Bernard Madoff (2)

Please note the date of this article by Michael Ocrant (May 2001) Just loooove Bernie's quotes! Brackets are mine.

MAR/Hedge (RIP): Madoff tops charts; skeptics asks how

By Michael Ocrant

No. 89 May 2001

Madoff, who believes that he deserves “some credibility as a trader for 40 years,” says: “The strategy is the strategy [fraud] and the returns are the returns [100% of nothing is nothing?].” He suggests that those who believe there is something more to it and are seeking an answer beyond that are wasting their time.

Read Full Article at: http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/MarHedge.pdf

Bernard Madoff

Since news first hit about the Master of Madness Madman Madoff there have been 65 new reference added to Madoff's wikipedia entry . We are seriously considering changing our tagline from "And the Madness of Crowds" to simply "And the Crowds are really, really Mad!!!!!" Frank Lautenberg, The Wilpons, the Khruschevs the Kennedys. Well versed in etiquette. Extraordinarily nice. Guaranteeed to blow your...fortune? To avoid complications he always kept the same address. 17th floor. . Bar those windows. Suicide alert. Moo-ve over.

 

Read Full Description at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_L._Madoff

Ponzi Scheme

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves paying abnormally high returns to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from the profit from any real business. It is named after Charles Ponzi. A Ponzi scheme has similarities with a pyramid scheme though the two types of fraud are different.

Read more at:

Wikipedia - Ponzi Scheme

New York Times - "A look back at Charles Ponzi the Schemer"

Congressional Oversight Panel: Meet Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren

Ballbuster extraordinaire?

Video: http://www.cop.senate.gov/

Report: http://cop.senate.gov/documents/cop-121008-report.pdf

Nominal Interest Rates: Less Than Zero?

By Daniel L. Thornton

January 1999

Can nominal interest rates be less than zero? Many people would argue not, reasoning that no one would invest $100 today with a promise of receiving only, say, $99 in one year, given the alternative of simply holding the $100 in cash. Yet, rates on short-term Japanese government bills recently were negative, and several foreign-owned banks in Japan have paid negative nominalinterest rates on yen deposits.

Read Full Article at: http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/mt/19990101/cover.pdf

Quote of the day!

"Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
-Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) http://www.gaia.com/quotes/Albert_Einstein

Other Notable Quotes:

"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
-Archimedes

"Wall Street: the fulcrum that far exceeded Archimedes wildest expectation."
-Stickman

"You can't solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it."
-Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

"A man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom."
-J.P. Morgan

"Why did I rob banks? Because I enjoyed it. I loved it. I was more alive when I was inside a bank, robbing it, than at any other time in my life. I enjoyed everything about it so much that one or two weeks later I'd be out looking for the next job. But to me the money was the chips, that's all."
- Willie Sutton (in his own words)