| FRONTLINE: The Madoff Affair |
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Product Details
In the mid-1960s, Bernard Madoff tapped money from Jewish businessmen at exclusive country clubs with the promise of steady guaranteed returns on their investments. He then set his sights on Europe and Latin America, brokering deals with powerful hedge fund managers and feeder funds from Buenos Aires to Geneva. Billions of dollars were channeled to Madoff s investment firm, and his feeders became fabulously wealthy. The competition wondered how the man could produce such steady returns in good times and bad. There were allegations that Madoff was front-running or operating a Ponzi scheme, which the SEC investigated several times over the last two decades. But Madoff remained untouched until December 11, 2008, when he admitted it was all one big lie. FRONTLINE producers Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria unravel the story behind the world s first truly global Ponzi scheme a deception that lasted longer, reached wider, and cut deeper than any other business scandal in history.
Product Reviews
 (5 stars) - Shame On Bernie... Shame On Us!
Perhaps the most fact-based documentary available on this quintessential Ponzi scheme. Madoff is a master con artist to be sure, but he is only the tip of a glacial mass on Wall Street. From reviewer comments here and elsewhere, it seems most folks just don't recognize the larger economic, social and ethical context in which this scam took place. Since Reagan, the waves of federal deregulation and the ill-conceived withdrawal of oversight literally created an incubation chamber for greed and abuse. The casino capitalism of Bush/Cheney opened the gates to outright fraud and rampant corruption.
If we look back just a few years, Enron, Tyco and WorldCom were simply the prelude to Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, Fannie, Freddie, AIG -- and Madoff. Sadly, America is becoming a nation that knows the price of everything... and the value of nothing. From corporate debt that is reported as assets, to fantasy home mortgages that are expected to default, to the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless" mentality that is so widely promoted by the media and embraced by the public, it is abundantly obvious that this nation has lost it's moral compass. To quote Justice Louis Brandeis, "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
 (2 stars) - If it sounds too good to be true, then you know the rest!
Madoff committed the largest investment scheme in American history. Folk lost $65 billion dollars because of him. This work gives some of the facts behind the tragedy.
Newspapers have continually said they suspect Madoff could not have accomplished this on his own. Althought some close to Madoff refused to be interviewed here, others spoke. This program lists names from which I imagine that prosecutors could find more info.
This felt like Titanic in which multiple small errors added to something large and devastating. Dahmer could have been stopped earlier in his murder spree, but police let him go. Similar here, the SEC looked toward Madoff once but never dug further. The 1986 Challenger tragedy happened in part because NASA wanted to launch the spaceship no matter what. This work says SEC didn't have enough staff to go after Madoff. That may be a credible excuse, but they sho' should have egg on their face.
This work speaks infrequently of Madoff's biography. Some audience members may want a psychological profile of the man and they will be disappointed not to receive it here. You never get a sense of what made this guy tick.
This work touches upon something: Madoff shows no remorse. I don't want to be insensitive, but buyer beware! If someone says to you, "I can make you lots of money, but never tell anyone I'm the person doing it" then that should tell you something is fishy!
The work doesn't touch upon something: I wonder if the far-right push to deregulate the business sector played a role in this. In the same way that it destroyed the housing market, perhaps the laziness that conservative politicians and voters adore caused this mess. Take that, I-worship-the-free-market goons! SNAP!
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