I'm so pissed, I can't even think of a clever title to this post

This makes me want to throw up:

NEW YORK – The many Bernard Madoff investors who withdrew money from their accounts over the years are now wrestling with an ethical and legal quandary.

What they thought were profits was likely money stolen from other clients in what prosecutors are calling the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Now, they are confronting the possibility they may have to pay some of it back.

The issue came to the forefront this week as about 8,000 former Madoff clients began to receive letters inviting them to apply for up to $500,000 in aid from the Securities Investor Protection Corp.

Lawyers for investors have been warning clients to do some tough math before they apply for any funds set aside for the victims, and figure out whether they were a winner or loser in the scheme.

Hundreds and maybe thousands of investors in Madoff's funds have been withdrawing money from their accounts for many years. In many cases, those investors have withdrawn far more than their principal investment.

"I had a call yesterday from a guy who said, 'I've taken out more money then I originally put in, but I still had $1 million left with Madoff. Should I file a $1 million claim?'" said Steven Caruso, a New York attorney specializing in securities and investment fraud.

"I'm hard-pressed to give advice in that situation," Caruso said.

I'm hard-pressed to keep my breakfast down.

Let me make it personal: 2008 left my investment portfolio about $50K poorer than it found it, roughly 40% of its value, about the market performance. Nobody is going to jail over these losses, and no one has been indemnified. These are the risks of equity investing.

Madoff's clients, in contrast, invested with a criminal, and furthermore someone that they probably suspected as a criminal. This criminal did, in fact, pay out profitably some of his early investors with the funds of later investors.

It requires incandescent sociopathy for such people to even consider going to this outfit, the "Securities Investor Protection Corp.", which I suspect is a codeword for "American taxpayer", to ask that their remaining balance with Madoff come out of my pocket and into theirs.

So here is my counter-proposal:

1. First, whatever link that the Securites Investor Protection Corp. (hereafter SIPC) has to the treasury should be severed. If investors what insurance against fraud, they should pay premiums like everybody else.
2. Second, the SIPC should take all necessary legal action to recover from Madoff's early investors every dime of profit they extracted.
3. Third, from such recovered funds, and whatever other funds that the government can extract from Madoff, the SIPC should pay out no more than $.60 on the dollar to Madoff's victims. This is the going rate of return for 2008, and they would be no more poorer than if they had invested in an index fund. This, until the money runs out. After that, they can take their pick of Madoff's appendages.