If there is actually a devil, maybe financier Bernie Madoff really did make a deal with him -- it? -- the classic Faustian bargain.
Think about it. In exchange for over 20 years of almost unimaginable luxury, the respect and deference given a seeming financial sage and the adulation of being a philanthropist, even if it was with money he pilfered from his clients, at age 71, Madoff will spend whatever time the Lord sees fit to give him in federal prison, where the treatment given older inmates is said to be pretty good.
His investment company was a giant Ponzi scheme, and Madoff, who knew enough about high finance to dazzle the Securities and Exchange Commission, had to know that, like all Ponzi schemes, his would sooner or later unravel.
When it did, he and his wife, Ruth, had a net worth of about $1 billion. Not many inmates serving 150-year sentences can make that claim. The collapse of his business and the evaporation of its fictitious assets left lots of ruined lives and institutions behind him, and part of the task of cleaning up that mess has fallen to the U.S. Marshals Service.
This weekend in New York they will auction off an assortment of the Madoffs' ill-gotten goodies, and next Tuesday in Florida they will auction off his boats -- his 55-foot custom-built luxury-lot "Bull" and two smaller vessels, "Sitting Bull," if 38 feet can be considered small, and "Little Bull." "Bull" turned out to be an appropriate name for a Madoff enterprise, but not for the reason he chose it.
Also in the Florida lot is a 1999 Mercedes CLK 320 convertible. Sure, it's 10 years old, but it has only 12,297 miles on it.
Earlier, his Montauk beach house sold for $9.41 million, but his Manhattan penthouse is still on the market -- yours for a reduced price of $8.9 million -- as is his Palm Beach house, also reduced at $7.9 million.
Among the other items on the auction block are five designer fur coats, his Hofstra University ring -- perfect for a 1960 grad -- and a blue satin Mets warm-up jacket with "Madoff" stitched on the back. Considering the number of people in New York whose financial well-being he wrecked, you might want to wear it only at away games.
If Ruth Madoff's Edwardian diamond-and-six-emerald bracelet in a lot estimated to go for $15,600 and up is too pricey for you, you might want to bid on the his-and-hers Bernard and Ruth Madoff stationery. And if that's too much, there are some personalized Post-it notes. What you would do with the stationery is anyone's guess, but you could slap up those Post-it notes as handy reminders not to commit financial fraud.
Also available for a buyer with more arms than a Hindu statue are more than 40 watches, including 18 Rolexes. An appraiser estimates that one of those watches, an 18-karat gold vintage Monoblocco, could go for between $75,000 and $100,000. Considering the business he was in, you have to wonder why Madoff would want all those reminders that time was inexorably running out on his scheme.
But you can imagine the gasps of envy and admiration from your golfing foursome when you pull out your personalized Ruth Madoff Big Bertha titanium driver, part of a lot that may go for $350 or so.
At a certain stage in life, people who live grossly over-furnished lives surely ask themselves, "What are we going to do with all this stuff?" Thanks to his deal with the criminal-justice system, the Madoffs don't have that problem.
(Contact Dale McFeatters at McFeattersD(at)SHNS.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com)
JUST DESSERT
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