The sins of the father. Many readers asked me last week after the suicide of Mark Madoff why I hadn’t written about it. I didn’t know young Madoff (or his parents). Like a lot of others, I long suspected that the Madoff boys knew about their father’s scheme.
That assumption was made out of nothing but venal imagination. I assumed everybody involved with Bernie Madoff knew something was awry or amiss. It seemed obvious. In retrospect.
It seems, however, that this may not have been so. It wasn’t so obvious, but more like that line from Paul Simon’s The Boxer, “a man believes what he wants to believe and disregards the rest.”
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| Bernard Madoff with his brother Peter Madoff and sons Andrew Madoff and Mark Madoff during July 1995 in Montauk, NY. (Photo: GETTY IMAGES [1]). |
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A friend of mine who knows Ezra Merkin, and who is also very savvy about the investment business, and perspicacious about the players, told me recently that he doesn’t believe Ezra Merkin “knew” what Bernie Madoff was up to with the millions he was moving for his clients to the Madoff “fund.”
My friend concluded that Mr. Merkin only knew he was getting results that were enriching him and his clients. And successful money is always and only about results, no?
Although my friend has known Mr. Merkin for quite some time, he wasn’t making excuses out of friendship or loyalty. He was merely pointing out the salient fact: in situations like this – where there is a consistent financial “guarantee” that has been operating for decades – people were happy to take the money and run without asking question or performing due diligence. My friend believes the same explanation can legitimately be applied to Walter Noel, another large contributor to the Madoff funds.
This kind of behavior (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil) while outside the realm of good business practice or ethics in terms of fiduciary responsibility is not uncommon among even the most “successful” people in the investment business, just as it is frequently not uncommon in our own lives under circumstances having to do with money, that is: our money. Look at how families and others fight over wills, mixing mendacity with moral highmindedness while keeping an eager eye on the buck that might be heading for someone else’s pocket.
It is very possible that the wizard himself, Mr. Madoff may have felt he had an image to protect and perpetuate for his sons: that of a successful, smart man. He was also a family man. No doubt he had his dreams about the best of all possible worlds, no matter what he knew. He did what many a generous father does: made a place for his offspring in his business. Did he bring them up to be shills, to be dons? I’d bet not.
It could also be that young Madoff knew, and in fact was implicated and facing potential indictment. This is the speculation and widely believed by many people who have nothing to go on but their own imaginations.
Then we read that Ruth Madoff “blames” Bernie for the death of their son who has killed himself on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest. The Sacrifice. Shakespeare. Arthur Miller.
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| Ruth Madoff. Photo: NY Daily News [2]. |
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This story has such a personal drama to it: a family in crisis, wreaked by the sins of the father, that it’s easy to isolate it from the rest of the story, but this is our drama now.
There is prevailing thought repeated everywhere that our financial dilemma is the result of this man or that man, this politician or that; this left-thinker or that right-wronger.
There is a tendency to find a punching bag as palliative for our own anxieties. The fact that is ignored by most of the people most of the time is that WE, the People, are the ones responsible for the mess we’re in. WE are the ones who bought into the con artists (known by other very important titles, of course) who encouraged us to buy that house and vote for them, buy that car or condo, buy that whatever to improve our lifestyles (and take on debt without an afterthought).
Only a generation and a half ago, for all time leading up to it, we spent money only if we had it. The smart boys spent money that they borrowed but the rest of us had no access to that privilege. Then came the credit card. Forty years later, a drop in the bucket of the history of civilization, we borrow money everyday and spend it as if it is ours, although it is not. Many of us never borrow more than we already have (so we can pay our bills). Many others among us live from loan to mouth, day in, day out. Not unlike Bernie, although he was way ahead of us plastic users in terms of the numbers.
I know several people personally who played the Madoff game and gladly, and without a thought of its implications or manifestations. This is not uncommon either. I know others who did not but are just as dumb about their assets and trusts funds. WE are the dummies. WE are the ones who when offered a ticket to a golden ring said yes, like some teenage Saturday night parked in car by the woods, after a few beers and whatever. Absurd but same idea. “I couldn’t help it” ends up as the explanation, when all others have been refuted by Common Sense. Common Dense. The devil made me do it.
When I say WE, I obviously don’t mean everybody. There are lots of exceptions, and in some ways I am one of them.
It’s obvious to anyone with an ear or an eye that this is a very difficult and dangerous time. A time to consider the consequences of blaming others and continuing to absolve the self. It is WE who have to change our ways and protect our freedoms and educate our children in order for them to grow up into an increasingly complex world. It is we who have to turn off our cell-phones and watch our step walking down some street into oncoming traffic. It is we who have to stop thinking that it’s all right that we don’t read, that we don’t think, that we’re not curious to know.
The lesson of Bernie Madoff and his tragic son is simply put in the words of the American songwriter Lorenz Hart, “the self-deception that believes the lie.”
It is WE who pay its price. |
