When you're less busy, I'd be interested in some citations. I can only find one professional, J. Ezra Merkin, who is accused of being a Madoff "pal" and hiding the fact that he was investing with Madoff, and no articles that mention anyone being paid by Madoff (lots of managers who took a percentage of the funds invested, though.) On the other side, in the first couple of pages of google results were this, (http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSTRE52414820090305) this, (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aipTGtffZU1o&refer=home) this, (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/unicredits-pioneer-unit-invested-madoff/story.aspx?guid={0B0DE84B-E209-463E-B763-90FD4BAF1294}&dist=msr_1) this, (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1046529.html) and this. ()
But basically, the claims that all professional investors avoided him and therefore can label everyone who didn't as "stupid" sound like bluster to me -- the ones who did are posting about how smart they were, and the ones who didn't are understandably keeping quiet, but that doesn't prove they're nonexistent. Yes, from what I've read, if you checked him out the way you're supposed to, it wasn't hard to figure out that Madoff was fishy, but there was a strong social engineering component to the scheme, and it reveals more that plenty of people take shortcuts when they think there's a web of trust than that those taken in were just stupid. I found this column (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik16-2009mar16,0,5992464.column) to be a more honest appraisal of how it all happened than either of "Madoff was pure evil" or "only stupid people were fooled." (http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/othercities/austin/stories/2009/02/16/daily27.html)
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Date: 2009-03-17 05:02 pm (UTC)But basically, the claims that all professional investors avoided him and therefore can label everyone who didn't as "stupid" sound like bluster to me -- the ones who did are posting about how smart they were, and the ones who didn't are understandably keeping quiet, but that doesn't prove they're nonexistent. Yes, from what I've read, if you checked him out the way you're supposed to, it wasn't hard to figure out that Madoff was fishy, but there was a strong social engineering component to the scheme, and it reveals more that plenty of people take shortcuts when they think there's a web of trust than that those taken in were just stupid. I found this column (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik16-2009mar16,0,5992464.column) to be a more honest appraisal of how it all happened than either of "Madoff was pure evil" or "only stupid people were fooled." (http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/othercities/austin/stories/2009/02/16/daily27.html)