{"id":1514,"date":"2009-06-29T09:53:22","date_gmt":"2009-06-29T17:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=1514"},"modified":"2009-06-29T10:39:29","modified_gmt":"2009-06-29T18:39:29","slug":"the-madoff-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/the-madoff-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"The Madoff lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nathan Hale<\/a>, a hero of the American Revolution, condemned by the British to hang as a spy in 1776, famously said that he regretted that he had “but one life to give for my country.”<\/p>\n

Madoff’s victims, many of whom have been condemned to a life of unexpected financial struggle, probably regret that the old devil had no more than one life to give for his crimes based on his 150 year sentence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Is there a lesson from the Madoff debacle?\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0 His crime was a catastrophe for everyone who trusted him, and on a larger scale than anything before perpetrated by a private individual.\u00a0 Several ethical codes suggest a moral:<\/p>\n

– Common sense:\u00a0 Don’t put all your eggs in one basket<\/p>\n

– Western religion:\u00a0 If you do put all your eggs in one basket, make certain you know what that basket is made of<\/p>\n

– Eastern religion:\u00a0 Better not to have many eggs;\u00a0 all baskets eventually fail<\/p>\n

I don’t know if any of these are particularly helpful, but two morals–the ones most often cited in the press–are quite unhelpful:<\/p>\n

– Fundamentalist:\u00a0 Greed is evil, and must be brought under control<\/p>\n

– Political:\u00a0 The government needs more money and more power to prevent these things<\/p>\n

The fundamentalist hypocrisy is that only certain other<\/em> people are greedy.\u00a0 It appeals to the vanity that you or I would never succumb to the sin of wanting more than we have, much more if given the opportunity.\u00a0 In fact, greed was on both sides of the Madoff equation.\u00a0 The victims experienced a certain feeling every time they opened one of the fake statements telling them how much they “made.”\u00a0 That feeling was indistinguishable from greed, and it was indispensable to perpetuating the Madoff scheme.\u00a0 Nevertheless, I would never say that the victims deserved what happened to them.<\/p>\n

Madoff’s real sin was, in fact, theft<\/strong>.\u00a0 Among the multitudes infected by the sin of greed, I believe that most of us are morally equipped to avoid perpetrating theft.<\/p>\n

The government’s prescription, of course, is a joke.\u00a0 Madoff was registered with the SEC.\u00a0 They were furnished specific concerns about his legitimacy.\u00a0 The clean bill of health given by the regulators simply helped Madoff reel in more victims<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nathan Hale, a hero of the American Revolution, condemned by the British to hang as a spy in 1776, famously said that he regretted that he had “but one life to give for my country.” Madoff’s victims, many of whom have been condemned to a life of unexpected financial struggle, probably regret that the old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scandal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1514"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1516,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514\/revisions\/1516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}