150 years for Madoff

[kleeda]

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.

 

[NoOneLikesUs]

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.

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.

 

[Mark2010]

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.

 

[trifectarich]

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.

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?

 

[deskslave]

They really want to make an example of this guy, send him to someplace like Marion, Atlanta or Leavenworth. Instead, like Mark said, he'll go to a minimum security prison and live out his days. Unless some disgruntled investor has a connection in there and finds someone to shank him [/keepingfingerscrossed]

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?

The punishment is the deprivation of freedom. The prison is the way we carry out that sentence. It's not supposed to be an additional punishment in and of itself. And the seriousness of the crime is reflected in the length of the punishment.

That there is so much societal acceptance of prison being a place where all sorts of horrible things happen (and I think that's somewhat overblown, though probably not by much) almost has to be part of the reason there is so much recidivism. The societal inability to forgive and reintegrate those who have served their time doesn't help either, and is ironic given the insistence on the U.S. being a "Christian nation."