Judge Chin Will Sentence Madoff on Monday – The next generation listens.
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The question Judge Chin answers on Monday is one of whether crime pays. The sentence he imposes will indicate the message we send to this next generation and how serious they take investing the largest retirement nest egg ever amassed. Will the baby boomers be protected from the financial criminal element that stalks the halls of Wall Street?
It’s being reported that Ruth Madoff settled with the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. She gives up assets said to have a value of $80 million and can keep $2.5 million in cold hard cash. They mention nothing about liabilities against those assets.
Meanwhile Big Bernie had a court order entered for forfeiture in the amount of $170 billion. A dream that will never materialize. The Court order indicates $170 billion was invested with Big Bernie. This leads us to Monday’s sentencing and the message being sent out about Wall Street's criminal culture that clashes with naive investors.
Judge Denny Chin will sentence Madoff this Monday, June 29, 2009. He can order a sentence of up to 150 years; a scenario not likely in modern America. In America we love capitalists, even thieving capitalists. Madoff is asking for only 12 years. Let’s do the math using $50 billion and figure out the hourly wage he and the feeders were sharing.
12 years x 250 working days per year x 8 working hours in a day = 24,000 working hours in a year.
$50 billion divided by 24,000 hours divided by 10 years = $208,333.33 per hour.
Not bad and a hell of a lot higher than federal minimum wage of $6.55.
The federal minimum wage is $6.55 per hour effective July 24, 2008; and $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009.
Split it up between the group of feeders and they are all rich men and women.
Wow! Where do the working people of America get a job like that?
Only one other has been criminally charged with any crimes that netted them a boat load of money. According to the WSJ the auditor of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities has been charged. According to the WSJ the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has sued a Fairfield Greenwich Group feeder. The New York Attorney General has sued another fund run by another designated feeder. The other feeders have not been charged. The WSJ has an interactive chart showing all the participants in the Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities operation. It's worth looking at.
But what about Monday's sentencing? My guess is that a black drug dealer if caught on his first drug transaction to a cop would get more time than this member of Club Madoff. I hope I'm wrong.
Ashby Jones of the WSJ has reported on the contents of the written memoranda that you can review. Forbes has an interesting article that discusses the longest sentences imposed for white-collar financial crimes.
In any case, Madoff will almost certainly die in prison. So will Sholman Weiss, currently serving the longest federal sentence for a white-collar crime. In 2000 a Florida judge sent him away for 845 years for the $450 million collapse of National Heritage Life Insurance. Weiss was convicted and sentenced after he fled the U.S. for Austria. Later apprehended and returned, he's currently housed in a federal prison outside Scranton, Pa. The Bureau of Prisons lists his release date as Nov. 23, 2754.
Forbes, It Coult Have Been Worse for Madoff, by Liz Moyer
Moyer reports the Weis partner received a 740 year sentence from a Florida court and died in prison. In Colorado Norman Schmidt, 73, was sentenced to 330-years for another investment scheme. Bernard Ebbers, 67 of WorldCom is in a Louisiana federal prison with a release date in 2028.
There are two concerns for the public. Those concerns are the message we send to the next generation that will fill the roles of investment advisers, while the largest group of U.S. retirees hand over their retirement dollars to safely invest.
Judge Chin, with all due respect your message needs to be clear, straightforward and unquestionable severe.
And what about those forces within society that have financial interests tied to the Wall Street crowd? We continue to await a clear condemnation from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Tort Reform Association and the chamber's Institute for Legal Reforms along with the Chinese Communist Party. So far I haven't seen it from any of these organizations. If condemnations of Wall Street excesses does exist the ATRA's communications director, Darren McKinney is welcomed to post the link in the comments section. They continue to advocate for the working men and women of America to pay for the mistakes of others and yet the others are never asked to act responsibly.
It's still just a one way limo ride on Wall Street.