Madoff in Hell

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Among the victim statements made in court - before Judge Denny Chin handed down a 150-year sentence to Bernie Madoff for his $50 billion Ponzi scheme - victim and former Mayer of Fort Lee, New Jersey, Bert Ross, got to the heart of the Madoff’s crime:

Several hundred years ago, the Italian poet Dante in his The Divine Comedy recognized fraud as the worst of sins, the ultimate evil more than any other act contrary to God’s greatest gift to mankind—love. In fact, he placed the perpetrators of fraud in the lowest depths of hell, even below those who had committed violent acts. And those who betrayed their benefactors were the worst sinners of all, so in the three mouths of Satan struggle Judas for betraying Jesus Christ and Brutus and Cassius for betraying Julius Caesar.

Many in America’s materialistic culture find fault in the government’s failure to properly regulate Wall Street’s investing class. In their view, this is what lead to the Madoff fiasco. In reality, the government is no more capable of ending all financial corruption than it is at ending all murders. Laws and regulations are reserved for those we catch. In the end, the only reliable regulator is the moral content in each human heart.

Know that as soon as the soul commits betrayal
The way I did, a devil displaces it
And governs inside the body….

Canto XXXIII of Dante’s Inferno

As Bert Ross so eloquently stated, Bernie Madoff’s crime was his betrayal of love for his fellow man – its most profound component being trust. Madoff will rot in a federal penitentiary until he casts off the mortal coil and raises his voice as part of an unholy quartet in Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell.