Markopolos: "To Believe In Bernie Madoff Was To Believe In The Impossible"



After the madcap thumotic excesses of our unilateral imperial roller coaster ride, it is the morning after and time to assess the damage to our Republic. The hyper-aggressive banker douchebags who created false value -- and against whom this blog has been so vigilant -- have been exposed, and the people who actually make things in this economy have to bail them out of their exorbitant mess. The Homeric Greeks knew that the secret to a good life is Moderation -- Thumos -- in money and in everything else; those shitheads were drunk on their oily Chimp masculinity, secreting, grotesquely, toxic assets. And the wealthy who expected money to grow from money on word of mouth of from their wealthy acquaintances are awakening from their fiscal somnolence. Why did so many ordinarily smart people who usually do diligence fall prey to Madoff? From Bloomberg:

"Harry Markopolos, a former money manager who sought to convince regulators for nine years that Bernard Madoff was a fraud, said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission suffers from 'investigative ineptitude.'

"Markopolos told Congress today that he contacted the SEC in 2000 after examining Madoff’s investment strategy and determining in four hours that returns exceeding 10 percent weren’t possible.

"... Markopolos, in his testimony, said Madoff’s resume made him fear for his life as he and a team of advisers scrutinized the manager’s Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. His testimony included 310 pages of e-mails and financial documents.

"'Our analysis lead us to conclude that Mr. Madoff’s fund and the secret walls around it posed great danger to those questioning and investigating them,' he said. 'He was one of the most powerful men on Wall Street and in a position to easily end our careers or worse.'

"Markopolos described repeated meetings with SEC investigators in Boston and New York, saying they appeared to lack the financial expertise needed to understand his warnings or brushed them off. He later tried to alert the media, without success, he said.

"'BM’s math never made sense, his performance charts were clearly deceiving, and his return stream never resembled any known financial instrument or strategy,' he said, referring to Madoff by initials. 'To believe in BM was to believe in the impossible.'"

Is it just The Corsair or does it seem that we are just waking up from a dream? Would it be more accurate to frame it: Sobering up after what can only be properly construed as an economic bar crawl with George W. Bush ..

More here.