Tolstoy on Madoff

I've been thinking about how so many who were so wealthy could have lost so much to Bernard Madoff.  But it's nothing new.  Here is Konstantin Levin in Anna Karenina:

". . . but all the same it's vexing and upsetting for me to see on all sides this impoverishment of the nobility, to which I belong and, despite the merging of the classes, am glad to belong.  And impoverishment not owing to luxury -- that would be nothing.  To live with largesse is a nobleman's business, which only noblemen know how to do.  Now muzhiks are buying up the land around us.  That doesn't upset me -- the squire does nothing, the muzhik works and pushes out the idle man.  It ought to be so.  And I'm very glad for the muzhik.  But it upsets me to see this impoverishment as a result of -- I don't know what to call it -- innocence.  Here a Polish tenant buys a beautiful estate at half price from a lady who lives in Nice.  Here land worth ten rubles an acre is leased for one.  Here you gave that cheat a gift of thirty thousand for no reason at all."

"What, then?  Count every tree?"

"Certainly count them.  You didn't count them, but Ryabinin did.  Ryabinin's children will have the means to live and be educated, and yours may not!"