While the sentiment of moment is harshly judgmental, it is difficult not to think about Madoff as a metaphor of recent times. He has played his role well in the public drama of shock and blame: stoically bearing guilt within the rituals of censure and condemnation.

His decision to turn from trading to the fabrication of trading (see Christoper Caldwell’s excellent “Madoff’s life of make-believe” in the Financal Times) is a perfect inversion of our virtual worlds: a reality show with real effect. We linger upon him as a symbol of the current economic climate that we can wrap our minds around: to vilify, shake our heads, and find ourselves unable to understand.

That’s quite a social role. The comments last week by President Obama and Larry Summers about the present opportunities available in equities markets—- the lure of the long term— put me in mind of Madoff and my own experience. Here were our leaders, sounding much like mutual fund marketers, reminding us of our investing future.

Yet, it was exactly this orientation that led us here: and to Madoff.
I recall many meetings with fund managers interested in handling family business accounts, over the years. Each had the fundamental sell now attributed to Madoff, as seductively greedy: steadily modest returns, value, hedging of risk— the Benjamin Graham mantra focusing our middle class conservative investing views on the long term: on growth and opportunity. We had studied philosophy, medicine, poetry and law: we let these business professionals advise us on business. How can we know everything?

It was only my mid-life sojourn in business school that oriented me to the craziness of the assumptive world underlying the patter of these discretionary fund managers. And of course, in earlier corrections, I had lost big .….discovering the permanence of short-term downsides within the long-term view.

So now, having assigned blame on Madoff, and condemning him to the mountains of Federal Azazel, President Obama reminds us of the long-term.

Okay: it’s a defensive antidote to the permanence of short-term corrections, but it is also the reset button for continued thinking about how we individual citizens and families attempt to secure our assets and futures: always attuning our eyes to the future opportunities of the prize, rather than the tragic losses of today’s losses, the genuine yield on yesterday’s illusions.

• BROWSE / IN TIMELINE
• « Bartleby and the Avoidant Personality
• » Obama’s Outrage and AIG

• BROWSE / IN Emotion Grief Learning Markets Psychology Self-Knowledge Uncategorized
• « Bartleby and the Avoidant Personality
• » Obama’s Outrage and AIG

• RELATED / YOU MIGHT FIND THESE INTERESTING
• No related posts