Monday, December 15, 2008

"Hedge fund body wants help for Madoff victims"

http://www.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUSLF6597520081215

Bernard Madoff is the hedge fund manager who was arrested last week for running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme that defrauded some of the world's savviest investors. Hedge fund managers are the guys who took the worthless mortgages issued by Freddie and Fannie, repackaged them, then resold them as secure investments. They made billions of dollars in "profits" doing this. Of course, the whole thing collapsed into the smoldering heap that is currently our economy.

So now the Alternative Investment Management Association, a hedge fund trade association, is calling for "restitution" to Madoff's victims: mostly wealthy individuals, institutions, and banks. NOTE: they are not calling upon their own membership to make that restitution. I assume they expect taxpayers to pick up the tab for this fiasco, too.

Personally, I think that maybe taking someone like Madoff out into a public arena and putting a bullet into his brain would send the proper message to the rest of these weasels. Of course, we are civilized, so that won't happen. Instead, working people will be forced to pick up the tab for greedy, selfish pigs. Families struggling to make ends meet for their children will pay for these and other crimes. Inflicting economic violence upon the lowest class of performers in our economy is the "civilized" way to do it. Only in the USA can you become an envied multimillionaire by screwing thousands out of their savings, and then making thousands others pay for it.

2 comments:

AvengingAngel said...

They should send these guys to ral prisons like Attica or Angola, not the usual minimal security joints.

One year in Attica for every million you stole. Seems right to me.

Oh, BTW, if you allowed yourself to be taken in one of these scams, shame on you. I'm not paying for it.

hale-bopp said...

I finally got to read the article you linked to and yep, no mention is made of where these funds should come from. I also noticed that several of the exposed banks are not U.S. based. Now I might have some sympathy if it was the Bank of Lesotho that got ripped off, but substantially less for large Scottish and Japanese banks who should be on the ball.

I also feel mildly insulted. "For decades the $1.5 trillion hedge fund industry has avoided the strict rules imposed on mutual funds as their managers argued that their clients were wealthier, more savvy investors who required less protection." Since I don't invest in hedge funds, I must be a real stupid rube...or am I? I am not the one who lost money this ime!