Of course there was willful blindness!  Even the SEC was warned but did nothing.  The Pledge of Allegiance should be replaced by the motto:  “We aspire to willful blindness.”  How many barrels of oil were gushing out of the busted BP drilling shaft?  How many Iraqi people were killed in the war?  How many decades were Tobacco companies allowed to deny the connection to cancer?  Even today, southern, right wing pols are denying that slavery was a major factor in the Civil War!  Turn and tune in in every direction and there will be someone denying reality or responsibility.

What is interesting is that one sole person working at JPM in London knew something was not right and he has a representative of a yet disclosed feeder fund threaten his life if he decide’s to pull funds.

What is more interesting about this is that the esteemed NOEL Family of Greenwich CT. ran a feeder fund for Madoff, and has a daughter married into a high powered Colombian family. Could there be a connection?

That chap in London seems to be the linch pin in all off this, and pray that he and his family are safe!

Once again I ask, why is Bernie Madoff in jail?

What did he exactly do to deserve such treatment. He was a kindergartner when you examine the “real” ponzi schemes that went on within Goldman Sachs and the other big time crooks.

Is he in jail because he just flat robbed people with a gun without having the power to set up MERS or get Glass/Steigel out, or to create some other illegal unconstitutuional scheme to circumvent regulations and plunder the middleclass?

Or is he in jail because he didn’t rob the middleclass, he robbed the rich and famous?.

When you survey the entire financial services industry over the past 20 years you see that the mortgage buble essentially made, even a person willing to do the real due diligence,  believe that Madoff was on the level. Goldman Sachs was making the same returns to its “special” customers even after a hair cut by the insiders. A thoughful investor could very well believe Madoff could produce the same or similar results minus the hair cut.

I suppose I can answer my own question, Madoff belongs in jail, I guess my question really is, where are his cellmates? Still robbing and looting?

The current financial crisis reminds me of the “War on Drugs” we’ll arrest and prosecute every street dealer, fill up the jails, create an entire industry for well educated lawyers, get the unemployment level down to 4.5% because the unemployed are now locked up and encourage the continual import of more and more drugs to keep the wheels greased.

If the unemployment level rises, we’ll start a war to employ the unemployable as cannon fodder.

America, we’ve Been there- done that and we got the T-shirt!

Trubee addressed a question about why others are not in jail along with Madoff. There is a big difference between the Bush Adm prosecution of Enron and other companies vs. the banking scandal. The Enron situation was less nuanced. There is such a huge confluence in the mortgage meltdown that it would be difficult to jail only one segment of this wall street disaster. You had a credit bubble which allowed for easy money, Wall Street repackaged mortgages, rating companies getting paid for lying about creditworthiness. You had Congress backing poor people to own property, Congress allowing Freddie/Fannie to perpetuate this disaster and a greedy public willing to be a player. Jail them all?

Very simply - why?  Greed is too simple an answer.

I’m curious about Homeland Security’s role or lack thereof. If a citizen tries to purchase a large item with cash - for instance, a house - the government crawls all over that transaction. In fact, Eliot Spitzer’s hooker money was flagged by the feds and I don’t believe those transactions passed the 5-figure mark.

It seems that Madoff was being protected from on high. The SEC never touched him, nor the FBI, nor Homeland Security.

Please investigate this case which exposes much about how power and money work in this country.