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Why was Bernard Madoff able to run his Ponzi scheme for so long? Why are the "best" leaders people with evil tendencies? Is that a universal law, or a symptom

• dredmorbius 11y ago
  Interesting -- psychology and trust / defection issues are really interesting areas, ones I didn't think I'd be as concerned with when I started asking questions but they've rapidly climbed up my own priority scale. On the Madoff story: I'd also be curious about the question of when it was that he turned: went from being an honest operator to intentionally running a scam. I'm assuming that there was a point at which his intentions were good. One possibility being that he "got stuck" and couldn't find a way out.
  • fsk 11y ago
    Initially, Bernard Madoff made money honestly by trading in penny increments when everyone else was trading 1/8 and 1/16. When the exchanges decimalized, he couldn't make money that way anymore, and switched to his Ponzi. In our society, most of our leaders have the same criminally insane personality type as Bernard Madoff. From their point of view, he was "one of us". When some low-ranking SEC investigators got suspicious, Bernard Madoff was able to use his influence to quash the investigation. However, most of them don't do something flagrantly illegal like Bernard Madoff. They can ruin a business while deflecting blame to other people, but not something flagrantly illegal where they might get caught. They're "too big to jail".