1 I find most of the "Madoff is Evil Incarnate" hype to miss the point: the scary thing is that I suspect he simply fell into an easy trap of his own making, and that most people, after the first few steps, would have made just the same decisions he did. The thing about pyramid schemes is that they are easy to start, and *very* hard to stop. You get deeper and deeper so fast that all you can do is keep feeding the monster until it eats you. Indeed, it wouldn't surprise me if it started the same way as the Satyam mess: cooking the books just a little to smooth out a glitch, and then covering over each successive layer until all you have left is the fraud...
Sesame Street explains the Madoff Scandal
1 I find most of the "Madoff is Evil Incarnate" hype to miss the point: the scary thing is that I suspect he simply fell into an easy trap of his own making, and that most people, after the first few steps, would have made just the same decisions he did. The thing about pyramid schemes is that they are easy to start, and *very* hard to stop. You get deeper and deeper so fast that all you can do is keep feeding the monster until it eats you. Indeed, it wouldn't surprise me if it started the same way as the Satyam mess: cooking the books just a little to smooth out a glitch, and then covering over each successive layer until all you have left is the fraud...
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Is anybody following me only here any more?
(Unlike nearly everything I post, this is intentionally only being posted to LiveJournal.) A few days ago, I posted my analysis of the new LJ Terms…
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Signal Boost: Affordable Housing at Assembly Square
Mainly for Somerville residents -- the developer of an enormous new apartment complex at Assembly Square is trying to skeeve out of some of the…
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A Study of the Battleground
When I dubbed my current politics posts with the tag "wartime thoughts", that was not originally intended as a general statement about the…
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Is anybody following me only here any more?
(Unlike nearly everything I post, this is intentionally only being posted to LiveJournal.) A few days ago, I posted my analysis of the new LJ Terms…
-
Signal Boost: Affordable Housing at Assembly Square
Mainly for Somerville residents -- the developer of an enormous new apartment complex at Assembly Square is trying to skeeve out of some of the…
-
A Study of the Battleground
When I dubbed my current politics posts with the tag "wartime thoughts", that was not originally intended as a general statement about the…
