A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

One of the uglier effects of the economic meltdown; attack of the Envy People, gloating over the falling fortunes of others.

Bernie Madoff made off with the money of the super-rich, and legions of howler monkeys danced with joy! The schadenfreude appeared in the comments threads of many articles about Madoff.

You’re all idiots, greedy idiots and you almost deserve what you got.

And deserving of their fate for being Jewish and associating with a Jew.

Yeah, I know there are a lot of crazies on the internet, but even without the gratuitous antisemitism, I was disappointed to hear so many people – including people I know – gloating over the victims of the Madoff scheme.

Bernie Madoff did not just rob rich people, he robbed charities, and the pensions of middle class Americans. He robbed teacher’s unions, and fireman’s unions.

At this link, you will find a list of the 147 charities and organizations Bernie Madoff robbed.

Apparently, putting your money into the hands of investment advisers (which, by the way, is exactly what you are supposed to do with money,) is the mark of stupid. Leaving your money in an investment account where other people can get it is asking to be robbed!

That’s like saying you deserve to have your house robbed because you left it out in public.

We sign contracts with banks, and credit unions and investment firms every day to handle our money. They get a fat percentage of it, to reward them for their efforts on our behalf. If they are not honest with our money, then they are crooks, and we deserve the protection of the law. We deserve the protection of the law if we lose $50 or $5 million.

Smart people are as likely to get burned by crooked investment advisers as anyone else. And there’s no better article for discussion than this one at The Skeptic. Author Stephen Greenspan is one of Madoff’s victims. He is also a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado where he teaches about scams, scammers and the scammed. File under REQUIRED READING.

The four factors are situation, cognition, personality and emotion. Obviously, individuals differ in the weights affecting any given gullible act. While I believe that all four factors contributed to most decisions to invest in the Madoff scheme, in some cases personality should be given more weight while in other cases emotion should be given more weight, and so on. As mentioned, I was a participant — and victim — of the Madoff scam, and have a pretty good understanding of the factors that caused me to behave foolishly. So I shall use myself as a case study to illustrate how even a well-educated (I’m a college professor) and relatively intelligent person, and an expert on gullibility and financial scams to boot, could fall prey to a hustler such as Madoff.

Scammers are epidemic in the art and entertainment field. The latest victim: Patricia Cornwell. Arlene Harris alerted me to this link: Cornwell and her wife Doctor Staci Gruber are out $40 million.

The complaint notes that Cornwell is bi-polar, has her own helicopter and makes more than $10 million per year. It also questions a $5,000 check to adviser’s daughter for her Bat Mitzvah, and says the adviser told Cornwell and her partner, Dr. Staci Gruber, to pose as Middle Easterners to lease a New York apartment.

At Daily Finance, stomach-turning gloating and homophobia. Is it really necessary to leave comments like that on a blog?

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