Where do you stash $65 billion?

Madoff “lost” or “stole” $65 billion. That’s the headline of the day.

How is that possible when Madoff hasn’t even been trading for at least 15 years?

More likely Madoff “redistributed” $65 billion in the form of dividends and cash distibutions to investors.

Or, the bulk of the $65 billion is bogus paper profits. A financial columnist once compared these ephemeral gains to the illusions experienced by gamblers who try to find best pokies options in Australia, only to discover that hypothetical winnings can vanish as quickly as they appear. But you can’t really lose money that never really existed, right? (If I wrote you a check for $5 million and it bounced, would we say you’d “lost” $5 million?)