Good on you, Judge Chin

Many small investors and no doubt some large ones will welcome the 150 year prison sentence handed down to Bernard Madoff by Judge Denny Chin. Madoff ran the largest of the recently exposed 'Ponzi' scams. In a Ponzi scam, money from new investors, rather than actual profits, is used to pay returns to older investors. Regulators are now catching up with these scams after what 'profits' they were apparently making completely crashed with the global economy last year.

What is amazing is that the regulatory authorities have been so slow about catching out these bank-rolling criminals. Madoff was at it for decades. But he was an esteemed former Chairman of the NASDAQ, the special stock exchange for hitech companies - the core of the future global economy. As a privileged member of the financial elite, he was simply left alone to carry out his crimes. Millions of ordinary people have suffered from financial mis-selling and even theft. Many are, rightly, calling for tough new regulations of financial markets. We have not yet seen much of this - yet billions of dollars of taxpayers' money are being pumped into banks and other ailing financial institutions to bail them out - in case of the very real danger that they will collapse the 'real' economy in which we all live and work.

Madoff and other self-proclaimed 'masters of the financial universe' have a lot to answer for but we, ourselves, are responsible for ensuring that our political leaders take the necessary actions. This means that we need to act at every level. Our own city is caught in the grip of these economic forces. The Wanganui District Council should be spending time sorting out its own mountain of debt to make us less vulnerable. It should act together with other district and regional councils to build financially sustainable local government. They, like we, as individuals, are vulnerable if we remain alone and isolated, but together we can exert real pressure.

Good on you Judge Chin, the son of poor Chinese immigrants to the US. You have struck a blow for us all.