In several hours of phone interviews from prison, convicted swindler Bernard Madoff tells New York Magazine writer Steve Fishman how his Ponzi scheme began, his family’s reaction when he confessed, Wall Street’s “rigged” markets, friends who lost money and coping with his son’s suicide.
Madoff, 72, is serving a 150-year sentence at a federal penitentiary in North Carolina for his $65 billion scheme.
Excerpts:
On Wall Street: “I realized from a very early stage that the market is a whole rigged job. There’s no chance that investors have in this market.”
On his wife: “She’s angry at me. She tries not to be, but it’s hard not to be. I mean, you know, I destroyed our family.”
On his motivation: “I had more than enough money to support my lifestyle and my family’s lifestyle. I allowed myself to be talked into something, and that’s my fault. I thought I could extricate myself after a short period of time. But I just couldn’t.”
On some investors: “Everyone was greedy I just went along. It’s not an excuse … Their friends had told them, ‘How can you be making 15 or 18 percent when everyone is making less money?’ … Believe me, if you don’t think they had doubts, they had doubts … I would say, certainly, by the mid-to-late nineties,” it should have been obvious to everyone that his investment business was a fraud.
On big Wall Street firms: “It’s unbelievable. Goldman … no one has any criminal convictions—the whole new regulatory reform is a joke. The whole government is a Ponzi scheme.”
On friends who lost money: “Look, it doesn’t mean I’m excusing what I did, doesn’t mean I don’t feel sorry for them. I’m embarrassed … It was the people that came in very late in the game that got hurt. All of my friends, most of my individual clients, are not net losers,”
On his son’s suicide: “Let me tell you, I cried for well over two weeks. I cried and cried … Not a day goes by that I don’t suffer. I may sound okay on the phone. Trust me, I’m not okay. And never will be.”
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(Source: USA Today)
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4 Responses
Why is this newsworthy?
I’ve been saying for years that the Social Security program is an elaborate Ponzi scheme. And the returns aren’t anywhere near 15-18%!!! You take money from the taxpayers to pay others, and promise that in 20 years they’ll get something back in return. That sounds like a Ponzi scheme to me.
He is in total denial and is still unrepentant!
Yes. Madoff is right. The Social Security system is a Ponzi scheme, but with this important difference:
When the crokked politicians run out of money, they can just make a holdup on all of us and extract more taxes to cover their deficits. Madoff couldn’t do that, so he was doomed.
By the way, that’s what happened in Wisconsin and Indiana and many other states. The Government Ponzi schemes ran out of money, and they can’t take any more taxes from the public.