Should Madoff's victims just 'get over it'?
Posted
Jun 30 2009, 01:50 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Government negligence pretty much caused the current financial crisis, writes Joe Nocera of The New York Times. Does that mean we can sue the government for our losses? No, he says.
In other words, victims of Bernie Madoff's schemes need to just get over it and stop suing the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to uncover the fraud, Nocera writes. If the SEC were liable for anything here, then taxpayers would be the ones paying Madoff victims. "This is not 9/11," he adds.
It's a pretty tough column saying all kinds of things that Madoff's former clients don't want to hear right now. They are responsible for their own financial gullibility. When something sounds too good to be true -- like the returns Madoff promised investors -- it probably is.
Too many victims still think that someone needs to make restitution, that someone should have to make them whole, Nocera writes.
"The whole point about Ponzi schemes is that there is not enough money to make anybody whole -- they were robbed, pure and simple, and the government is not in the business of reimbursing for robberies. Not even when the cops stumble across the robbers and then mistakenly let them go."
Related reading:
SEC isn't to blame for Madoff
Madoff sentenced, but has anything changed?
Who wasn't dealing with Bernie Madoff?
