Curious

“Why I don’t know, but it was the best thing in New York City was to try to get to Bernie Madoff. And to make enough money so that you could get into Bernie Madoff…and everyone wanted to be there because nobody thought that they would ever lose any money.” Barbara Flood’s confession spilled out in an interview on All Things Considered this weekend.

Ms. Flood, who considered herself a friend of the Madoff family, was as shocked as anyone else when she heard Bernie Madoff, a former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange, had pulled off a massive ponzi scheme. Madoff’s investment firm, it turns out, was a total bluff.

As Flood’s interview progressed, I caught myself paralleling the dramatic narrative to a familiar fairy tale Hans Christian Anderson told a few centuries ago. Any guesses?

“[Madoff] only took people who had a million dollars. And everyone wanted to be there because nobody thought that they would ever lose any money…You made money all along. The statement was a series of stocks that went up or down, and so there were about fifty stocks. And you’d get a statement once a month. You could never talk directly to Bernie Madoff. He was not available, even to friends, I mean, even to me he was not available. And you’d get a statement and you couldn’t read the statement and nobody could understand what the statement said. But after trying to figure out apples and oranges, you know, my accountant would say: ‘Well, the thing is…he’s always making money!’ And ‘always making money’ sounded very good to all of us…on paper, I grew [money]…Nobody, even though we thought it was strange, nobody ever really sat down and said: ‘Wait a minute, this doesn’t make any sense!’ Until now.”