{"id":1,"date":"2011-09-06T04:08:58","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T04:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aaronchan\/?p=1"},"modified":"2011-09-14T23:57:36","modified_gmt":"2011-09-15T06:57:36","slug":"hello-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aaronchan\/2011\/09\/06\/hello-world\/","title":{"rendered":"From Riches to Rags."},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mceTemp mceIEcenter\">\n<dl class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 470px;\">\n<dt class=\"wp-caption-dt\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.telegraph.co.uk\/multimedia\/archive\/01205\/bernie-madoff-460_1205171c.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"288\" \/>Admitted operator of the largest Ponzi Scheme in history.<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n<p>ONCE upon a time, about 20 years ago, a charming lifeguard sparked the burning desire of every Sauder student: to make money, and a lot of it. Twenty years later, the lonely man ponders in his jail cell; <em>how his $50 billion rollercoaster ride ended in 150 years of imprisonment and his son&#8217;s suicide.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It all started with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/2008\/12\/12\/madoff-ponzi-hedge-pf-ii-in_rl_1212croesus_inl.html\">Ponzi Scheme<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Essentially, Madoff attracted wealthy investors with a hefty and suspiciously high 9-10% return. For example, I could invest $1,000 in the <strong>Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC<\/strong> and would be promised a return of $100 each year \u2013 guaranteed. And where did Madoff get this money? From another investor. For years, Bernie effectively continued his chain of lies in secrecy, producing only paper-based statements for clients from an antique computer, involving only a dozen employees. Madoff\u2019s scandal grew rapidly, soon described as the largest Ponzi Scheme in history.<\/p>\n<p>Self-interest can organize the economy, but is effectively destructive when taken to the extreme. Some describe this ethical issue as pure evil.<\/p>\n<p>However, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.time.com\/time\/business\/article\/0,8599,1866398,00.html\">Robert Chew<\/a>, a former Madoff investor, urges us to react positively: &#8220;We&#8217;ve lost it all, but we&#8217;re choosing to get on with living\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/people\/m\/bernard_l_madoff\/index.html\">http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/people\/m\/bernard_l_madoff\/index.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Admitted operator of the largest Ponzi Scheme in history. ONCE upon a time, about 20 years ago, a charming lifeguard sparked the burning desire of every Sauder student: to make money, and a lot of it. Twenty years later, the lonely man ponders in his jail cell; how his $50 billion rollercoaster ride ended in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8468,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aaronchan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aaronchan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aaronchan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aaronchan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8468"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aaronchan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aaronchan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aaronchan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aaronchan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aaronchan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aaronchan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}