Bernard Madoff is a supervillain.  I make this claim, not because he has devastated a city or murdered a bunch of people, and certainly not because he runs around in tight spandex being a scourge to the police and peaceful citizens.  No, its the volume of money he swindled-  50 Billion dollars- that puts him in the league of the fictional comic book villains of the Kingpin, Lex Luthor or Doctor Doom.

Bernie Madoff even has a comicbook name-  His last name is pronounced “Made Off” as in, he “made off” with everyone’s loot.  He should taste the fists of justice.  Where is “The Tick” when you need him?

From the Times Online here:

Some of America’s wealthiest socialites were facing ruin last night after the arrest of a Wall Street big hitter accused of the largest investor swindle perpetrated by one man.

Shock and panic spread through the country clubs of Palm Beach and Long Island after Bernard Madoff, a trading powerbroker for more than four decades, confessed to a fraud that will cost his wealthy investors at least $50 billion.

Mr Madoff, 70, a former Nasdaq stock chairman, was arrested on Thursday morning at his Manhattan apartment by the FBI. The SEC described the scheme as “a stunning fraud that appears to be of epic proportions”.

Mr Madoff told the FBI that he was “finished”, that he had “absolutely nothing”, and that “it’s all just one big lie”. He said the investment arm of his firm was “basically a giant Ponzi scheme”, and that it had been insolvent for years.

A Ponzi scheme, named after the swindler Charles Ponzi, is a fraudulent investment operation that pays abnormally high returns to investors out of money put into the scheme by subsequent investors, rather than from real profits generated by share trading.

How did this man bypass all of the regulations that were supposed to be in place to protect investors?  Is it just the greed of the rich investors that allowed this to happen?  Rich fat cats saw that Bernie could bring in great returns- greater than regulated Wall Street brokerages, and they leaped at the chance to give their wealth to this criminal.  Yeah, this guy was a supervillain, but excuse me if I don’t shed a tear for the victims.

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