Bernie Madoff's Pyramid Collapses (2008)
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2022
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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It’s December 13th. In 2008, FBI agents knock on the door of financier Bernie Madoff and arrest him for running a decades-long Ponzi scheme. Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss how Madoff was able to get away with it for so long, why it all collapsed — and the man people who were hurt as a result of his fraud.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. |
| 0:07.0 | My name is Jody Avergan. |
| 0:10.0 | This day, December 11th, 2008, Bernie Madoff is arrested at his New York City |
| 0:16.8 | apartment, his New York City luxury apartment, and he's charged with |
| 0:20.0 | masterminding a long-running Ponzi scheme. |
| 0:23.4 | It was later estimated to involve around $65 billion, all told, making it one of the biggest |
| 0:29.2 | investment frauds in Wall Street history. |
| 0:32.0 | I think December 2008 was when a lot of regular folks |
| 0:35.3 | heard Madoff's name for the first time but within certain circles he was very |
| 0:38.6 | well known. His reputation was quite good among those with a lot of money to invest and that's because his |
| 0:45.0 | boutique investment firm provided consistently astronomical returns so |
| 0:50.2 | astronomical that they were too good to be true. |
| 0:52.6 | They were only possible through immense fraud. |
| 0:55.7 | And as we would learn, it wasn't just high-end investors who were fleeced by Madoff, |
| 0:59.6 | but also universities, charities, lots of regular folks who had entrusted their savings to people in the Madoff |
| 1:05.4 | world even if they didn't know who Madoff himself was. So let's talk about the arrest of Bernie Madoff, the collapse of his |
| 1:12.1 | Ponzi scheme, the the fallout and whether we've learned |
| 1:15.3 | any lessons in the year since what lessons has been. |
| 1:19.1 | Mickey is shaking your head. |
| 1:20.5 | No. That is Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter, Jackson of Wesley. Hello there. |
| 1:27.0 | Hey there. |
| 1:28.6 | Hello Jody, I was just doing the math and |
... |
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