In 2009, US financier Bernard (Bernie) L. Madoff was jailed for 150 years after pleading guilty to
running a massive ponzi scheme. While superficial condemnation was widespread, his US$65 billion
fraud cannot be understood apart from the institutions, practices and fictions of contemporary
finance capitalism. Madoff’s scam was rooted in the wider political prioritization of accumulation
through debt expansion and the deregulated, desupervised and criminogenic environment
facilitating it. More generally, global finance capital reproduces many of the core elements of
the Madoff scam (i.e. mass deception, secrecy and obfuscation), particularly in neoliberalized
Anglophone societies. We call this ‘Madoffization’. We suggest that societies are ‘Madoffized’,
not only in the sense of their being subject to the ill-effects of speculative ponzi finance, but also
in the sense that their prioritization of accumulation through debt expansion makes fraudulent
practices, economic collapse and scapegoating inevitable.