[the invisib1e hand]

The commentary, that part in parentheses, is very provactive. It suggest that it wasn't enough for private practitioners to simply conduct their businesses as they saw fit, but they should have gone further and "ratted him out." I don't think such a presumption is consistent with a "free market"

It is a matter of public record that the SEC was sent a detailed study on the likelihood that Madoff was running a "Ponzi scheme," yet they chose to do nothing.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Actually what I am saying is that those institutions have their own skeletons in the closet. The fact that they did not do what Madoff did does not mean that they are automatically better than Madoff.

As for the first point, it is totally up to them to keep quiet about Madoff's problem. However, this opens the possibility that there are whole lot of crooks they knew but kept quiet about.

We already know that these institutions are not good apples. There are other bad apples not outted yet but whom they know about. The whole place was pretty sinister, Byzantine web of deception and fraud. Nothing was what it is supposed to be. Transparency was and is far from their concern.

They were free to make their decision, but their decision are now poisoning the credibility of the whole industry.