Pride Goeth Before
Jan 19th, 2009 • Posted in: Letters From ReadersA reader reacts to last week’s commentary about apportioning blame to those involved in the Madoff scandal:
My personal story reflects at the most micro level what happens when we mistake money for value. With my stockbroker, I traded modestly and esoterically — he sometimes joked that he would get me a t-shirt stating, “I am the market.” My small gains — low five-figure amounts from month to month — enabled me to make modest home improvements and donate generously to my church and other causes with which I sympathized. It made me giddy. It made me smug. My money was making money, and I wasn’t squandering it; I was using it for good.
But pride and greed, like pregnancy, don’t come in degrees. You either are or you aren’t. My pace quickened when I saw the zeros extend, and the reason was digital, not moral. In September, my losses swallowed the six-figure assets it had taken me decades to amass and as well took me deep into margin.
Guilt and blame ill-fit the humble lady on Main Street, but pride and greed nevertheless caught her up in their merry game. We love to be clever. We love thinking we’re special. Did I bother to scrape at the shiny film to find if there was a moral issue at stake? Did I lump together the components of ethics rather than place them piece by piece on the table for close inspection and assimilation?
All of us — me and my mad money; Madoff’s accomplices and victims — must take full responsibility for taking pride in patronage, pride as we see the gap widen between us and the masses. Pride links arms with greed and forms the chain that binds us to a Madoff.
– Sharon Cooper
Des Moines, Washington
Another writer comments on what may be a different level of culpability when comparing classes of investors who placed their money with Madoff:
Perhaps there’s a useful distinction to be made between the legal culpability of institutions (purporting to be accredited, professionally competent, etc.) that invested money from investors who were unaware that the institution they were dealing with was investing with Madoff versus those who, acting on their own, foolishly invested their own money directly with Madoff (without legal culpability).
Interesting question!
– Robert Fles
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman
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