MADOFF made off with everyone's money!

There is an old, and true saw that if something is too good to be true, it isn't. But greed causes blindness, to ethical judgement and common sense. The best, long tested minds in the investment world consider yields in the range of 3-4% to be the norm, and struggle to reach that number on a consistent basis over a significant number of years. Even so, down markets can cause yields to turn negative, and no genius has yet revealed himself as able to regularly predict such downturns and
consistently profit from them. The smartest investors shun market timing. They investigate sound companies that have grown and been profitable over many market cycles, and invest in those for the long term.
If some whiz kid comes along who promises yields forever of 8%, attained by mysterious, secret methods unknown to anyone else, sophisticated or not, he should be approached with extreme caution. Such genius has yet to be discovered, as the
Madoff debacle proves. At least he should be entrusted with a modest percent of your assets, and the balance should be diversified among other, lesser geniuses.
Finally, the failure of the SEC to detect the fraud, which was ludicrously obvious if an even cursory inspection of his operation was conducted, is symptomatic of the Bush administration's cozy, incestuous relationship with Wall Street and its disdain for regulation of business.
The cost of unravelling the Madoff scam will be enormous, and will occupy lawyers, and the courts for many years. That process will likely survive many of the injured investors.