OK, after every election, there is a cleaning up factor plus of course rumors that are shown later to be untrue. But I cannot remember an election followed by the discovery of so many bad guys in so many high places and in so many fields (I do not claim that these bad guys belong to any political party, I am just surprised that we got so many popping up).
There is of course the wave of investment schemes like Madoff followed by Allen Stanford. We are over 60 billions dollars for these two, which explains that the many millionaires recently arrested by the FBI do not make headlines: Canadian George Georgiou (a fraud of only 26 millions so far), David Gwin from Colorado (only a multi-million dollar fraud scheme), Niketa Williams, of San Francisco, California (condemned for wire fraud to reimburse 1.6 million dollars), Robert Miracle, of Bellevue, Washington, Mukhtar Kechik and Fahimi Fisal (operating a $65 million Ponzi scheme, five people in Oklahoma (for a fraud over 41 millions), Scott Luster from Missouri (only a 4.5 million fraud) all of them arrested in February alone. What is a million dollars nowadays? Not much, of course, it is easy to spend, but in my neighborhood it is still the value of about ten houses. All these frauds add up to a lot of money lost by innocent people. On the budget I am on, I could feel the difference when a thief took off with my purse and less than 100 dollars in it. Ponzi schemes are very common at all financial levels: here in Savannah GA I find that I frequently have to explain it to naive and uneducated people in my neighborhood: there is always a false prophet or a false friend ready to take advantage of the poorest people.
We are all aware of the housing problems, but there is also a lot of pure mortgage fraud. In the first 20 days of February alone, we see cases popping up in Missouri, in Maryland, in Florida and in New York.
I have been surprised to see educators on the take too. It ranges in the last few months from a Professor of Western Kentucky University misusing Federal money to people accused of embezzlement, bribery, corruption, kickback and racketeering.
And to top it all, we now get judges on the take in activities so mean that it is hard to comprehend. Two Pennsylvania judges have been charged in a fraud scheme involving the placement of juveniles in juvenile detention facilities. The two judges "jailed juveniles for profit". You can read that story in the New York Times here and here
And there are the things that we seem unable to correct: dishonesty in sports, 30 million Americans on illegal drugs, enormous frauds in medicare-medicaid, and the horrible abuse of the military by their suppliers (The military are easy victims: it is the same all over Europe).
I am not claiming that we, ordinary people, are perfect, just saying that we, ordinary people, do not want to hurt other people. Some of the public sense of morality has degenerated in the US since the 1980s. Maybe too much easy money- easy credit produces that. Maybe it is a side effect of women having to work instead of staying at home, maybe it is linked to increases in separation and divorces, maybe it is the increasing disparity between the poor and the rich so lavishly exposed on TV. Maybe all of it. What I do know is that it starts early: most kids, according to surveys, cheat at school. But we got to reduce this corruption before we fall like the Roman Empire or the British and French Empires once dominating the world and brought down by their own rot.
This corruption is going too far.
Showing posts with label Madoff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Madoff. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Best paper of the month: JULIE CRESWELL, LANDON THOMAS Jr.
There are always great papers on the international scene, but I had trouble finding a good paper made in the USA this month. Of course, the inauguration of a new President gets so many expected comments, not much stands out.
I was very pleased to find in the New York Times a paper entitled The talented Mr Madoff, by Julie Creswell and Landon Thomas Jr. It presents Madoff as a psychopath, a possibility I examined here too. There are only two ways to detect a psychopath: you studied them because it is your job, or you have been the victim of one, which gives you more needed insight.
There was a paper earlier in the NYT by Allen Salkin (Jan 16th) about Madoff and his frat brothers: people hardly remembered him; it is interesting to note as it was also a a characteristic of The Talented Mr Ripley, one of the best descriptions of a psychopath in literature. Mr Madoff ruined many personal friends of his: he used their loyalty against them. It is also very typical: a psychopath sees your friendship for him as your weak point and thrives on his victories over you.
There is an old guy like that living on my street: everybody thinks that he is a nice person. But he once told me that the best moment of his life was when he was very young: he had built a kite with a razor blade attached to it, and he used it to cut loose the kites of the other children. The children would cry and run to their mothers, but they did not guess that he was responsible for the disaster and it amplified his fun.
The old man has not changed: he did not have the education of Madoff, so he is reduced to play lesser games, such as stealing mail and letting his dog run after the neighbor's cats.
I was very pleased to find in the New York Times a paper entitled The talented Mr Madoff, by Julie Creswell and Landon Thomas Jr. It presents Madoff as a psychopath, a possibility I examined here too. There are only two ways to detect a psychopath: you studied them because it is your job, or you have been the victim of one, which gives you more needed insight.
There was a paper earlier in the NYT by Allen Salkin (Jan 16th) about Madoff and his frat brothers: people hardly remembered him; it is interesting to note as it was also a a characteristic of The Talented Mr Ripley, one of the best descriptions of a psychopath in literature. Mr Madoff ruined many personal friends of his: he used their loyalty against them. It is also very typical: a psychopath sees your friendship for him as your weak point and thrives on his victories over you.
There is an old guy like that living on my street: everybody thinks that he is a nice person. But he once told me that the best moment of his life was when he was very young: he had built a kite with a razor blade attached to it, and he used it to cut loose the kites of the other children. The children would cry and run to their mothers, but they did not guess that he was responsible for the disaster and it amplified his fun.
The old man has not changed: he did not have the education of Madoff, so he is reduced to play lesser games, such as stealing mail and letting his dog run after the neighbor's cats.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Madoff and Scott Peterson : psychopaths at large
You remember Scott Peterson who killed his wife Laci and unborn child? Everybody said he was such a nice reliable young man. Some children have a knack for discovering how to please, and everybody likes them. Sometimes such children develop as unique Pleasers. That is what they live for: approval, until one day they have forged a personality that they present to the world and they have no idea who they really are.
It is like they have developed an outside envelope at such a price that there is nobody inside: no plan, no guidelines, no empathy, no principles, not much emotion, little feelings. Some rotten trees are like that: only the bark holds them up. They remain unnoticed for a long time amongst other trees.
There is lot of that in the Madoff couple: Mr Madoff did not even invest for his clients at all: his swindle was deliberate from the get go. It makes him a very different guy from somebody who started lying after his affairs went south. That is the difference between a psychopath and a dishonest man. Mrs Madoff was probably all about appearances too: she had a ghost writer for a cookbook published under her name because it was "fun". So the Madoffs were a couple united by their outside shell.
How do you discover that somebody is a psychopath? You cannot: all the external signs are fooling you. Unless of course, you have been victimized before: then you learn to pay attention to all the small signs that tell you if there is a person inside.
It is like they have developed an outside envelope at such a price that there is nobody inside: no plan, no guidelines, no empathy, no principles, not much emotion, little feelings. Some rotten trees are like that: only the bark holds them up. They remain unnoticed for a long time amongst other trees.
There is lot of that in the Madoff couple: Mr Madoff did not even invest for his clients at all: his swindle was deliberate from the get go. It makes him a very different guy from somebody who started lying after his affairs went south. That is the difference between a psychopath and a dishonest man. Mrs Madoff was probably all about appearances too: she had a ghost writer for a cookbook published under her name because it was "fun". So the Madoffs were a couple united by their outside shell.
How do you discover that somebody is a psychopath? You cannot: all the external signs are fooling you. Unless of course, you have been victimized before: then you learn to pay attention to all the small signs that tell you if there is a person inside.
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