Not everybody was taken in by Bernard Madoff, the latest one-man Enron. In fact, quite a few people thought he was a scam artist. Maybe even the Securities and Exchange Commission which acknowledges its own role in the $50 billion debacle. There aren't enough shoes ...
Wall Street's Nomi Prins thought Madoff smelled pretty rotten. Yesterday an NPR reporter described her conversation with Prins about what kind of a person Madoff is. Turns out he's a typical born and bred American narcissist, not atypical on Wall Street.
"She surmises there were two levels of self justification probably going on in Madoff's mind. One, she says, is 'I am good at this' and the other is 'Look, I'm not doing anything that far wrong. I'm getting assets in the door, I am promising returns to my customers — they're not the highest returns they could get going somewhere else — but you know, I'm giving them money back.'
"Prins adds that this mentality is typical among 'a lot of the egos that run around Wall Street. There is a very strong … separation between their natural power that they believe themselves to have, whether it's navigating the markets or convincing clients to do things, or whatever it might be. It becomes a sort of super power that they feel that they have and it sort of melds into the egos that a lot of them have to have to get to those positions.'
"'You have to be able to disconnect yourself from the people or the money that you are extracting from in order to sort of look toward the greater deal or the greater trade, and a lot of these — and I got to say all of the characters I knew happened to have been men who fit into this category it just so happens — really show that characteristic of "I am awesome, I can do this. I will swagger down halls whether actually or in my head. And I will make deals and I am really good at it.'"'
New rule: Quit telling young kids everything they do is wonderful. They grow up to become people like Bernard Madoff.
Meanwhile, everyone is talking about the implications of the Madoff mess. You can tune in here and here and here and here ...
