Crime

Gut feelings — often used as a compass for gauging the reality of the market — can easily leave you sick to your stomach at the realization that everything you have worked your life for is gone. Bernard L. Madoff is the perpetrator of a $50 billion Ponzi scheme that masterfully manipulated the gut feelings, which oftentimes trump rational thought, of investors.

The trouble with Ponzi schemes is that they are so difficult for consumers to spot. Not only do most give dividends right away, but they are often positioned as sweetheart deals that may seem too good to be true. It is when the money touches your fingers that you are deceived to the point that you begin to believe the lie. Read more...

The mainstream press will be telling us this Christmas that the motive behind Bernard Madoff's impressive heist was greed. It's not. It never is. It is hard to say in under two words what motivated Madoff. It took F. Scott Fitzgerald many more words.

And in a moment of almost spooky turnings, Bernie is almost an exact reenactment of Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby. He is our own 3.0 version of Jay Gatsby, much as Obama appears to be on occasion a 3.0 version of JFK. Read more...

Looking at the situation with Gov. Blagojevich and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Armstrong Williams points out that so many politicians, especially a number of U.S. Representatives have been caught in scandals and maybe it's the profession that is susceptible to corruption.

I don't really understand why we're paying so much attention to Bernard Madoff.

Oh sure, sure, if the charges are accurate, the collapse of his Ponzi scheme might just put him in the Fraud Hall of Fame.

But he'll have plenty of company. In the world of finance, however, it's probably more accurate to say he will achieve new heights in the realm of ILLEGAL fraud.

As we're discovering, almost the entire economy is the moral equivalent of a Ponzi scheme. Read more...

He just couldn’t leave bad enough alone. Getting away with murder(s) was not enough. This time, the scene changed, and so did the key characters, except O.J. Johnny Cochran is gone to his maker. Judge Ito replaced by a low-visibility, no-nonsense judge. The glow is now gone from the younger, untouchable star.

The bizarre administration of justice finally worked its way. Nullification in Los Angeles was replaced by overreaction in Las Vegas. The man is finally there for all to see, shackled hand and foot, in prison-issue garb, whimpering before a judge, who was sipping her Slurpee while the prisoner begged for forgiveness. Read more...

Bush pardoned a bunch of turkeys this week, yet left off those responsible for the engineering and implementation of torture. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Bush administration thinks that the Justice Department torture memos give guilty officials cover. Last night on Rachel Maddow, her guest, constitutional legal scholar Jonathan Turley, expressed his belief that the torture memos have little to do with why no torture pardons were made. Instead, Turley believes that the Bush administration will use the Democrats’ conciliatory nature to repair his legacy. Read more...

It’s my blog and I will cry if I want to.

My dog woke me up this morning at 4 a.m., and then my mother, who is visiting from Chicago for the holiday, yelled from the guest room, “There is somebody at the front door.”

I traipsed downstairs, opened the door and saw D.C.’s finest gathered outside.

“Sir, do you own a black Lexus?” Read more...

Before President-elect Barack Obama was elected, he was, among other things, a community organizer. He helped organize others to help themselves — not to rely on the government for handouts, but to learn about what the law states and to take advantage of what the law dictated in their favor.

Oftentimes the law may have rewards and stimuli for people who are trying to make a difference, or even just protect their own property, but some diligence may be required to learn about it. While the government may have ordinances and infrastructure in place to support you in your position, if you don't know about it, no one is necessarily required to inform you. Read more...

Note: The following was originally published in The Washington Times’s Monday edition. — Ed.

Shocking news in this season of lobbyist bashing — many lobbyists not only are good people but also represent real people.

And even more shocking news: Without lobbyists, government could not function efficiently, and perhaps not at all, going all the way back to George Washington. Read more...

The blurb in The New York Times today caught my eye, and proved a point. Americans — right or left — need to clear their heads about capital punishment.

Today’s blurb (A21) reports that Richard Cooey, convicted of raping and killing two women in 1986, unsuccessfully appealed his execution to the United Sates Supreme Court. His reason: he is 5-foot-6 and weighs 267 pounds, so a lethal injection under Ohio law might cause Cooey agonizing pain, in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Read more...