Worsening Economy in UK/US

If the current credit crunch is not enough, we are now faced with another US 50 billion wall street scandal.

It is essentially a pyramid scheme (Called Ponzi scheme in US named after this person who used the pyramid scheme in US years ago to cheat investors) with returns as high as 10.5%.

"This is the biggest financial scandal, probably in the history of the markets - $50bn is a huge amount of money"

Britain's HSBC said it had investments of about $1bn, which could be affected.

The person behind this is Bernard Madoff. Who is he anyway?

Bernard Madoff was born into a New York Jewish family in 1938.

He founded his investment firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, in 1960, with $5,000 earned during summer jobs as a lifeguard and installing sprinklers.


By the early 1980s, the firm was one of the largest independent trading operations in the securities industry, and by 2000 it had about $300 million in assets.



He was closely involved in the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), the self-regulatory organisation for brokers and dealer firms. The NASD went on to found Nasdaq, the screen-based equity exchange, in 1971, and Mr Madoff became its chairman in 1990.

Madoff Securities opened a London office in 1983, and was one of the first American companies to trade on the London Stock Exchange.


The pound is continuing to drop in value day by day and the coming year is expected to be worse.

I am just waiting to see what happens next month when the credit card bills reaches the mailbox of everyone.

(By the way, The Royal Mail in UK is also in the verge of bankruptcy)

Unemployment in UK is now 5.8% (1.8 million)
Unemployment in US is 1.2 million.


So what's the moral of the story-
"If it looks to good too be true, It is usually too good to be true! Don't let greed overcome that natural instinct of yours"