> For what it’s worth, I read the chapter and I am also unclear on how a Ponzi scheme is a form of short selling.
Problem: Madoff gave his clients statements showing trades (mostly long, I guess) that never happened.
Solution: If Madoff's firm, which was a market maker, had made a matching short trade at the same time as the client's hypothetical long trade, they would net out and the firm wouldn't need to send either order to the market. (It would be legit for this to happen from time to time as long as the client got NBBO or better.)
Problem: Madoff has no record that his firm did any such matching short trades.
Solution: It's a "books and records" violation.
Problem (unmentioned): If he did record all these short trades, his books and records would have shown that his firm was wildly insolvent for decades.
Solution (unmentioned): ???
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This is loosely similar to the "is fraud margin trading?" jokes about SBF's explanation of the FTX collapse. Madoff's explanation is loosely similar to SBF's "margin trading" explanation, except that FTX _did_ keep records showing that its customers' money was missing because Alameda had borrowed billions on margin (albeit $8 billion of that was recorded in a "hidden, poorly internally labeled" account in the name of some fake Korean, various flags prevented interest from accruing on the margin and removed all reasonable bounds on the size of the margin position, etc., etc.), whereas in Madoff's case it sounds more like a completely post hoc explanation.
> For what it’s worth, I read the chapter and I am also unclear on how a Ponzi scheme is a form of short selling.
Problem: Madoff gave his clients statements showing trades (mostly long, I guess) that never happened.
Solution: If Madoff's firm, which was a market maker, had made a matching short trade at the same time as the client's hypothetical long trade, they would net out and the firm wouldn't need to send either order to the market. (It would be legit for this to happen from time to time as long as the client got NBBO or better.)
Problem: Madoff has no record that his firm did any such matching short trades.
Solution: It's a "books and records" violation.
Problem (unmentioned): If he did record all these short trades, his books and records would have shown that his firm was wildly insolvent for decades.
Solution (unmentioned): ???
----
This is loosely similar to the "is fraud margin trading?" jokes about SBF's explanation of the FTX collapse. Madoff's explanation is loosely similar to SBF's "margin trading" explanation, except that FTX _did_ keep records showing that its customers' money was missing because Alameda had borrowed billions on margin (albeit $8 billion of that was recorded in a "hidden, poorly internally labeled" account in the name of some fake Korean, various flags prevented interest from accruing on the margin and removed all reasonable bounds on the size of the margin position, etc., etc.), whereas in Madoff's case it sounds more like a completely post hoc explanation.
Wait, what happened with the person who stopped??