We should thank Bernard Madoff – the Wall Street broker with ‘impeccable credentials’ – who is charged with having swindled investors (including some of his best friends) to the tune of $50 billion. Few individuals have so eloquently exposed how easily gulled are the supposed experts of the financial world.
Madoff highlighted a simple truth: that one of the best ways to fool people is to make things appear rather complicated. Vanity kept ‘sophisticated investors’ from admitting that they didn’t really understand the intricacies of Madoff’s get-richer-even-quicker scheme. Greed and laziness kept them from asking the crucial questions. As long as the money came rolling in – and at 15 per cent the returns were abnormally high – who cared?
