Queston on background check for petitioner

[mox 298]

I'm going to disagree with those who said he was a monster and even those who think he should get all that time in jail. Personally, I think he should get a couple years in a resort to think about what he did wrong, but I don't think what he did was all that wrong. The folks who lost all that money were motivated by the same thing he was - GREED.

When I hear stories about 74-year-old grandmothers who lost everything I wonder how? If they were diversified wouldn't they still have other investments and/or assets? If they lost everything they were in it for the same reason he was - GREED!

He pulled a horrible scam on people, but I don't see how he's any different than the guy playing 3-card monte down the block. We have people out here who shoot, rape and rob others in their community and we can't hold them in jail over the weekend yet this guy who set up an elaborate scheme in which no one was injured, hurt, or even really unjustly victimized, he gets 150 years.

Is that justice?

Ever quit a job to take a higher salary somewhere else? That's greed. Ever waited to buy something on sale? That's greed. Any money in an interest-bearing account? It's greed. In a monogamous relationship? Greed. Humans are genetically designed to act in their own self interests. Our brains are hard-wired for it.

But what Madoff did was only motivated by greed. It's the mechanism he used that makes it more than just greed. It was robbery. It would have been no different than if he'd have gone into their houses and stole their belongings. He was just more sophisticated about it. Blaming the victims of his ponzy scheme is akin to blaming a rape victim because she was wearing revealing clothing.

The only way your "3-card monte down the block" analogy works is if the investors understood that they were investing their money into a shady proposition. That wasn't the case. He was highly respected in the financial and Jewish community. Investing with Madoff was considered safe, and he had a track record (forged of course) to prove it. He even had the SEC fooled.

No, sorry, I don't buy that it was the fault of the investors. The guy's ruined I don't know how many lives. He deserves to be imprisoned for the rest of his life.

[slim 1,525]

No, sorry, I don't buy that it was the fault of the investors. The guy's ruined I don't know how many lives. He deserves to be imprisoned for the rest of his life.

I'm not disagreeing that what he did was wrong, I'm only disagreeing with your implication that it was completely his fault for ruining peoples' lives. If the investors wouldn't have been so greedy as to dump every single penny they had into this one investment, they would've been allright.

A loss of one investment shouldn't have been catastrophic for any single investor. What we hear on the news is cases of people who "lost everything" (which is usually several hundred thousand dollars - yeah, I feel real sorry for those people.) and have had their lives ruined. I have no empathy for those people whatsoever because they were greedy with their investing and instead of diversifying and protecting themselves, they dumped all their eggs into one basket in the hopes of making even more money.

It's almost like me going to the casino and then bitching about it later when I lost all my money. "It seemed like a great investment. They paid 3 to 2 on all blackjacks. I lost everything. Now, I'm ruined!" Granted what the casino didn't do was outright steal my money, but they did offer an investment with risk of loss. Every investment features risk of loss, and if an investor ignores that fact in hopes of making more money, sometimes they end up losing. In cases we hear on the news, some lost everything.