Series of errors allowed Madoff to keep trading

Oh, God - I'm laughing so fucking hard, I can barely type! I'm sorry, this is schadenfreude.

Series of errors allowed Madoff to keep trading

Now, for those of you who may be unaware, my background is in Law and financial compliance. The first thing that one is told, as a rookie compliance officer (by the people training one, not by one's company!), is that a major risk indicator in any organization is the balance of marketing types vs. others, at the top of the organization. In other words, if an organization is run by marketing people, then the potential for blind eyes to be turned is much greater. Moreover, such an organization is likely to appoint a junior person to the compliance role, because they can be more easily controlled (ie, manipulated and starved of information), and also because it is a measure of how important they regard compliance.

And the SEC has been caught out in just this way, by the look of things. They put people on the case who could be slapped down, if anything was uncovered - hell, one might even think that they were determined not to find anything, even though it was (apparently glaringly), there, presumably because it would have been embarassing. Or, even worse, they were so fucking supine that they feared that if they looked and found nothing, but Madoff chose to be angered by the scrutiny, then there might be repercussions. Cowardice, in other words.

It's all too funny for words. Reminds me of my old place of work. Nobody believed me, either. Or else chose not to believe me, because they were doing nicely out of it. Or else they were only too well aware of what was going on with the megalomaniacs who were running the business, and had chosen to become part of it, rather than object. Also reminds me of the pharmaceutical industry and its non-regulators on both sides of the Pond.

You like putting people in boxes and giving them labels? I will have my revenge, and it will be complete. What's more, I don't care if you hate me for it.

Matt