Bernie Madoff, Free at Last
nymag.com
nymag.com
I'm curious whether this prison system does in fact have better rehabilitation success than regular prison systems. It does sound like the inmates are more well adjusted, and although the article initially describes them as "soft", mob hit men as well as some gruesome murderers and child molesters definitely make that list.
When you knowingly invest in a Ponzi scheme (or something like it) you are enabling it and you should be considered an accomplice.
It would be hard do prove in a criminal case, but there should be regulations to prevent the investors who should know better and who got handsome returns for enabling him to enable other similar schemes in the future.
You ... scheme would be hard to justify given that the SEC received so many detailed reports that Madoff was doing something impossible and just blew them off.
Regulators should have "skin in the game".
Heck - politicians too. But, Barney "Fannie and Freddie are sound" Frank will be re-elected.
A lot of politicians have been and will be losing their seats for following the lead of Barney "let's roll the dice" Frank. He's in a well gerrymandered seat (in the state that invented the process!) so he's likely to stay indefinitely, but who knows if the economy gets bad enough (e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1410594). One big factor here is that the whole situation has been thrown in flux with Ted Kennedy's death. He was the big "bring home the bacon" guy, there's no one last time I checked who's stepping into that role. E.g. Kerry doesn't have what it takes.
Neither can I. If the good people of Mass want to keep electing him, there's not much that the rest of us can do.
> "bring home the bacon" guy
Supposedly pork actually kills jobs in the recipient's district.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Harvard-study-show...
Another approach, which won't ever happen because of the social dynamics, is for his fellow legislators to punish his district. The theory being "we can't make you elect someone else, but we can make you wish that you had". However, legislators don't work that way.
I'd much rather read 6 pages of well-written, fact checked magazine than some shitty blog entry that someone spent 5 minutes on just to drive up traffic numbers.
Of course he does. For them, it's like being in the same prison as Ernst Blofeld, Lex Luthor or Ludwig Von Siegfried.