Read This Now - The Ponzi Era

Paul Krugman asks the obvious question; How, exactly, is the Madoff ponzi scheme different from the way our financial industry as a whole functioned over the past couple of years?

Bonus Materials:

From James Surowiecki's morning reading list:

Thankfully, Chris Cox will not be running the S.E.C. for much longer. Here's Obama's new financial regulatory team, which he unveiled yesterday. And here's a great New Yorker story from 2002 by Jane Mayer on former S.E.C. chair Arthur Levitt and the challenges of financial regulation.

Speaking of the S.E.C., its failure to stop Bernard Madoff looks more egregious by the day. Here's an account of how Harry Markopolos, the Boston accountant who quixotically (it seemed) challenged Madoff's returns for years, actually testified before the S.E.C. on the subject of Madoff and, incredibly, told investigators Madoff might well be running "the world's largest Ponzi scheme." Yet the S.E.C. did nothing.