Words.
"IN all the hue and cry that has surrounded Bernard Madoff since news of his preternaturally elaborate Ponzi scheme broke last December, we have chosen to concentrate our inquiry and analysis on the perpetrator and his far-flung world, as though we might thereby begin to answer the question of what made him tick.
Yet, as a culture that tends to look for black-and-white, reductionist explanations, it is doubtful that we will ever fill in the gaps in our understanding of a situation that is shot through with ambiguity. There is no single code word — no “Rosebud” — that will lead us to decipher the Madoff phenomenon, no eureka realization that will account for his strange and ultimately ruinous trajectory or the dissociative behavior that allowed him to believe one thing while doing another. What this intense focus has enabled us to do, however, is to skim over the psychology of the other participants in the drama: the ones who got taken.
Given the demonization of Mr. Madoff and the intense sympathy for the plight of those smaller investors who trusted him, it is easy to forget that he actually did bring something to the table. Indeed, what is lost amid the fury of some of those who handed their money over to him is that theirs was a voluntary — nay, eager — association. No one was holding a gun to anyone’s head, saying sign up with Mr. Madoff or else..."
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