Greed

Greed: an excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth





Greed and Wall Street have always seemed to go hand in hand. But even the most cynical had to pause when news broke about the financial shenanigans of one Bernard Madoff. The 70-year old perpetrator of what amounted to a classic Ponzi scheme, Madoff has been charged with securities fraud, costing trusting investors up to $50 billion. He is facing 20 years in prison and up to $5 million in fines.

In Madoff's wake are a host of investors from New York to Florida who have lost their entire savings to someone they trusted. One especially tragic aftermath is the suicide of a French investor who lost $1.4 billion of his and his client's money in Madoff's scheme. He was found dead with his wrists slashed in his New York office. It should not be surprising if this suicide turns out to be the first of many.

Considering the amount of money involved it is believed that Madoff could not have perpetrated his fraud without help from within and possibly from outside his company. In fact, Madoff's hedge fund had been the subject of whispers on Wall Street for years. Presumably, there are a lot of very nervous people right now who were associated directly and indirectly with Bernard Madoff and his firm.

Greed and Wall Street have often gone hand in hand, but theMadoff affair will long be remembered as a supreme case of callous, calculated financial success at the expense of others.

Sad.