The Financial Crisis: Are You Angry Or Apathetic?

“During the decade-long real estate bubble preceding the global financial crisis, a bubble that itself strikingly resembled Mr. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the world’s largest financial institutions earned several hundred billion dollars in fake profits. Some of them made billions by using derivatives to bet against the very investments they sold to their customers as safe. A large percentage of these profits were then personally appropriated by the top 1 per cent in the financial sector. Yet despite substantial evidence of large-scale fraud, nobody has gone to jail, nobody’s compensation has been clawed back, and only a few firms have paid even trivial fines.”
 — It’s funny how you can see something you know, and have known for a while, stated plainly somewhere, and suddenly you’re like, “Oh, right, THAT happened.” Your reaction is either blinding anger or weary numbness. I saw these lines in this review of a new book about Bernie Madoff and was initially in the latter, head-nodding camp, but I could probably work myself up about it pretty well if I wanted to. You?