From the WaPo, Jim Hoagland, "The Madoff Generation," 12/21:
"[The] problem is the awakening of the world's youth to the raw deal their parents and grandparents -- my generation, in toto -- are handing them, and the growing anger the young feel about the fetid stables of debt, scandal and corruption they are being left to clean...
"We have taken the greatest financial, technological and political opportunities the world has ever offered and abused them for our own pleasures, greed and egos...
"Bernie [Madoff] was one of all of us who refused to vote for politicians who would raise our taxes and make the nation live within its means, even as we went to war. Bernie was one of all of us who did not demand more diligent supervision of financial markets as long as the outsize returns kept flowing. And in his own special way, Bernie was one of all of us who wasted energy in myriad forms, kept on consuming imported goods even when it meant going into debt to foreign lands that do not wish us well, and cut budgets for regulatory and law enforcement agencies even in the fat years."
