Comment 312

One of the commenters said there was no difference between the head of Goldman Sachs and Madoff. There is a big difference. Madoff was an unsophisticated lifeguard and Hofstra graduate. Goldman is lawyered up with the best of Harvard and Yale law schools. Madoff just took the money as his own. He was unsophisticated. What the big banks are doing is figuring out the law and figuring out how to steal and cheat right up to the line that would put them in jail. If that means changing the law in their favor they do it by paying off the congress. We often see people say tax avoidance is fine but tax evasion is illegal. The difference is arbitrary. The concept is to pay money to support government and societal functions. Tax avoidance is avoiding those obligations using every legal trick possible. Evasion is to cross that line. Both are morally indefensible. Kind of like saying oral sex is not cheating on ones wife.Had Madoff lawyered up with the best of Harvard Law School five years before his scheme blew up...they would have restructured the whole thing and he would have been fine....He would be honored as one of the great men of Wall Street. He was always an outsider, though, and he did not walk among the Harvard anointed. Another example is provided by another Harvard attorney who defended OJ so that he was "legally innocent" of a crime although morally and from a common sense standpoint we know he committed it.The real criminals here are the legal minds who think that just because something is "legal" it is morally supportable. It may be legal to set up these swaps etc. It may be legal to know how bad the situation is before the general public does. It may be legal to sell the bonds short in another division of the bank based on this inside knowledge. All of this may be legal but is it moral? Betting in poker after looking at the other players cards is perhaps legal but is it moral. In the Wild West folks who did that were shot. I often wonder why the jobless and suffering don't mob the headquarters of Goldman Sachs....perhaps they will....and Goldman is just the symbol....the leader of this legal/financial monstrosity and far from the only culprit. Of course with 400 lawyers advised by 4000 lawyer/lobbyists running this country it is hard to imagine that this will ever get better.