Bernie Madoff from all sides

CURRENT EVENTS

Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty yesterday--and provided a sterling example of the value of multiple national newspapers. I normally wouldn't read every account, but the night before I made it through Mark Seal's long Vanity Fair chronicle of the Madoff victims, and I was hungry for more dirt.

Far and away the most complete was the WSJ's write-up, which even got the details on Bernie's new accommodations: "Mr. Sussman said typical cells at the corrections center house two inmates and are 7 feet by 8 feet with a bunk bed, sink, desk and toilet." More importantly, the paper systematically reviewed contradictions between the prosecutors' and Madoff's accounts--whether the fraud started in the 1980s or early nineties, whether the whole business relied on the Ponzi scheme's profits--differences most other papers omitted. (Perhaps the Journal is trying to make up for christening Madoff "the broker with the Midas touch," as the WP reports.)

The NYT's otherwise pedestrian (and poorly copy edited: "lost most everything") piece managed to muse on the absence of Bernie's wedding ring in the lede, but then never said another word about it. It did helpfully note that Ruth, his wife, will be battling to retain some $65 million, but did no speculation.

In truth, the wedding ring anecdote was simply the most prominent of a theme all papers played with but offered no real elaboration. "No relatives stepped up to say goodbye" before Bernie was lead away, noted the LAT. "His wife, Ruth, an employee with his firm, did not appear at the hearing," wrote the WSJ. And...?

I found the LAT's rapid background--"A onetime chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market, he was viewed as a reformer whose electronic stock-trading firm competed with the entrenched New York Stock Exchange and helped reduce trading costs for investors."--the best, but perhaps that was because I hadn't been following the story too closely till today.

While the rest of the press herd crowed about the guilty plea, the Washington Post offered up an atmospheric, outside-the-courtroom look at the mess, using the day's events as merely an entree into reviewing Madoff's methods. For those who haven't spent an afternoon working their way through Seal's 12,000-plus word behemouth, it is a treat.

Most disappointing to me was the apparent misunderstanding of Ponzi schemes by all the papers. All put ink into wondering where all the money went, neglecting to note that it is possible--not definite, but possible--that almost all those billions were ultimately paid out to feed the new investors. Only the LAT tempers the questions with some real thinking, courtesy of an expert:

"I wonder practically whether there's money squirreled away all over the world," said Steven D. Feldman, an attorney at Herrick Feinstein in New York. "If there was, why wouldn't he have run off to a country where the United States doesn't have an extradition treaty and lead the good life? Instead of retiring to Florida, he would have retired to the Swiss Alps."