1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

150 years for Madoff

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by TheSportsPredictor, Jun 29, 2009.

  1. trifectarich

    trifectarich Well-Known Member

    Yes, some of these people have nothing, but keep in mind what got them there: greed.
     
  2. Magic In The Night

    Magic In The Night Active Member

    If you haven't read it, the article in Vanity Fair on him written in first person by his longtime secretary is fantastic. From reading it, it seems she believes the wife knew but the sons didn't. The secretary had no idea.
     
  3. NoOneLikesUs

    NoOneLikesUs Active Member

    First off, the regulators should also be the ones thrown into the fire on this one. There were plenty of warnings on this investment scheme. It was a hedge fund. It was risky.

    But if regulators aren't doing their job, ultimately it's the investor who is responsible. The investor trusted this person to continue to ring up 10 percent annual returns (or whatever it was) without a bit of skepticism. That's the definition of foolish.

    I do feel sorry for those who counted on the investments to fund their retirement, kids' college funds or charitable foundation, but there's a lot of pain to go around at the moment. And a lot of was inflicted by trusting a system that was and still is deeply flawed.
     
  4. kleeda

    kleeda Active Member

    I'm not sure how investing in funds with a track record of 10 percent (or more) returns makes one greedy. Bernie Madoff failed them. So did the system. Hell, I've done better than 13 percent many years in a row. I gave a lot of that back the last 2 years, but everyone did. But I damn sure didn't lose everything, but if I had been invited into Bernie's world, I would have. I'm not a big Schadenfreud guy anyway, but particularly not for the vast majority of Madoff's victims.
     
  5. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    The whole role of prisons in our society is a complex one. Do you take a person who committed some terrible crime and put them some place to torture them and make them feel bad for whatever they did? (As if they don't feel bad enough already.) Like a murderer goes to a harsher prison than someone who uses drugs or has a DWI?

    Or do you --- as is currently done --- base unit assignment on factors like age, health, escape risk and so forth, basically saying that all crimes are equal and the role of prison is not to inflict punishment, but rather to protect the public?
     
  6. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    Oh, I have no problem with the way it's done now, for the most part. Madoff isn't an escape or security risk once he's actually in prison. If anything, putting him in a maximum security hellhole would probably get him killed within a year. For the purposes of a smoothly-operating prison system he should be in a minimum security prison.
    But once in a while, in extreme cases like this, you start to wonder if the punishment aspect of prison ought to outweigh some of the other factors. The guy didn't kill anyone, but he destroyed a lot of lives. Plenty of people are going to spend years -- years they don't have in some cases -- cleaning up the mess. In a lot of ways, what he did was worse than walking into a bank and sticking a gun in a teller's face. There should be some way to revisit that pain and suffering on a guy like Madoff.
     
  7. you can't be serious

    how on earth is investing in what you have every reason to believe is a legitimate outfit - run by a former chairman of NASDAQ - being greedy?
     
  8. GB-Hack

    GB-Hack Active Member

    The big question is whether the Cubs will have won a World Series by the time he was due for release.
     
  9. kleeda

    kleeda Active Member

    It's OK, write then drink, I've seen this game before. It's the same one where the girl with the plunging neckline and the slit skirt "deserved" it.
     
  10. NoOneLikesUs

    NoOneLikesUs Active Member

    I don't see how this justifies a rape comparison.

    There is always a risk present when investing - whether it be with Madoff or anything else. You can lose it all. It does happen. At no point are you, me or any else guaranteed a thing.
     
  11. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    True dat. Madoff was a crook, but that doesn't absolve the investors from responsibility for managing their own investments. I've always compared investing to gambling: sometimes you win, but sometimes you will lose. And if you aren't prepared to lose, you have no business playing.
     
  12. trifectarich

    trifectarich Well-Known Member

    If you're making 10 percent while all the markets are down 20 percent, you'd better suspect something is amiss. If you don't, I have little sympathy for your own foolishness. If you own even one share of stock, you get an annual report and a proxy to vote on the board of directors and other matters. Didn't any of these idiots wonder why these materials never popped into their mailboxes?
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page