If he only made a simple market return he would not have got the billions in the first place. Those billions of dollars would be in the hands of someone who can offer better than average returns.
Imo,Study him all you want. There's nothing to discover by his actions, what he does with the money is not the motive for his action.He does it because he can, plain and simple. From Jeffry Dhamer to Madoff and countless others, there is nothing upstairs. Knowing his reasons will not lead to predictive behaviour of the next madoff. They may tell you their reasons, money, blame their childhood, their mother, the girl next door, some wrong in their life it is all insanity. You're trying to ascertain reason and motive where their isn't one, because they do not know. The most eloquent and genius iq sociopath will leave you dealing with the devil and devoid of the truth.
I don't support nor back what he did. But the investors are to blame as well - if someone was to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge, I should do due dilligence on it. At the end of the day, he's no different than a manager that make you high return consistently and blow up because of credit crisis or other "extraordinary market condition".
I disagree. Market events losses are totally different than losses suffered from fraud, totally different. surf
I remember seeing this show on 911 where the fire fighters are waiting in the lobby of one of the towers; the captain kind of looks over at a guy and you can see they are like "we're not gonna make it" , now that's courageous! I like to think for every bad guy out there that there are still some good ones around. Money does corrupt you if you let it, but its a tool like everything else.