You’ve no doubt heard of the latest financial debacle by now, Bernard Madoff, whose sons & business partners ratted him out to the feds, ran what he himself called a gigantic, high-stakes Ponzi scheme. Here’s the wheeze: he targeted “sophisticated investors”.
The WSJ analyzes this psychology that any half-way successful con man would recognize: assure the marks that this is an exclusive offer, available to only a lucky few, & you’ll have people elbowing each other out of the way to throw handfuls of money at you.
You know, I wouldn’t give a toss about trust-fund babies being kneecapped by their own greed. Except I just opened the quarterly statement for one of my IRA accounts, & it’s dropped almost by half in the last three months.
Remember that movie Escape from New York? Where all the worst criminals are locked up in maximum-security Manhattan? They should do that with all these CEOs, hedge fund managers & all the greedy bastards who fed their cons. Just their money, their risk, nothing crosses over any of the water surrounding the place.
The world would be infinitely better off.
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