Law Humor

Trusting the Trustee

From: Steve Harbeck
President, SIPC

For those of you that tuned into our live show today, I trust that we made it clear to the media reporters attending the show that I'm the straight man in this team. Irv works for me; and SIPC--the insurance company that I preside over, pays Irv's bills.

That said, if there's any confusion about who is driving the claim payout strategy, or who is determining who gets how much, including the rationale behind denying Alte Cocker investor claims, including those that might have simply transferred Bernie Dollars from one account at BMIS to another BMIS account, and might not have actually withdrawn real money from their accounts; rest assured, the FIFO analysis is as logical as any, and the interests of the insurance company will always prevail.

As an insurance entity, our objective is to pay out as little as possible, to delay those payments for as long as humanly possible, and to do it in a way that is as painless as possible for our staff members.

We have many constituents that we answer to; including powerful politicians that need to take care of their special interests, and the least of which are those that might have to schlep up to New York via wheelchair in order to contest any claim denials that we might have made to date.

Hank Greenberg understands these issues, which is exactly why I've sent my resume over to his new company!

In the interim, we will continue plugging away until we get it right.

Full post as published by Bernard Madoff on October 28, 2009 (boomark / email).