Friday, December 12, 2008

That's you folks

There was this guy named Bernard Madoff. Very smart guy. Spent his life in the World of investments and finance. He made a lot of money. For himself. For other people.

One of the problems guys like this have is they have been successful for so long, they can't believe when things start to go wrong for them and then keep going wrong. This guy had billions invested for other people. He was returning 8-10%, even over the last couple of years. I gotta tell ya. Anybody that could do that pretty much had to be reading God's mail.

I'm sure when he started to declare profits that weren't there it was with the best of intentions. He felt he could recoup the losses he had suffered and make a comeback. It might even have been something he had done before and it probably worked that time. I don't believe Bernard started out to steal anybodies money. I don't think that he has a boatload of ill gotten gains stashed in Swiss vaults.

The problem is that 50 billion dollars is gone. I don't think he was managing any more than 20 billion. They let these hedge fund guys leverage pretty heavily. So it's the banks that lent him the money that will take the biggest bath.

That's you folks.

I think there are a lot more bad boys like Bernard still out there, wondering what to do and when it will all fall apart.

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