A plea deal for Bernie Madoff

Signs of a plea deal are afoot in the $50 billion fraud case of Bernie Madoff, the New York Times is reporting.

Madoff's attorneys are negotiating frantically with prosecutors, and a judge has refused to revoke Madoff's bail despite the fraud suspect mailing more than a million dollars worth of assets to family and friends.

The main question in Madoff's Ponzi scheme is, "Where's the money?"  A plea deal might help answer that question.  Then again, the answer might be, "He invested it in subprime loans."

You know somebody whose watching the Madoff case closely?  Rod Blagojevich.  It's homework for him.

With a plea deal, Madoff likely will get a lighter sentence than he would if he went to trial.  A jury might want to sentence him to 100 years in jail.  A judge might sentence him to one second in jail for every dollar that was bilked from an investor.  Let's see, that works out to — 1,585 years!  Never mind.