¶ Don’t get us wrong: we agree that Bernard Madoff’s sustained defrauding of investors was very, very bad. But “extraordinarily evil“? That’s what Judge Denny Chin called it in his decision to sentence Mr Madoff to 150 years in prison. (We’re not sure why this is news two years later, but let that pass.) Quite aside from our discomfort with the idea of “evil” — especially as attached to a person (in the form of an onerous sentence), and especially in connection with a nonviolent crime against property — we have a big problem with the fact that Mr Madoff’s loser-take-all condition. The complete story remains to be told, but from the start it was clear that the Ponzi scheme was hugely enabled by complaisant counterparties at “feeder” funds and at banks — not to mention sophisticated investors who really ought to have known better; not to mention the wilfully stymied enforcers at the SEC. This was a case, moreover, in which it was the emperor himself who made the announcement about his invisible assets. We’re not saying that Bernie Madoff’s sentence ought to be reduced. We’re just saying that, standing alone as it does, it’s unconscionable.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 at 10:30 am.