TRB: Why they clapped for Sam Bankman-Fried

The Reformed Broker writes:

Last night’s interview between the New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin and Sam Bankman-Fried ended with the host thanking the accused criminal mastermind for coming, despite the protestations of his lawyers. The audience applauded as the screen went black. They had just witnessed more than an hour of lies, obfuscations, ass-coverings and subject-changings as delivered by one of the most talented con artists in American history. And there they were, clapping like the studio audience at a daytime talkshow. Like Rachel Ray just pulled the nine-layer Mexican bean dip of a lifetime right out of her own ass and slapped it down on the counter. I was watching the livestream on the train. A lot of other people were too. When it ended just after 6pm I looked around to see if anyone else thought it was weird that they clapped for him. I couldn’t tell.

But I thought it was weird. Bernie Madoff confessed his crime to his sons and he was in handcuffs before the end of the day. And that shit was like fifty times more complex than wiring customer funds into a hedge fund or using collateral to buy properties in the Bahamas in your parents’ names. Madoff had an entire floor of an office building in Manhattan dedicated to creating fake account statements, staffed with multiple accomplices, over the course of decades. Sam looks like an amateur in comparison. A dabbler. Still walking free, weeks later. It’s inexplicable. As inexplicable as the round of applause he received after an hour of accidentally sorta confessing to multiple financial crimes.

So I thought about why that applause happened. I came up with some potential reasons for it…

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