Ethical Ethics Of Bernie Madoff, A Villain?

Bernie Madoff, villain or simply a business man who made unethical business decisions. This is a question that many people have asked since he was caught and sentenced for perpetuating a global Ponzi scheme. What we do know is that Madoff’s unethical actions led to the cash losses of at least $20 billion for his clients. This caused the financial devastation of pension funds, hospitals, and universities across the globe. His actions had a devastating affect not just on the social elite but nonprofit organizations and working class people looking to retire to name a few. He wasn’t thinking about the well-being of others while making the decision to carry on taking people’s money even though he knew he couldn’t produce the returns he promised

Madoff didn’t show remorse for his decision when finally sentenced and confessed with pride to his crime. He held positions of power and was respected in investment circles. He was elected to NASD advisory council which he served on the council for four years and he also sat on numerous NASD committees and task forces, chairing several. We as a society expect people in these positions to act responsible and ethically when making decisions that will affect many people. We as a society hold people in higher positions to higher standards. Their reputation is supposed to reflect the way they do business. If they are highly respected than we expect them to be respectable in their business dealing. Madoff was greatly respected on Wall Street but he used his reputation as a way to shield himself from scrutiny. His firm advertised high ethical standards even though He knew that no one would expect him of illegal activity because his business reputation was impeccable. This just allowed him to lure in more investors and gave him an inflated sense of being invincible. He allowed his greed to override any sense of common decency and make the decision to keep this rouse going for so

Whether this was deliberate or willful blindness Avellino and Bienes were not innocent in their actions. They allowed money to cloud their judgement and didn’t ask important questions. They knew they were misleading investors but as long as they got a fat pay check didn’t care about the people they were lying to. Bienes knew that he should have been licensed and that investment advisors need to register with the SEC. But, he admitted to asking Madoff about it and being told not to register or get licensed. So, shouldn’t this have raised a red flag that something wasn’t right? If everything was legal why wouldn’t you want to register or get yourself licensed? These are just a few questions I think anyone would ask but Bienes and Avellino chose to leave them unasked in order to keep making easy money. Bienes admitted to paying millions on a house and famous paintings and doing very little for the money he was making. All he had to do was dupe people out of their money and he would continue to live a life of luxury. Later when Avellino and Bienes had to shut down their small investment firm, this didn’t even show up as a blip for Madoff to stop his shady business