Articles

Zizek : Quiet Slices of the Peace Camp

Ziabari : Waging War Against The Wrong Country

Wright : Litvinenko was MI6 Agent

Wilkinson : BISHOP WILLIAMSON

Wilhelmson : Sad Story from Sweden

Wilhelmson : Revoking Israel UN Membership

Wilhelmson : Forum for Living History

Whitney : Why CFR Hates Putin

White : The Usury Paradigm

White : Ezra Pound American Giant

Weiss : Out From the Shadows

Weiss : Elders of Zion to Retire

Weir : Israeli Organ Harvesting

Webster : Israel Lobby in Britain

Weber : Why Judaism is Not Like Other Religions

Watson : War on Shampoo

Walt : Attacks From Ideological Opponents

Wall : Zionists Freeman Robinson

Wall : Who Gave Bibi Permission

Wall : Man Kills His Parents and Begs for Mercy Because He Is an Orphan

Wall : Joe Biden in Israel

Wall : Israels Trauma Trail

Walberg : To Leave and yet Stay

Walberg : Stars and Stripes

Walberg : Review of Al Azmeh Against Culture

Walberg : Return of the Repressed

Walberg : Requiem For An Overweight

Walberg : Recess Games

Walberg : Publish and Perish

Walberg : Prison of Nations

Walberg : Power Behind Throne To Be

Walberg : Political Poison

Walberg : New Auschwitz

Walberg : Muslims and Jews

Walberg : Masters of Discourse

Walberg : Israel In Canada

Walberg : Georgia Attacks South Ossetia

Walberg : Freeman and the Lobby

Walberg : Defining Diplomacy

Walberg : Cakes Not For Eating

Walberg : Bushs Divine Comedy

Valenzuela : Untermensch Syndrome

Uhler : Protocol of the Elders

Tucker : Open Letter to Uri Avnery Noam Chomsky and Jimmy Carter

Tillawi : Nice Soldiers Die First

Tibbs : Interview With Stuart Littlewood

Stone : Robinson Investigation and Protest

Spritzler : Why They Voted

Spritzler : They Destroy Our Society

Spritzler : Anti Gentilism

Spritzler : A New Way For Israel

Sniegoski : Transparent Cabal Smeared

Sniegoski : Israel Nukes Obama

Sniegoski : Gaza Resolution Illustrates Power of Israel Lobby

Sniegoski : Anti War in the Age of Obama

Smith : Illegal Settlements in America

Singh : Gandhi and US Israel

Sharon : The Complete Guide to Killing Non Jews

Shamir : Zionist Crook

Shamir : Yiddishe Medina

Shamir : Yeti Riots

Shamir : Wrong Lizard

Shamir : Wiki Chaos Controlled

Shamir : Walking About Jerusalem

Shamir : Translating the Bible into Hebrew

Shamir : Third Force

Shamir : The Snatch

Shamir : The Rise and Rise of the Neocons

Shamir : The Poverty of Racialist Thought

Shamir : The Man Who Stayed Away

Shamir : Texas Body Snatchers

Shamir : Talmud Impaled

Shamir : Slow Down

Shamir : Shamir in Italy

Shamir : Shadow of Zog

Shamir : Seven Lean Kine

Shamir : Self Determination

Shamir : Secularism

Shamir : Scorpion Logic

Shamir : Say Not Fatah

Shamir : Sages Rule

Shamir : Russias Daring Vote

Shamir : Russian Intifada

Shamir : Right Ho Lobby

Shamir : Return of the Body Snatchers

Shamir : Resurrection Sunday Blessings

Shamir : Regards from Ankara

Shamir Readers : Zionist Takeover of Italy

Shamir Readers : Top Stories February 2008

Shamir : Reading Douglas Adams in Yanoun

Shamir Readers : Should The Jews Be Deported

Shamir Readers : October Omnibus 2007

Shamir Readers : March Omnibus 2007

Shamir Readers : February Omnibus2 2008

Shamir Readers : February Omnibus 2008

Shamir Readers : Christmas Songs

Shamir Readers : August Omnibus 2007

Shamir Readers : August News 2007

Shamir Readers : About Ron Paul

Shamir Readers : A Letter From A Catholic Friend

Shamir : Rape of Dulcinea

Shamir : Pope Not Welcome

Shamir : Peter Edel On Zionism

Shamir : Pakistan in Turmoil

Shamir : Our Congratulations to the People of Turkey

Shamir : Oscar for Obama

Shamir : Obama Lynching Party

Shamir : No War For Heroin

Shamir : Not Only About Palestine

Shamir : No Deal

Shamir : Noam Chomsky and 911

Shamir : Merry Christmas 2007

Shamir : Mauro Manno is gone

Shamir : Mahler In Vanity Fair

Shamir : Madoff Affair

Shamir : Lead Rains of Gaza

Shamir : Keep Shining Cuba

Shamir : Kashmir

Shamir : July Thunder

Shamir : Jews Can Be Trouble

Shamir : Island of Faith

Shamir : Interview with Sweden

Shamir : India Comeback

Shamir : In Defense of Prejudice

more...

 

Find More Articles By or About Shamir



The thinking-man’s antisemite would be baffled what to make out of Madoff Affair. Should he rejoice or bewail? If you read Jewish newspapers, you’d think that “antisemites” - the vast majority of mankind, according to Jewish sources (“scratch a goy and you'll find an anti-Semite”) – should be bursting with joy.

The Madoff Affair: A Guide to the Perplexed Antisemite

by Israel Shamir

Bradley Burston enthused in Haaretz: “For the true anti-Semite, Christmas came early this year. The anti-Semite' s new Santa is Bernard Madoff. The answer to every Jew-hater's wish list. The Aryan Nation at its most delusional couldn't have come up with anything to rival this”. He is echoed by the execrable Lipstadt: “He is an antisemite's dream. The worst of them could not have dreamt up such a story.” And the ADL confirms: “We expect the antisemites to have a field day. They will exploit it."

One would think that Jewish mega-cheats are a rare species, like white ravens. This is hardly the case. Dr. William Pierce made his valuable observation some years ago: “Jews aren’t the only crooks, but they’re certainly the biggest crooks. If you hear about a 100-thousand- dollar swindle, it could be anybody. If you hear about a 100-million- dollar swindle, then you know that it has to be a Jew.” Even more so if we hear about 50-billion-dollar swindle!

Pierce reminded his readers about Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Marty Siegel, Dennis Levine and the insider-trading scandal that nearly wrecked Wall Street a dozen years ago--and incidentally bankrupted tens of thousands of ordinary Americans who lost their investments as a result of the artificial manipulation of stock prices. Every major actor in that scandal was a Jew.

“Remember the enormous savings-and- loan catastrophe during the 1980s that ended up costing American taxpayers 500 billion dollars? A big part of the reason for the collapse of the savings-and- loan industry in the 1980s was the huge investments in so-called 'junk bonds' by so many savings-and- loan institutions. And the man behind the junk bonds --the financial genius persuading the savings-and- loans to buy them--was none other than Michael Milken.”

One can fine-tune Pierce: the big crooks and swindlers are not necessarily Jews but they are devoted to Jewish causes, be it the Holocaust cult or the Zionist cause. When it comes to charity, an American cheat, whether goy or Jew, does not care for poor Americans or for starving Africans. He gives his tithe to the Jewish cause. This was the case with Madoff. He contributed a lot to Jewish causes, so he had to be a swindler. (In “The Man Higher Up” from my book  Pardes, I explain why). 

So, why should the proverbial antisemite rejoice at Madoff’s fall, if it was as much to be expected as the morning dawn? Is it because there were “a number of prominent Diaspora Jews among the victims, including Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, movie director Steven Spielberg, and real-estate magnate Mortimer Zuckerman”, as the Wall Street Journal reported?

James Petras thinks it should rather disappoint antisemites: “Madoff struck a severe blow against anti-Semites who claim that there is a ‘close-knit Jewish conspiracy to defraud the Gentiles’, laying that canard to rest once and for all.  Among Bernard Madoff’s principal victims were his closest Jewish friends and colleagues, people who shared Seder meals and frequented the same upscale temples in Long Island and Palm Beach .”  [An edited version of Petras’ article is appended below.]

This is also the view of Michael Hoffman: “Madoff's enormous heist … undercuts a stereotype of the Jew-haters: that Jews are always …robbing gentiles and profiting communally from the rip-off. This is sheerest ignorance… Contrary to the received opinion, Judaism is not good for Jews. They may cheat the gentiles first, but sooner or later they'll give each other a haircut too.” Hoffman goes even further and says, “The biggest victims of Judaism are not gentiles but Jews themselves.”

One hesitates to disabuse his noble heart. Though Hoffman’s generous statement certainly is correct in a deep spiritual sense, the Judaic strategy, in the medium-run, is a winning one in the practical sense. From bankruptcy to bankruptcy, from swindle to swindle, from one insurance fraud to the next -- the aggregate wealth of the Jewish community permanently grows thanks to intra-Jewish philanthropy. Yes, Spielberg and Yeshiva University lost some cash in this debacle, but otherwise, billions of dollars came in and remained within the Jewish community. One may view Madoff as a Jewish suicide bomber: he blew himself up financially, and the immediate losses to a few Jewish investors were just so much collateral damage. But the bottom line was a major, permanent transfer of gentile wealth to the Jews.

As always, denunciations of antisemitism serve to cover up the hard facts. We hear of ruined Jewish investors, BUT the majority of Madoff's fools were non-Jewish, correctly observed Peter Myers’ correspondent Leo Schmit from Kandahar , Afghanistan . “The majority of Madoff's fools were non-Jewish individuals, banks, funds and firms. The claim that Jewish foundations are taking the ‘biggest hit’ is evidently not true. The harm to Jewish foundations is dwarfed by the damage done to numerous financial institutions, funds and firms as listed by Henri Blodget.”

So, antisemites have no reason to rejoice. A Jewish crook is nothing new; a successful Jewish crook is nothing new, either. Dr Petras’ joy was premature, too, as he wrote: “The swindle may lessen funding for AIPAC’s purchase of Congressional influence and financing of propaganda campaigns in favor of a pre-emptive US military attack against Iran .” Not so fast, Jim! Even if some Jewish and Zionist organizations lost money, the total sum of Jewish holdings increased, and this new wealth will again find its way to the Zionist Lobby and other such bodies. Does this mean that nothing can be done about it? No. Where there is a will, there is a way.

While it would be unfair to confiscate the private funds of innocent Jewish individuals in compensation for the Jewish fraudsters’ misdeeds, the holdings of “the Jewish people” are fair game. Now these vast holdings are mortmain, as was Church property in the Middle Ages. Mortmain, or “Dead Hand”, means one can’t sue them. All losses are yours, while only the profits are theirs. Such a regime is too good to last forever. The Reformation would never have taken place but for the Dead Hand rule of the Church holdings. The princes finally had to expropriate the Church, otherwise it would have become too powerful and undermined their own economic dominion. Now is the time to deal with the Jewish Dead Hand. They benefited from Madoff’s misdeed, now let them pay for it.

These holdings are controlled by still uncaught Madoffs and other Zionist leaders. The Jewish National Fund (JNF) “is a multi-national corporation with offices in about dozen countries world-wide. It receives millions of dollars from wealthy Jews around the world, most of which are tax-exempt contributions. JNF's aim is to acquire and develop lands exclusively for the benefit of Jews. It leases land to Jews only.” Our friend Jonathan Cook from Nazareth described it as a racist institution of immense wealth and power. The JNF received funding from Madoff, and moreover, other people who earned money through Madoff’s schemes also supported the JNF.

Another possible mortmain body with vast holdings is the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany . This Fund, according to Haaretz, received billions dollars’ worth of real estate in East Germany under a clause in German law that recognizes it as the owner of all assets belonging to Holocaust victims without heirs. Do not worry: this money is not helping poor old Jews anyway. A  Haaretz headline relates that “Survivors get tiny slice of Holocaust compensation”. This bulk of cash should be used to pay the defrauded gentiles.


While we're at it, these and other Jewish communal bodies may be charged not only for the relatively tiny losses caused by Madoff, but for the much bigger ones caused by the Talmud-swearing Alan Greenspan and his Yeshiva-comrade Ben Bernanke. There is no reason to hate Greenspan or to call him Public Enemy Number One: it will be enough to revert his main deed, the massive transfer of wealth from ordinary Americans to the super-rich and from them to the Jewish causes. Among these latter, the Simon Wiesenthal Tolerance Center should also be a prime target; this could save Jerusalem from the monstrosity that organization plans to build in the centre of Jerusalem on top of Mamilla Cemetery . (In order to be ‘tolerant’, by Simon Wiesenthal Tolerance standards, you must support gag laws and the bombing of Iran !)

Expropriation of these bodies will not harm a single honest person of Jewish origin. It's the other way around:  it would remove the major reason for antagonism between Jews and non-Jews. Jews would know that there are no separate funds to take care of them and would recognize that they are in one boat with their non-Jewish fellow-citizens. And then the Jewish Lobby would shrink to its natural size of, say, Cuban Lobby, and the US would recover from its sickness.

We, the Israelis, would be the biggest beneficiaries of such a move. Isaac Deutscher ascribed the negative developments in Israel to the influence of super-rich American Jews: “A wealthy American Jew is at heart proud to be a member of the Chosen People, and in Israel he exercises his influence in favour of religious obscurantism and reaction. He keeps alive the spirit of racial-talmudic exclusiveness and superiority. It feeds and inflames the antagonism towards the Arabs”. If they are made to pay for their tricks, not only antisemites, but Jews as well will have good reason to rejoice.

Appendix:

In Praise of Bernard Madoff

by James Petras

(edited by Israel Shamir)

Wall Street broker Bernard (‘Bernie’) Madoff, former president of NASDAQ, revered and respected investor confessed to pulling off the biggest fraud in history, a $50 billion dollar scam.   

In a few days, one individual, Bernard Madoff, has struck a bigger blow against global financial capital, Wall Street and the US Zionist Lobby/Israel- First Agenda than the entire US and European left combined over the past half century!  He has been more successful in reducing vast wealth disparities in New York than all the white, black, Christian and Jewish, reform and mainline Democratic and Republican governors and Mayors over the past two centuries. 

Unlike the leftist pundits, bloggers and protest marchers, whose earnest and public activities have had no effect on the rich and powerful, Madoff has aimed his blows where it hurts the most: Their mega-bank accounts, their confidence in the capitalist system, their self-esteem and, yes, even their cardiac well-being.         

There is no reason to mount the barricades for Bernard Madoff.  It’s enough to recognize that he has inadvertently rendered an historic service to popular justice by undermining some of the financial props of a class-ridden injustice system. 

 It is worthwhile to list the inadvertent positive outcomes of Madoff’s mega-swindle. 

1. The swindle of $50 plus billion dollars may make a big dent on US Zionist funding of illegal Israeli colonial settlements in the Occupied Territories , lessen funding for AIPAC’s purchase of Congressional influence and financing of propaganda campaigns in favor of a pre-emptive US military attack against Iran . Most investors will have to lower or eliminate their purchase of Israel bonds, which subsidize the Jewish State’s military budget. 

2. The swindle has further discredited the highly speculative hedge funds already reeling from massive withdrawals because of deep losses.

3. Madoff’s long-term, large-scale fraud was not detected by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) despite its claims of at least two investigations.  As a result, there is a total loss of credibility.

4. Madoff’s long-term association with NASDAQ, including his chairmanship, while he was defrauding his clients of billions, strongly suggests that the members and leaders of this stock exchange are incapable of recognizing a crook.

5. Apart from severe bank losses, tens of thousands of influential, affluent and super-rich lost their entire accumulated wealth. The result is a weakening of the financial stranglehold over investor behavior and the demise of an important sector of the parasitic ‘rentier’ class. 

6. Since most of the money stolen by Madoff came from the upper classes around the world, his behavior has reduced inequalities – he is the ‘greatest leveler’ since the introduction of the progressive income tax.

7. By swindling life-long friends, self-same ethno-religious investors, narrow ethnically defined country club members and close family members, Madoff demonstrates that finance capital shows no respect for any of the pieties of everyday life: 

8. Among the many ruined investors in New York and New England, there are a number of mega slumlords (real estate moguls), sweatshop owners (fancy name-brand clothes and toy manufacturers) and others who barely paid the minimum wage to their women and immigrant laborers, evicted poor tenants and swindled employees out of their pensions before moving their operations to China.  In other words, Madoff’s swindle was a kind of secular ‘divine’ retribution for past and present crimes against labor and the poor.

9. Madoff struck a severe blow against anti-Semites who claim that there is a ‘close-knit Jewish conspiracy to defraud the Gentiles’, laying that canard to rest once and for all.  Among Bernard Madoff’s principle victims were his closest Jewish friends and colleagues, people who shared Seder meals and frequented the same upscale temples in Long Island and Palm Beach . 

10. Madoff’s swindle will likely promote greater self-criticism and a more distrustful attitude toward other potential confidence people posing as reliable financial know-it-alls.

The final and 11th point is the demise of Madoff’s enterprise and his wealthy liberal Jewish victims will adversely affect contributions to the 52 Major Jewish American Organizations, numerous foundations in Boston, Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere, as well as the Clinton/Schumer militarist wing of the Democratic Party (Madoff bankrolled both of them as well as other unconditional Congressional supporters of Israel).  This may open Congress to greater debate on Middle East policy without the usual high volume attacks.


From Daniel McGowan, NY
The Madoff Victims:  They Richly Deserved It

As the news of Bernard Madoff’s colossal fraud focused on America’s most “important” Jewish tycoons and moguls, it was only a matter of hours before the story was spun around their victimhood with the usual cudgels of “anti-Semitism” and the Holocaust.  In Israel columnist Bradley Burston spun the story best by declaring, “The anti-Semite' s new Santa is Bernard Madoff.  ...  The Aryan Nation at its most delusional couldn't have come up with anything to rival this.”

As the list of Madoff’s “victims” grows, their common characteristic is not philanthropy, but rather political Zionism.  Virtually all have worked to build a Jewish state with little regard, and often downright hatred, for the non-Jewish population living there.

The money from this type of mogul or “ganzer macher” has been used to dehumanize and depopulate non-Jews in Palestine for over 120 years.  But in spite of creating a strong Israeli economy based on guns, diamonds, and security services and in spite of walling Arabs in Bantustans in the West Bank and in the KZ lager known as Gaza , they have failed.  Non-Jews outnumber Jews within the borders controlled by Israel , which makes a mockery out of calling it a Jewish state.

Schadenfreude is defined to be largely unanticipated delight in the suffering of another which is recognized as well deserved.  Political Zionism deserves scorn and derision; it is racist and antithetical to what Americans profess to hold self-evident:  that all men and women are created equal and that we should share equal rights of citizenship.  When rich Zionists lose a piece of their portfolios, especially to the guile of one of their own, it is a delight.

The press was first to report Madoff’s pilfering of the Robert Lappin “Charitable” Foundation, an organization whose “mission is helping to keep our children Jewish, thus reversing the trend of assimilation and intermarriage.”  If the reader has trouble seeing the blatant racism here, substitute “White” for “Jewish” and imagine it was the stated goal of the David Duke Charitable Foundation.

While Mr. Burston found Madoff’s bilking of “fellow Jews, even Holocaust survivors” particularly outrageous, there are those who find divine justice in seeing one fraud defraud another.  Elie Wiesel and his Foundation for Humanity would certainly qualify.  Here is a man who has made millions peddling his narrative on the deaths of Jews in World War II; his novel, “Night,” is mandatory reading for most high school students; questioning it in any way invites charges of “anti-Semitism” and “Holocaust Denial.”  He has been feted by Presidents and holds dozens of honorary degrees.  If there were a CEO of the Holocaust Industry (a term coined by Norman Finkelstein) , surely it would be The Great Weasel.

Wiesel’s Foundation claims to combat indifference, intolerance and injustice through programs to promote acceptance, understanding, and equality.  Yet he remains persistently indifferent to over 60 years of suffering of the Palestinian people and treats them with silence or as the “untermenschen” his people once were under the Nazis.  Wiesel boasts of having worked for the terrorists of the Jewish Irgun, not as a fighter but as a journalist, and he steadfastly refuses to apologize for the massacre by his employer at Deir Yassin.  As a devout Zionist there is no way he can endorse one state in Israel/Palestine with equal rights of citizenship for all.

Other victims of Madoff’s deception, like the Shapiro Family Foundation and the Chais Family Foundation, are undoubtedly genuinely philanthropic and well-meaning.  But insofar as their gifts support Jews-only education, medicine, and social programs in Israel , they deserve the derision that would be accorded to Aryan philanthropists or others who support a racist state, one whose very laws favor one chosen group over all the rest.

Madoff’s clients were not just generous Jews; they were Jews who directly or indirectly support the racism inherent in political Zionism.  They support the assimilation of Ethiopian Jews (a noble enterprise), but reject the assimilation of Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians caged in West Bank and Gaza .  They support “birthright” trips for young American Jews in hopes they will settle in Israel , but not the “Birthright Unplugged” educational trips of Hannah Mermelstein or the work of Jeff Halper’s Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions.

Madoff’s wealthy victims build ever more Holocaust memorials with the message “Never Forget” but ignore the current siege and starvation of Gaza to which they contribute financially and by their silence.  Like The Great Weasel, they simply dismiss the analogy as “unworthy.”  Where is the Spielberg movie of the Gaza ghetto that isolates three times as many people as the Warsaw Ghetto and in worse conditions?  Where is the support for Righteous Jews (www.RighteousJews. org<http://www.righteou sjews.org/>) like former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, who calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza "a crime against humanity?"  Falk has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as "a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention."

Cast in terms of their impact on the struggle for Palestinian human rights, it is difficult not to plead guilty to schadenfreude caused by the greed of Bernard Madoff.  In fact, my only regret is that Edgar Bronfman and Alan Dershowitz were not among his preferred clients.

Daniel McGowan
Professor Emeritus
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Geneva , NY   14456

 

 

http://www.sunnifor um.com/forum/ showthread. php?t=41361

THE MADOFF DOUBLE-BLUFF
by Muhammad Rafeeq (18th-Dec-08) 
[The author is a Jewish convert to Islam.]

At first sight it was extremely refreshing. A white-collar financial crook raising his hands and pleading guilty to his financial crime. This has to be almost a first. Usually financial criminals when caught in the most obvious of wrong-doing plead 'not guilty'. The criminal can be caught boarding the plane, with a suitcase containing US$100mn of someone else's cash, with his mistress holding on to his arm, he will look into the camera with his most genuine 'Tony Blair look of sincerity' and say "What we have here is a misunderstanding. ... "You make up the rest of the excuse; there is a million of them.

So yes, an outright confession, "It was me, I chopped down the apple tree" is so against the current socio-political culture it was almost too good to be true. Especially given the pedigree of this perp, the CEO of one of the busiest and most prominent financial exchanges in the world. After his confession the world goes into shock, especially the Jewish world, since affluent members of this community had previously flocked to his door, seeking his world famous high returns. Since his arrest the press is full of people extolling his virtues as a decent human-being and "who would ever of believed it?". It would be so easy for this man to deny any wrongdoing because he could bring out an army of good character witnesses and he could just point at some suspect-looking goy in his hedge fund organisation to lay the blame on.

So a truly heart-warming confession. And it was apparently made to his 2 sons, both of whom who worked for the fund and who had absolutely no idea that this fraud was being perpetrated, until such time as this astounding confession.

But then I started to look more closely at the mix of investors who have lost money. About half of them are professional investing institutions. Look at this quote from the UK 's Daily Mail newspaper (online http://www.dailymai l.co.uk/money/ art...-lawsuits. html)

"Full details of the exact losses are yet to emerge. Hedge funds and banks have so far admitted to having around £16 billion with Madoff - only half of the total that is reckoned to have been lost. Some of the biggest casualties are Swiss private banks, which have taken hits amounting to about £2.5 billion. Spanish bank Santander had £2.1 billion of client money with Madoff. HSBC has admitted to lending about £600 million to funds who wanted to use debt to gear up their positions with Madoff. RAB capital, the hedge fund that lost huge sums on investing in Northern Rock, has revealed that it is exposed to Madoff to the tune of around £6 million."

Now the confession does not look right at all. 

It is possible to accept the idea of a Ponzi scheme being played on members of the public, who are ignorant of how such schemes are worked, in fact the schemes are targetted specifically at such people. Yet Madoff would have us believe that he managed to convince professional investment companies to put their funds with him without any due diligence being performed. This is clearly nonsense. 

I have acted as a professional consultant to major EC and US financial institutions on corporate and institutional credit risk and the idea that anyone in HSBC or Santander could authorise large investment without the internal checks and controls being employed is almost impossible. To try and believe that EVERY institution that invested in Madoff circumvented their internal control procedures IS impossible.

Why is this important? Simple. If someone approaches the HSBC credit risk team, for instance, with a view to making a loan or investing a sum as large as £600m to what is ultimately a single institution (therefore a single counterparty credit exposure) a significant number of  hoops would have to be jumped through. Firstly there is the credit officer competence limit, which is the maximum amount that a single credit officer may be allowed to authorise. More than his/her limit must be referred up the credit approval food chain. In an institution like HSBC or Santander etc, £600bn or US$1bn will have been referred to the very top of the food chain, the banks' credit committees at the board level. This is an enormous sum and no lackey is going to be able to approve this by themselves, ever.

When the credit committee are called together to review an application, everything is ready prepared for them, so they can cut to the chase. The lower levels of the credit approval process will have prepared a summary of all the application documentation, included in the meeting bundle, with the strengths, weaknesses, and other important credit risk points. This application will usually contain a set of audited accounts going back a minimum of 3 years and most likely 5 years. There will be a full credit breakdown of the investment profile of the business, Madoff's hedge fund, looking at how the fund obtains its returns, its investment assets and investment methodology. After the committee is satisfied that all the issues and concerns have been addressed they will vote on the approval or otherwise.

So there is no way that Madoff could have been pulling a scam. It would have stood out as clear as day to professional financial analysts, whose only job in life is to examine the management of companies and their reports and accounts, to make sure that all is in order. It's their job, it's what they do. They are the world experts in spotting anomalies. The idea that all these professionals in all these companies were all duped is absolute nonsense. It is highly improbable that one such evaluation process could have been fooled, but all of them, never. A Ponzi scheme is easy to spot when you have the audited accounts and the full range of investment assets and investment metodologies employed.

Also, this scam avoided the attention of all the fund's employees, its accountants, traders, auditors, and the US regulators, all of whom are also financial professionals.

This again is absolute nonsense. Any company that I have ever worked for would have known internally that such business was being done, because they are all involved. For instance, a trader goes on buying equities from the worlds stock exchanges that go down in price for 5 continuous years, but the company just keeps giving him more money to top up the trading, continues paying his salary and even annual bonus. Absolute rubbish. But assuming this actually did happen, the market risk team would have been watching these losses, as would have the accountants. It is not possible to hide things like this internally for very long, months at the most; 20+ years, NEVER.

So why plead guilty? The answer is simple. Look on the net and you will see that because this case is being labelled a fraud, it would appear that investors are going to be able to claim their investment back under the US government's financial fraud protection scheme. A judge has already given his approval in principle for compensation, without any evidence having been presented and financial fraud being demonstrated in a court of law. And it would appear that there will never be such a demonstration in a court of law. Why? It would appear that all the fund's financial records are mostly "missing" (rather like Dov Zakheim's US$1.4tn) and those few records that do survive are in a terrible mess.

However, since the guy has pleaded guilty we do not need to demonstrate the fraud, because he says he is guilty.

And look further on the net and you will see that these "victims" have also been told by the US tax authorities that they will probably also be entitled to claim back some taxes on these defrauded sums.

Rather than saying this hedge fund has gone bust, due to its choice of investment assets and investment methologies, a scenario which is highly probable in the current financial paradigm, since all the professionals are predicting that at least 30% of all hedge funds are about to fail, more than 700 of them, the CEO chooses to fess up to fraud. If the CEO admits the fund has gone bust, then all those wealthy members of the Jewish community get nothing, but if the CEO admits to fraud they get their money back as compensation from the US tax payer, just as they are also drawing money back from the tax payers with the other hand.

And, as can be seen at the Daily Mail link above, the investors in this fund only get to litigate the fund directors against Lloyds insurers in London for even more compensation. Done properly the compensation could end up paying out far more than the original fund returns (yes this is sarcasm, it was bound to creep in eventually in yet another swindle like this).

Would that I could believe that Madoff was a good guy who slipped and then became repentant. But given the facts, this simply cannot be true.

 

Click here to join shamireaders
Click to join shamireaders


Donate $100 To Shamir Now!
Click here to join shamireaders
Click to join shamireaders