The Good News in the Atlanta and D.C. School Cheating Scandals
- July 19, 2011 | 12:00 am
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With the possible exception of tot-murdering moms and professional basketball players who jilt their fans on live television, there is no more reviled figure in American life than Bernie Madoff. Portrayed on the cover of New Yorkmagazine in Heath-Ledger-as-Joker makeup, he has been variously described as a sociopath, a financial serial killer, and the devil incarnate. What nobody has said, however, is that Madoff was the victim of a profession that puts relentless pressure on money managers to publicly report their success in the market. And, while plenty of deserved scorn has been heaped on the auxiliary financial institutions and hapless federal regulators who allowed his fraud to unfold for decades, nobody has suggested that those lapses in any way mitigate Madoff’s culpability in his crimes. Society has taken away all of Madoff’s money and freedom, but it has left him