Posted by OK, Guru Swami, so what is this investment literacy?
We’re boiling it down: stay invested, 401k/IRA, information (as simple as an app) you are comfortable with and can understand, funds that triple in 10 years.
But first a digression. The other side, if you will.
The story and the crime has a way of ringing true. My mother put my father in “jail” and proved she could not live her life at all; the rest of the family could be any one of the Madoffs. I had a very similar SEC/FBI revelation very similar when I left Nextel. That was a time when the tech bubble was bursting and, well, it was a different time. And I was personally affected, not just a competitor.
The TV movies or dramas are great. I thought Wizard of Lies was amazing and Richard Dreyfus as Madoff was pretty good too. But reading some reviews I agree: while excellent they still fall short.
Madoff and everyone around him had a completely whacked view of their role. It’s not their money. There is no such thing as a “redemption.” He always viewed it as his asset.
It was always a crime in progress. You can’t print false statements and mail them.
It is an interesting take on “responsibility to know.” Should the brother or sons, and others, have known? Are they responsible?
They didn’t seem to have lives of their own. Are they responsible?
They didn’t know. Are they still responsible?
The family disintegrated.
“Fuck my victims,” he said, loud enough for other inmates to hear. “I carried them for twenty years, and now I’m doing 150 years.” In an e-mail written on Jan. 13, he observed that many long-term clients made more in legitimate profits from him in the years before the fraud than they could have elsewhere.
IRAs and 401ks are better because of taxes (every year). Or you could start a charity. Lesson #5: stick to legitimate funds at good companies with (public) track records. There is plenty of information available.
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CdqYJZfyq0