Mad about Madoff

A Ponzi scheme for $50bn, that is an operation that fits right into our current Weltanschauung, with trillions wafted about like shuttlecocks, Madoff's story just goes with the flow, babies.

Remembering us in our recent past, whining and moaning about $100bn a year, off budget, for the Iraq and Afghanistan disasters makes us humble, now that's just small potatoes. As for $14bn for GM, hardeeharhar.

Compared to the almost late governator of IL, Blagojevich, who might have been angling for hefty six figure sums in his relentless quest for graft, Mr. Madoff has been very much out of the media focus. The victims, who are not nobody, seem to be trying to get a little press now, to ease their distress. Fat lot of good it'll do them.

The press is working to create a narrative around this new example of disaster capitalism, but the victims are no longer just the debris of the third world, foreign or domestic. We're seeing whole new sectors being sucked down into the pit:

The dictature of money marches on, tending to its material peak... And now something happens that is intelligible only to one who has penetrated to the essence of money. If it were anything tangible, then its existence would be forever - but, as it is a form of thought, it fades out as soon as it has thought its economic world to finality, and has no more material upon which to feed.