A year ago, exactly on September 15, 2008, the 158-year old investment bank Lehman Brothers plummeted into a financial abyss that came to be known as the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, a collapse that sent shock waves across the global financial system.

The fallout quickly spread far and wide, compelling governments to come up with stimulus packages to pump-prime economic activities, but the financial crisis continued to deepen, crippling, even crushing, businesses and industries with the force of a juggernaut never seen before.

Subsequently, with the global financial market in turmoil and investor confidence hitting a record low point, Ponzi investment schemes epitomized by Bernard Madoff began to unravel, compounding further the engulfing financial meltdown.

The scandalous state of American capitalism – brought about by the greed and avarice or corporate predators whose collective mindset is diametrically opposed to the cherished values of average American – has been studied and analyzed to great lengths by pundits and writers as the main culprit in running corporate America and the government itself into the ground.

A syndicated columnist, Arianna Huffinton, came up with a book titled “Pigs at the Trough” which elucidated how corporate greed and political corruption deeply undermined America and the very foundations of its democracy.

Citing a long list of disgraced corporate top honchos involved in scandals that made up only the tip of the corruption iceberg, she pointedly portrayed CEOs, politicians, lobbyists and Wall Street bankers as conspirators in unholy alliance driven to bilk trillions of dollars out of the investing public.

“The excesses of corporate America have become more than just a social crime; they are a direct threat to the well-being of our society,” she wrote, indicting the “pigs” feasting on the trough.

Perhaps it can now be said that if ever there is someone who can be elevated to the status of a mascot to represent contemporary corporate greed in America it is Bernard Madoff, the former Nasdaq chairman and a masterful confidence man who ran a Ponzi scam using the façade of an investment-advisory business, and this unenviable honor will be his alone for a long, long time.

Attesting to his dubious distinction is a steady stream of books coming out of publishing houses, zeroing in on the devastating impact wrought by Madoff’s financial misadventures and laying bare salacious details even about his personal shortcomings.

Some of these books delving on the complex web of massive swindle that defrauded more than 8,000 investors, including a number of financially sophisticated funds, are Erin Arvedlund’s “Too Good to be True,” Andrew Kirtzman”s “Betrayal” and Jerry Oppenheimer’s “Madoff with the Money.” They all revolve around one common story, a story of unbridled greed and grand deception made possible by an uncaring evil mind. But the book that offers a new twist is “Madoff’s Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie and Me” authored by 60-year-old blond Seryl Weinstein who dared to come out into the open to claim she had an affair with Madoff.

This book shows that Madoff, aside from cheating thousands of people to the tune of US$65 billion, had no qualms cheating on his wife. Weinstein worked as chief financial officer of Haddasah, a Jewish women’s nonprofit charity organization which invested $40 million with Madoff and, as expected, said investment went up in smoke and eventually drove her to financial ruin.

Madoff, said to be “the most despised man living in America today,” is now in prison for 150 years yet the wide swath of financial devastation he left in our increasingly uncertain world will linger on.

Email: businessagenda_report@yahoo.com.ph