DIGG THIS The mystery of Bernard Madoff will be storied a hundred years from now. As history’s biggest financial criminal, he took a cheap rip-off that you can use at home — the Ponzi scheme — and turned it into a global empire worth some $50 billion. One ingredient was financial intelligence. Madoff had buckets of it. Early in his career, he was the real deal, an actual innovator. He combined this with an amazing lack of conscience, for his scam was rooted most fundamentally in lying and stealing. The difference between him and all who came before was his … Continue reading Madoff Explained