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There's also the problem that not all of his investors knew that they were investors.

If you handed over your cash to a broker, and the broker looked at Madoff's record and decided he was a good bet, it wouldn't have been a personal choice.

Not a few people seem to have become involved like this - sometimes with two or more levels of indirection.

A more interesting question is where all the money went. If the fund was worth $65bn, and Madoff was keeping most of the cash, that would have made him one of the richest people in the world.

He can't have lost all of it through personal speculation.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed Jun 17th, 2009 at 04:23:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The money's gone to paty for the higher returns that investors DID get for many years. Those that were in for a long time didn't really lose money over the period, as they 'earned' more earlier - and probably used that money to live on, to quite an extent. The most recent entrants lost everything.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Wed Jun 17th, 2009 at 05:01:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The fund was only worth $65bn in financial cyberspace, a place where real money is amplified a thousand times.

Those on Wall St and the City who were on the receiving end of the wealth capture cycle extracted the real money while everybody else was left looking at screens that depicted a representation of what their money would look like if it were real as well. When the Greenspan bubble burst, it was as if somebody pressed Delete and it all went away. But then again, it was never really there in the first place.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Wed Jun 17th, 2009 at 05:01:50 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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