El Podcast

E29: From Wall Street Genius to Prisoner: The True Story of Bernie Madoff

Episode Summary

Award-winning journalist Diana B. Henriques joins the podcast to explain how Bernie Madoff orchestrated the largest Ponzi scheme in history and what it revealed about systemic failures in financial regulation. She also discusses her new book Taming the Street, which explores how FDR's reforms reshaped American capitalism—and why those lessons matter today.

Episode Notes

Financial journalist Diana B. Henriques joins El Podcast to unravel the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, discuss systemic regulatory failures, and explore her forthcoming book on FDR’s financial reforms.

Guest Bio: Diana B. Henriques is a Pulitzer Prize-finalist and award-winning financial journalist known for her investigative reporting on white-collar crime, market regulation, and corporate fraud. She is the author of The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust, adapted into an HBO film starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, and her new book Taming the Street explores FDR’s fight to regulate American capitalism.

Topics Discussed:

• The scale, secrecy, and timeline of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme
• Regulatory blind spots and the illusion of trust in finance
• Differences between sociopathic behavior and criminal choices
• The criminal justice system’s treatment of white-collar crime
• The HBO film adaptation of The Wizard of Lies
• FTX, crypto regulation, and echoes of the unregulated 1920s market
• Henriques’s new book on FDR and the origins of U.S. financial regulation

Top 3 Quotes:

• “Madoff was more comfortable living with himself as a liar than living with himself as a failure.”
• “If it sounds too good to be true, you're dealing with an amateur. Bernie wasn't an amateur—he was a pro.”
• “Ponzi schemes aren’t over—one surfaces every five or six days.”

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