Maybe these people were involved in illegal activiies that would have put them in prison? Maybe they stil had life insurance policies that would now pay off to thier families and being worth more dead than alive. It's weird these people didn't have any safe guards somehwere.

Donald Trump seems to have realized this already and had his money in properties. He still has to pay to maintain these with taxes etc.

maybe it's because they've spent their life looking down on us and screwing us at every chance they get, maybe they've helped make life almost impossible for the poor (anyone with less than 5 mill) and they know its only going to get worse in the coming years. Plus they don't have the skills for urban survival we do so for them the prospect is even worse?

I've spent most the night thinking about this yet i still don't get it, if you have 6billion or even only a few mill then surely you have absolute minimum £100,000 hidden away? That's all it would take for me to move somewhere out the way and open a quiet bar, i'd call it the 'failed businessman's escape' or something and spend the rest of my life sunbathing.

Maybe they're so involved with that life that they see no other life fit for them, or they got so involved their conscious and rationality was distorted. They could be involved in schemes up to their necks and realize it's about to come back to them.
If i was dirty rich and i saw a smaller wallet in my future i wouldn't be too happy either, but kill myself no. Now if i had ties to several crimes i would contemplate, and maybe some "higher up's" would put the pressure on me to not reveal anything that could possibly incriminate a whole society.
A lot of variables to think about.

they could have at least shipped their remaining millions to me before they kill themselves, i'd be happy as a pig in S%# to take a "paultry" 1,000,000 bucks.
poor picked on boobs.

What a terrible fate it is being poor and having to live with the mere commoners! Why, he might only be able to salvage $5-10 million from his billion dollar empire!

Sorry, maybe I'm an a$$, but you'll have to excuse me if I don't shed a tear for someone who thinks they're better off killing themselves than living a life where he's still likely better off than 99.9% of the world's population.

The first thing that came to my mind was murder. Maybe these guys knew too much....or maybe Madoff is more corrupt than we thought and actually has a mob/mafia of sorts. Whenever I hear of stuff like this I think conspiracy.

I think you guys are looking at this wrong. As someone recently effected by the struggling economy I can *almost* see where they're coming from. Take out of account the amount of money they have/make and just use percentages. If they suddenly without warning lost 50% of their earnings that could cause serious problems for them.

For example, between my husband and myself we make decent, middle income wages. I just lost my job and now our income has been almost cut in half (about 40% were my earnings). This has now seriously hampered our abilities to pay our bills, loans, mortgage etc. But....go tell MY story to a low income earner and they have the same "quit your whining and try living off my earnings" story you are all spewing. There are differences. Differences in cost of living etc.

It's not about now having to live with new standards of someone earning less than us...it's about LOSING everything we've worked so hard for and haven't quite paid off yet (vehicle, home etc). This has been devastating and totally out of left field unexpected. I'm not crying over not being able to go on a vacation, or buying a new fur coat...I'm concerned about losing my HOME and putting food on the table.

You aren't in their shoes you don't know what their debt to income ratio is/was and it seems to me that you're all coming across a bit jealous and spiteful. Is suicide a cowardly way out...in my option you bet it is! They've now left all the dirty work to their poor families to sort through. Did they do it just because they didn't want to be a "measly commoner"...probably not

Michelle

edit for mistake

[edit on 7-1-2009 by Michelle129]

Maybe his life insurance agent pushed him in front of the train 'cause they didn't want to fork over the cash.

Can't remember the last billionaire that actually allowed him/herself to go broke. These guys aren't stupid and always have an eye on their bottom line. Good chance he had some skeletons. He should have done like Ken Lay and fake his own death in a remote location.

Peace

What kind of a conspiracy board is this?

AEIOU...

Hopefully the vowels help.

(These guys were offed)

Not to mention the financial elite don't really live on the same planet as the rest of us scrubs.

The billionairs suddenly die off so there is a bigger gap between the millionairs and the trillionairs.
The elite don't want any upstarts to try and join the ranks.

A millionair will just seem like another blue collar worker when the Billionair have all gone.