【英语生活】谁上了马多夫的当？

If Bernie Madoff has lost $50bn (€35bn, £32bn) of other people's money, as he is said to have admitted, why did they trust him with it?With hindsight, the whole affair seems deeply implausible. We know that nobody produces rock-steady returns of 15 per cent or more, year in and year out, unless he or she is either a genius or a crook.

Yet people lined up to entrust their savings to Mr Madoff. Many of them got a tip from a friend or adviser about a Wall Street operator with a great record. The Madoff broker network also included many funds of funds and private banks that oozed financial sophistication.

Why did they fall for it?

It is an old story: the allure of the Wall Street insider. No one thought that Mr Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme but plenty of people thought he had an unfair advantage. He was a former Nasdaq chairman and one of Wall Street's biggest marketmakers. Enough said.

“We all hoped, but we knew deep down it was too good to be true, right? I mean, why wasn't everyone in on this game if it was so strong and steady?” wrote Robert Chew, one Madoff investor whose wife's family has lost $30m, on Time.com. “The way it was described to us was that the ‘New York people' had a system.”

The New York people always do, particularly at the height of a bull market, when it looks as if Wall Street insiders are positioned to make more money than everyone else. Given the opportunity, who would not try to invest alongside them?

Henry Blodget, a former analyst who was charged with issuing fraudulent research by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2003 and settled the case by paying $4m, argued on his Clusterstock blog that many Wall Street veterans thought Mr Madoff was up to something.

They did not think he was recycling client funds, according to Mr Blodget; they suspected that he was using inside information from his big marketmaking operation to “front-run” trades for his clients. That would have explained his oddly consistent high returns.

Even if Wall Street did not think so, some of Mr Madoff's millionaire clients probably did.

Mr Madoff made this point himself at a debate last year at the Philoctetes Centre in New York. He first brazenly asserted that it was “impossible for an [insider trading] violation to go undetected, certainly not for a considerable period of time” because of regulatory safeguards.

He added, however, that this was “something that the public really doesn't understand. If you read things in the newspaper, and you see somebody violate a rule, you say: ‘Well, they're always doing this.' ”

Indeed so, and if you are in a country club in Palm Beach or on the shore of Lake Geneva, half of you thinks this is a disgrace and the other half may wonder: “How do I get a piece of the action?”

Mr Madoff's pitch fitted perfectly into the long and ignoble tradition of Wall Street fund managers luring ordinary folk with the promise of hot investments during booms.

Charles Mitchell did so in the 1920s by selling securities through National City Bank's investment banking arm, before foundering in the 1929 crash. The scandal brought on the separation of banks and securities houses in the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

The last time it happened on this scale was in the 1960s. That was the era when aggressive mutual funds flourished and hedge funds became well-known investment vehicles.

“The hedge funds of 1965 . . . were Wall Street's last bastions of secrecy, mystery, exclusivity and privilege. They were the parlour cars of the new gravy train,” wrote John Brooks in The Go-Go Years, his book about the 1960s stock market mania that culminated in the 1970 crash.

The 1960s had a Bernie, too: Bernie Cornfield, whose Investors Overseas Services mutual fund group was the biggest in the world before, at the end, it tipped into a Ponzi scheme. “Do you sincerely want to be rich?” was this Bernie's question to those who wanted a job.

Mr Madoff was more subtle than Cornfield, since he was selling to those who were already rich (or fairly rich) and wanted comfortable security more than dazzling but volatile returns. They sought the privileges of hedge fund investment combined with the safety of annuities.

In the real world, you do not get that – or not for long, anyway – but they were offered nirvana. We now wonder at their gullibility but two things made him plausible.

First, this was an age of credulity. People had become used to double-digit increases in the value of houses and Wall Street was full of people leaving investment banks to become hedge fund managers. And Mr Madoff presented himself as offering something comparatively modest and reassuring. He would not shoot for the moon but he would give people secure prosperity.

Second, he had a network of financial advisers, many of whom had invested their own cash, who portrayed investing with Mr Madoff as a privilege. It was a Main Street version of the access that institutional investors and foundations had to private equity and hedge funds.

On the face of it, funds of funds, private banks and investment advisers were simply offering Mr Madoff's services as a skilled veteran of financial markets who had such old-school values that he did not charge hedge fund-style fees.

Behind that, some detected the unspoken promise that Bernie would use his Wall Street connections to make sure his clients came out well from his trades. The fact that they believed Wall Street was “always doing this” was not a deterrent; it was a recommendation.

如果伯纳德•马多夫(Bernard Madoff)让客户损失了500亿美元——如他本人据称已承认的——为什么那些客户当初会把钱委托给他呢？事后看来，整个事件似乎很难让人相信。我们知道，没有人能年复一年的带来稳如磐石般的、15%或更高的投资回报，除非他（她）要么是个天才要么是个骗子。

然而，人们排着队将自己的储蓄委托给马多夫。他们中的许多人从朋友或投资顾问那里得知了一个内部消息：有位华尔街高手的投资纪录棒极了。马多夫的经纪商网络还包括许多富有金融经验的基金的基金(FOF)和私人银行。

他们为什么会上当呢？

原因并无新意：华尔街内幕人士的诱惑力。没有人想到马多夫是在经营一个庞氏骗局(Ponzi Scheme)，但许多人以为他拥有不公平优势。马多夫是纳斯达克前董事长以及华尔街最大的做市商之一。这就够了。

“我们都曾满怀希望，但我们内心深知这美好得不太可能，对吗？我的意思是，如果投资回报如此强劲和稳健，为什么人们不全都参与到这场游戏中来？”马多夫的一位投资者罗伯特•丘(Robert Chew)在Time.com上写道。这位投资者妻子的家人已因马多夫损失了3000万美元。“当时我们得到的描述是，那些‘纽约人'有一套系统。”

纽约人总有一套系统，尤其是在牛市最火爆的时候——那时候华尔街内幕人士似乎占据有利地位，能比别人赚更多的钱。只要有机会，谁不想与他们一起投资呢？

以前曾担任分析师的亨利•布洛杰特(Henry Blodget)曾在2003年被美国证交会(SEC)指控发布欺诈性研究报告，后来他赔付400万美元达成和解。他在其博客Clusterstock上主张，许多华尔街资深人士都认为马多夫在搞鬼。

布洛杰特称，这些人士并未料到马多夫是在用客户资金拆东墙补西墙；他们猜测他是在利用从自身的大型做市业务得到的内幕信息，为自己的客户“抢先”做交易。这种猜测可以解释马多夫稳健得有点奇怪的高回报。

即便华尔街人士不这么，马多夫的一些百万富翁客户可能也会这么想。

马多夫去年在纽约菲罗克忒忒斯中心(Philoctetes Centre)的一场辩论中，自己暗示了这一点。他首先悍然断言，由于存在监管保障措施，“[内幕交易]违规行为不可能不被发现，肯定无法天长日久的隐藏”。

但他补充说，这属于“公众实际上并不理解的东西。如果你在报上发现某人违反了规则，你会说：‘哼，他们不一直在这么做嘛。'”

的确如此，如果你有幸进入棕榈滩(Palm Beach)或日内瓦湖(Lake Geneva)畔的那些乡村俱乐部，你有一半会认为，这样的奢华很不光彩，另一半则会纳闷：“我怎样才能加入这个圈子？”

马多夫的推销，与华尔街基金经理在繁荣时期利用热门投资来诱惑普通人这一悠久而卑鄙的传统完全符合。

查尔斯•米切尔(Charles Mitchell)在上世纪20年代就是这样做的，他通过纽约国家城市银行（National City Bank of New York，译者注：花旗银行的前身）的投资银行部门出售证券，该业务随后在1929年的股灾中崩溃。这一丑闻造成的结果是，1933年《格拉斯-斯蒂格尔法》(Glass-Steagall Act)规定银行与证券公司分离。

同样规模的丑闻上次发生在上世纪60年代。在那个时代里，进取型共同基金盛行，而对冲基金成了知名投资工具。

“1965年时的对冲基金……是华尔街仅剩的带有秘密、神秘、排外和特权色彩的堡垒。它们是美差中的美差。”约翰•布鲁克斯(John Brooks)在其描写上世纪60年代股市狂潮的《沸腾岁月》(The Go-Go Years)一书中写道。那场狂潮以1970年的股灾告终。

上世纪60年代也出现了一位伯纳德：伯纳德•科恩费尔德(Bernard Cornfeld)。他的投资者海外服务(Investors Overseas Services)曾是全球规模最大的共同基金集团，最终却沦落为一场庞氏骗局。“你是否真的想发财？”是这位伯纳德对求职者提出的问题（译者注：伯纳德曾雇用2.5万人在欧洲各地逐门逐户销售共同基金）。

马多夫比科恩费尔德更巧妙，因为他的销售对象已很富有（或者相当富有），并且偏好舒适的安全感而不是令人眩目但起伏不定的投资回报。这些人寻求的是对冲基金投资的特权再加上年金的安全性。

这在现实世界中是无法拥有的，或者至少无法长期拥有，但马多夫则向他们提供这种天堂境界。虽然我们现在会对这些人的轻信感到吃惊，但有两点确实让马多夫看上去可信。

首先，这是一个轻信的时代。人们对房价两位数的上涨已经习以为常，华尔街上到处都是从投资银行跳槽、去担任对冲基金经理的人。而马多夫则定位于提供回报相对适中、且令人安心的投资。他不会进行孤注一掷的投资，而是要带给人们安全无忧的富足。

其次，马多夫拥有一个金融顾问网络，这些顾问中的许多人也在马多夫的业务中投入了自有资金，他们把跟随马多夫投资描绘成一种特权。这是一个大众版本的投资特权，就像机构投资者和基金会拥有投资私人股本和对冲基金的特权一样。

从表面上看，基金的基金、私人银行和投资顾问在推介马多夫时，只是将他描述为金融市场一位资深操盘手，拥有老派的价值观，以至于他不收取对冲基金式的费用。

在这背后，有些人察觉到了心照不宣的承诺——伯纳德会利用他在华尔街的关系网，确保客户们能得益于他的交易。人们认为华尔街“一直在这么做”这一事实，并没有成为阻碍，反而成了引诱。

译者/汪洋