I am sad. The Madoff family has been a staple of our community for as long as I have been alive. I know the brothers, I have been in their offices, and I know their positive reputation. For years, the Madoff's have been active evangelists for the industry, its operations, and driving forces for improving the industry's efficiency and technology. All of this is just plan sad.

I am also angry. With all of the challenges we have had over the past year, none (or should I say few) were because of fraud. While we as an industry had made poor, greed-based business decisions that have come back to haunt us with tragic results, fraud was not high on the cause list. Now that fraud is being introduced it will not only anger Washington, who is already not our largest advocate but it will anger the general population who already believes that our greed, stupidity and our complicity has irrevocably hurt the global economy.

While the alleged Madoff affair is certainly significant, the SEC, who is under pressure from not stopping the sub-prime challenge, will certainly try to make and example not only of Bernie, but unfortunately their whole family business as well.

In addition, the timing of this could not be worse. This event comes just as Washington is looking to re-regulate Wall Street. Compound the poor business decisions leading to the sub-prime collapse with this mess and it undercuts any leverage the industry has with not only Washington but with Main Street. Because of this I can certainly see this event coming back to haunt our industry for years.

While Dick Fuld may have been unfairly targeted as the poster boy of the sub-prime mess, it doesn't seem that he or the firm committed fraud. Unfortunately for the sons, Madoff Securities, and its investors, the real poster boy for this mess may turn out to be Bernie.