Madoff’s con won’t be fixed by regulations…
…only by improved personal responsibility.
To put things very simply, it wasn’t a lack of regulations that let Madoff run his scheme for as long as he did.
What allowed him to evade prosecution by current laws was merely a lack of due dilligence on the part of the investors in his “fund”. While most investments take a bit of faith in honesty by the investor, the existence of regulations is not enough to keep from getting screwed. Investors have the responsibility to investigate the worthiness of anything they put money into. The excuses, that the fund was a private one and didn’t have the same regulations for disclosure as public investments, are lame - if a business isn’t willing to open the books to a full and complete independent audit when a billion dollars are at stake then the investment isn’t worthy. If the investors were not bold or competent enough to ask for a full audit before investing, then the investor is at fault as well.
Madoff’s fund was created by a con man and was supported over many years by willfully ignorant investors which poor or completely unexercised financial acumen.
As the folks at the eSkeptic blog write:
There are few areas of functioning where skepticism is more important than how one invests one’s life savings.
It’s pretty clear where the blame lies - with Madoff and all of his investors.
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[...] Student Loan Consolidation wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt …only by improved personal responsibility. To put things very simply, it wasn’t a lack of regulations that let Madoff run his scheme for as long as he did. What allowed him to evade prosecution by current laws was merely a lack of due dilligence on the part of the investors in his “fund”. While most investments take a bit of faith in honesty by the investor, the existence of regulations is not enough to keep from getting screwed. Investors have the responsibility to investigate the worthine [...]