| Christmas 2008
What Bernie Madoff Taught Me About Christmas
We see the stories day in and day out. They say it’s the largest fraud in Wall Street history – and that’s saying a lot. Coming in the midst of the greatest financial crisis of our lifetime, the impact couldn’t be more dramatic.
But the real shocking story of the Bernie Madoff swindle isn’t the size of it, or how it magnifies the destruction of wealth that affected us all in 2008. The real shocker is who gave him their money – and how much of their money they gave him.
It’s one thing for a con man to take in the naïve or the gullible. But how could people – some of them smart, sophisticated business and financial leaders – trust this guy to the degree they did, for as long as they did?
We’ve all read the stories of those who claim they saw through the scam all along. Maybe they did. But if the “evidence” was so clear, why did so many miss it? Greed? Maybe for some. But I think there are two other reasons no one’s talking about. They both have to do with Christmas. Before we get to that, I want to share a little story.
The Night I Saw Santa’s SleighIt was as clear and bright as the stars on that Christmas Eve – Santa’s sleigh, I mean. I could see it through the Venetian blinds in our apartment. No, it wasn’t a plane. I’d seen plenty of planes before, but this was different. No doubt about it, this was Santa’s sleigh, riding through the night sky over Jersey City. I could even make out the two rows of lights that must have been on the reindeers’ antlers.
The excitement just overwhelmed me. I shoved my little face under the Venetian blinds to get a better view (hitting my mouth on the windowsill and chipping my front tooth as I did).
I know it sounds silly, but I remember as if it were yesterday. If I were under oath, I’d have to say that it really did look like Santa’s sleigh – reindeer and all. That’s what I actually saw and it’s burned into my memory. Even now I find it hard to admit it was just a plane.
Was Madoff like Santa?I think some people believed in Bernie Madoff in somewhat the same way children believe in Santa Claus. I think this because I sat through presentations that touted the man’s magic. No, they didn’t actually use the word “magic.” They just said he had a “feel” for the market. Like no one else ever did – or maybe ever would.
They said that your money was as safe with Madoff as in a U.S. treasury security. Some on the Street even called him the “Jewish T-bill.” But he was even better than a T-bill. He brought you 10% – 11%, just like Santa brought you presents, year in and year out.
If you think it’s a slap at Santa comparing him to Madoff, my apologies. But there’s another point that’s much more profound than a child’s belief in Santa Claus that I believe was going on. It occurred to me when I remembered how much I actually missedbelieving in Santa even after I had figured out that my parents bought the Christmas presents. What did I miss? After all, I still got the presents.
Whatever it is, you start missing it on Christmas Eve: getting to sleep early; leaving cookies and milk for Santa; making sure there was enough space around and under the tree for the big guy to bring the stuff in and lay it out. Once you know it’s your parents who bought you the presents, that all goes out the window.
You get over the Christmas Eve thing, but then at some point you start to see that what you’re missing is part of a bigger sense that there’s something more to life than the everyday, mundane existence that takes up most of our time. Fortunately for me (and you too?), I had my parents and some great teachers to pick up the slack after Santa exited the scene.
(The great philosophers understood this. Great religious thinkers and leaders understand this. Unfortunately, too many of us today spend too little time understanding the “bigger” things. It’s too bad, because we’ve all got a natural ability to get this. And if we did get it, we’d want more of it.)
How does Madoff fit in? I think he represented something bigger and better than the typical, run-of-the-mill investments out there, even better than a lot of the fancier “alternative” investments that promised “absolute” returns. With Bernie, there was no weighing risk vs. reward, having good years and bad years, carefully analyzing and tracking results. You didn’t need to do any of that. Once you invested with Bernie you were set; there was nothing like him out there.
If we’re capable of making money into an idol – and we are – we were capable of making one out of Bernie Madoff. Unfortunately, that false idolatry hurt a lot of people. (In fact, I think elevating the investment industry to the exalted status it’s held since 1980 – if not idolatry, something close to it – has led to a lot of the trouble we’re having today, and will continue to have for quite a while. But that’s another story for another day.)
But the sense of something greater than the ordinary, mundane everyday world does fit right in with Christmas. That’s why the over-commercialization of the season is such a tragedy: you miss the whole point. Whatever you believe really happened on that first Christmas Day, the fact is that Christmas is one of those times that take us outside the ordinary. It makes everything different.
It’s a moment in time when the usual, everyday world is changed. That’s what the Shepherds and Wise Men understood about the Star and the Baby in the manger two thousand years ago. How about us? Do we understand?
If we only let it, Christmas would remind us that those poor, lowly Shepherds and those Wise Men really did know something that has escaped so many of us ever since. I’ll close with a piece called “One Solitary Life.”
He was born in an obscure village
The child of a peasant woman
He grew up in another obscure village
Where he worked in a carpenter shop
Until he was thirtyHe never wrote a book
He never held an office
He never went to college
He never visited a big city
He never traveled more than two hundred miles
From the place where he was born
He did none of the things
Usually associated with greatness
He had no credentials but himself
He was only thirty-three
His friends ran away
One of them denied him
He was turned over to his enemies
And went through the mockery of a trial
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves
While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing
The only property he had on earth
When he was dead
He was laid in a borrowed grave
Through the pity of a friend
Nineteen centuries have come and gone
All the armies that have ever marched
All the navies that have ever sailed
All the parliaments that have ever sat
All the kings that ever reigned put together
Have not affected the life of mankind on earth
As powerfully as that one solitary life
May these Twelve Days of Christmas lift us all out of the hum-drum of our ordinary lives.
A Happy and Blessed Christmas to all,
Rick
|
