The Bernard Madoff Circus Goes Public Today: Will There Be Justice?
by Danny Schechter (Author of Plunder)
Thursday is “BM Day” in New York, the day that Wall Street Wonder Bernie Madoff, wearing his electronic bracelet perhaps, surrounded by a phalanx of security goons on guard for some modern day Jack Ruby among his distraught investors, and followed by a voracious media pack, meets Da Judge, the Honorable Denny Chin in the new federal courthouse named after former Senator Moynihan.

 

 

 

 

I hope to be there, at least in the street, shooting for my film-in-the-making based on my book Plunder. (Think about all the MSM “journalists” covering the big event, and all the screaming tabloid headlines like “GOODBYE BERNIE, and then think of all the media outlets that lionized this Mr. Moneybags for decades but missed his mega-scam — until he confessed to it!)

Everyone in New York was talking today about the NY Times chronology that showed that Madoff has been making off with millions for at least twenty years, undetected by the sanctimonious regulators.He was stealing in plain sight. He is now facing 150 years in the hoosegow but tomorrow the Judge will also decide whether to let his victims speak and whether he will pass Go or go directly to Jail or pack to his luxury Apartment. (Also today, that other ALLEGED billionaire financial fraudster Alan Stanford took the 5th. He will not be spilling his guts, at least not yet.)

Bernie is a great symbol of corporate crime having been named the Ponzi King for a scam that survived for decades and supposedly racked up more than $65 billion in ill gotten gains. Not bad for a former life guard on Rockaway who used to tell people that all he cared about was what was happening in the market in the next hour. Here we go again with the banality of evil. (And did you know that AL CAPONE started out as an accountant, only to eventually be brought down on tax charges, despite all the killings he was party to?)

Bernie’s Family is under scrutiny reports New York Magazine;

Madoff’s “legitimate” operation based in New York’s LIPSTICK BUILDING relied on so called FEEDER funds from cronies and Hedge funders who poured money into his company and extracted nice fees in the process. They all, of course, feign surprise and ignorance about what was really going on. In fact, according to Vanity Fair, some of his “victims” will get great tax breaks. So far they have not found ANY trades made by Mr M who was also profiled in New York Magazine. The story was hyper detailed about the size of the his wardrobe, the anal color coordinated organization in his closets and his reputation of great reverence as a former chairman of NASDAQ and cover boy on a financial magazine that once hailed him as the best paid in his class of heavyweight swindlers. For more on Bernie’s world, read this colorful story in Vanity Fair.

Knaves make great copy. If he had only been a serial killer, he would get his own TV show!

The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and so far he’s been the biggest but let us remember that many of his clients invested with him because they believed he had access to insider information, Larceny and greed were in many of their hearts too. (”Just get me a good return and I don’t care how you do it!”)

An Israeli newspaper said Madoff has done more damage to the Jews than Hamas. (Actually, as a former Israeli President goes on trial for rape today, he will probably get more face time in the press there than Mr Madeoff who is considered an old story by now.)

AP reported that he will pleady GUILTY, “The revelation came Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where Madoff waited for more than three hours in a conference room to avoid a clash with angry investors before appearing in court for the first time in nearly two months for what was to be a routine hearing.

The attorney for the 70-year-old former Nasdaq chairman told the judge Madoff intends to plead guilty this week to all 11 felony counts, including securities fraud and perjury.” Perhaps BM has had a spiritual awakening or just got tired of the game he was playing. He has become an icon of the age. Why aren’t some the “regulators” and his cronies in the dock too? That may come.
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Finally, The “Jail Out” That I Have Been Calling For May Be Underway

The NY Times reports today, a “surge” (that word AGAIN!) of financial prosecutions may get underway BUT they have not had much success in the past, partly because the way the statutes are written.
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Another Surge? Financial Institutions Now Targets

AP: ATHENS, Greece – A far-left Greek militant group claimed responsibility for recent attacks against Citibank offices in Athens, saying they were carried out because of the international financial crisis, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The weekly Pontiki newspaper published a statement from the Revolutionary Struggle group, which claimed responsibility for a failed car bomb attack on Citibank offices in Athens on Feb. 18 as well as a bomb attack Monday on a suburban Citibank branch that caused damage but no injuries.

Alternet:Jim Hightower: Conservatives React to Class Warfare
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Investment News reports that Shareholder suits are up:

“Shareholders filed more class actions in 2008 than they had in years — with financial services firms clearly serving as investors’ most common target.

There were a total of 103 class actions filed against financial institutions in 2008, which represents almost half of all such activity that took place a year earlier, according to a report by Cornerstone Research today.

About 75% of the suits filed against financial firms were, not surprisingly, connected to the subprime-mortgage and liquidity crisis that crippled banks and brokerages last year, according to Boston-based Cornerstone.”
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Many Courts In Many Lands Working Overtime

In other news from the world’s temples of justiuce , Saddam Hussein’s VP Tariq Azziz has been sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday for his role in the 1992 execution of 42 merchants accused of price gouging while Iraq was under U.N. sanctions. (*Hmm… 15 years for executing 42 people; while Bernie may get 150 years for stealing from the rich, that is if he did it which he insists he didn’t. I tend to believe him. He had earlier been acquitted on a more serious charge.)

The news report had this response:

Defense attorney Badee Izzat Aref said he would appeal and that Aziz was traveling in Europe when the executions occurred.

“My client had no role in the execution of the traders. He spent most of his time on diplomatic missions outside Iraq and he was removed from domestic issues.”

“This is an unjust ruling, and my father was dragged into this case,” his eldest son, Ziad, said in a telephone interview from Amman, Jordan. “I cannot add more.”
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In Germany, still reeling from a another school massacre, “German prosecutors said Wednesday they have charged retired Ohio auto worker John Demjanjuk with more than 29,000 counts of accessory to murder for his time as a guard at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp, and will seek his extradition from the U.S.

Demjanjuk (dem-YAHN’-yuk) is accused of participating in the murders while he was a guard at the Nazi camp in occupied Poland between March and September 1943.

“In this capacity, he participated in the accessory to murder of at least 29,000 people of the Jewish faith,” Munich prosecutors said in a statement.
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ARE YOU ON THE LIST? TERRORIST WATCH LIST HITS 1 MILLION:

The government’s terrorist watch list has hit 1 million entries, up 32% since 2007.Federal data show the rise comes despite the removal of 33,000 entries last year by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center in an effort to purge the list of outdated information and remove people cleared in investigations.

Obama May Send Troops to Mexican Border


This Just In At Midnight:

CHENEY LINKED TO ASSASSINATION TEAM

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Eric Black: Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes ‘executive assassination ring’

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 1:30 am and is filed under Daily Dissections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.