A MADOFF RUSH TO JUDGMENT

Bernie Madoff is in jail but who has the missing money?

You know by now that yesterday in the U.S., crooked fund manager Bernie Madoff was handcuffed and led away to jail after pleading guilty to all counts against him. By declining to take the normal route of a plea deal with prosecutors, he sidestepped the requirement to divulge information about his accomplices and the disposition of the stolen money. Financial observers agree that Madoff could not have run his Ponzi scheme without help, and they certainly agree that the money didn’t just disappear.

The New York cover pictured here labels elderly Madoff a monster, as if he’s some atrocity never before seen by human eyes. While he may be the biggest swindler of all time, and he certainly isn’t Kevin Bacon’s favorite person, he’s not new. No, he’s just the latest in a long line of elegant grifters, though a particularly efficient one. What makes Madoff truly pulp is that he took the hit for his financial clan like a good mafia footsoldier, and though he’ll never get out of jail, neither will he—let’s face it—do time in Attica’s supermax wing with the child rapers and guys who ate their grandmothers’ kidneys. It’s easy to imagine Madoff is smiling inside just a little. Does that sound strange, and perhaps cynical? Yeah, it does until you think about it.

Consider for a moment how, in this post-millennial reality, we’ve become so jaded regarding the term “billions”. Not too many years ago you rarely heard that word uttered aloud by anyone other than an astronomer. So to put this Madoff thing in perspective, let’s just pretend the word doesn’t exist. Thus restrained, we now have to refer to him as a guy who stole—not one million, not fifty million—but 999 million dollars 60 times, and walked into jail without divulging where any of it went. Still think he isn’t smiling just a little?

New York City, New York Magazine, Bernie Madoff

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

January 17

1950—The Great Brinks Robbery Occurs

In the U.S., eleven thieves steal more than $2 million from an armored car company’s offices in Boston, Massachusetts. The skillful execution of the crime, with only a bare minimum of clues left at the scene, results in the robbery being billed as “the crime of the century.” Despite this, all the members of the gang are later arrested.

January 17

1977—Gary Gilmore Is Executed

Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore is executed by a firing squad in Utah, ending a ten-year moratorium on Capital punishment in the United States. Gilmore’s story is later turned into a 1979 novel entitled The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer, and the book wins the Pulitzer Prize for literature.

January 16

1942—Carole Lombard Dies in Plane Crash

American actress Carole Lombard, who was the highest paid star in Hollywood during the late 1930s, dies in the crash of TWA Flight 3, on which she was flying from Las Vegas to Los Angeles after headlining a war bond rally in support of America’s military efforts. She was thirty-three years old.

January 15

1919—Luxemburg and Liebknecht Are Killed

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two of the most prominent socialists in Germany, are tortured and murdered by the Freikorps. Freikorps was a term applied to various paramilitary organizations that sprang up around Germany as soldiers returned in defeat from World War I. Members of these groups would later become prominent members of the SS.

January 14

1967—Summer of Love Begins

The Human Be-In takes place in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park with between 20,000 to 30,000 people in attendance, their purpose being to promote their ideals of personal empowerment, cultural and political decentralization, communal living, ecological preservation, and higher consciousness. The event is considered the beginning of the famed counterculture Summer of Love.