Customer Reviews

Madoff with the Money

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This was the first Madoff book I read, looking for some real explanations. It seemed very thin, padded with a limited amount of original material, mostly recycling earlier reporting. There is more emphasis on Madoff's early life than in "Too Good to be True" (a more authoritative book, with a better handle on the technical issues involved), but I came away feeling that I had learned little that had not been in the news.

You know I read the book by the journalist who wrote for barrons and i really didnt like it. I dont like this one either. I think that a real good book on this subject is only going to be written after an author truly has the time to investigate and get to know the various stories and characters before he thinks he can write like an authority on the subject matter. And unfortunately the lack of knowledge is apparent in the lack of confidence in the writing.

When money and crime collide on a colossal scale one can be sure that the literary equivalent of ambulance-chasing lawyers will be on the scene documenting the excessive for us all to enjoy. The 100 car-pile-up known as Bernie Madoff is the subject of several insta-books. The title of this one indicates the overall tone of the book - half moral-indictment, half National Enquirer exposé. All in all, that's exactly what Madoff deserves at this point.

Jerry Oppenheimer starts out the book by spending the first chapter telling us how this book isn't like all the other insta-books out there. He's exploring the big issues, "weaving" an "in-depth profile" etc. Which roughly translates into "blah blah blah" as far as I'm concerned. Just get on with the book. Once Oppenheimer gets done telling us of his high-minded aspirations for the book off come the gloves. It starts with a description of Bernie's parents overseeing an "ethically and morally bankrupt household" and just keeps rolling. I've seen serial killers treated more warmly that uber-conman Madoff. Oppenheimer rarely lets a paragraph go by without letting readers know he thinks Bernie is pond scum.

Oppenheimer ladles on the Yiddish expressions every so often in a particularly artless way and does make a few genuinely bonkers connections, such as likening Bernie's secretary, Eleanor Squillari to Richard Nixon's secretary Rose Mary Woods. They were both secretaries but beyond that? Oppenheimer is at his best when he's delivering insights from Madoff's friends, victims and acquaintances. Like the old friend who's smart enough to notice that Bernie is too thick to figure out the time difference between New York and London without the aid of two Rolex watches. Or the many nasty stories told about Bernie's niece Shana who appears to have endeared herself to so many who have repaid the favor by all but suggesting she roamed the streets of New York with a mattress strapped to her back. Nothing sums up this book better that this choice line:

"Besides being a crook, Bernie was a bit of a perv."

Yes, gentle reader, he certainly was. This book will neither expand your intellectual horizons nor answer any of the deeper questions about how such a massive fraud could go undetected for so long. It will, however, introduce you to some of the most tasteless, vulgar foul-mouthed people on the planet. Someday a James B. Stewart or Kurt Eichenwald may tackle this sordid tale and bring us those deeper insights. Until then, we'll always have satisfyingly trashy outings like Madoff With the Money to remind us that behind every sleazy crime is an even bigger sleazeball.

Take it for what it is, a long, gossipy reasonably but not exhaustively research magazine article.

With Bernie Madoff convicted and behind bars the deluge of books on him and his crimes can be unleashed. But considering the investigations into what became of the money lost and his co-conspirators any initial books are little more than a second draft of history, initial news coverage being the typical first draft of history. While these initial books may provide a considerable wealth of information on Madoff himself and what he did they will never be the complete story nor the final word on the subject. Witness the book Disconnected: Deceit and Betrayal at WorldCom, a book so rushed to publication it was out before WorldCom's Bernard Ebbers was even convicted. "Disconnected" shows the perils of rushing a book to publication to capitalize on a timely topic; in the rush to get it to market it's hardly a complete or nuanced story. "Madoff with the Money" is certainly far better written than "Disconnected" and has a far more gossipy tabloid style of writing as in Oppenheimer's earlier Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel. Oppenheimer helps to unmask the carefully crafted image Madoff fabricated over decades to reveal that Madoff's insincerity and moral bankruptcy went back to his childhood. It's often said that a child learns his values from his parents, and in Madoff's case his parents were hardly paragons of virtue either, with his father a self-proclaimed "plumber" who had connections to the mob, and his mother who ran a dubious stock operation out of her home that winds up getting shut down by the SEC. Considering the indignities Bernie was exposed to as a young man it's no wonder he vowed to do things better but wound up repeating the sins of his parents.

Oppenheimer retraces how Madoff carefully crafted his image as a trusted and revered Wall Street insider while at the same time running very shady operations. Madoff used his prestige as a thin veneer to intimidate seemingly everyone until his house of cards came crashing down. Oppenheimer explores seemingly every seedy connection the entire Madoff family had, Bernie's extramarital affairs and much more. "Madoff with the Money" gives you a true sense of how completely morally and ethically bankrupt Bernie Madoff and his family were. Compared to the other books out there on Madoff like Betrayal: The Life and Lies of Bernie Madoff, Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff, and Madoff's Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, and Me, "Madoff with the Money" is a good gossipy read from someone who's done their homework. If you hate Bernie Madoff this is pretty much preaching to the choir. While it certainly helps shape our knowledge of Madoff and his Ponzi scheme it's clearly unlikely to be the last word on the subject.

OK, OK, how many times do you have to write, "Those who knew him as a young man said he was a real schmuck----," over and over, before it gets very old? This book has an obvious agenda, that being to jab and poke at Madoff, ad infinitem. The man certainly deserves our contempt, but this book seems to get too caught up in reviling Bernie to the extent that you do not learn much about how he actually pulled off his scam. There are some good accounts of his early days in school, to be sure, but if you are trying to understand the technical side of how he created and sustained his massive Ponzi scheme, you will have to look elsewhere. I did not hate this book, and did learn a bit about Madoff, on a fairly shallow level, but I will wait for a later book to come out about his financial schemes, after the investigations are completed, in the next few years.

This is the first, and will be the last, book I've read by this author, who has managed to take what should be at least a guilty pleasure, the story of the the greatest [non-governmental] financial theft in history and through boring, hackneyed, repetitious writing and superficial research turned it into a tedious trudge of a book. Everything of worth could probably be condensed down to less than twenty pages [and I am being generous!] which is an indication of how much filler and redundancy the author has packed into this poor excuse for investigative journalism. I paid $2.24 for the ebook version, and still feel like I was overcharged- I will leave it up to you to decide if you should continue to add to the Madoff story's long line of ripped off victim's by purchasing it for yourself!

If you're thinking about picking this book up for insight into the fraud itself, don't bother. What you get is exactly what the product description sells: information about the man -Bernie Madoff- based on interviews of those aquainted with him (a majority of whom are victims of the fraud).
Where the product description is misleading, though, is by stating that the book will present "new revelations". The book is basically a compilation of pre-existing interviews, and Wikipedia would probably provide more indepth information on the actual financial scam than this book does.


I will give the book one thing: it was a quick and mostly entertaining read...at least when it wasn't beating the same dead horse. (there is quite a bit of repetition)
If you're new to the Madoff scandal and are looking for gossip on Bernie Madoff himself, this book is for you. If you want something of substance pertaining to the fraud, don't bother.

I found this book to be very disappointing in the quality of reporting - lots of unsupported suppositions, heavy weight placed on comments of very low level players in Madoff's world such as admins and mens clothing salesmen he bought from. Madoff is a compelling topic as the biggest scam artist in history - how the author could not come up with a better yarn is beyond me. As financial tales go, Gasparino's The Sellout is The Great Gatsby compared to this - this book was a National Enquirer article expanded to a couple of hundred pages.

One great part of the book: 1. Mr. Oppenheimer showed the ascend of B. Madoff to the wealth (Starting with a marriage made in heaven)
Three problems with the book: 1. Some paragraphs were hard to understand, so they needed editing. 2. The author appears to have little understanding that B Madoff had created two distinct businesses (The legitimate one Trading Floor) and the Fake one the one in 17th floor. Except for some passages, he kept referring to them as if they were one. I believe because of such confusion the author tried hard to state that all the Barnie family had to play a part in the fraud. 3. Too much redundancy: How many times does one need to be reminded that all B. Madoff properties were decorated with only two color schemes.

I disagree with the posters who say this book offers no insight to Madoff's character, or lack thereof. There was one significant paragraph that explained what I needed to know. I note, too, that my reason for picking up this book is to understand how this person could do this.

The part I think is significant is in the early part of the book, when he discusses Madoff's adolescence. Oppenheimer states that he was unimpressive... a nothing. He struck no one as being remarkable.

In another part of the book, in discussing Madoff as an adult, his "nothingness" is again discussed.

Banal is what he was and that is how evil so often appears, according to Arendt.

I'm almost finished with the book, but there is one question Oppenheimer has not answered for me and that is why Ruthie is attracted to him. What does she see in him? The best he seems to do on this question is insinuate she was a woman of the times, hitching her star to that of a man.

Oppenheimer explains what Bernie sees in Ruthie, but not what Ruthie sees in Bernie. She's head and shoulders above him in the looks department, as well as upstairs. Ruthie is a math wizard and is also well educated, while Madoff barely made it through college.

That is a story in and of itself: that a smart, attractive woman stayed connected to a nothing. It cost her her dearly, starting with the suicide of her son. Everything else pales in comparison to that.

Who will tell Ruthie's story?