So Bernie Madoff was sentenced today to 150 years in prison. He will undoubtedly spend the remainder of his days in a cell, albeit a comfortable one. Yet the ending is almost biblical -- by sending Bernie away we expiate the guilt of a whole class of fraud artists who are once again receiving record bonuses.
Madoff swindled about $60 billion in an unabashed ponzi scheme that used incoming "investment" to pay returns to earlier contributors. Like all such schemes, it seemed, according to Madoff's testimony, to arise incrementally rather than by some grand design as these things so often do.
I guess it is sort of like selling CDS's that are inadequately funded, securing short term gain (and massive bonuses) at the cost of longer term consequences that must have been understood as potentially catastrophic. A more sophisticated scam, in other words, but a more morally defensible one? Probably not.
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