New York Times money columnist on Yeshiva trustee Elie Wiesel, and other cargo cultists:
[They] entrusted their life savings to a man they thought “was God,” as Elie Wiesel put it not long ago….
It [is] hard not to feel sad for … all the victims of Mr. Madoff’s evil-doing. But one also has to wonder: what were they thinking?
At a panel a month ago, put together by Portfolio magazine, Mr. Wiesel expressed, better than I’ve ever heard it, why people gave Mr. Madoff their money. “I remember that it was a myth that he created around him,” Mr. Wiesel said, “that everything was so special, so unique, that it had to be secret. It was like a mystical mythology that nobody could understand.” Mr. Wiesel added: “He gave the impression that maybe 100 people belonged to the club. Now we know thousands of them were cheated by him.”
… People did abdicate responsibility — and now, rather than face that fact, many of them are blaming the government for not, in effect, saving them from themselves…