This One Goes to 11...The Tale of the Worst Man Ever to Live

So Bernie Madoff is off to the slammer. Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Well, he's already made off with the "go" money, that plus an estimated $64,999,999,800 according to the charges to which he pleaded guilty earlier today.

We won't have Bernie Madoff to kick around anymore. Jail isn't good enough. He's going to solitary...he's facing 150 years...he's going to rot. He's done. Elie Wiesel, the iconic Holocaust survivor, the author of 'Night' lost a reported $15.2 million through his foundation to Madoff. As a colleague Jonathan Fox put it "Stealing from Wiesel is like stealing from the Dalai Lama." If you believe in that sort of thing stealing from Elie Wiesel is your e-z pass to hell. Weisel called Madoff a "sociopath" who should spend the rest of his days staring at continuous slide projections of his victims.

We get it, Bernie Madoff is officially the worst man ever to live in the history of the world. He destroyed the economy of the western world. He has eliminated the New York Mets chances at a pennant run this season, by stealing from their owner Fred Wilpon, and he is a shonda for the goyim, even if the majority of his victims were fellow Jews.

And get this. It's all Bernie, it's all his fault, and only his fault. Everything! He was not charged with a conspiracy, so apparently no one else knew. $65-Billion and Bernie cooked the books all by himself. Not with the help of his wife who was busy mailing out millions of dollars in Chanukah gifts to friends and family (where can I get friends and family like that)? Not even his children who were shocked, shocked that their father's business, whom they were executives in, was not in reality a legitimate trading room. And not the employees of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC , the 6th largest investment business in Wall Street prior to the end.

So now that we know how the story ends, the question remains, how could this have happened? I'm sure that tale will be told over the upcoming months if not years but you can start with the following principles:

1) THE SPINAL TAP PRINCIPLE: Most of Madoff's investors had no clue and no care what it was they were investing in. The genius was the simplicity. Those who understood the math, apparently could tell Madoff was cheating rather quickly. People like Harry Markopolos. Markopolos explained in a 60 Minutes interview that he figured out Madoff was cheating in "about 5 minutes." He tried to warn the SEC several times but they "just didn't care." There were others (I would bet more than we will ever know) who invested in Madoff because they assumed he was cheating. But most investors did not know what they were doing. They trusted Madoff, completely. We are talking about educated people, people who many assume were sophisticated wealthy financially involved people. But they did not know, even if they pretended they did. And Madoff thrived off of the ignorance. So long as the statements went out showing what it turns out were manufactured bogus huge profits, even in an impossible down market, these people were blissfully ignorant. They thought they were doing fine, they bought the investment because they liked the amp with the shiny dials. While other companies had standard amps, the madoff model went to 11.

2) THE BILLY JOEL PRINCIPLE: They say that Madoff would often tell people that they were not 'worth' his time . Although at the time of his arrest, Madoff's records indicated he had approximately 4,800 clients, each client felt that their access to Madoff was part of a secret fraternity; they were part of an exclusive club. Being with Madoff put you on the inside, and it felt good to be the big shot, the master of the world over all those other suckers . This was one of the strongest weapons Madoff had. Whenever one of Madoff's clients recommended him to a friend, a neighbor, a colleague, a business associate. Madoff was already vouched for and the new victim felt like he was in with the in crowd. At that point the sale was made and the scam could continue with fresh money.

3) THE IRVING BERLIN PRINCIPLE: When it comes down to it. Bernie Madoff represented the American dream. Child of immigrants. Grew up in middle class Queens. Product of public school. Worked hard, started a business and struck a fortune. He looked like your neighbor who made good. And people wanted to be with him, people wanted to be like him.
He personified what we are told from our first day in school. If you do well in school, if you work hard you can be anything you want. You can have anything you want. It doesn't matter who your parents are or how much money you grew up with. It doesn't matter what your race and religion is. Everything is up to you. God bless America.

Perhaps, in the end, admittedly with a pinch of cynicism and a dash of restrospect perhaps there is some truth to the Irving Berlin Principle. Bernie Madoff, if we think about it, maybe was just like us a little more than we'd like to admit. This nation is leveraged to the hilt. We have more debt than any of us can ever imagine, the real estate market has collapsed, the stock market is in free fall, the banking industry is being propped up, the auto business is on a respirator and the government seems powerless to fix any of it.

The program everyone points to as a model for the future is the New Deal. The iconic program from the New Deal is social security, which is essentially a nationwide ponzi scheme. Afterall, social security's model is that a current workforce pays for a former workforce's retirement. Take from present investors to pay for the past. It works so long as you have a fresh pool from which to draw. Once new money dries up the program collapses. If Madoff had found a new pool he could continue being the 'model philanthropist' that the conventional wisdom thought he was 6 months ago. Let's be clear, Madoff's acts were dispicable, hypocritical and awful. They are also a cautionary tale.