Madoff, Malibu and the Miracle Mile

It never ceases to amaze me the greed and laziness that goes on. I've invested for years and in the long run I would have been better off stuffing it all in a can and hiding it. No worries or doubts... My word to the wise. If you have to depend on someone to do his or hers job in order for you to succeed or attain your goal, forget it! Do it yourself and live with it. It rarely happens anymore.

Before it's overwith not just your network but CMBC and Bloomberg television are going to be working this one. I expect Craydon Carter at Vanity Fair to be digging into the Scam of the 21st Century too. I expect Madoff's victims to grow and expand. Question are we going to see more celebs in this mix. Anything is possiple. And the Madoff Scam makes Worldcom looklike a kindergartend. But this is a human story too with investors as the collateral damage. CNBC has been doing a terrific job on the Palm Beach,Florida angle too. I like to give credit where its do. I watch thier special too bernie Madoff and I learned more. Now I'm looking at the larger picture here just how many Palm beachs are there going to be? U know they've been quiet about the Madoff scam and madoff deserves to the be the butt of Leno Jokes. In this story I see three coasts: East,Southeast and West. But this is going to be an interesting human story. I suspect he didn't run this ultimate Ponzi scheme alone.

Although most business people are not in the category that Bernie Madoff's investors were, there are business lessons to be learned for all business people. The first lesson: What ultimately got most of these "sophisticated investors" was greed. Now greed can disguise itself in many different ways including eating too much at the all-you-can-eat salad buffet. Or wanting to be part of the "crowd" and not missing out on anything. In our daily business, we need to make sure we are making sound, rational business decisions. That we are motivated by solid business principles and not greed. The second lesson that is important, is that many of these investors didn't even know they were investing with Bernie Madoff! They had trusted a financial planner to make decisions for them and had no idea of where their money was being invested. When they first heard of Bernie Madoff and the Ponzi Scheme, they never realized their investments had been invested with Madoff. What a shock they got! In business we need to know what is going on and leave nothing to chance. The moral is: Don't get greedy. Ask questions. Lots of questions. And don't make a deal till you are satisfied with the answers. If the other party doesn't like that you're asking questions, all the more reason not to do business with them.

It seems he was an equal opportunity offender whom ever and wherever he found people with money he struck....

Persons of any level of intelligence are vulnerable to deception by experienced con artists. Confidence tricks exploit human weaknesses; like religious beliefs, greed, dishonesty, vanity, but also virtues like honesty, compassion, or a naïve expectation of good faith on the part of the con artist. The con artist often works with one or more accomplices called shills, who help manipulate the mark into accepting the con man's plan. These associates of the con are persons selling goods or services or a political group, who pretends no association to the seller/group and assumes the air of an enthusiastic customer. The intention of these associates is, using crowd psychology, to encourage others unaware of the set-up to invest. The con is applied metaphorically to journalists or commentators who have vested interests and usually this takes the form of a show or network pretending to be offering "news" when in fact they are simply repeating talking points offered by a political party. O' bummer! Ghost bidders are sometimes employed in auctions. Driving prices up with phony bids, they seek to provoke a bidding war among participants. Christies, Sotherby's, Bonhams & Butterfields. These cons also pay tribute to missionaries and benefactors of the church, working the crowd for money, using their weeknesses, using crowd psychology. Rev. Jimmy Swaggart got busted with several $5,000.00 an hour prostitutes. Money for starving children in the red light district of Americas political playground; Cambodia.