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From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York:

“What concerns me is that there is one guy that is going to be perceived as the face of this recent fiasco,” Michael Oxley, former chairman, House Financial Services Committee and co-author of Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 said on Thursday, referring to the global financial crisis. “And his name is Bernie Madoff.”

Speaking at a meeting held by the non-profit, non-partisan U.S. research firm The Ethics Resource Center, Oxley was lamenting the fact that although Madoff did terrible things, he did in fact only run a classic Ponzi scheme, the kind of thievery that has been around for decades. Much more dangerous to the financial markets and one of the actual causes for the bubble and its subsequent collapse was the activity in the unregulated, opaque, derivatives market.

To Oxley’s point, the Madoff fraud is often alluded to as a cause for the destruction of the financial markets. It was not, other than in the way it fuelled fears of other possible frauds that may have led to additional redemption requests during illiquid markets. Then there is the oft-made mistake of labeling Madoff’s firm a hedge fund. It was not; although, many fund of hedge funds (FoHFs) were large allocators to his “strategy”.

In any case, US regulation now looms. The healthcare plan and cap and trade are widely considered to be DOA, freeing up the spo......................

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