Tag Archives: Michael Milken

Bernard Madoff serves time incognito

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Pnzi scheme financier scam artist in Groucho incognito glassesYou and I fight traffic tickets, Phil Spector fights charges that he put a gun to a woman’s mouth and pulled the trigger, he fights for years. Everyone fights against the long arm of the law, except Bernie Madoff. Does that make sense to you?

The biggest economic fraud ever perpetrated by one man, and that man pleads guilty. Hmmm.

We are told that as a consequence, Madoff doesn’t have to tell anyone where he buried the treasure. Meanwhile his accomplices are being charged and are proclaiming themselves innocent.

Okay, I didn’t know that not plea-bargaining means not having to say you’re sorry, or divulge where you took the loot. I didn’t know that when Kenneth Lay died, it meant that because his appeal could then never be exhausted, his wife and family got to keep the money. An appetizing pattern emerges…

Can you imagine a parade of white-collar-criminal bunkmates sidling up to Madoff in prison, hoping to learn the whereabouts of his vanished bullions (who saw that pun coming)? Nor can I. Michael Milken –now a financier and philanthropist–had plenty of business suitors waiting to hire his larcenous consultation when he was released. Paper crimes don’t garner severe prison sentences. Whether Madoff has a felony on his record or not can hardly hinder his future prospects.

Madoff has a very good reason to plead guilty. It’s a bit like the Kenneth Lay play-possum legal strategy. Let’s remember Bernie Madoff couldn’t even afflict himself with jail. He remained out on bail in his luxury penthouse, until his day in court. Since then where has he been? Have YOU seen him? Are you sure he’s where authorities say he is?

I’m convinced that Bernie has a plan to stay out of the penal system. And it doesn’t involve a jury verdict.

I’d guess with just a fraction of his loot, he can pay off the very few administrators involved to handle the paperwork to incarcerate someone in his place. No visitors, no outsiders to know. It won’t be Bernie doing the time, it’ll be a stand in. Maybe as simple as a real inmate, written off as released, but reissued Bernie’s ID. No cosmetic surgery necessary, what’s the probability that prison guards know what Bernie Madoff looks like anyway.

If Bernie had to go back and forth to court, he’d have to do be there himself. Being seen by too many people.

In prison, rather, not in prison, Madoff can live the rest of his years on a private estate, miles from onlookers, his fence-line probably abutting Kenneth Lay’s.

World Economy 101

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Graph showing US, China and India shares of world output.Here is a graph that I think illustrates world economic history quite well in a very simple way. It takes three countries and charts their portions of the world economy over 2 centuries. The three countries are the US, India, and China. See the graph Output and Outlook

Ignore the conclusion of the Harvard Professor, Greg Mankiw, as he glowingly quotes Michael Milken of the Wall Street Journal. Both these guys are American apologist buffoons who overlook the obvious about the graph they are looking at.

In 1820 India and China held almost 50% of the world’s economic output between themselves, whereas the US had less than 2% of it. But just about then the US was importing slaves ripped away from the African continent by European imperialism. As this stolen wealth in human slaves accumulated in the US and was used as labor in agricultural production, the US portion of world wealth shot up, and later not even the Civil War could brake it.

And then, European imperialism began to spread its hooks and tentacles toward India and China, where they began to colonize the 2 regions. Now you see the swing begin downward in the Chinese and Indian portions of world wealth as they were bled drier and drier by the Europeans, and in the case of the Chinese also by Japan.

It is only in the 1980’s where China, and a lesser extent India began to recover some. That was when both societies began to recuperate themselves some from the destructive effects of colonial occupation.

Since the end of WW2, the European countries and the US have had to discard colonialism and embrace neo-colonialism, where the looting of other countries is done primarily through economic structures (banks and lending institutions), and not military ones of direct occupation.

Now with the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, we see the US Empire beginning to return to using the old methods of traditional colonialism by direct military occupation to loot other countries’ wealth to enrich its own treasuries. Or at least, this seems to be the current direction where US government is now trying to implement its foreign policies.

Direct colonization by occupation troops does not have a recent history of being successful though, except in the case of the construction of the Jewish Apartheid state of Israel. The US occupation of Iraq is somewhat an extension and outgrowth of the Jewish occupation of Palestine, while the occupation of Afghanistan is more a remote fortress garrison occupation than a direct colonization attempt of any sort.

So what we have is the US Empire today directing a kind of hybrid imperialism where traditional colonialism is fused with neo-colonialism, and then again with a sort of return to the old colonial style fortess enclave structures, like the British and Portugese used to specialize in.

But now, we are off some from the theme of the simple educational graph that we linked to.