Whole damn system is/was Marked to Madoff

(Consider please the term 'toxic assets' being stricken from the language and replaced with 'rich folks' bad speculative bets'. Or you can take the Federales blue pill and the story ends, you wake up in your Nancy Capitalist bed and find that the downside has been socialized and the upside has been piratized. D'ahr. -AM)

via LOLFED

Madoff on a 2005 conference call telling colleagues how to dodge the SEC.

“Obviously, first of all, this conversation never took place … OK?”

“You know, you don’t have to be too brilliant with these guys, because you don’t have to be,” Madoff said, referring to SEC investigators....

“The guys … ask a zillion different questions and we look at them sometimes and we laugh, and we say are you guys writing a book? These guys they work for five years at the commission then they become a compliance manager at a hedge fund now.”

“You don’t want to have that information because … the commission, when they ask questions, they try and draw out information, the less that you know how we execute … the better you are.”

(Grrr... whole damn system is/was Marked to Madoff isn't it? -AM)

I have spoken to the heads of various Wall Street equity derivative trading desks and every single one of the senior managers told me that Bernie Madoff was a fraud. Of course no one wants undue career risk by sticking their head up and saying that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. As a result of this case several careers on Wall Street and in Europe will be ruined. Therefore, I have not signed nor put my name on this report. I am worried about the personal safety of myself and my family.'
-Harry Markopolos in 2005.

'To me the SEC is utterly irrelevant. It is the federal fig leaf over the securities market. Bring back Joe Kennedy ... bring back free markets ... get rid of these people.' - James Grant

(Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? -AM)