Where Did the $50 Billion Go?

I (and, yes, I bet a bunch of other people) are still puzzling over the propositin that $50 billion (that's "b") went missing out of Bernard L. Madoff's change purse in what we are please to call a "Ponzi scheme." When you stop to think about it, a Ponzi scheme is about the crudest and simplest of all frauds--you use new money to pay old debts or (what is close to the same thing) you use capital to pay interest. It hardly even deserves the name of "scheme;" for the most part, it's just the form of betrayal that comes naturally to a debtor who can't mee his obligations and is stalling for more time in the hope that Something Will Turn Up (or, as they say, that he might get lucky and die).

Anyway the point, for present purposes is, that a Ponzi scheme is not the same as simply setting fire to a big pile of dollar bills. The money is somewhere--in the wallets of the transferee, or the transferee or some such on down the line. The bankruptcy statutes have devices for recovering these transfers sometimes, under restricted circumstances but you can bet your boots that if these transfers were made long enough ago, there are plenty of tranferees who can get on with their life as the money continues to warm their pockets. Suffice it to say that litigators' grandchildren yet unborn and unbegot will be flipping back jello shots a couple of generations from now in honor of the old fraud and the mess he created. Or should be, the ungrateful little twerps, but do they ever thank you? Ha!