“I’ve worked hard and lived a quiet life - and have just lost my retire ment savings in the blink of an eye, thanks to Bernie Madoff.”
Let’s not overlook GREED in that equation ...
Just goes to show; the U.S. Gov’t and those who run the Financial Institutions and Industry are the new “Mafia”; they are a pack of crooks covering each others backs. From this point forward, only idiots, fools, or morons would invest in or allow friends and family to invest in U.S. financial instruments, institutions, equity markets and/or banks.
There is something strange about how this guy was able to cheat all these people. As I read the stories from the swindled, there always seem to be references to “get rich”, “get rich fast”....it may seem heartless but it keep hearing “you can’t cheat an honest man”.
Does it apply here I don’t know.
And I can't shake the belief that the events since Sept are all manipulated to discredit capitalism. Not long ago people hoped that Social Security would be transitioned away and citizens could keep control of their own money, invest it wisely in the stock market and retire comfortably. Hey, do you think that idea would be popular now??
It's all gone to smash, largely because of disreputable politicians and financial con men -- and the solution is going to be socialism and Russian-tyle oligarchs running our lives for us. Then we will all be happy.
Free money is never free.
But she should rest assured, Zero’s gonna pay her mortgage.
For a CPA, she sure wasn’t smart enough to remember rule #1- Diversify.
I feel sorry for this lady but her father was an awful financial advisor and CPA...
I heard Madoff’s returns were in the neighborhood of 2% a month. So let’s say $375,000 invested returns $7500 a month for 10 years. That’s nearly a million of other investor’s money they got.
I guess they’re victims.
There must be a lot of “goldbugs” on FR, because it seems like no one can empathize.
I guess everyones up 40% around here.
Call 1-202-456-1111.
Ask President Bush to give you a bailout, as he is furiously trying to throw money at failing auto companies.
Seriously, this is a tragedy for this woman, and I don’t envy or make light of her pain.
Quite frankly, Wall Street has never been worth one nickel of our money for bailouts. They are thieves with a license and always have been.
These kinds of financial collapses are happening every eight to ten years.
The savings and loan scandal was from 1989-1992. The dot.com bust in 2000. Now the mortgage crisis in 2008.
Next crisis is due in 2016, when a ton of boomers, myself included will be starting to withdraw funds for our retirement.
Always a new way to scam the public. We throw a few miscreants in jail, and the cycle starts anew.
This time, our own government has actively participated in a scheme to defraud us AND to mortgage our future ahead three generations to fleece us. Trillions of retirement savings value has been lost, and well as trillions in home values(homes would have been the fallback in value if stocks went south).
And in eight or nine years, the government will not be able to fund Social Security and Medicare.
And the sheeple keep re-electing the fools that fleece them.
The time for tar and pitchforks is rapidly approaching. The colonists revolted for far less.
“It was less than $400,000 - not a large amount by Madoff standards...”
Maybe not to Madoff, but nealy 400K would be a huge retiremet principle for me.
We have the Schnitt show which covers Florida>
Yesterday he had a very nice 87 year old woman (she stated her age) call up and say she had lost two million and her family three million. They had been with Madoff for 30 years....Back when he started out honest I’m sure
They thought money just fell from the sky, I suppose. And she also has her IRA, Social Security, and presumably her house, unless she spent way too much on it when she moved to Florida. "Ruined"?
She took income from this fund? Uh oh. She better hope she doesn’t get sued for that money from a later investor who also got screwed by this Ponzi scheme.
After 15 years, they got more back from the original investment than they would have gotten from a regular investment. Madoff was paying, what, 20-30% per year? They got their principle back in the first 5 years, and for the next 10 they were living high off of other peoples money.
I feel very sorry for this woman. Nobody sets out to be swindled, and there wasn’t any indication that this was anything other than a very good investment: it kept making decent returns and sent no signals to an UNSOPHISTICATED investor that anything could possibly be wrong.
Everyone who says she should have known better are only being wise in hindsight, and ought to thank their lucky stars that they didn’t get caught by this swindler.
Did not even read the article.
Once a person turns fifty and from that point forward if the DOW hits an all time high, you exit the market. Anyone who is retired and has their “nest egg” in anything but a capital preservation fund is foolish.