Lyric Hughes Hale: Why the Bankers Aren't In Jail. "The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been discovered, because it was properly executed.
" Balzac, Le Père Goriot Conversely, when execution is faulty and failure occurs, crimes are exposed, and an effort to apportion blame and punishment is launched by the guilty and innocent alike. This is an apt description of what happened when Bernard Madoff's investment firm collapsed. As long as high returns were being generated, no one wanted to ask questions, including the obvious "isn't this too good to be true? " When the music stopped and markets tanked, the entire scheme collapsed. The Big Picture. Mike Lipper's Blog.