28 February 2011
American Monster: Excerpts from The Madoff Tapes
"It’s unbelievable. Goldman … no one has any criminal convictions—the whole new regulatory reform is a joke. The whole government is a Ponzi scheme."
Here are some brief excerpts from a story in New York Magazine called The Madoff Tapes. The story runs to nine pages, so consider this just a taste and read the whole thing when you have the time. I thought Steve Fishman did a terriffic job of lett ing Bernie talk and presenting his thoughts in a orderly manner without a lot of interpretation and editorial intrusion. He has real talent as an interviewer, and seems a natural reporter.
But while you read this bear in mind that you are seeing reality interpreted through the eyes of a master manipulator and pathological liar, an individual perhaps in deep denial, but the question is, to whom.
His psychiatrist in prison tells him he is not a sociopath because he has remorse. I think his major remorse is that he was caught. The article implies that he is a narcissist. I think he is all of the above, and much, much, more.
Always full of self-pity and the quick deflections of a classic con man, he seems to blame his corruption on the failure of his father's business, and a personal vow never to let it happen to him, a resolve that became an obsessive compulsion. Besides, everyone was doing it. He just did more of it, more quickly and with an automated efficiency that turned into raw fraud when the easy gains evaporated. It is a microscosm of the US financial sector today.
Sometime in the future someone is going to do a thorough analysis on what was common in the background of these fellows who were drawn to Wall Street in the 1980's and beyond, and what made them the way they are. But we can discover what set them free to do their worst, and that was the undermining of regulation, of the government, and the 'greed is good' meme that has brought an entire society to its collective knees in a number of countries.
At times Bernie Madoff sounds like a less articulate version of a former Fed Chairman, but less able to rationalize his way, with a prideful sneer, out of nearly anything and everything with a practiced verbal acuity and evasion.
I think he is the emblem of an empire of in decline, a decline that came into full flower with Reagonomics, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and the capture of the government in a campaign led by a few New York money men, with the resulting institutionalization of fraud and mass plunder by the financial interests that continues today.
The only difference between Madoff and many of the others like him on the Street is that Bernie ran out of rope, and was caught. The others seem to be hanging on and are trying to bluff their ways out of similar predicaments by keeping the game going, at any cost to the country, unto the destruction of the dollar and bond, the misery of families, and the pure corruption of all that has made America great.
The rationale will be like Bernie's, a cheap apology, a spreading of blame to everyone and therefore no one, and that all the enablers and beneficiaries knew something was wrong, and they took the money and turned a blind eye to it anyway.
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Jessie…
