I’ve never been able to find a lot of compassion or sympathy for the victims of conmen like Bernard Madoff. Its common knowledge that unless the odds are stacked in your favor as the likes of Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon enjoy, all investments, have their degree of risk.
You are at risk of losing the money you deposit in a checking or savings account. These accounts are nothing more than an unsecured loan to that bank. The bank is not guaranteeing you squat. The only protection you have is the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), an independent agency.
The word ‘corporation’ should be your first clue that you are taking a risk. The FDIC at the moment can cover about 1/10 of these unsecured loans to banks. The good news is, the Federal Reserve Banks, a private corporation, is creating billons of dollars daily with computer key strokes. That being the case, the FDIC in theory, could cover every dollars in every bank in the world. The bad news is, these bankers couldn’t care less about main street USA. They’ll get to common folk’s giddy deposits whenever time permits, if they get to them at all.
Any time the danger alarm goes off in a person’s head, they had better listen to it. I have no way of knowing how our minds can detect even the slightest bit of deception but it can. The problem is, out of greed and/or love, most people disregard that warning. In the case of love, you can dispense with offering common sense advice. A dear friend of mine handed over $200.000 in six months to a man she had never met and was never to meet since he said he loved her. I’m a T-Rex when it comes to dealing with conmen, but since I had no way of finding this guy in Egypt, I showed my friend my big sharp teeth and she charged at me like I was a butterfly and I humbly backed away with que sera sera.
Senior who give these con men their life’s savings are not necessarily ready for the nuthouse, but family members who had assumed they were going to get this money, can if they desire and hire the right law firm, have this person put in a facilities for their own good. Right! Even considering the fact this beloved relative had hated their guts because they were petty thieves in their own right, they were unfortunately members of his or her family.
The wonderful thing about this for the family is, these facilities for the declared incompetent, don’t make money by curing these person. They stay booked by keeping these incompetent people for their own good. Like our wars where the thousands of mentally challenged young men must die so that a few competent men like George W., Bill Clinton and Paul Ryan can continue to see that God’s will be done. All of this is done with the best intentions of course.
