The Huffington Post, the New York Daily News and others are suggesting today that the Bernie Madoff 
defense team will try an insanity approach in an effort to keep their client out of jail. I, for one, was not aware that hubris qualified as a defense to criminal acts.
Madoff has been screwing investors for the better part of twenty years. Now that his cards are on the table, he starts losing it? I suppose that if I were in his shoes right now, I might be feeling a bit stressed. But does this post-disclosure anxiety somehow backdate his mental state? I don’t think so.
Madoff’s incredibly ill-timed behavior will stand as yet another example of capitalism at its worst, the exaltation of the financial wizard/opportunist. Sure, he hid his crimes for many years. But early in the discovery process, it is evident that many people who should have and could have challenged this fraud did not do anything.
Herein lies the insanity.
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