Thursday 1 January 2009

Madoff to Bacon - Six Degrees of Deficit


That old game, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” has been given a new contemporary, if unfortunate, twist with recent revelations about Bernard Madoff’s activities. The game involves linking Our Kevin with anyone (but mostly other actors) in as few steps as possible.


Let’s take a quick look and do some linking….


OK, first of all we have Bernard Madoff himself.


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Perhaps not so well known among average folk until recently, Madoff will go down in history as one of the greatest Wall Street swindlers of all time. His fraud – basically a pyramid scheme – has meant that up to fifty billion dollars may be lost due to him. Effectively, rather than rewarding his investors with profits he gave them money which had been paid to him by new investors. With virtually nothing left, he recently felt the urge to fess up and the rest is all over the papers. Let us link him first to…


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Steven Spielberg


Spielberg has admitted that he is one of the fraudster's many victims although it does not seem that he has lost any of his vast wealth directly to Madoff. His charity, the Wunderkinder Foundation – which was set up to help children’s’ health causes as well as environmental groups – was looking forward to a rosy future. Unfortunately, much of the Foundation’s money was invested with Madoff. Spielberg is connected with…


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Tom Cruise


Cruise starred in Spielberg’s film “Minority Report”. Tom has had a long and wonderful career in the movies and has starred with a host of stars during his career. One of the films he starred in was “A Few Good Men”, with….


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Kevin Bacon


Our Kevin didn’t play a very nice person in that film but nothing that he has done makes him deserving of losing a whole chunk of his personal fortune! He and his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, have steered clear of the Hollywood glamour parade and have brought up two teenage children, mostly in New York. They lead a fairly quiet life despite a recent resurgence in their earning power. However, Bacon’s publicist has recently admitted that he has lost an undisclosed amount of money to...



Bernard Madoff.


Done in less than six links!


Our condolences to Kevin, who only last year was instrumental in setting up the charity SixDegrees.org, which links up charities and philanthropists. It is a great shame that someone so involved in charity work should have been ripped off to such a degree! Please excuse that final pun - it was just too irresistible!

4 comments:

Glynis Peters said...

Just don't get me started! This made me so angry when I heard this news story. Your portrayal of this is a good one.

Hein Marais said...

It is just sad how people in trusting positions will most of the time take advantage of people with the best intentions.

Cruiselife & Co said...

This was a great article RJ. I loved Kevin bacon when he was acting more.

Michele Cameron Drew said...

Sad, but just another fine example of the big fish eating the little fish. A great write, RJ.

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