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Bernard Madoff beat up in USA Prison

Um, no, my comment was obviously intended to bring a whiff of reality back to the discussion. That you didn't see it that way speaks ill of you, not me.

Accept for one thing. The victims didn't break any laws.



Okay, so you either don't know much about the prison system, or you don't know much about prisoners. Fair enough.

I have relatives in prison, now. One doing 100 years. Yes, I know plenty about prisoners, prisons and convicts.
 
Why do you think compassion should be showed to Madoff?


***** Because I never feared anyone looking like him either on the streets or Subways in NYC. Also he never held a Public Office and at one stage was at the point of coming clean with minimal losses compared to what eventually occured, and doing some time OR continuing on with the BS until his luck ran out. Maybe he thought he wouldn't live long enough to get nailed.

**** Considering the volume of posters on this board I guarantee some here would (if they had the resume,resources, or connections) have made the same call and just hoped.
 
He wasn't beaten up, he fell out of bed

Source [ABC | Source: Madoff fell out of bed, injured]

DURHAM, NC -- A source tells ABC11 Eyewitness News that disgraced financier Bernie Madoff is being treated for serious injuries after he fell out of his prison bed.

ABC11 Eyewitness News first reported that Madoff had injuries consistent with an assault. Now, the source says Madoff was not attacked in prison, but that he fell off a bed onto his face. The source said there was a lot of facial bleeding.
 
It also depends on the rule of law.

Thats true, but in a perfectly free marketplace, it would work because everyone would work in their best interests. Some would feel it is their best interest to sell product x. Others would want to sell product y. And because they are all working for their own benefit, the market system works. In a perfectly free market of course.
 
Thats true, but in a perfectly free marketplace, it would work because everyone would work in their best interests. Some would feel it is their best interest to sell product x. Others would want to sell product y. And because they are all working for their own benefit, the market system works. In a perfectly free market of course.

I'm not sure what you're getting at.
 
Wow. I'm amazed at what I've been reading. An old man swindled lots of money out of people who were willing to gamble their money away in order to make lots more money. He gets put in jail and the crap beat out of him, most likely by younger stronger men. And people are cheering the fact that he is getting what he deserves? It sounds to me like money is all that matters, and a contagious classic case of class envy.
 
Accept for one thing. The victims didn't break any laws.

I never said they did. My point, ultimately, is that they paid for their greed, just like he's paying for his.

I have relatives in prison, now. One doing 100 years. Yes, I know plenty about prisoners, prisons and convicts.

Not, enough, apparently. :lol:
 
I'm not sure what you're getting at.

Sorry, I'm not very eloquent. I'm trying to say that in a perfect world, where the market is truly free, without any governmental interference, everyone would work for their own benefit. Without trying to, they would have positive externalities on everyone around them, positive benefits from their actions. This, plus the fact that the market would hypothetically be at equilibrium, would mean that the market would be perfect. Because everyone catered to their own needs rather to others needs.
 
Wow. I'm amazed at what I've been reading. An old man swindled lots of money out of people who were willing to gamble their money away in order to make lots more money. He gets put in jail and the crap beat out of him, most likely by younger stronger men. And people are cheering the fact that he is getting what he deserves? It sounds to me like money is all that matters, and a contagious classic case of class envy.

No, it's more like there are a lot of people who are operating under the illusion that vengeance is justice.
 
Wow. I'm amazed at what I've been reading. An old man swindled lots of money out of people who were willing to gamble their money away in order to make lots more money. He gets put in jail and the crap beat out of him, most likely by younger stronger men. And people are cheering the fact that he is getting what he deserves? It sounds to me like money is all that matters, and a contagious classic case of class envy.

Why should anybody be expected to feel sympathy for someone who made it his life's purpose to prey on other people?
 
I never said they did. My point, ultimately, is that they paid for their greed, just like he's paying for his.

You're blaming the victims for trying to do nothing more than use their money to make money.
 
No, it's more like there are a lot of people who are operating under the illusion that vengeance is justice.

Vengeance is justice. The investors took a chance that they might lose their money by making risky investments and Bernie took a chance of paying a physical price for stealing their money.

It's your logic.
 
Wow. I'm amazed at what I've been reading. An old man swindled lots of money out of people who were willing to gamble their money away in order to make lots more money. He gets put in jail and the crap beat out of him, most likely by younger stronger men. And people are cheering the fact that he is getting what he deserves? It sounds to me like money is all that matters, and a contagious classic case of class envy.

No that is not what it is. Madoff ran a ponzi scheme taking in money to pay off previous investors. It did catch up to the tune of 55 billion. The investors many that were retired with no chance of getting a job were looking to pay bills not become uber rich.
 
No that is not what it is. Madoff ran a ponzi scheme taking in money to pay off previous investors. It did catch up to the tune of 55 billion. The investors many that were retired with no chance of getting a job were looking to pay bills not become uber rich.

They were very stupid then, as hedge funds are not for retired people.

Not to mention that most had enough to pay their bills as the entrance requirements to invest in hedge funds is quite high, they just didn't want to give up their lifestyle to meet the funds they had.
 
With scams, it's always easy to use 20/20 hindsight and see how the victims might have been a little more street smart.

But regardless of whether the victims of scams were the sharpest tacks in the box or not, it makes the scammer no less abhorrent.
 
Sorry, I'm not very eloquent. I'm trying to say that in a perfect world, where the market is truly free, without any governmental interference, everyone would work for their own benefit. Without trying to, they would have positive externalities on everyone around them, positive benefits from their actions. This, plus the fact that the market would hypothetically be at equilibrium, would mean that the market would be perfect. Because everyone catered to their own needs rather to others needs.

No, I understand what you're saying; I just don't know how it relates to our specific discussion.

You said laissez-faire economics depends on people like Bernie Madoff, but that isn't true because he operated outside the confines of the law.

And laissez-faire doesn't mean no government involvement in anything even tangentially related to the economy. It's just a label which loosely describes a complex socioeconomic philosophy.
 
They were very stupid then, as hedge funds are not for retired people.

Not to mention that most had enough to pay their bills as the entrance requirements to invest in hedge funds is quite high, they just didn't want to give up their lifestyle to meet the funds they had.

There were several pension funds involved in the Madeoff ponzi scheme.I,m sure that the people that were looking forward to a pension were not all stupid.
 
There were several pension funds involved in the Madeoff ponzi scheme.I,m sure that the people that were looking forward to a pension were not all stupid.

The pension fund managers certainly were, considering that retirement funds should not be invested in hedge funds.

If anything the managers should be going to jail or at the very least fired for violating their due diligence responsibilities.
 
The pension fund managers certainly were, considering that retirement funds should not be invested in hedge funds.

If anything the managers should be going to jail or at the very least fired for violating their due diligence responsibilities.


I agree that the hedge fund managers should be in the can taking their lumps along side Bernie. Painting the teachers and doctor's that put money in a pension fund as being stupid is using a pretty big brush, imo.
 
1)If they didn't like it, they should have worked harder to stay out of prison. There are concequences to our actions. You break the law, you go to prison and prison sucks. Fear encourages people to do amazing things. Making prison a tea party isn't going to encourage people to stay out of prison.

2) You're talking about two totally demographics. You're comparing apples to oranges.

1)And this has proven to be false. Making jail harder for people encourages them to keep committing crimes. Your idea that harsh punishment makes people not want to go to jail has been discredited. Punish people and they'll keep doing it. Rehabilitate them and they won't. This is proven in many studies and statistics.

2) No they are not. Canada's jail rate and the U.S.'s jail rate are very similar. Both are characterized by the over representation of minorities only in Canada's case their justice system is moulded around rehabilitation and thus their jail population stays much much lower than that of the U.S.
 
I agree that the hedge fund managers should be in the can taking their lumps along side Bernie. Painting the teachers and doctor's that put money in a pension fund as being stupid is using a pretty big brush, imo.

They didn't invest into it, the pension fund managers did.

I'm not going after them, I'm going after the individual investors and fund managers that recklessly handled their money and the money of other people.
 
They didn't invest into it, the pension fund managers did.

I'm not going after them, I'm going after the individual investors and fund managers that recklessly handled their money and the money of other people.


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Noted.:2wave:
 
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Noted.:2wave:

When did I ever say that people who had no control of their investments were stupid?

If you bothered to read the whole thing and take notice that i was referring to the people that invested millions of their dollars into something that could cause them to loose it all just by its very nature.

Hedge funds are risky by design, they are for rich people who have tons of money to play with and not for retirement funds and money you need.

"Investing in certain types of hedge fund can be a riskier proposition than investing in a regulated fund, despite a "hedge" being a means of reducing the risk of a bet or investment. Many hedge funds have some of these characteristics:"

"Leverage - in addition to money invested into the fund by investors, a hedge fund will typically borrow money, with certain funds borrowing sums many times greater than the initial investment. If a hedge fund has borrowed $9 for every $1 received from investors, a loss of only 10% of the value of the investments of the hedge fund will wipe out 100% of the value of the investor's stake in the fund, once the creditors have called in their loans. Leverage can also be achieved through trading on margin. In September 1998, shortly before its collapse, Long-Term Capital Management had $125 billion of assets on a base of $4 billion of investors' money, a leverage of over 30 times. It also had off-balance sheet positions with a notional value of approximately $1 trillion.[12]"

"Appetite for risk - hedge funds are more likely than other types of funds to take on underlying investments that carry high degrees of risk, such as high yield bonds, distressed securities, and collateralized debt obligations based on sub-prime mortgages."

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_fund]Hedge fund - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]


That is but a taste of the risk involved with hedge funds, would you invest your retirement money in that?
 
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