Pickens plan

I don't think putting T. Boone into the same category as Madoff really makes a lot of sense.

The man makes enormous donations to charities, including $7 million to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

He made kind of a big gaffe when a lot of the enormous donations he made to Oklahoma State University were diverted into hedge funds that his company administered, presumably to increase their value in order to fund a new stadium and an athletic village.
When the hedge fund/securities market tanked, a lot of his donations to the university lost much of their value. The hedge fund move was opposed by some of the OSU Board of Regents, as well as some folks in the Stillwater, OK local government.

He's made a few risky financial ventures, but you'd be hard pressed to find a successful businessman who hasn't.

I'm just not convinced that his motives are as nefarious as some of the folks in this thread are implying.
 
I'm not putting him in the same category as Madoff. He's a ruthless businessman, though and through. Granted, he actually does business and isn't simply scamming people out of their money, but there's very scant evidence (if any at all) that Pickens actually gives two squats about altruistic business dealing-- and his record in the business supports that. When he started his TV commercials with the supposed best interests of the country as the message, I didn't take it as some nefarious plot on his part, but neither did I believe a word he was saying about removing US dependence on oil or helping the economy. It can be argued that Pickens has been so successful because he knows how to keep his own best interests in mind while convincing others to buy into his best interests. He's exceedingly good at it (yet I still wouldn't trust him anywhere near the government coffers... or my own bank account).
 
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