Readings

Interesting point of view...

If Bernie Madoff's crimes were "extraordinarily evil," as his sentencing judge declared, than how to we describe the crimes of Joseph Stalin, or the warp speed massacres in late 20th century Rwanda? How do we distinguish linguistically between a massive Ponzi scheme and genocide? It's not an idle semantic question. Hyperbole, pop culture's lingua franca, doesn't simply exaggerate; it also diminishes. It threatens to obliterate essential moral and aesthetic distinctions, undermining our ability to recognize gradations of good and evil, freedom and repression, or beauty, intelligence and talent.

Yes, Madoff ruined countless lives (literally, considering the effect of his fraud on charities as well as individual investors.) Yes, he stole on a grand scale and earned his imprisonment. Yes, apparently he had his share of neuroses, (like reported obsessive compulsive tendencies,) but who doesn't? Generally, he seems such an ordinarily evil man. His sins -- greed, selfishness, dishonesty, an absence of empathy -- are all distressingly common. Indeed, his story owes its symbolic resonance to the ordinariness of his character and crime. Extraordinary people stand apart. Madoff stands within and for the acquisitive, status hungry culture that lionized him, the tribalism that led so many Jews to trust him, and the corrupt financial and regulatory system that allowed him to prosper.

Isn’t money fungible?

I thought it was, but when couched in legalese and banking jargon, what was intended to be a fungible commodity can be 'unfunged'.

From here: When news broke that Wells Fargo, recipient of $25 billion in bailout money, was planning a lavish Las Vegas retreat for its top employees, lawmakers howled. The bank canceled the trip but took out full-page newspaper advertisements defending such trips. ''The funds to pay for recognition events such as these do not come from the government,'' the ad read. ''They come from our profits.''Does that mean the bank tracks government money and profits separately? No.

Company spokeswoman Julia Tunis Bernard said Wells Fargo doesn't distinguish between bailout money and other revenue. What the newspaper ad meant, she said, is that the bank didn't need the bailout money to pay its routine operating expenses -- including employee trips like the one to Las Vegas.

Another example of 'unfungible' aspects of money here: Ruth Madoff said she owns a Manhattan apartment, $45 million in bonds and $17 million in cash that are “unrelated” to an alleged Ponzi scheme by her husband, Bernard Madoff. ... Madoff’s lawyers claim “only Ruth Madoff has a beneficial ownership” to a Manhattan apartment, about $45 million in municipal bonds on deposit at Cohmad Securities Corp., and approximately $17 million in cash in another account. Ruth Madoff says these assets are “unrelated” to the alleged fraud, citing her husband’s lawyer.

Quotable

"I would like him to be in a solitary cell with a screen, and on that screen, for at least five years of his life, every day and every night there should be pictures of his victims, one after the other after the other, always saying 'Look, look what you have done to this poor lady, look what you have done to this child, look what you have done. Whatever is to hurt him, I think should be invented, because he deserves it"

--- Writer Elie Wiesel on swindler Bernard Madoff. From here.