I was drafting an erudite posting on the Jenkins opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal, but it disappeared after I'd done about 4 paragraphs, so I'm not going to recreate it. Suffice it to say that a lot of Madoff investors who got their money out before the bankruptcy (because they were lucky or smart) are going to get sued and have to pay the money back. Many of them will be as innocent as the snow falling outside my window. They'll be victims of a bad decision by a guy named Hardin, the bankruptcy judge in the Bayou Ponzi scheme bankruptcy, who ruled that pretty much all pre-bankruptcy transfers (during the period of two years before the bankruptcy - Holman Jenkins please note this error in yout WSJ piece) made when there's a Ponzi scheme are recoverable.
If it's a bad decision, why wasn't it appealed? Because the lawyers for the bankrupt engaged in a scorched earth approach designed to make people give up and settle before their own legal fees bankrupted them. That reflects a major flaw in our American legal system. But it's a flaw that won't get corrected until we all wake up to the damage done by the trial lawyers in this country. What do you think the chances are for that to happen?
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1 comment:
I suppose this link must be the Jenkins piece?
Most WSJ links go stale, so look now.
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