We really are witnessing the great unraveling here...
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/17/as_madoff_s...
The Securities and Exchange Commission has admitted it missed repeated opportunities to discover what may be the largest financial fraud in history: a multi-billion-dollar pyramid scheme operated by Wall Street legend Bernard Madoff.
Bernard Madoff was the former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange and a respected figure on Wall Street for nearly half-a-century. For decades, his firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, had been one of the top market makers on Wall Street. In Washington, regulators had sought his advice on any number of regulatory issues over the years. In 2000, he served on a government committee established to protect investors by ensuring accurate and full public disclosure of information to them. In an old video of Madoff that’s come to light, he tells an audience it’s tough to skirt the law.
BERNARD MADOFF: In today’s regulatory environment, it’s virtually impossible to violate rules. And this is something that the public really doesn’t understand. And if you read things in the newspaper and you see somebody, you know, violate a rule, you say, well, you know, they’re always doing this. But it’s impossible for you to go—for a violation to go undetected, certainly not for a considerable period of time.