Not a great way to spend your "golden years".
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11640999

I thought Deane already had some sort of business thing going.

LOL!! OUCH! Deane isn't THAT OLD!!!! Is he?

When I click on the link, I get a 'secure.feedback.pdxradio.com not found' error. Didn't know this site had a secure server.

However, in general I understand what the problem is: Social Security doesn't pay anyone crap, those who have pensions are receiving benefits that are near worthless, and those with "defined contribution" accounts (401(k)'s, IRAs, etc.) are going to be even deader in the water than the senior citizens of today.

I haven't even mentioned the fact that the "private charities" that all the political types keep talking about have never had the resources or ability to care for the disabled and elderly the way that these same political types have said that they work.

The link still works for me. If you want to Google the story elsewhere, the headline reads, "Back to work for Ben Lomond man, 90, who invested life savings with Bernie Madoff."

Thank you, Bernie Madoff.

Talk about "Transfer of Wealth"

Last night on 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft interviewed a guy who had for years complained to the Securities and Exchange Commission (he filed 5 complaints over a period of about 7 years) about the Madoff operation. It is beyond me how he could have pulled the crap he did for so long without getting caught by the feds (and I don't buy Madoff did it alone). One thing this guy pointed out is that most of the SEC investigators are not trained on the financial side of equation. They can find inconsistencies in the legal aspects of things, but not when it comes to complex financial stuff. But the most distressing thing about was using his ties to the Jewish community as a way to perpetrate his Ponzi scheme. And it wasn’t just high rollers. He took the money from people well meaning folks who invested their life savings and screwed them royally. The man had no shame.

Madoff should spend the rest of his life in jail. And not some cushy federal prison either.

If they can sentence Bernie Ebbers to life for only bilking 11 Billion, Madoff should probably be sentenced to 5 life terms! (to run consecutivley, with no parole ever.)

I don't like alternet.org because it is so far left leaning I'm surprised it doesn't tip over!

However, an old boss and friend of mine sends me stuff from them almost daily. Some of it I can tell by the title is not something I want to read and others I'll at least glance at.

This one however, caught my attention.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/workplace/129363/

This is just wrong. These CEO's ran their respective companies into the ground and then bet millions, tens of millions and sometimes even hundreds of millions as a golden parachute.

For example Alan Fishman headed WAMU for ONLY 17 days before it failed and got bought out by Chase and he left with 19 million severance and signing bonuses.

It looks like the only honest one (at least according to the graphic) was Robert Willumstad from AIG. He declined his exit package of 22 million.

These guys should ALL be required to give back their windfalls, ESPECIALLY if any of the monies were bailout funds. Maybe they should be prosecuted too.

They need to start making examples out of crooks.

Put them on hard labor, no Blackberry.

When we do this, it will all stop.

Until we do this, it's a cost value judgement and we lose.

Yep. As I said, make examples out of them.

Public examples.

You know, I hate to say it, but the people who invested with Madoff did so because they were greedy. Not that they deserve any of this, but I have to say where there's smoke, there's fire. Returns that appear to be too good usually are.

Greedy? As opposed to the banks that have siphoned off TRILLIONS from the Federal Reserve and Federal government in recent months because of hideously stupid business decisions you seemed very quick to defend a few month ago. So when it comes to your reading of greedy Vitalogy, I’ll take you’re expert opinion (or lack thereof) with a grain of salt.

It's stupid to invest where there are returns too good to be true.

But, it's still a crime to offer them in the first place.

The fault lies with Madoff.

Look, I'm not defending what Madoff did. But it's true to say the victims share some of the blame for their losses. Had they not taken chances to get a higher return, they wouldn't have been in a position to get ripped off. They knew damn well the money was not being invested in FDIC insured CD's.

Absolutely.

He's working, and he's been very clear about why he's working and that he has no problem working.

That's personal responsibility.

Madoff needs to do hard ass time. Brutal, in the public, as in "Man, I'm in the investment business and don't even want to come close to that!", kind of hard time.

Line up all the shit eating greedy mo-fo CEO's bailing on fucked companies with him.

Until this becomes something more than a simple risk / reward situation that can be gamed, it's not gonna stop.

Personal responsibility cuts both ways. These asses trade in thousands of lives and hedge their bets so they really aren't at risk, other than to lose some bragging rights at the golf course.

It's got to end. Public, hard time is how to end it.

No amount of fines, no amount of onerous accounting reform (though some of that is clearly warranted beyond what we have going right now), or any other "soft" solution is gonna cut it.

These people are doing a LOT of damage and need to pay for it, physically, mentally, socially (as in we set far better norms that make these kinds of things VERY POOR FORM), and financially. (nobody goes home with the toys when they fuck it up that bad)

And here's why the fault lies with Madoff:

If the risks were presented out in the open, straight up, the number of takers would be far less, and most ordinary people then would find considering the matter easier.

Truth is, this fucker lied his ass off and those lies cost a lot of dollars.

This isn't, "whoops! too much risk, sorry".

A bad investment is one where risk comes to pass, thus voiding the return and very likely the investment itself. Happens all the time. No worries.

A fraud is where they want to call it a bad investment, but somebody somewhere exploited things for their own personal gain, or for that of others, without full and complete disclosure.

It's pretty fucking hard to persue due dilligence when all the cards are not on the table. This is hard enough for corporation to corporation, or experienced investor to same. It's damn near impossible for an ordinary person (and this old guy is an ordinary, if gullible person) to even go down that road.

That's why it should be criminal.

As for the CEO's, those clowns boil down breaking the law and circumventing ethics and lots of other things to a legal cost, not actually honoring the spirit, nor the intent.

THEY DON'T CARE, because they don't have to care.

We seriously need to change that. Everybody cares about hard time in a box. No exceptions. It matters, it hurts, it will deter.

That's what I'm talking about above.

Madoff is at fault here for mis-representing an outright fraud as an investment. The old guy is guilty of biting on it. The old guy is working now to deal with that.

Madoff, since he fucked a ton of people, deserves a bit worse time of it.

Hard ass time, no black berry, labor, maybe he tips over early kind of time.

If we didn't have a fraudster offering up fraud, the old guy wouldn't have bit on it, now would he?

Fault with Madoff.

When someone offers you a return of 15% and you know the historic average return is 8%, shouldn't there be a red flag popping up that says "What is he doing to beat the market like that?" The only answer that is possible, other than Madoff being able to magically predict the market, is that there is either super high risk or fraud. Either way, you are putting your money on the table and spinning the wheel hoping he continues turning a blind eye to the risk because you have dollar signs in your eyes.

And by the way, this is the same mentality that has put a lot of homeowners in the poor house.

Absolutely there should.

And again, offering that 15 percent return, WHILE STATING THE ACTUAL risk is perfectly ok. Some people are going to want to gamble, which investing is. It's just formalized gambling, with some structure as opposed to betting on a race.

The fault here is offering that without disclosing the actual risk. That's fraud.

And people do shoulder some responsibility for dealing with fraudsters, but it remains that if the fraud is not offered to the public, there would be no takers.

The old guy is taking his lumps and is good about it. Not much more you can ask for there. I don't even understand that part of the discussion. He dealt with a fraudster, and is paying the price.

Is it the public outrage over it?

Well, why shouldn't the public be outraged? What value is there in tempering that somehow by saying the old guy was stupid.

Is it to somehow keep the public from pushing back on investing in general? If so, bring that on!

I'll be truthful here. I don't like the big financials generally. Add multi-national and very large corporations to the mix. These things are not doing us any good.

They cause us a lot of harm, and this kind of discussion enables that.

We need to regulate the living fuck out of that stuff, until things are running good, keep running good, and incidents like this are once again minor league.

There was a lot of mortgage fraud. That's not the public's fault at all. That burden lies directly at the feed of large financial institutions looking to fuel supply side economics with artificial wealth, backed by the rapid and complete draining away of real wealth in this country.

That sucks ass, and it's a crime against the people.

Unacceptable.

Clearly, there is a burden for people to do their homework. Not all of us do. Some of us can't do it, others are naive enough to not do it, and others know to do it, but don't.

This never, ever changes. It's always true. It works like ages do. There are always kids, always 20 year olds, 21 year olds, etc...

Given that reality, regulation then is the check against that. We have it and need to stay on top of it because there are always suckers. PT Barnum man. Sucker born every minute.

I ran into one of these clowns a while back on another prior house sale a few years ago. The guy literally told me, over the phone, that they specialize in presenting a case to the computer to get an approval. You name it, they would do it, and they do it a lot.

I unloaded on that ass, and moved on of course. But this was going on ALL THE TIME. What fueled it was the drain on our economy caused by corporate tax breaks, particularly those granted for shipping good jobs overseas, and an increase in personal risk over time.

I've picked through a few of these shady deals for friends and family. It came up shitty a fair number of times. Too many times. Enough times to pay for attorneys to vet the crap times. That's too much. Regulation is not effective enough. Period.

That's supply side shit, and it's come home to roost.

So that's the other part of this equation being ignored.

Frankly, I've never been on that treadmill. I scale up or down, depending on the times, but don't carry a lot of debt. Never have. A clear majority share of my peers do.

And, as that value drain continued, I saw those peers go for re-fi after re-fi, just trying to keep up with their set expectations and not paying attention to the rapidly declining buying power per hour worked.

So that trancends stupid. There exists clear pressure to entertain those things.

Hell, I saw a damn MasterCard commercial yesterday basically showing the double cost of food today, and the implication that it's ok to charge your groceries on a damn MasterCard.

When I was younger, that same commercial was saying it's ok to charge that big trip, or new car, or expensive clothes.

Ordinary people are going to think that's a tool to be used like other tools. Maybe it's stupid. I think it's stupid, but I also can't help but see how this crap is positioned and it pisses me off huge.

If we are going to say that people need to be more responsible (and I'm up for that), then we better damn well not be setting unrealistic expectations for them at the same time.

Fault = big financials.

Sorry man. I know you are a good person, and that this topic is close to your heart. Probably you do the right things, manage your risk and work hard. Congrats.

For a lot of people that's very difficult to do without experiencing a lot of stigma. I myself experience that regularly! I work among professionals that have images. For going on 15 years, I've popped that bubble every damn year. Presenting a good value means you can ditch the image, and I've caught shit for it every single year.

Guess what?

Those image guys come and go, and I'm here delivering as much value as I can, and getting less for it every damn year.

If we want that to all change, then we need to make the investments necessary to improve buying power per hour worked and level out people's risk.

When we do that, a whole lot of the pressure to buy into this crap goes away.

Think of it like this:

You've got Bob, who is in serious trouble. Maybe something bad happened. Bob sees a financial tool that might just help him out, and given he's looking to lose big, taking the additional risk just might make sense right?

So then, if that risk is presented honestly, losing on it is Bob's deal. However, if that risk is not presented honestly, or the terms change mid-stream, like big credit does every month these days, where does that leave Bob?

Fucked, that's where, and it's largely NOT his deal, given that disconnect.

Now, we've got Roy, who would like to do well, but isn't in trouble. Roy sees that same risk and says "No way!". Why?

Because Roy has a lot to lose, where Bob didn't.

See how that works?

So then, offering up these questionable tools as frauds is clearly wrong, given the times. People are gonna bite. Offering them up with full disclosure is marginal, again because people are gonna bite.

Expecting everything to fall on ordinary people, who may or may not understand what can be complex dynamics to understand them isn't appropriate.

What is appropriate is structuring things so that the pressure to go down this road is moderate at best, leaving us with just the real morons and risk takers getting burned.

I'm cool with that. Nothing to be done about them. We have Social Security for that

Flip that right around and it's clear that a lot of homeowners are in the poor house because they were exploited at a time when that didn't have to be the case too.

This cuts both ways, and what I fear the most is not entertaining a holistic solution to it. Can't put it all on the people, can't put it all on the major league finanicials either.

It's a systemic problem, and failure to see that and address it like that, IS OUR FAULT.

That's why I push back on that. It's not an either or deal.