Madoff worked posh Palm Beach for investors. Let's hope El Rushbo, the MahaRushie, got a good heads up from uhGod down at the Southern Command. Hate to see him get hurt in this one.

I find it odd that I've never heard of Madoff, yet I've worked in financial mkts for quite some time. And nobody I work with has heard of him either.

I'm a bit skeptical of the 50bil figure - I suspect it's a lot smaller. (even though I kind of hope it's bigger - I love a good financial fraud). Personally, I'm going to start calling $50bil sums a Madoff

The take by the aide seems a little short on top spin...

Auto bailout prospects revived in Senate

[snip]
"Everybody is trying to figure out how we can move forward. It's a long shot but I think we could still come out with something," a Senate Democratic aide said.

The House has adjourned for the year but could be called back, which would be necessary if the Senate approves the compromise plan. A House Democratic aide said the chamber could not vote on a modified Senate version until next week at the earliest.
[snip]
Bush may tap bailout fund to aid automakers
| Reuters

More on Madoff, complete with photograph.

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This should increase the requests to hedge funds for redemptions. I am assuming the more redemptions a fund gets the more they are forced to sell off their positions?

Madoff
Typical Wall Street scam artist
Another so-called free marketer

Plenty more just like him
Reaganomics for all Wall Street pigme

In a World of Billions...,

There is one man

Who will rise above it all

To be known as

The King

Don't be taken in by Petters.
Don't be fooled by Madoff.

When you want to make piles of money, illegally. When you want to defraud in the millions and billions. When you want to go down in history, you need a plan

One that stands the test of time.
One that rewards the first in, and punishes everybody else.

When you want a scheme supreme, only one name will do.

Ponzi.

Coming again and again and again to a television, interweb, and perp walk near you.

Money lost on investments that didn't work out, then pretending losses don't exist (level 3), borrowing to cover current liabilities, finally succumbing to a run on the bank. So? Madoff should just request a bailout.

brianinboise, oh god, that almost sounds plausible.

Maybe
Hank and Kashkari
can give Madoff
a 50 billion bailout.

Better than wasing 15 billion on Auto
companies and their unions.

Wonder what bonus Madoff got this year
probably more than the 600,000 average at GS.

This is perfectly normal but an autoworker making 28/hour is the end of Western civilizatio

This scheme sounds remarkably similar to the social security trust fund.

My friend works at a Fund of Funds

Fund of fees! - Warren Buffett

OK, but why didn't he declare the fund down 60%, give 50m or some other pittance back to investors and then put "the rest" into a "side pocket" and tell his investors that the illiquid investments would be drawn down over time? Sure, his alleged strategy was to remain mostly in cash and then use some sort of trend following with futures - but any investors that believed that BS probably would have believed him if he had said he had switched to a new capital intensive strategy of levered anti-trend following (or some other nonsense) due to historic mkt dislocations - and it was up 12% in the first month! Then a month later have the fund blow up and draw the bridges.

This dude really showed a lack of creativity, or there's a lot missing to this story.

billiesolestes now that's a snort
couldn't pull that shit on veg oil these days
(or maybe you could)

According to Bloomberg, there's only $200-$300 million in cash in that fund.

Someone(s) out some BIG numbers $50 billion is real money. There's no way this won't make a splash.

From Bloomberg:

“The Madoff firm had about $17.1 billion in assets under management as of Nov. 17, according to NASD records. At least 50 percent of its clients were hedge funds, and others included banks and wealthy individuals, according to the records.”

when do we stop buying gold and silver and start hoarding lead?
sneering nihilist | 12.11.08 - 9:46 pm | #

When there is no gold to be found.

iafrica.com | business | business news Gold coins 'drying up'

Speed writes:
I wonder how many of these schemes are out there waiting to be uncovered. Wading around waist deep in money makes it easy to hide fraud. The tide is now out, as they say

So true, Wall Street and the financial industry have become a modern day religon. This reminds me of jimmy swaggart and other notable preachers who preached one thing and lived another. Like you I don't think we have seen the last of these financial preachers.

You all miss the BIG problem......

The truly scary thing about Madoff’s $50 billion dollar ponzi scheme is not that he stole the money. It is that he owns a NASDAQ settlement market making business through which flows enormous sums. He may have stolen the money from other peoples trades waiting to settle.

Get this:
-\t The hedge fund he ran had $17 Billion in assets per his filing with the SEC
-\tHe told two co-workers yesterday that his ponzi scheme lost $50 billion dollars.
-\tWhere did the other $33 Billion he lost come from????
-\tThe only place was from his market maker business. If trades take at minimum 3 days to settle, he may have stolen the from the 3 day float in that market maker business.
-\tIf so, that means come Thursday $33 Billion in stock trades will not settle….EVER.

If this holds to be true, you will see the most massive investor sell off of all time.

BB TV: McConnell Says there isn't a deal, still talking.

No Senate Vote Tonight

50 big, better hightail himself to somewhere

I bet there are a lot more crooks like this out there...the whole ponzi scheme is coming undone...The Great Unwinding continues.

American dopes!

if there is capitulation , target--5800 (DOW)?
i don't think so, continue sinking through the thousands with light vol. Anybody got a capit.
target that isn't bs?
if we break into the 7 handle there will be panic
(mild) enough

"It says on their website that they are SIPC insured. SIPC only insures to $500,000 and it sounds like their customers are mostly above that means. I guess that we will shortly be hearing that the SIPC is in need of a bailout.

They may also have to wait in line at SIPC to make their claims. From the SIPC website:

SIPC: CLAIMS FORMS MAILED TO LEHMAN BROTHERS INC. CUSTOMERS AND CREDITORS"

I don't think SIPC covers fraud, unless I'm mistaken.

...Obama, don't close Gitmo....

insert Bernie Madoff and friends...

keep spaces open for Greenspan, McConnell, Bago, and Players to be Named Later........

"I think you are right on that it doesn't cover fraud... So why are they covering the Lehman FRAUD and all the other banker FRAUD. Call a spade a spade."

Well SIPC hasn't been covering anything, that's all I was pointing out. Looks if you make an SIPC claim if this is true you're SOL.

You need to make a TARP claim.

"PPT will be out in full force tomorrow and Friday......"

I hope so they've done such a hell of a job so far. Pump it up boys and I'll short the hell out of this puppy, Again!

re Barley:
Cox took his sock off?

per Bloomberg - NO DEAL! PPT boarding their helicopters...

CNBW just showed Reid and McConnell comments on the Senate floor. Senate bill vote coming in 10 minutes, and will fail according to Reid. He said something about not wanting to see the markets tomorrow.

i hear the choppers, oh look, bricks of new "F'EDS"

"So what. Its all insured by the serfs that work. "

Like auto workers, so far?

Madoff
Typical Republican scam artist
Reaganomics at it's finest

Three cheers for the autoworkers
In standing up to the Southern party

Senate negotiators failed on Thursday night to reach a compromise deal to bail out U.S. automakers, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.

"There is too much difference" between negotiators to reach an agreement, he said.

Reid said the chamber would attempt to proceed with a Democratic-sponsored plan, but predicted it would not pass.

"It's over with," the Nevada Democrat said.

WRAPUP 10-Auto bailout dies in US Senate, Asian stocks fall
| Reuters

check out that CDS scene when GM it TU, major bond default action, realize your southern heart cannot comprehend such sophisticated derivatives.
guess slavery was so cool, maybe not racially specific, eh
but you guys are in a terminal minority

Jim Rogers, one of the world's most prominent international investors, on Thursday called most of the largest U.S. banks "totally bankrupt," and said government efforts to fix the sector are wrongheaded.

Speaking by teleconference at the Reuters Investment Outlook 2009 Summit, the co-founder with George Soros of the Quantum Fund, said the government's $700 billion rescue package for the sector doesn't address how banks manage their balance sheets, and instead rewards weaker lenders with new capital.

Dozens of banks have won infusions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program created in early October, just after the Sept 15 bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc . Some of the funds are being used for acquisitions.

"Without giving specific names, most of the significant American banks, the larger banks, are bankrupt, totally bankrupt," said Rogers, who is now a private investor.

watch for the save Friday PM - Tomorrows Trade SDSSDSSDSSOSSOSSO

"Madoff Securities has one of the most sophisticated disaster recovery facilities found anywhere in the securities industry. "

No worries, then?

market will be open tomorrow at 3PM
can we blame it on a short squeeze?
Damn we're stupid

skucount: You assume that Madoff actually owned the shares that settled on T+3. What if he borrowed them from DTCC/NSCC and they were/are naked short to the tune of $50 billion?

Any idea who their auditors were?

USD-JPY: 91.08

U$D/JPY caving to new lows at 91.06 is atop my downside leaderboard, bearish for the indices for tomorrow, so I bought some for a trade, then short again soon for overnight, trying to be quick, like the deer and the trout.

elvis/dk...maybe the crass 80 yr old was Jas

I sense we are at a cliff or an iceberg?

Our nation is in trouble.

ahhh MArk to market , such a long lost forgotten and formal oft used phrase

A new metric for The Big Shitpile: The Madoff Unit. 40 Madoff Units, for example, equal two trillion dollars....

"Extracts from "The Great Crash: 1929", John Kenneth Galbraith, First Published 1955, Page 152 to 153."

This is brilliant. An economist with the mind of a great novelist.

If the Big 3 are allowed to go under, just like that, it will be the economic equivalent of the mobilization of 1914. That too was irrational, if you define self-destruction as irrational.

I still can't believe it will be permitted to happen.

Whoops, meant to say, for once a politician can be speaking the truth.

The only thing that will wake the UAW up is Bankruptcy.

The only thing that will wake the Government Unions up is the demise of UAW from stangling the auto companies.

Bankruptcy is a good thing.

It's what's done when the management has screwed everything up. The debts are restructured, the contracts burned and if necessary the show is liquidated.

i picture JAs as the old man that jeff dunham uses in his act

YouTube - Jeff Dunham Walter The old man

Thank God the Republicans held out against the tide

Yes, and thank god all the CEOS and upper management of the financial institutions who were recipients of the BILLIONS and BILLIONS in TARP money took those hefty pay cuts...

When is Ken Fisher gonna fall?

I'm sure that scumbag is the same BS.

"The UAW is Unwanted And Wrong."

Tame unions?

I used to know people from Trud (Labor), the trade union newspaper.

Old joke: Customer goes to the news stand and asks for copies of Pravda (Truth), Sovietskaya Rossiya (Soviet Russia), and Trud.

News stand guy says: There is no more Truth, Soviet Russia is sold out, the only thing left is Labor.

Soviet unions were not completely tame. But God help them if they bothered anyone really important.

Hey, we could have that here. Eh? A labor force paid whatever management would like to pay them.

Then they could afford to buy what? Instead of trading with China we could become China, without the rice. The unions were crippled decades ago. Wages went stagnant. Any effects on the economy and financial practices?

The banks have caved to one act of heroism. One. They ignore congress and threaten the country. They steal at will and harness us with the debt. One group stood up and won. A small battle but meaningful in many aspects.

I believe the Hispanic workers using peaceful pressure and the knowledge they were seeking justice will represent a template going forward. Seize assets and represent yourself as the wronged party. Count on local support and be steadfast in the face of violence but do not react with violence.

All local law enforcement belongs to a union. Law enforcement is also VERY blue collar and have a rugged sense of right and wrong. Law enforcement will do their job and will react if if you threaten their authority. They also will react out of a larger sense of duty to country and community if they see labor's side of the dispute.

Should this come down to protest remember these words. Make a difference because we might only get one shot at righting the ship of liberty. Stand up for your rights and the rights of your fellow citizens. There are enough good uncorrupted people in this country. Stand with them.

U$D/JPY below round number 90 in an hour, but now 89.66, oops 89.03! A serious collapse not good for stocks tomorrow.

"...the strangest thing is that the majority of the people that I know against the bailout will only drive American (think F-150 types) and those for the bailout will never buy American (Beemer, Audi, wine and cheese)."

The ability to master the contradiction between thought and action has become integral to living in the U.S. (Jas, for example, is a master - and he is pretty much off the deep edge.) Refined sophism, it is at the basis of so much of American society - marketing for the customer's good, as those paying for and creating marketing had only our interests at heart, and not theirs, or the renaming of the War Department to the Defense Department, after which we have invaded more nations in a couple of decades than we did for centuries previously.

This is not Orwell's doublethink, exactly, it is something more troubling. I think this is source of much of the dynamism which has motivated American society for most of my life - except for a brief period where relative sanity seemed to break through. A period that many people today consider the nadir of America's recent history.

Now, thoughts are about to be overwhelmed by reality, where only actions count. Such periods rarely turn out well, though occasionally, the aftermath is an improvement.

I recommend reading Roosevelt's first inaugural address - "Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself": FDR's First Inaugural Address

'I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today.'

Until you can imagine those in charge of government being able to speak similar words, we have not come even close to bottom. Worse, if you can't imagine such words from an American president or lawmaker, then likely you can only 'imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever' or never ending replays of Mad Max. America has been lucky for generations - that luck running out was always in the cards, new deal or not.

GM: Make sure your people know that whoever acts violently is not a friend.

PSgirl wrote: "All of the talking heads on CNBC were very familiar with [Madoff] and he had been interviewed by them. Apparently they were suspicious because he was always able to get 8-10 percent returns."

Ah, but when were they suspicious? It's easy to be suspicious now. Were they suspicious at the time of those interviews? Or were they really, really impressed with someone who was getting such a great return on investment?

Once again, storyteller Billie Mintz is way ahead of his time.

He got ripped off in a Ponzi Scheme and made a movie about it last year.

And now a $50 billion dollar scam has caught Steven Spielberg... He got swindled for $1 billion! Which brings us back to Billie Mintz of Artists Raising Consciousness who made a movie. When Billie got ripped off and he knew it was a hoax he went looking for the perpetrator, which is something not enough people do...

His web video movie, entitled simply The Ponzi Scheme is just that - a simple story about a guy who trusted a con man and the search for justice.