The Ponziest Scheme of All, October 2008
The living, breathing symbol of America's economic squalor is prisoner No. 61727-054, a.k.a. Bernie Madoff, now rotting away in a Butner, N.C., jail cell, doing 150 years for orchestrating the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of humanity. His fraud, uncovered in late 2008, capped years of living on the brink of economic collapse — from a housing bubble fueled by cheap money to excessive borrowing set ablaze by derivatives, so-called financial weapons of mass destruction.

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