March 2009

Long and breathtakingly interesting article in the New York Magazine: The Monster Mensch by Steve Fishman. (What made Bernie Madoff, a man who helped revolutionize Wall Street and built a completely legal billion-dollar business, perpetrate the greatest fraud in history? And what led Ezra Merkin, born to immense privilege, to enable him?)

The article describes Bernie Madoff’s role in the breaking of the NY Stock exchange monopoly and building NASDAQ. If accurate than for sure Bernie Madoff’s influenced on the American Business far outweighs anything he could possible steal.

Ezra Merkin’s role becomes much clearer as he evidently raised enormous amounts for Bernie Madoff and introduced him to the NY Jewish rich and the Jewish philanthropy which is the same really.

There are some interesting details about the families.  I am unnerved by the revelation that Ezra Merkin was a major collector of Rothko paintings. Because of the detached style of the abstractions and because with the millions he spent on Rothko one could have started an art movement and/or fed hundreds (make it thousands) of starving artists in the process. May be that’s why Rothko cut his veins and bled on his final canvas, he probably had a vision of Ezra Merkin hanging the painting in the Park Ave. living room.

The article is very well written although it is obviously completely borrowed from published and online sources. Some of the sources are readily recognized. And unfortunately (at least in the online version) there is regrettable lack of proper links and attributions. I am certain that they read what I blogged about this (two paragraphs in the article). The main weakness of this remarkable piece, is that it was written virtually without any first hand contacts or conversations.

Here is interesting quote that sheds light on the massive role Ezra Merkin played in this drama.

“And so Ezra took Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities places Bernie couldn’t have dreamed of going by himself. The list of people and institutions that Ezra Merkin put with Bernie Madoff is a kind of Jewish social register. There was Mort Zuckerman, the media and real-estate mogul, and Ira Rennert, chairman of Fifth Avenue Synagogue and owner of a 68-acre oceanfront Hamptons estate. Over 30 charities invested with Ezra, many of them with a Jewish affiliation. Ramaz was in, as was Yeshiva. Not every investor says they knew that Ezra’s fund Ascot was fully invested with Madoff, an assertion that will be at issue in forthcoming lawsuits. Ezra maintains that, at the very least, he let people know that he might invest with other managers. And in some instances, he claims he was more direct. In the case of Yeshiva, with perhaps the largest endowment of any nonprofit he managed, he did report a relationship with Bernie, though it appears not to have been the real one.

Ezra had served as chairman of Yeshiva’s investment committee since about 1994. Not long after that, the committee directed $14.5 million of Yeshiva’s endowment to Ascot, which Ezra passed along to Madoff, collecting his usual fee, initially one percent and later 1.5 percent, standard for all of Yeshiva’s money managers.”

There is also a second article with a more personal color on Mishpocha Madoff: A Family Friend of Bernie Madoff Speaks Out — New York Magazine.