Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street

"A white collar crime is different than a blue collar crime. In a blue-collar crime a body drops before you investigate whereas in a white-collar crime they drop afterwards!" 1960s. The end of I Love Lucy era but the continuation of the conformist culture period that had became a way of American life just in the preceding decade. In the Wild West of the Wall Street, the race to become rich, the exuberance and swashbuckling became the normal operative norms. This gave a rise to an over-the-counter market which then harbored the small mostly less reputable companies and provided an easy loophole for them to trade the unregulated mutual funds based on a pool concept. And then came along a young man who was at right place and at right time and who in order to impress his father-in-law started a small security company for penny-stocks with only few clients with $5000 of his own and rest with a loan from his father-in-law. Later he went on pioneering the computerized trading that would consolidate all the off-the-exchange markets, pink sheets, small firms into NASDAQ. His biggest contribution. He also became a member of the Securities Investors Protection Corporation - SIPC. He was everyone's Go-to-guy! But greed is a bottomless pit with no ceiling. It is the thirst of power and the avarice that has spawned many scams for many years! It is not just about making money but proving that one is invincible while deluding one's own self that he or she is imperceivable almost sacrosanct. A $64 billion scam as a result of his Ponzi scheme rattled the nation and shattered the lives of many. The total number of victims were counted to be more than 35,000 that included hardworking people from the working class, retirees, senior citizens, rich and famous and even non-profit organizations! He ran this Ponzi scheme for years and that proves SEC was either bedazzled by him or it just trusted him blindly. Although it somewhat lacks ignominious details, the documentary is engrossing, compelling, didactic...Documentary is rightly named. But will there be a sequel? Will there be another monster in the Wall Street? Probably yes, the bitter reality! "History never repeats itself but it often rhymes" - Mark Twain. A must watch.