Madoff

In the face of the deepening financial crisis and the largest Wall Street swindle in history, President-elect Barack Obama acted swiftly to fill three key economic posts. He announced his appointments at a press conference this morning in Chicago.
“The regulators who were assigned to oversee Wall Street dropped the ball” in this economic downturn and [...]

Speaking of Bernard Madoff — and who isn’t, these days? — the inevitable next chapter of this saga is the first-person tales of woe from his wealthy victims. The Daily Beast steps right up with a piece by Alexandra Penney, a New York artist, and former editor of Self magazine, which seems somehow fitting.
Did I [...]

Looking for a guilty pleasure today? Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture has a partial listing of the banks and brokerages facing big losses from financier Bernard Madoff’s alleged Ponzie scheme. The Financial Times also delves into this, noting big losers in the scheme such as the Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC. Nomura Holdings, [...]

That’s the question Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism asks about Bernie Madoff’s huge Ponzi scheme. He also raises another good point: Why didn’t Madoff make a run for it?

Forget credit default swaps, mortgage-backed securities and all those complicated financial instruments that are causing the economy so much trouble. Wall Street is reeling today instead from a straightforward, by-the-books, $50 billion Ponzi scheme apparently orchestrated by the once-respected investor Bernard Madoff, a former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. There is no complex chain [...]