In case you missed the news... Bernie Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 charges. He was taken to jail immediately and will likely never leave jail again.

• Count 1: Securities fraud. Maximum penalty: 20 years in prison; fine of the greatest of $5 million or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense; restitution.

• Count 2: Investment adviser fraud. Maximum penalty: Five years in prison, fine and restitution.

• Count 3: Mail fraud. Maximum penalty: 20 years in prison, fine and restitution.

• Count 4: Wire fraud. Maximum penalty: 20 years in prison, fine and restitution.

• Count 5: International money laundering, related to transfer of funds between New York-based brokerage operation and London trading desk. Maximum penalty: 20 years in prison, fine and restitution.

•  Count 6: International money laundering. Maximum penalty: 20 years in prison, fine and restitution.

• Count 7: Money laundering. Maximum penalty: 10 years in prison, fine and restitution.

• Count 8: False statements. Maximum penalty: Five years in prison, fine and restitution.

• Count 9: Perjury. Maximum penalty: Five years in prison, fine and restitution.

• Count 10: Making a false filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Maximum Penalty: 20 years in prison, fine and restitution.

• Count 11: Theft from an employee benefit plan, for failing to invest pension fund assets on behalf of about 35 labor union pension plans. Maximum penalty: Five years in prison, fine and restitution.

His new living conditions are going to be terrible. Especially from what he is used to. 

It's hard not to feel sorry for him, but I think everyone agrees the punishment is just. 

This one is definitely not good for the Jews.

If I were to cast actors in a movie of the purim story I would have:

Achashverosh : Marlon Brando

Mordechai: James Stewart / Humphrey Bogart

Esther: Natalie Portman

Haman: Al Pacino

Charvona: Morgan Freeman

I don't know how I overlooked this article several months ago.

Bill Miller, former best stock picker ever, was dethroed royally over the last two years. 

He was a portfolio manager that I was always personally impressed by.

It's hard to really believe in the value-add of portfolio managers after this. 

Where are all of our best and brightest? 

If no intelligent investor will invest, it's our responsiblity as idiots to!

Google’s web-based email service, Gmail, has crashed this morning, leaving millions of users from Britain to Australia unable to send and receive messages

The email service went offline at around 10.25am GMT, and the outage appears to have affected users throughout the UK as well as across Europe, and even as far afield as Australia and India.

According to insiders, Co-CEO's Larry Page and Sergey Brin have recently clashed over whether to keep Google's web-based email service free. One insider has even mentioned the possibility that they will dismantle the service completely as it did last year with Google Answers. 

If Google decides to shutter it's free email service it will likely give users little to no warning. Many employees actually thought that today's outage was actually the official closing of the service. According to Google's disclaimer they are allowed to close the free service without warning and without recourse. 

The last two paragraphs are absolutely false. But when I couldn't access my email today I was scared that something like this had happened. It was worse than the worse dream I have ever dreamed.

Today I attended the Bar Ilan ESCape "Family Day BBQ" as it was family day in Israel. 

Why?

Clearly I have lots and lots of free time. 

I did have fun though.

I don't have time to write a long description of the event as I am extremely busy, and most of what I would write would be extremely uninteresting, but I wanted to share with you the most important thing I learned today: Egg fights are downright hilarious.

I don't know why, but eggs flying through the air and eventually cracking on something or someone is extremely funny to me.

My suggestion for Bar Ilan ESCape's next event: A giant egg fight.

Imagine 50, 100, or 200 people lining up in a giant battlefield, with some stationed on tops of roofs, hurling giant eggs at each other; the thrill of seeing hundreds of eggs whirling through the air towards you at one time; the feeling of eggs cracking against your body. 

I checked on Youtube to see if anyone has ever constructed an egg fight as the one described and could not find any. I think such an event, on a large enough scale, could become a great viral video too.

If anyone wants to organize such an egg fight you can definitely count me in.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. 

Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. 

The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. 

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be! 

We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone." 

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. 

I want you to get mad! 

I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. 

I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!" 

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dib2-HBsF08