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Mr Madoff and Mr Flothow

Names are destiny, as I’ve observed in a previous blog.

The building my son lived in recently “retained the services of Mr Jonathan Flothow, the buildings heating consultant, to investigate and recommend options for replacing both the burner and boiler.” How could he not go into that line of business?

As for Mr Madoff, he has the right name too.

I once wrote in a column in Risk about cranks, that

“Finance, after nutrition and psychology, may be the field in which it?s hardest to distinguish between a really enthusiastic academic or practitioner and a genuine crank ? Recently I saw an academic article that found ?strong global evidence that stock returns are lower on days around a full moon than… around a new moon.? Crankademic? Pranktitioner? The real thing? Can one devise a Turing test to tell the difference? “

If it wasn’t so embarrassing to be part of a business with so many scams, it would be mildly schadenfreude-ishly gratifying to observe how easily supposedly smart and rich individuals are taken in. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

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