Madoff Fallout Won't Be Felt Till Next Year

All weekend, I -- like others who follow the markets -- tried to figure out how Bernie Madoff may have lost $50 billion, not the $17 billion he started the year with, given that, by nature, you can't leverage a Ponzi scheme. You can't borrow 9-to-1, as a hedge fund might have, because you have to keep sending money out and because he apparently was captive to himself.

It is possible, of course, that he sent out so many fraudulent statements showing much more unrealized profit in his fund than his fund had assets, but that would seem to be the only way it could happen, unless he got so much in this year and lost it all before the end of the year.

So many questions remain unanswered. Did he ever make money? What did he do with the money? Was every monthly report simply backdated and too impenetrable to raise questions? When did he start the scheme? Why did he have to start the scheme?

And perhaps the most important question for now: Why does none of it matter? I thought for sure it would matter on Friday, but Friday was a nice day because of the auto bailout from Treasury. I thought it would matter this morning because of the incredible foreign bank exposure -- and did they ever do anything right, those foreign banks? But Europe's very strong.

Yes, the biggest mystery remains how this $50 billion scam hasn't affected anything at all. It's akin to how the gating of Citadel after horrendous losses really doesn't mean anything.

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