The other day in the news Bernie Madoff was interviewed by the media for the first time since his arrest in Dec of 2008. Bernie you may remember, is the man who created a $65 Billion (yes, that’s with a B) Ponzi scheme to rip off investors to the benefit of himself and those closest to him. Well, it appears that poor old Bernie (who’s already 72 and just starting his 150 year sentence) is now pointing a finger at the banks and hedge fund operators he associated himself with. He said, “They had to know”.
Reading that, I am amused that this is ‘news’ at all. Of course “they” had to know. How can an investment firm allow billions of dollars to flow through their doors without any kind of checks as to it’s legitimacy? The question really is, “Who is THEY at JP Morgan Chase who knew?” Someone knows who knew, and knows who SHOULD have known. The fact that they haven’t come clean about it by now means I (and this is just my personal opinion mind you) certainly would not count them worthy of the trust that they aspire to instill in their everyday investors. And they’re serious about inspiring trust.
JP Morgan Chase’s website touts they are, “…a leading global financial services firm with assets of $2 trillion and operations in more than 60 countries. The firm is a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers, small business and commercial banking, financial transaction processing, asset management, and private equity.”
Two TRILLION dollars! That’s a lot of money to trust to an organization which allowed a con man to use it for years. You’ve got to expect that entire teams of people at JP Morgan Chase are working hard with investigators to find out who was complicit, either willfully (that’d be criminal behavior) or unwittingly (that’d be someone who’s unbelievably incompetent). The latter of which is the BEST CASE SCENARIO. So you’d want to check out their website under “Corporate Responsibility” (yes, they have a whole tab for that!). It says, “Every day, we strive to make our firm a good corporate citizen -- and the most respected financial-services institution in the world.”
We can expect then that they’ve taken every day (their words, not mind) during the last two plus years to pour over the people and paperwork involved with Madoff’s account. Yet after all this time they still can’t find anyone who did anything wrong. Wow. Kind of inspires trust doesn’t it? And take note that with 65 Billion dollars gone, investigators have charged a grand total of 8 people to date. NONE of whom are connected with Morgan Chase. So what I’m hearing here is; Decades of swindling billions of dollars and only 8 people are complicit, none of whom are from the primary financial institution used. Well I guess we can all just put that behind us and forget about it then! Whoo-hoo!
Of course, if we were to hear the truth about financial matters, we might hear something unpleasant about both the level of our own government debt and our own household debt. We’d have to realize that we’re complicit in allowing government to borrow far beyond our means to pay it back and that we really just expect downstream generations to pay it. Well golly, that sounds like a Ponzi scheme! Maybe we’ll all just look the other way, do nothing and pretend it’s all just fine.
It brings to mind the old saying by Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Way back in the book of Numbers, Moses perceived that two of the Israelite tribes involved in the exodus would have opportunity to avoid doing the right thing. He said, “But if you fail to do this, you will be sinning against the LORD; and you may be sure that your sin will find you out.” (Num 32:23).
Failing to the right thing is wrong because God says it’s wrong. And God says it will be found out eventually. That day is coming, and it won’t be pretty.
