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  • optionsgirl: 
  • Comments (1711)
  •  • Instablog (103)
  •  • StockTalk (34)
  Actually, there is a place on your 1040 long form for robberies. So, that part of Joe Nocera's observation is wrong.
  To be robbed of your life savings is a terrible tragedy. Especially painful is when the investor hired a firm to make proftis, and that firm took an administrative fee and passed off the responsibility to Madoff.
  Personally, if I suffered such a loss, I'd be wailing from the rooftop!

  Jun 30 05:36 PM | Link | Reply
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  • cabanker: 
  • Comments (20)
  Agreed, these people need to buck up. It's not the Government's responsibility to make up for their losses. There was writing on the wall for years and the investors chose to ignore it out of either greed or stupidity. Did they ever hear of diversification? Don't put all your eggs in 1 basket?
  I (and many others) took a bath in financial stocks last year as some of the Banks I owned went under. No one is bailing me out. Suck it up an move on.
  Oh and btw, how much of their losses were paper vs. actual $ invested?

  Jun 30 06:20 PM | Link | Reply
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  • Righteous: 
  • Comments (7)
  •  • StockTalk (3)
  Nah, this isn't robbery. It's closer to larceny. Robbery involves violence or intimidation. I don't know if there is any such place on your 1040 for larceny or not. However, I agree that the investors need to get over it. They sure want the government to help them out now, but I'm sure if the government had wanted to double the taxes on their fabulous pseudo-earnings, they wouldn't have been willing to pony up. Whatever happened to buyer beware? Maybe the victims should exert more effort to get Madoff to disclose what happened to the money and what can be recovered. Then they would actually be working for their money.
  
  
  On Jun 30 05:36 PM optionsgirl wrote:
  
  > Actually, there is a place on your 1040 long form for robberies.
  > So, that part of Joe Nocera's observation is wrong.
  > To be robbed of your life savings is a terrible tragedy. Especially
  > painful is when the investor hired a firm to make proftis, and that
  > firm took an administrative fee and passed off the responsibility
  > to Madoff.
  > Personally, if I suffered such a loss, I'd be wailing from the rooftop!

  Jun 30 06:30 PM | Link | Reply
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  • prudentinve...: 
  • Comments (710)
  How about those who trusted their savings to GM bonds and "Smart Notes" at par value, when they were AAA. The "Smart Notes" were aimed at Mom & Pop, who had faith in this great all-American institution, General Motors.
  
  Madoff victims want to be bailed out by the same government that basically told GM's bondholders to "go to heck", with a creatively structured a bankruptcy that, whilst perhaps within the letter of the law, basically fleeced the bondholders.
  
  Investment carries risk, and Madoff's investors were no more diligent than GM's bondholders, and should not qualify for better treatment at taxpayers' expense.

  Jun 30 06:49 PM | Link | Reply
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  • i'mwithher: 
  • Comments (23)
  Fraud is awful, period.

  Jun 30 08:01 PM | Link | Reply
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  • philipmax: 
  • Comments (49)
  The Madoff victims are mad that with all the righteous regulations in place at the SEC, this scam has been undetected for 40 years.
  
  This is where the peeve against the government is focused at.
  
  The voices you hear are the same as Citi's victims AIG victims GM and dozens of other formerly "towers of safety" companies that let their stockholders down with unscrupulous behavior. The difference is that Madoff's victim have a face and a name to point at but corporate America has successfully shielded its perpetrators.
  
  Does anyone else see the irony of the fleecing of America of 15 TRILLION Dollars by Corporacity complicity without criminal trials while a relative piker (Madoff) gets 150 years??? !!!

  Jun 30 09:52 PM | Link | Reply
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  • urgentcare doc: 
  • Comments (9)
  I have no problem accepting my losses. However, the IRS shouldn't profit. For 20 years I wrote quarterly checks to subsidize my children's college funds by paying the taxes on their phantom gains. Which were taxed as short term gains at my tax rate.
  Madoff was a risky investment bet which I lost. The IRS stole from me. I just want to refile my taxes for the 20 years I paid for ficticious gains.
  

  Jun 30 11:21 PM | Link | Reply
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  • Mr. Ed, Jr.: 
  • Comments (461)
  I have not heard of anyone at the SEC losing their job over this. But we wouldn't want to inconvenience anybody by firing them, would we ?
  
  No reasonable person at the SEC (or on the planet) could read the Markopolos letter and think Madoff was on the level.
  
  Here is a link to the Markopolos letter :
  
  www.scribd.com/doc/918...

  Jun 30 11:49 PM | Link | Reply
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  • arthurofchi...: 
  • Comments (21)
  From what I understand many Madoff "victims" thought they were investing in divirsified portfolio's through third party firms.
  
  That said, my broker has less then 1/3 of our money, Bonds and cash are with JPM and my SEP IRA is with TDAmeritrade. Smart I thought, but I almost had a 20% haircut because my Bear Stearns broker had a decent chunk of our $ in a variety of Bear Stearns structured instruments. They seemed safe but would have been worth ZERO had the Bear gone BK.
  
  Anyone who knowingly invested with Madoff and gave them all their money was very foolish. What if he were honest and just made some bad bets? A lot of "smart", honest investor's lost a ton of money for their clients over the last 12 months.

  Jul 01 12:11 AM | Link | Reply