{"id":3050,"date":"2008-12-13T09:31:17","date_gmt":"2008-12-13T13:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=3050"},"modified":"2008-12-13T13:16:07","modified_gmt":"2008-12-13T17:16:07","slug":"write-what-you-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/write-what-you-know","title":{"rendered":"Write What You Know?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know whether the Sulzberger family exerts any influence on the NYTimes<\/em>‘ editors. All I know is that today’s business section seems pretty heavily loaded on the Bernard Madoff case. Bernie’s a legendary money manager who appears to have been bilking hedge funds and the super-wealthy out of their money in a huge (he says $50 billion) Ponzi scheme.<\/p>\n

Now, I know it’s a big story (although no one knows how deep the losses really are yet), but I get the feeling that if it weren’t about the pain of wealthy people and socialites, we might not see four articles <\/em>totaling more than 4,500 words<\/em> in one edition:<\/em> 1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>, and 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The best part about today’s Lifestyles of the No-Longer-So-Rich coverage in the Times<\/em> is that the paper chose this very day to debut a new bi-weekly web column about . . . money strategies for the wealthy<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Of course, these strategies aren’t just<\/em> for the wealthy! Writes columnist Paul Sullivan, “While his [Robert Seaberg, head of wealth management at — no lie — a branch of Citigroup, the bank that lobbied for a $300 billion backstop from the U.S. government and plans to fire 52,000 people next year, most of whom I assume are not super-wealthy] findings are geared toward the highest end of the investing community, people at every wealth level should take note.”<\/p>\n

After all:<\/p>\n

While losing 40 percent of $100 million gives those investors more wiggle room than that same decline on $100,000, it still requires them to re-evaluate their view of risk, if not a change to their lifestyles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good to know!<\/p>\n

For my part, I’m just happy that Amy & I started watching Arrested Development<\/a> this month. I expect to find out that Madoff had a cross-eyed Judy Greer for his secretary:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Or that his sons are really amateur magicians or anxiety-prone dilettantes. But Life doesn’t always imitate canceled TV, I guess.<\/p>\n

(Update! The <\/em>NYPost has a couple of pieces on the story, too. I was convinced that one of their quotes was by an alias for Andre 3000, but it turns out that Montieth Illingworth<\/a> is a real person! Oh, and it turns out that Madoff’s key strategy<\/a> was betting on the spread between bids and asks, which — to my untrained ear — sounds a bunch like the “vacuuming up nickels” strategy of LTCM that went awry when it scaled up. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the case of a long-time friend of my mother who got into trouble similar to this, although in his case, I don’t think it wasn’t a Ponzi scheme as much as a case of “I just lost some of X’s money on some bad investments, so if I just move some of Y’s money into X’s account, no one will be any the wiser once my next batch of investments pay off.” And the missing money added up to around $2.5 million, which is bad, but not as bad as (allegedly) $50 billion.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know whether the Sulzberger family exerts any influence on the NYTimes‘ editors. All I know is that today’s business section seems pretty heavily loaded on the Bernard Madoff case. Bernie’s a legendary money manager who appears to have been bilking hedge funds and the super-wealthy out of their money in a huge (he … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Write What You Know?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[488,67],"class_list":["post-3050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-business","tag-bernard-l-madoff","tag-judy-greer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-Nc","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3340,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/follow-the-code","url_meta":{"origin":3050,"position":0},"title":"Follow the code","author":"Gil","date":"January 31, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Mark Cuban reminds us that he's a tech geek at heart by exploring the Bernie Madoff case from the angle of the computer system Madoff used to generate his fraudulent transactions. It's a fun post, and hey, his thesis is more sensible and responsible than when Ron Rosenbaum went kinda\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3229,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-jan-16-2009","url_meta":{"origin":3050,"position":1},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Jan. 16, 2009","author":"Gil","date":"January 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Baby, it's cold outside! Stay in and catch up with some Unrequired Reading! That's a very good question. * * * Looks like Bourgeois Surrender has moved on from Ruskin to Wilde! I can't wait for his transition to Walter Pater! * * * Lewis & Belzer: The Neurotic and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3204,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/f-you-you-whining-f-1809","url_meta":{"origin":3050,"position":2},"title":"F*** You, You Whining F***: 1\/8\/09","author":"Gil","date":"January 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A lot of these entries have focused on the publishing industry, because I read about it and its constituents tend to whine a lot. I haven't written so much about the financial crisis in that context, so I'll remedy that now. Here's an article about the SEC branch chief who\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "F*** You, You Whining F***"","block_context":{"text":"F*** You, You Whining F***","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/f-you-you-whining-f"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12819,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-357-walter-bernard","url_meta":{"origin":3050,"position":3},"title":"Episode 357 – Walter Bernard","author":"Gil","date":"January 13, 2020","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 357: Walter Bernard \"The first thing you try when you're called in, is to find out how the top people see the problem. That's often similar from project to project: the disconnect from the readership.\" Legendary designer Walter Bernard joins the show to talk about Mag Men:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/wbernardcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C683&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/wbernardcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C683&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/wbernardcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C683&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/wbernardcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C683&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/wbernardcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C683&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3510,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/0-fer-of-the-week","url_meta":{"origin":3050,"position":4},"title":"0-fer of the Week","author":"Gil","date":"February 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"What better day of the week than Wednesday to show off my lack of erudition? In an act of Godelian irrelevance, I'll try to post a significant 0-fer (as in, \"I've never read a book, play, story or essay by [x]\") every week. This week's 0-fer is\u00c2\u00a0 . . .\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8596,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-109-the-confidence-man","url_meta":{"origin":3050,"position":5},"title":"Episode 109 – The Confidence Man","author":"Gil","date":"March 10, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show: Walter Kirn - The Confidence Man \"He could not imagine what went on in other people's hearts and minds any more than you and I could imagine what it's like to live on Jupiter.\" Author and journalist Walter Kirn joins the show to discuss his latest book,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=voyantpublishing&l=as2&o=1&a=0871404516","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3050"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3055,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3050\/revisions\/3055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}