Few treats in Los Angeles in the 1990s were as gratifying as sandwich made with Silverton's Olive Loaf bread. It was wicked expensive and monster salty, but good God was that stuff fun to eat. (You can still get it and it's the same recipe, though it presumably comes from huge factory instead of her little bakery.)

She was a remarkable success story from my first years in LA from a woman almost precisely my age. She built a food business with simple, unprocessed ingredients, thoughtful recipes and an artisan's hard work. (Later she had some celebrity investment; I remember that Fonzie/Henry Winkler was one them. I don't know whether he hit the motherlode when the company was sold, or whether he too bought into Madoff's scam).

So, I'm thinking that if everyone who enjoyed it as much as I did sent Silverton a check for the cost of one loaf without expecting anything in return, she'd probably be whole again, and I'm tempted to try.

But y'know, thing is, she was never going to giving me a slice of her remarkable 'earnings' from the Madoff fund. And that was dirty money, OK?

The point's been made elsewhere that the people who've been deceived by Madoff include some of the most sophisticated investors who ever lived... Certainly some of the most successful people from many fields in American life. They never asked obvious questions, like why this fund couldn't give computerized access (as could every little ratshit S&L branch on the prairie).

They didn't ask because they didn't want to know. Madoff was a genius, right? Presumably his remarkable returns were happening because the money was coming from other people who weren't doing as well in the transactions. Madoff's investors had found a rewarding investment! They were very happy people!

And now they're very sad.

Reading the article, the tone is appalling... The woman owns two restaurants, but complains that if she doesn't get out of bed and go to work next year, she'll be broke.

That's insane.

Similarly- I loves me some Drezner and McCardle, but Postrel draws righteous blood.

" ... the tone is appalling ... The woman owns two restaurants, but complains that if she doesn't get out of bed and go to work next year, she'll be broke."

Damn right, Crid. The financial success of just about everyone during the last fifteen years or so has been built on a bubble. She ain't the only one who has to get up and go to work every day. And this comment:

"Now, I'm just like 99% of the world. If I had to retire tomorrow, I could not."

Horseshit. She's still better off than 99% of the world, whether she can retire or not.

Boo Hoo. Sucks to be her, I am sure, but even the smallest investers (myself included there, I'm tiny) know never to have it all in one place. Live and learn.

Many people thought Bernie Madoff was doing something illegal, and invested with him anyway, or even because they thought he was cheating.

See Investing with Bernie Madoff>

From the Wall Street Journal: Many Wall Streeters suspected the wrong rigged game. They thought it was insider trading. Here's the best part: That's why they invested with him.

She has a share in Campanile, as well as the building that houses it. Her parents were the original investors, along with a bunch of other people. She owns a share in Mozza, along with other investors. She also owns her house in Hancock Park and one in Italy. You don't need to send her a check.

Two of her kids are in their 20s, so they should be grown up enough to support themselves.

But her parents were the people who suggested the BH money guy, who put all her money in one place--Madoff. Which is an insane way to invest.

I'm glad everyone gets this.

The whole LAT piece linked by Amy is a grotesque. She says things out loud from which no good can come. Especially the parts about not being able to retire at the drop of a hat, and the part about always meaning to diversify, but never getting around to it. Of course she never got around to it! Madoff's returns were remarkable. It's like saying you've been meaning to diversify the mechanisms by which blood is pumped through your veins.

I'm not saying that the LAT tricked her into saying these things. But tone-deafness of this magnitude is hard to explain from the single newspaper in Los Angeles, the media town of media towns. We're all supposed to be a lot more savvy.

(PS- If you didn't spend part of this afternoon driving on the Pacific Coast Highway, with flocks of god-knows-what-kinda birds flying in psychedelic, op-art shapes in sunbeams at the horizon over white-capped waves... Well, then your Christmas wasn't the best that it could have been. And we in LA feel bad about that, on your behalf.)

I hadn't realized it was Madoff's sons who turned him in. It's kinda like Kaczynski's brother.