On 11th December 2008, financier Bernie Madoff was arrested for the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, writes Eliot Wilson

The 1990s had been an economic boom time for much of the West, with America growing at more than three per cent a year. It seemed as if the post-Cold War world might be one of progress and opportunity.

Come the new millennium, however, even if the most dire predictions of disaster had proved unfounded, the climate changed abruptly. The dot-com bubble burst in 2000; the al-Qa’eda terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001 had a seismic effect on global markets; and the spectacular collapse of Enron, the “smartest guys in the room”, three months later began a torrent of financial scandals which would scar the 2000s.

There still seemed to be success stories. Bernie Madoff, the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Queens, New York, had founded a penny-stock brokerage in 1960 with $5,000 saved from working as a lifeguard on Long Island. He had challenged the cloistered world of Wall Street’s white-shoe stockbrokers with aggressive marketing, accepting small-value clients and embracing electronic trading. In the early 1970s he had helped establish the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated........

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