Thursday, March 12, 2009

The Wizard of Maddoz tears of relief

collage by marguerita
Play the Game, Sweetie

Madoff: To the best of my recollection, my fraud began in the early 1990s.

Translation: Hey, does anybody here really remember the 80s?

Madoff: At that time, the country was in a recession and this posed a problem for investments in the securities markets. Nevertheless, I had received investment commitments from certain institutional clients and understood that those clients, like all professional investors, expected to see their investments out-perform the market. While I never promised a specific rate of return to any client, I felt compelled to satisfy my clients’ expectations, at any cost.

Translation: I have pathological need to be admired.

Madoff: I therefore claimed that I employed an investment strategy I had developed, called a “split strike conversion strategy,” to falsely give the appearance to clients that I had achieved the results I believed they expected.

Madoff: As I engaged in my fraud, I knew what I was doing was wrong, indeed criminal.

Translation: As the former chairman of the Nasdaq stock market, I tend to know the rules.

The scandal turned a well-respected investment professional _ Madoff was once chairman of the Nasdaq exchange

Parsing Madoff: It Was Me, Me and Only Me - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com

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