TruthSavvy.

President Obama has given the nation hope, but is it enough? Indignation remains widespread because Wall Street has failed its public trust and politicians have yet to find ways to counter outrages with real justice. “Heads need to roll,” proclaimed Moneycentral’s Jim Jubak recently, for if we fail to punish wrongdoers we are bound to repeat this disaster (“Why the CEO salary cap is a joke,” Feb. 10).

The American economy could operate more safely by looking to the essentials in Aesop’s Fables than by following Irwin Kellner. Mr. Kellner’s spending advice might pump up the stock market for a short time — long enough to allow elites to dump unwanted holdings at better prices — but would serve to weaken the U.S. relative to other nations like China. Furthermore, added borrowing will increase the national calamity once there is insufficient demand for Treasuries to support the public debt.

A movie about Bernie Madoff should be made if it will help Americans see that covetousness for undeserved gain keeps us from setting up an honorable and just architecture for our financial markets. The movie needs to focus on more than the Madoff family scandal. It needs to evaluate the scandal of the American financial mind, and do so in quite the same fashion that the Christian scholar Mark Noll evaluated “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” in his 1995 book.

The disconcerting story of Robert Rubin's career overlaps the maddening story of Bernie Madoff's livelihood: Both men held elevated positions on Wall Street, and both believed in an approach to capitalism that is dangerous to the common good. In Madoff's case he turned the general architecture of the stock market into a personalized business, thus making himself liable for reproach that the general market has largely escaped: formal Ponzi status. What percentage of the American public understands this?

Capitalism without morality is a terrible sight to behold. Prudently responsible market capitalism is superior to communism because it preserves the sowing and reaping equation without governmental force. Merit deserves its reward just as demerit and ineptitude must be penalized to preserve the legitimacy of law and show the way to goodness.

Which anti-Claus has done more harm: The Federal Reserve or Bernie Madoff? A holiday stage play could show the FED creating money while Madoff filches it. But in the larger picture the FED is by far the bigger bandit. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme aimed at making money for a select group. But greed and dishonesty caught up with Madoff when the economy turned, resulting in the forfeiture of illegitimate profits and perhaps much of the invested cash.

How is it that the accomplished wife of a veteran journalist specializing in financial planning loses her entire 401k to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme? Sadly, the lady also loses her job because her employer — a North Boston area charitable foundation with a demographically loaded mission — has lost its assets in the Madoff scandal.

Is any observer of Wall Street surprised that a former chairman of the Nasdaq Exchange has been charged by prosecutors for running a Ponzi scheme in which by his own estimate some $50 billion has been lost for investors? Is anyone shocked that this operation allegedly went on for years right under the collective noses of SEC officials?