Thursday, December 11, 2008

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats;
A Falling Tide ...

Finance websites are gasping over the unraveling of Bernie Madoff, charged in connection with a 50 billion (that's "b") fraud at his advisory business (eat your heart out, Rod Blagojevich). Details are pretty much above my pay grade, but I can offer a generalization. John Kenneth Galbraith used to say that financial acumen is a short memory and a rising market. Just as a rising tide lifts all boats, so a falling market exposes all those discarded refrigerators and miscellaneous detritus that huddle out of view below the normal water line. I'll bet a nickel we'll see more of this sort of thing, and that their mantra will be "everything was fine until the market fell apart..."

Update: It's pretty small potatoes compared with the foregoing, but I bet this is more of the same. Oh, and of course there is this guy.

Update II: Holy Toledo.

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