Kass: Madoff Mess Is Widespread

This blog post originally appeared on RealMoney Silver on Dec. 15 at 8:03 a.m. EST.

Life at its best is bittersweet.

I have had a good year investing. Some of my oldest friends are also my Limited Partners. My performance in 2008 is a sense of personal achievement for me. Through hard work, a skeptical and independent view and by virtue of hard-hitting analysis, I have made money for my investors in a challenging period.

Meanwhile, many of my other friends have been caught up in the alleged Madoff fraud -- many others.

As I related on Friday, if accurately reported, the Madoff Ponzi scheme is the biggest fraud of all time, bigger than Bayou and Enron combined.

In that column, I detailed my experience of analyzing a Madoff account in 2005, the process of which made me an early nonbeliever because the numbers simply did not add up. I also enumerated six red flags that should have been picked up by investors (and their agents), many of whom put their entire investment capital with Madoff.

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How does an alleged multibillion-dollar 'Ponzi scheme' by market maker and money manager Bernie Madoff affect your confidence in the stock market?
	Has no effect. Makes me more nervous than I already was. Not as bad as past scandals I've seen. I've never trusted Wall Street, and I never will.

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