Madoff Does the Ponzi Scheme Perp Walk

I'm so glad Bernie Madoff is in jail tonight. He's been living large on the Upper East Side, ever since his arrest last December and that has really galled me. I mean a man who can run a Ponzi Scheme that bilks people all over the world out of an estimated fifty billion dollars doesn't deserve to be sitting around in his posh digs with nothing but an ankle bracelet to restrain him.

Tonight, at least, he'll put his head down on a lumpy pillow in a tiny cell in Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center. Quite a change for him, but well deserved. I have to say it does my heart good. Maybe what goes around really does come around after all.

I'm just one of the little people and I didn't have any money invested in Madoff's Ponzi scheme but thousands of honest individuals, institutional investors and charitable foundations did. The stories are shocking. You've read them in magazines and seen the victims interviewed on TV-- the wealthy retired couple who used to live in Palm Beach and are now eeking it out day to day in a mobile home, the eighty year old who has gone back to work, the children's charity that is closing its doors-- the list is long. But even as the victims were crying the blues, Bernie was kicking back in his luxury penthouse and his wife was mailing packages filled with Harry Winston jewelry to her cousins and withdrawing fifteen million bucks from the bank. That should keep the wolf from the door for awhile.

I can't wait for the trial to begin. I think lots of dirt is going to come up from under the carpet. Bernie took the spear and entered a guilty plea, insisting that he acted alone. But investigators don't think so. He had an office full of employees and his two sons worked in the family business. Impressive looking completely fraudulent statements were sent out regularly. Surely, Bernie was not entirely surrounded by innocent bystanders.

At least one SEC whistle blower smelled a rat. There had to be others who did too. And why was nothing done? The SEC, the FBI and the New York State Attorney General's Office are on the case now and I bet they are going to dig up plenty. I hope so anyway. I want to believe that there really is justice in the world.

At least Bernie Madoff is sleeping in a jail cell tonight. That's a good beginning.