He Madoff with a Fortune

JP Morgan Chase, America's biggest bank, agreed to pay 1.7 billion dollars for failure to supervise Bernie Madoff.  Madoff, arrested in 2008, bilked clients out of at least 17 billion dollars through an elaborate Ponzi scheme.  Now he's serving a 150 year prison sentence.  For JP Morgan the fine is a slap on the wrist but there is a much broader lesson to be learned here.  Evidence showed that JP Morgan suspected Madoff as early as 1994.  But no clients complained, they were all happy to receive big pay-outs from Madoff as he used new client money to fund their expectations.  A classic Ponzi Scheme, a House of Cards destined to collapse some day. And when the deck collapsed, everyone expressed shock and outrage.  This was capitalism gone mad!  But no one identified the underlying cause- greed - not Madoff's but the clients'.  It seemed too good to be true but as long as they received big dividends, clients turned a blind eye to reality.  How could Madoff make consistent returns that defied the market odds?  No one cared until the end.  Oversight, regulation, compliance officers - all important safeguards for the investing public.  But the only real protection is common sense.  If it seems too good to be true - it is.