Another nail in the coffin of neoliberalism:
Some of the world’s wealthiest private and corporate investors are reported to be victims of an alleged $50bn fraud by Wall Street broker Bernard Madoff…
…Mr Madoff founded Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities in 1960, but also ran a separate hedge fund business.
According to the US Attorney’s criminal complaint filed in court, Mr Madoff told at least three employees on Wednesday that the hedge fund business – which served up to 25 clients and had $17.1bn under management – was a fraud and had been insolvent for years, losing at least $50bn.
He said he was “finished”, that he had “absolutely nothing” and that “it’s all just one big lie”, and that it was “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme”, the complaint said.
He told them that he planned to surrender to the authorities but not before he used his last $200m-$300m to pay “selected employees, family and friends”.
Under a Ponzi scheme, also known as a pyramid scheme, investors are promised very high returns on their investment, while in reality early investors are paid with money collected from later investors.
If found guilty, US prosecutors say he could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $5m.
Let’s go back to Marx:
Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.
So, to review: man runs massive scam; scam collapses; man is arrested and prosecuted. Where exactly did the liberal economy die? Thank god this sort of vulgar Marxism does not have currency outside of English departments and alt papers.
Did Marx ever pronounce on the issue of dogs and their owners? Maybe like “The Eighteenth Basenji of Louis Bonaparte.”
so a fraud of $50 billion is punished with a $5 million fine?? how does that punish this person in any way? WTF?? Damn, i need to go start a ponzi scheme now…
Nothing created by people is without it’s weaknesses and faults. That said, damn glad it wasn’t mine!
Using Bernard Madoff as an argument for Marxism is a bit like using automobile deaths as an argument for the horse and buggy.
Is anyone else viciously delighted at the idea of the wealthy being destitute?
Wow. I thought Jews were supposed to be GOOD with money. I’m feeling a warm tingle of schadenfreud…
I love this story because it puts an end to the notion of Spencerian Darwinism. Rich dumwads bet their life savings on the most “trusted option” and lost!
They go to the back of the line…Section 8 is available for those with a steady income.
You might as well give up Monopoly and play $quander…
I thought Marx was the one who said, “Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.”
I might make you get emotional when someone says it, but Marx does matter. Let’s wonder: what is the basis of that emotion? Are you afraid? Angry? Marks is a 19th century thinker who had some insights. What is so threatening about that? What is it about these Victorians, Freud, Nietzsche, Darwin, and Marx, that gets 21st century Internet frothers so worked up?
When you talk about Marx, the vast majority of Americans who know who you’re talking about picture the breadlines of the former USSR. Like a “true Democracy” the world has never seen a working model of a Marxist utopia. People always get in the way of their own progress.
@5, what’s your point? ;-P
@10: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud have become the hallmarks of the contemporary pseudo-intellectual. Anyone who throws these names around without irony is inviting scorn.
Inviting the scorn of who, exactly, seandr? The scorn of those who didn’t predict these financial pyramid schemes would collapse? Is that who? Do tell.
What’s interesting here is how you have no engagement with the ideas themselves. You have no critique or argument. To you the whole argument is the mere mention of the names. All it takes is the names, “throwing the names” alone, to provoke your vindictive defense reaction. This is my point. These guys scare people today, and they want do not even hear the names spoken.
Boo!
do you pay for those pictures or just steal them off the Corbis website?
Charles,
Uh, Marx doesn’t matter. He’s a dinosaur. The natural state of humanity is in competition for resources and partners (usually economic and sexual). Capitalism works for both.
@14 the irony is lost on you.
@10: the scorn of any freethinking, intelligent technocrat who doesn’t have an axe to grind. put it this way, if Marx were alive today, he would not be a marxist.
Dammit, a Ponzi scheme is different from a pyramid scheme.
“A pyramid scheme is a form of fraud similar in some ways to a Ponzi scheme, relying as it does on a disbelief in financial reality, including the hope of an extremely high rate of return. However, several characteristics distinguish pyramid schemes from Ponzi schemes:
* In a Ponzi scheme, the schemer acts as a “hub” for the victims, interacting with all of them directly. In a pyramid scheme, those who recruit additional participants benefit directly (in fact, failure to recruit typically means no investment return).
* A Ponzi scheme claims to rely on some esoteric investment approach, insider connections, etc., and often attracts well-to-do investors; pyramid schemes explicitly claim that new money will be the source of payout for the initial investments.
* A pyramid scheme is bound to collapse a lot faster, due to the necessity of exponential increases in participants to sustain it. By contrast, Ponzi schemes can survive simply by getting most participants to “reinvest” their money, with a relatively small number of new participants.”
-from the wikipedia article on Ponzi schemes. I thought they could explain the difference better.
the US is in the process of nationalizing banking and major industry – face it – all you silly poor defenders of unfettered capitalism
you all are too stupid to even know how screwed over you have been – and the rich will still get richer – and you do not have health insurance – thank god for the socialist FDR moment called social security or most of us would be eating garbage and dog food in our old age
get a clue, marx was right about 3/4 of the time
you all been snookered for generations – poor poor working class, totally screwed
UM. A Ponzi Scheme is NOT THE SAME as a Pyramid Scheme. They are both scams, but they work somewhat differently.