Madoff Victims, Five Years the Wiser
Joanne and Burt Meerow, retirees in West Dover, Vt., were among Madoff s victims.Credit.Caleb Kenna for The New York Times
Dec. 7, 2013
It was the first global Ponzi scheme a slow-motion crime wave that began in the Manhattan offices of a stockbroker named Bernard L. Madoff, spread to wealthy enclaves in Palm Beach, Fla., and Southern California, and reached as far as the Persian Gulf. It carried a breathtaking price: $64.8 billion in paper wealth and at least $17.5 billion in cash losses. Those affected ranged from carpenter-union pensioners to French aristocrats.
Early on Dec. 11, 2008, Mr. Madoff was arrested at his Manhattan penthouse. Within hours, the news reached his investors, leaving them stunned. In doctors’ offices, beauty salons, executive suites and living rooms they learned that all the money they thought was in their accounts invested through a trusted Wall Street statesman had vanished.
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4 ‘Save your farmer, think of your children’: Despite high crop productivity and expected market-oriented returns, French farmers continue to suffer. Reuters
Devinder Sharma
Food & Agriculture Specialist
A few weeks ago, French farmers hung suicide dolls on trees outside parliament to draw attention to the devastation brought about by continuously sliding market prices. In a country which follows modern agricultural practices, it is disturbing to know that while three farmers on an average commit suicide every two days, growing indebtedness is resulting in the closure of at least 1,500 farms every year.
That such a grave tragedy should afflict the biggest farm producer in the European Union (EU), and ironically, which also happens to be the topmost recipient from the $100 billion agricultural subsidy kitty that Europe provides for every year, shows clearly how markets are tightening the noose, leaving the struggling farmers exasperated. “How can anyone want to be