The year 2008 will be remembered as a rat of a year. Seemingly unending prosperity to August, and then the Lehman heart attack in September, as if someone pulled the plug, and half of our stock market wealth was flushed down the drain.
But the highlight must be the news that a paragon of New York society, a former chairman of Nasdaq no less, Bernard Madoff confessed to a Ponzi scheme of up to US$50bil. Madoff’s niece was his compliance officer and married a former SEC attorney. Members of the Madoff family served on various regulatory advisory bodies. Didn’t someone accuse us Asians of crony capitalism in 1997?