I apologize. I just went back and read Bee-Dubya-Ell's post. As he points out, the $60B or $65B figure is a shadow, an illusion, a fraudulent bait-claim, and evidently "only" about $15B was put in over the--what?--15 years.

But the point remains, there was never a pot of "even" $15B sitting there; the money was going out in payments nearly as fast as it came in, and of course Madoff was consuming most of what was left.

My figures were wrong, but the burden of what I said in the previous post stands.

Dave Oesterreich