How Much Of Your Money Do You Want To Give To The Poor Millionaires Who Were Greedy Enough To Fall For Bernie Madoff's Siren Song?

Instead of a bailout, how about the death penalty?

At one time Bush and Cheney were calling their program for fleecing America The Ownership Society. A more accurate moniker would have been The Entitlement Society. But the latest manifestation of the Bush world view is the demands that Bernie Madoff investors-- all millionaires and billionaires-- are making on the rest of us to make them whole. And why not? It fits right in with the whole Bush Economic Miracle that has virtually destroyed the American working class painstakingly built up since the early 1930s.

Yesterday's Guardian reports that taxpayers are already on the hook bailing out Madoff's rich (and formerly rich) investors and that they're complaining that more taxpayer funds are needed.

Lawyers representing the victims of Bernard Madoff's alleged $50bn fraud are calling on the US government to bail them out with billions of taxpayers' dollars.

They say the government should bolster the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, which helps creditors of collapsed brokerages.

The SIPC has little more than $1.6bn of funds and has promised $500,000 to each Madoff victim who had an account with his firm in the past 12 months. Losses in the Madoff affair are estimated to be between $30bn and $50bn. Michael Sirota, a lawyer representing KML Investments, a firm claiming to have lost $80m, said: "What if SIPC needs $15bn to compensate all the victims because this fraud is bigger than anything they imagined could happen? The government should step up with funds like it has for the banking sector and the automotive sector."

This, of course, fits in perfectly with the Bush Regime's vision of financial policy and economics in general: Privatize the profits; socialize the losses. That's George W. Bush's idea of the "free market."

I'm sorry Madoff's clients lost $50 billion. They should have been more careful about the risks they were taking in their lust for greater rewards. It's the first rule of investing. Perhaps they thought they were getting away with insider trading and offshore banking shuffleboard to evade capital gains taxes. And they expect hardworking Americans to subsidize this?

Between 1950 and 2006 (56 years), the S&P 500 moved either up or down by more than 5% during a trading day exactly 34 times. Last year (2008), that happened 44 times, half of them since October 1. That's what you call volatility. Volatility is risky. Take big risks and one of two things happen-- you make a fortune or you lose a fortune. You think Madoff's investors planned to hand outsized profits off to the American taxpayers if things had worked out the way they planned? No, neither do I. But they now claim we should cover their recklessness.

SIPC does not have enough money to pay out all the claims that are sure to come from one of the biggest fraud cases to ever hit Wall Street. Securities attorneys say the organization has a reputation of being tough to squeeze money from, and each investor is only entitled to a maximum payout of $500,000 if a claim is approved.

SIPC officials say the books of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC are in complete disarray and could take six months or more to piece together. With bills piling up and her bank account vanishing, the one thing Ambrosino and others caught in the alleged $50 billion fraud don't have is time.

...The government created SIPC in 1970 to reimburse investors duped by brokerages in areas such as unauthorized trading or theft. SIPC is set up to cover losses of up to $500,000, and $100,000 of that amount can be claims for cash holdings that were lost.

The scope of what SIPC covers, however, can be limited. SIPC, for example, typically won't cover claims for cases involving stock manipulation or investments made into hedge funds.

How about we all take a pledge to vote against every elected official who votes in favor of spending taxpayer dollars to bailout these people?

Somehow Ken forgot to post this on December 24 while I was in Bandgiagara and Sangha. It still works: