Whose Responsibility?

From Talking Business, on nytimes.com, yesterday:

“…Judge Denny Chin had made clear that he was not going to allow the Madoff guilty plea to turn into a Wailing Wall for the victims, so most of them stayed away. Though Judge Chin allowed them to speak, he insisted they stick to the issue before the court: whether he should accept Mr. Madoff’s guilty plea. One woman argued that the judge should not and force a trial instead, for the “opportunity to find out where the money is.” But of course there is no money — certainly nothing close to the supposed $60 billion plus he was “investing.” That is the whole point of a Ponzi scheme: the fraudster uses money coming in from new investors to pay old investors, pretending that that is their gain.

“Afterward, the TV cameras surrounded a woman named Sharon Lissauer. She had not been wealthy, she said, but she’s lost everything. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She was weeping. It was hard not to feel sad for her — indeed, for all the victims of Mr. Madoff’s evil-doing. But one also has to wonder: what were they thinking?…”

The most telling part of the piece is the last two paragraphs.