Millennials Have No Idea Who Bernie Madoff Was
And that says a lot about their financial mindset
One of my favorite things about graduation season is reflecting on the mindset of young people embarking on their first career. For the 1.6 million Millennials entering the real world this spring, the Cold War has always been over and the Internet has always existed. They have no living memory of when testing positive for HIV was akin to a death sentence. For them, Sam Kinison and Freddie Mercury have always been dead. Email is too slow; snail mail, unthinkable. Cursive is a forgotten skill. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive movie director than the brutish Dirty Harry. Korean cars have always been ubiquitous on American roads. In a new poll, more than half of 18-to-29 year olds could not identify the Bernie Madoff investment scam—a defining $65 billion fraud and the largest Ponzi scheme in history. This scandal broke in 2008 and has been in the news repeatedly. Trusting investors lost their life savings and many will never fully recover. Yet in just half a decade young people have largely forgotten the scam and, presumably, the lessons that sprang from it. More in Time here.
