Bernie Madoff Calls the US Government A Ponzi

It always takes a crook to spot a crook, it seems.

New York magazine has a long article by Steve Fishman (2/27/2011) based on a telephone interview with Bernie Madoff, who is serving a 150-year sentence for his Ponzi scheme that has cost $65 billion for the wealthy, mostly Jewish, investors.

He calls the whole US government "a Ponzi", and says it's a joke that no one at Goldman Sachs has gone to jail.

For that matter, no one at J.P.Morgan Chase, Citi, Bank of America, AIG, Fannie, Freddie, no one has gone to jail.

Difference between them and Madoff? Madoff screwed the wealthy, whereas TBTF financials screwed the general populace, small flies called taxpayers and middle-class Americans, with the active help from the Treasury Secretary (first Paulson then Geithner) and the Federal Reserve Chairman (Ben Bernank), as their boss (Prez of the USSA, first Bush the lesser, then Obama) either didn't comprehend the gravity of the situation (Bush) or simply didn't care other than to look and sound good (Obama).

Here's the link to the article online.
For the printer-friendly version (it's 10 pages), click here.

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Matt Taibbi: Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

The latest from Matt Taibbi:

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."

I put down my notebook. "Just that?"

"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.

Yup.

Ben Bernank's scheme to goose up the stock market is to benefit the top 5% of the population (including all these rich and famous people), while the most important asset (or what once was) for the middle class (or what's left of them) - homes - continues to fall in value.

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Madoff and Stanford "Victims" Want Government to "Make Them Whole"

Jewish and Christian coalition of the (once-)wealthy to make the rest of us pay, ultimately. Can you spell C-H-U-T-Z-P-A-H?

Investors Who Lost In Madoff and Stanford Schemes Want Government to "Make Them Whole" (3/10/2010 Jesse's Café Américain)

Citing the Business Week article, the post informs us that the Madoff and Stanford victims have banded together and have been lobbying Congress for a law that could require Wall Street firms to pay billions of dollars to cover some of the losses they suffered.

"Revenue neutral" solution to so that this wealthy group of investors are made "whole". RRIIGGHHTT.

But as Jesse's Cafe says, "What about the rest of us?":

What about the many who have lost, on a percentage basis, equally if not more devastating amounts of their retirement savings in the tech, housing and credit bubbles? Their only fault is that they lack the political connections and high powered lawyers to make the case for them to the Congress, and the influence to get their way from pliable Congressmen.

...To take the losses of wealthier investors from hedge funds and other high risk investments having no productive benefit or socially redeeming value, and socialize them to the many is almost unbelievable.

This holy coalition even has Federal Reserve Dallas's spokeswoman as one of the lobbyists, and influential Senators are already quite sympathetic to their "plight".

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