When I was 16, and had been driving with a license for about 4 months, I was in a minor car accident. A Jeep wanted to merge on to Highway 13, right here, and I was in the right lane. I braked, the Jeep braked as well, and pretty soon we were going to run out of shoulder. I decided to move into the left lane, and saw only at the last moment that there was another car in my blind spot to my left. The other car swerved left and did a little dance with the guard rail. I panicked and pulled over to the shoulder. I felt instant regret. The other car pulled in behind me (the Jeep was long gone) and I carefully got out of the car and proclaimed my guilt and apologized profusely . Between my parents and myself, we paid to have this lady's car repaired- it was an expensive mistake.
I made the opposing party whole for her loss - 100%. What in the world is Madoff going to do? By all accounts, his fraud is probably in the billions, and it's all GONE, or nearly so. So when I read that Madoff Agrees Not to Dispute S.E.C.’s Civil Case and that someone will have to figure out how much he has to pay in fines, I am dumbfounded.
All of it. If he has anything left after this I will be really annoyed- he stole from rich people in a lot of cases, but the kind of trangression he represents, the scale of it, I think we need Bernie Madoff down for the count- and I'm only talking about the the civil proceeding (the rest of his life probably will be in jail). Perhaps I am just getting paranoid that his plea deal leaves him out of jail just for cooperating, yet another of the SEC's lax prosecutions and "neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing" settlements, but please, let's not go easy on this one.