Jul 01 2009
Ponzi’d
If I had any money left, I wouldn’t have invested it anywhere. I would have put it all away, making damned sure the only person who could get at it was me. It’s all part of the reason why I think that our wonderful nation is going completely to hell and that nobody knows anything about “hedge funds,” “capital gains,” or “money.”
Then I hear about this Bernie Madoff guy. Before this surfaced in the news, I knew nothing about Wall Street, NASDAQ, or what “five dollars” looked like. Now, I can tell you what a Ponzi scheme is and why everyone who invests money in anything is an idiot.
This Madoff guy had been stealing money from investors probably since the late sixties. He was only discovered recently, after he confided in his sons and was turned in. What does this mean? It means if you invest your money in something, you may not find out that you’re not getting it back until the person brokering your investment accidentally tells his or her children that he or she is conducting a massive money-stealing scheme.
If nobody noticed some guy (the vice chairman of the NASDAQ exchange, nonetheless) stealing 65 million dollars over the course of his career, then how the hell are we supposed to know when other people begin to milk investments and securities dry? Who knows how much money has fallen through the cracks since then?
This is typically something rich people care about, but not really something that affects people without money. Still, I wish I were clever enough to extort piles of money from people with little or no economic knowledge. If I did, I wouldn’t have looked at my ATM slip today and seen a balance of .43 cents. I would have seen at least $20 dollars, I bet.
Anyway, investing your money in anything nowadays is simply a bad idea. Unless you invest it in Devon’s blog. In which case I guarantee you a 40% return on your investment over 90 days. Forever.
