See You in 150 Years
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See You in 150 Years
Madoff’s sentence provides relief but changes nothing.
Posted Monday, June 29, 2009 - 12:51pm
Bernie Madoff entered the courtroom Monday morning from the back door. His audience—victims, voyeurs, and observers—all craned their necks up above the pews to catch a glimpse. They may as well have been at a game reserve, jostling to get a once-in-a-lifetime look at a rare albino lion. At least a half-dozen security officers stood sentry, listening to their ear pieces, watching their potential mob. Madoff walked solemnly toward his seat, decked out in a snappy black suit and snappier black tie. The courtroom went silent.
And for the next two hours Madoff sat in his seat as his destiny unspooled in front of him. In the end, it was 150 years of punishment on 11 counts: the maximum allowed under the law. An unprecedented sentence for what the judge said was an unprecedented crime. Once the judge said "150," the victims let out a small cathartic release, but one muted by six months of depressing realizations. Somebody yelled "Yes!" which was then followed by "Whoo!"s and a spontaneous round of applause. Quickly, though, the crowd settled down. Nothing in their lives had changed. They had still been robbed. They were still newly poor.
So in the end, Monday morning was not about the future. It was about the past, a past that has shaped what's to come for Bernie Madoff—and what's to come of him.
Madoff's legacy was evident far before his sentence came down. It flung from the mouth of every victim who spoke before the court. All were resolute in their belief that Madoff deserved the maximum penalty under the law. After each victim read a statement, he or she would be congratulated with an empathetic squeeze of the hand or a rub on the back. The camaraderie was ad hoc and organic—the kind that is built after a tragedy shared among strangers. They spoke of Madoff as a "nightmare" from which they could not wake up. They referred to Dec. 11—the day that the news of the Madoff fraud first broke—with the same weighty tone that New Yorkers use to refer to that other 11th.
They called him names. "Beast." "Evil lowlife." "Monster." "Despicable." "The most despised person in the country." "Equal-opportunity destroyer." One victim said he hopes Madoff's "jail cell become[s] his coffin." Another, referring to Dante's Inferno, said, "May Satan grow a fourth mouth [of hell] where Bernard L. Madoff deserves to spend the rest of eternity."
Throughout all of this, Madoff sat unmoved. While the victims were speaking, they could see only the back of his head, a wave of silver hiding whatever was on the other side of it. Without cameras in the courtroom, almost everyone who was present was forced to wonder not What's Madoff thinking? but How's Madoff reacting? For a man whose actions were so incomprehensible, the back of his head made for an appropriate image. Even when his victims were detailing their pain, Madoff was looking the other way, off into the distance.
Eventually it came time for Madoff to speak. He stood after his lawyer finished a fanciful sales pitch that argued Madoff deserved a 12-year sentence since he'll be dead within 13 years anyway. Madoff seemed to know there was no hope of that happening. "I can't offer an excuse for my behavior," he started. He continued, rhetorically asking how you excuse the betrayal of thousands of investors, the deception of hundreds of employees, the lies to brothers and sons. Resigned, he said he "won't ask any forgiveness."
Photo by Stephen Chernin/Getty Images
Comments
I don't believe you need to
I don't believe you need to insert the bracketed "[of hell]" into that quote from the guy making a reference to Dante's Inferno. In the Inferno, Satan is described as having three mouths, which he uses to chew three special victims. I couldn't remember who the victims were just now, but a little research reveals they are Cassius and Brutus, co-conspirators who helped kill Caesar, and Judas Iscariot. I can see Judas, that's a fair cop, but the other two might be feeling a little put upon. I would have guessed Mohammed, actually, so live and learn. In any case, the man quoted spoke correctly of Satan's actual mouths, not mouths of hell.
140 years ago
As far as I know, 150 years ago was the year 1859, but nice story though.
BERNIE MADOFF AND THE GREAT GOLD CONSPIRACY
HOW LITTLE WE HAVE LEARNED
BANZAI7 NEWS--Confessed Wall Street thief Bernard Madoff, 71, was sentenced to 150 years in prison on Monday for perpetrating Wall Street's biggest and most brazen investment fraud.
US District Judge Chin in announcing the sentence said: "Mr. Madoff's crimes were extraordinarily evil."
"The breach of trust was massive."
"By any of these monetary measures, the fraud here is unprecedented."
150 years certainly is a very long sentence. If you are wondering what Bernie Madoff can learn during his 150 years of prospective incarceration, consider this: A swindler convicted and sentenced to the same term 150 years ago would have been incarcerated in the year 1869.
What a coincidence, the year 1869 was an epic year for Wall Street swindlers and con men, it was the year of what has come to be known as the original "Black Friday" or "The Great Gold Conspiracy".
"Black Friday, September 24 1869, also known as the Fisk/Gould Scandal, was a financial panic in the United States caused by two speculators’ efforts to corner the gold market on the New York Gold Exchange. It was one of several scandals that rocked the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. During the American Civil War, the United States government issued a large amount of money that was backed by nothing but credit. After the war ended, people commonly believed that the U.S. Government would buy back the “greenbacks” with gold. In 1869, a group of speculators, headed by James Fisk and Jay Gould, sought to profit off this by cornering the gold market. Gould and Fisk first recruited Grant’s brother-in-law, a financier named Abel Corbin. They used Corbin to get close to Grant in social situations, where they would argue against government sale of gold, and Corbin would support their arguments. Corbin convinced Grant to appoint General Daniel Butterfield as assistant Treasurer of the United States. Butterfield agreed to tip the men off when the government intended to sell gold.
In the late summer of 1869, Gould began buying large amounts of gold. This caused prices to rise and stocks to plummet. After Grant realized what had happened, the federal government sold $4 million in gold. On September 20, 1869, Gould and Fisk started hoarding gold, driving the price higher. On September 24 the premium on a gold Double Eagle (representing 0.9675 troy ounce of gold bullion at $20) was 30 percent higher than when Grant took office. But when the government gold hit the market, the premium plummeted within minutes. Investors scrambled to sell their holdings, and many of them, including Corbin, were ruined. Fisk and Gould escaped significant financial harm."
[Source: Wikipedia]
Back in 1869, the The Great Gold Conspiracy was big news. The Gold Room of the New York Exchange "developed a reputation as the den of the most dangerous transactions. One regular called it "a cavern full of dank and noisome vapors" where "the deadly carbonic acid was blended with the fumes of stale smoke and vinous breaths." A journalist wrote, "Imagine a rat pit in full blast, with 20 or 30 men ranged around the rat tragedy, each with a canine under his arm, yelling and howling at once." The center of the room contained a stony Cupid spewing water into the air. "The artistic conception is not appropriate," the journalist complained. "Instead of a Cupid throwing a pearly fountain into the air there should have been a hungry Midas turning everything to gold and starving from sheer inability to eat." [Source: "The Money Men"
by H.W. Brands (W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2006)]
The economic fallout caused stock prices to fall 20%, export agricultural products (mainly grain crops) to plummet over 50%, several brokerages to go bankrupt, and severe disruption in the national economy for months. A combination of expert legal counsel, led by David Dudley Field, and Tammany Hall judges allowed Gould and Fisk to escape legal punishment. [Source: http://nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/1016.html#explanation]
Its not surprising that Gould and Fisk, like so many of their successive Wall Street brethren were able to evade punishment.
What is also not surprising is how little America has learned about Wall Street greed and excess in the 150 years since the epic financial disaster of 1869. Not much at all. If Gould and Fisk were sitting in a Federal penitentiary in 2009, they would be reading about sub-prime meltdowns, Wall Street bailouts, thieving bankers and Ponzi Kings. No doubt, they would be shaking their heads in envy and thinking: "We were way ahead of our time".
No need to wonder what Bernie Madoff's ghost will be seeing and thinking in the year 2169.
"Wall Street never changes. The pockets change, the suckers change, the stocks change, but Wall Street never changes because human nature never changes." Jesse Livermore