Beacon Hill's "Casino Capitalism"

In the first Boston Globe of the New Year, Renée Loth offered 11 things we can live without in ’11 with her #1 choice --

More casino capitalism. This month we heard about a group of hedge fund investors trading in a hot new commodity: claim settlements for victims of Bernard Madoff’s massive fraud. These Wall Street sharpies are offering pennies on the dollar for claimants who want a guaranteed payout. What’s next — pooling the payments and then dicing them into derivatives? Did we learn nothing from the financial collapse?

More importantly, did we learn that 'something for nothing schemes' don't work?

How different is Madoff's fraud from the "Casino Capitalism" folly of Destination Resort Slot Barns presented and supported on Beacon Hill without conducting an Independent Cost Benefit Analysis?

From Frederica Cade's blog, filled with cases being brought with her explanation offered here --

This case was brought in coordination with President BARACK OBAMA’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, on which Mr. BHARARA serves as a Co-Chair of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Working Group. President OBAMA established the interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force to wage an aggressive, coordinated, and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes. The task force includes representatives from a broad range of federal agencies, regulatory authorities, inspectors general, and state and local law enforcement who, working together, bring to bear a powerful array of criminal and civil enforcement resources. The task force is working to improve efforts across the federal executive branch, and with state and local partners, to investigate and prosecute significant financial crimes, ensure just and effective punishment for those who perpetrate financial crimes, combat discrimination in the lending and financial markets, and recover proceeds for victims of financial crimes.


How different are legally approved 'casinos' offered with false promises than Bernie Madoff?

Casino Capitalism: Culpability and Complicity

If JPMorgan is culpable in profiting from the Madoff scheme, why aren't casinos culpable for allowing patrons to gambling using funds the casino should have reasonably known exceeded the patron's ability to pay?

Why are casinos allowed to retain stolen funds and profits?

Madoff trustee sues JPMorgan, others for $6.4B

The bank used most by Bernard Madoff was "willfully blind" and "thoroughly complicit" in the disgraced financier's epic fraud, lawyers working for a court-appointed trustee alleged Thursday.

The suit alleges that as Madoff's primary bank for 20 years, JPMorgan had to know that the unwavering double-digit returns Madoff reported to wealthy investors were too good to be true. The trustee cited bank documents showing questionable transactions by Madoff as evidence it was in on the scheme.

The bank "was willfully blind to the fraud, even after learning about numerous red flags surrounding Madoff," said David J. Sheehan, an attorney working for Picard. "While many financial institutions enabled Madoff's fraud, JPMC was at the very center of that fraud, and thoroughly complicit in it. ... Madoff would not have been able to commit this massive Ponzi scheme without this bank."