as many years as anyone can remember, has been stripped of his assets. And before that he had apologised to his investors for swindling them out of $65,000,000,000. I have included all the zeros here so that you could get a feel for the sort of money we are talking about.

We are asked to believe that good old Madoff singlehandedly, all by hinmself, without any help, stole an astronomical amount of money and is taking the rap for it. It was a one man operation, he says, and I take full responsibility for what I have done and I am prepared to suffer the consequences of my mistakes for the rest of my life.

Very decent it was of him. Very honest, I would say. Well done Bernard!

Only being cynical, of course. Who is this guy kidding? Does he really think that we will fall for his story – I am sorry, but I might even call it bullshit – and actually believe that he alone moved such vast amounts of money across the world without being caught? If so, he should be appointed Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve immediately. President Barack Obama should pardon him and allow him to resolve the financial crisis in the U.S. single-handedly. And why not, if this man could fool governments and banks and cops and lawyers across the world from his office in New York and some tiny place in London for so many years?

Madoff must be a financial genius. He should be given the Nobel Prize in Economics straight away. Books should be written about him and students in business schools should learn from his vast experience. Eat your hearts out Russian oligarchs. Your fortunes pale into insignificance compared to what Bernard has made.

But seriously: do any of you out there believe that Bernie pulled this off all by himself? I remembers one investigator telling me that once you steal over a million, be it dollars or euros or even pound sterling, you run a big risk of getting noticed. And that was a man who spent many years tracking down fraudsters and swindlers and con-artists. He also told me that it took a sophisticated network of bank accounts to move the stolen money between them to avoid detection. He did mention though that such things as client accounts in legal companies did help to hide large amounts of money but he was still adamant that once you would be steling millions it would be pretty hard to hide them.

In Bernie’s case we are talking about $65 billion. OK, the amount was spread along many years but it has come to light that he actually invested, in a proper sense, something like half a billion of it and the rest just went walkies. Brilliant stuff! I suspect there is already a script being written and a film director getting all excited about the future blockbuster.

Let me tell you what I think really happened; in a cynical sort of way. Madoff was, of course, working with many other people. Serious people with wide connections. Maybe even senior politicians and top bankers and big shot lawyers. And these people have decided when he was caught out – by chance, by the way, all because of the financial meltdown – that he should take the blame for everything.

Look, Bernie, they said to him, why don’t you take the rap for the whole thing? It will look great on your CV and you will help many good people from having to explain some of the honest mistakes they have made in the past. Not to mention that your family will not have to suffer. And we promise to look after you when you spend your time in the slammer. You won’t even notice the difference between your penthouse and your new place of residence. Go on, be a sport.

Beats having a bullet between the eyes any time.

And Madoff must have agreed. And took the rap. For all of the $65 billion. And I bet you he probably even feels a certain sense of satisfaction now. Because it’s not like he going down for some miserly hundred grand, or even a mil. He is going down in style and with a bang, so to speak. And he is expecting to be looked after well.

I wonder if he would not be tempted to confess to stealing even more money. Say, another $50 billion? Compliments of some other group of serious people? And who doesn’t he actually claim to have brought down the whole US economy? The possibilities are endless here.

Bernie should also consider taking the rap for the whole world crisis. Would save so many people all that hassle of proving that they never touched a cent of other people’s money.

– End –

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Category: Living In America  · 3 Comments »
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3 Responses to “Let’s Be Cynical About $65 Billion Going Missing”

  1. Exposé on May 9th, 2009 2:37 am

    Can we say “MONEY LAUNDERING” yet?

  2. Exposé on May 9th, 2009 2:47 am

    Using 9 zeros is an OTT ”American-ism’ BS billion.

    Actually,
    $65,000,000,000.
    is 65 thousand million..

    The real figure for 65 billion looks like this
    $65,000,000,000,000.

    Exposé

    AGAIN and however many zeros are used … MONEY LAUNDERING IS INVOLVED IN ALL OF THESE SCAMS!

  3. Glory Promo on June 30th, 2009 6:51 am

    Yes it stinks and they just hope to have it all go away by giving him a sentence that a 5 year old could never out live.

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