[Peace-discuss] Repercussions of Madoff scandal

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Bernard Madoff's Circle of Victims Widens;
	Charities Caught in his Scheme, Forced to Close
	BY CAROLINE BANKOFF

As if the city's charities didn't have enough to contend with this holdiay 
season, it looks as though newly infamous investor Bernard Madoff is going to 
make things that much worse. Mr. Madoff, who is all over the news for squadering 
billions of dollars in high-profile money in a massive Ponzi scheme, will be 
taking a number of philanthropic organizations down with him. Via Bloomberg, we 
have a partial tally:

- Both the JEHT Foundation, a large foundation dedicated to electoral reform and 
improving the criminal justice system, and Massachusetts's Robert I. Lappin 
Charitable Foundation, which covered the costs of trips to Israel for teenagers, 
will close as a result of their lost investments.

- Mr. Madoff seems to have been solely responsible for investing the money of 
author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel's foundation, which sponsors an annual 
ethics contest and after-school programs for Ethiopian Jews in Israel.

- He was also a money manager for Steven Spielberg’s Wunderkinder Foundation, 
which disbursed about $5.2 million in 2006 to causes like the Ross School and 
Los Angeles’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and handled 45 percent of the $324 
million Carl and Ruth Shapiro Foundation, which donated to Brandeis University 
and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.

- SAR Academy, an Orthodox Jewish school in Riverdale, New York had invested 
about a third of its $3.7 million dollar endowment with Mr. Madoff.

- Mr. Madoff also headed up New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon’s family foundation, 
which donated $50,000 to New York’s City Center and $10,000 to New York’s Jewish 
Museum.

Representatives for these organizations have mostly avoided comment. Maybe 
they're waiting to wake up?


David Green wrote:
> http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1228728211183 
> <http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1228728211183> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> Though observers agree it is still too early to ascertain the full 
> extent of the damage, some estimates expect a 20 percent reduction in 
> funding <javascript:void(0)> for US Jewish federations. The cutbacks are 
> expected to hit educational and Israel programs first as the federations 
> work to keep their local charity efforts going.
> 
>  
> 
> "People who are starving are going to have to continue to be fed," 
> Avraham Infeld, president of the collapsed Chais Family Foundation, told 
> the /Post/ on Monday. "That means every other kind of Jewish expenditure 
> is going to have to move aside in order to allow welfare to take place 
> for the aged and the poor."
> 
>  
>  
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laurence-leamer/bernard-madoff-and-the-sh_b_150624.html
>  
> People in Palm Beach sort themselves out into the group in which they 
> belong based largely on how much money they have. Even the poorest of 
> the islanders seem to have everything yet joy proves elusive, even for 
> the country club members, because there is always someone richer or 
> better socially connected. Joy is driving out of your 35,000-square-foot 
> mansion in your Bentley and tooling up to the entrance of Mar-a-Lago for 
> your fifteenth ball of the season, the valet parkers salivating at the 
> chance to take your car and the prospect of a twenty-dollar tip. Joy is 
> having a wife younger and thinner than any of the other wives at your 
> table. Joy is subtly announced during dinner that your hedge fund scored 
> 33 percent last year, while that of the arrogant son of a bitch across 
> the table with the fat wife scored only 17 percent.
>  
> 
> Those with the biggest financial gains generally had their money managed 
> by Madoff. It was an honor having him handle your fortune. He didn't 
> take just anybody. He turned down all kinds of people, and that made you 
> want to give the man even more of your money. When he took your fortune, 
> he told you that he would tell you nothing about how he achieved his 
> returns. He was a god. He had the Midas touch.
> 
> Yesterday Madoff was arrested and accused of running what probably will 
> prove the greatest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world. He may have 
> dissipated as much as fifty billion dollars into nothing. For the elite 
> Jewish world, it is a curse of almost biblical proportion. I was at a 
> dinner party last night and one of the guests called on his cell phone a 
> man whose money Madoff had managed. I know the man and he is a generous, 
> kind person who recently gave away over a hundred million dollars. He 
> said that both his company's retirement plan and his charitable 
> foundation had been handled by Madoff. He was preparing to fly back to 
> his Boston home to walk among the ruins. It's a story told scores of 
> times yesterday. Bankruptcy. Despair.
> 
>  
> 
> There was one largely Jewish charity event last evening. "It was like 
> the Titanic," one attendee said. "The ship was sinking, and people were 
> crying, 'I lost this and that.' And everybody was drunk. The Titanic was 
> going down and we might as well carry on."
> 
>  
> 
> There is a feeling of incredible shame, embarrassment, of exposure, as 
> if their whole world has been exposed as jerry built. This evening the 
> synagogues in Palm Beach will be full. And there will be men and women 
> listening to the truths of a great and ancient faith as they have never 
> listened before.
> 
> 
> 
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> 
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