Those who felt for Madoff just trusted the green lights!
Gapper completely forgets to mention that this incident occurred in a time zone when the financial expert consensus was that risk could be diversified away into the arms of those who could handle the risks, with little or nothing said about who these blokes might be; and the financial regulators, the supreme authorities, committed the most extreme act of incredulity and gullibility of empowering the credit rating agencies… and then these officially appointed masters of the risk lured away trillions into the swampland of the badly awarded mortgages to the subprime sector.
Comparatively speaking, in these times, asking why people put their trust in Madoff is more like asking someone who has been overrun by a car why he trusted the green light.
Mr. Gapper, if “with hindsight the whole affair seems deeply implausible” start by asking yourself why you believed that the credit rating agencies could save the world from “insiders and fool’s gold” and, if you did not gullibly believe so… why did you not speak out?