The banks around the world that are reporting multi-billion-dollar losses in the alleged fraud involving financier Bernard Madoff seem to have given up hope far too easily of ever seeing their money again.
If any individual has embezzled that amount of money, as US prosecutors allege, surely it should not be too difficult for them to recover the money.
Even allowing for the most outrageous extravagance, it would be virtually impossible for any individual to get through $50 billion without putting it into tangible assets - property, land, works of art, etc - that the authorities could surely seize and sell to return most of the missing money to its owners.
It would be possible for a bon viveur to squander the odd million or two on decent Champagne and high living, but the chances are that whoever pocketed the $50 billion (if indeed, anyone did) spent it on realisable assets.
So why are the banks panicking? Why haven't they thought of this? And why, in the case of bad mortgage debts, do they simply write them off?
Does that mean that people who don't fancy paying their mortgage any more can just stay in their homes, safe in the knowledge that the banks have given up on getting their money?
Or do the banks repossess and sell their homes, in which case why is the debt being written off?
Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!
