Politics with Jenn: The Most Hated Man in America..

And the winner is...(drum roll please)...Bernard L. Madoff! Also more infamously known as Bernie Madoff, the man who committed the largest Ponzi scheme ever committed by a single individual. According to the New York Times a Ponzi scheme is “potential investors are wooed with promises of unusually large returns, usually attributed to the investment manager’s savvy, skill or some other secret sauce. The returns are repaid, at least for a time, out of new investors’ principal, not from profits.”₁

The scheme is estimated to have totaled around $65 billion. Although Bernie pled guilty to 11 felonies and is expected to spend the rest of his life, he isn't cooperating with disclosing where the money is. What does he have to lose? He will be spending the last years of his life in prison, so why continue the scheme Bernie? You’ve been caught, now stop being the heartless jerk that you are, and give those people their money back.

What is even more frustrating, is Bernie’s wife Ruth, who is trying to make it so she won’t have to give up about a hundred million dollars worth of assets, which she claims are solely hers. In these assets include a $7 million dollar yacht named “Bull”, a $320,000 dollar Montauk boat classed “Little Bull” jewelry worth over 2.6 million dollars, and various properties.₂ How can she sit there, and want her $7 million dollar yacht, while some of the victims in which HER husband decided to ruin their lives, work minimum wage jobs because they have no other money to pay their utility bills. Seriously? And how can she claim that all of those assets were hers?! On November 25^th, 2008, Ruth Madoff withdrew $5.5 million from a Madoff-related account. On December 10^th, the day before her dear Bernie was arrested, she withdrew $10 million.₃

I was watching the news the other night, and there was a story that not only broke my heart, but enraged me. Ian Thiermann, who is 90 years old, has recently started working 30 hours a week at the local grocery store greeting people making 10 dollars an hour, after his life savings, around $738,000 was stolen by Madoff. Thiermann stated, “You meet a situation like this, what are you gonna do, fold up? Instead of crying, yelling or being mad about it, face it and move on.”₄ A 90-year-old retired man, working for $10 an hour, just to pay house and medical bills, yet Ruth Madoff wants to keep her precious little $7 million dollar yacht. SERIOUSLY?!