The Bernard Madoff scandal has swept over Palm Beach like a monumental hurricane, leaving wreckage on every street and byway. Last Thursday evening started like every other night at Amici, a popular Italian restaurant just down the street from my ocean-front condo. At about 7:30 one dinner guest got a phone call and jumped up screaming and within minutes there was turmoil in the sedate restaurant.
Everyone knows someone who has been destroyed or hurt. A friend called me yesterday and said he was “nicked.” He and his wife had invested $2 million with Madoff years ago. He wouldn’t tell me how much it had grown to but it must have been at least $5 million and perhaps twice that. In Palm Beach that’s a nicking.
I don’t know what to say anymore. Palm Beach is not the same. The fantasy is dead. The game is up. And sooner or later everyone is going to realize it.
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4 comments:
I just read all the articles on your blog and I do think they are fascinating! Your writing style is concise, literary, and enjoyable. How you --a sane and normal person-- manage to put up with the oddballs of Palm Beach is beyond me but it only shows you to be a better man than many. The Madoff case has interested and saddened me for the past few days. Trust destroyed and dreams broken. I actually doubt Bernie is a bad man at all; I think he is not a sociopath as some claim and that he feels terribly about his actions.
CNBC Thurs 18th of Dec, 9pm, Show on Madoff. This is a book and movie in the making. It is to the 2000's what "Barbarians at the Gate" and "Wall Street" were to the 80's! The fraud must have evolved rather than been planned because there would be no logic to hurting the people and charities you cherised the most. My guess is the (Madoff) fund, while dishonest, was under control and appeared to be able to meet redemptions with new subscribers on an ongoing basis until the meltdown in equities in Oct. and spawned redemptions that couldn't be met. The fraud probably started with the desire to report good results every quarter and once the fraudulent results started there is no way to get off the treadmill without causing a collapse because every quarter needs more profit to be reported on a ever growing capital base. It self perpetuates until a collapse occurs. These frauds are doomed to fail through the law of geometric progression. There isn't ever enough money to continue indefinetly. How many other entities "parked" funds with Bernie while they were waiting for the market to bottom and got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, stay tuned.....
Very enjoyable. I lived for years in Aspen and watched it ruined by social silliness.
Check out chapter on Indian Dick if you like.
www.jmatsonheininger.com
Ben Kingsley, Anthony Hopkins, or Jack Nicholson for Bernie?
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