Pity today’s trust funders.

Their bright futures of easy money and endless leisure went up in smoke with the stock markets and financial crisis. They have seen their future Hamptons homes and Aspen villas crash in value, their charitable foundations get poorer and their bling budgets drastically curtailed. Some may not even get to replace their Bentleys this year.Then there is the group we might call Bernie’s Kids–the economically orphaned
trust funders whose parents lost money in Mr. Madoff’s fraud. We have read about dozens of foundations that lost millions of dollars in that alleged Ponzi scheme, and while most were created for philanthropy, some are vehicles for passing money from parents to their children.
Trust fund kids everywhere are up in arms. And in Palm Beach, Fla., they took matters into their own hands. According to an article in the Palm Beach Post, several teenage boys claimed responsibility Sunday night for festooning Bernie Madoff’s front yard in Palm Beach with toilet paper. The boys said they were “acting in retaliation after they lost their trust funds to the accused swindler” and that their act of toilet-paper justice was sanctioned by their parents.
By the time Palm Beach police arrived at the home Monday morning, the toilet paper was gone and the housekeeper chose not to make a police report, police spokeswoman Janet Kinsella said.
Among those who oppose inherited wealth, like Warren Buffett, the Madoff fraud might actually have a silver lining. While no one likes to see wealth destroyed, some may see Mr. Madoff’s impact on trust funds as a healthy corrective to inherited wealth and dynasty. Mr. Madoff may have finally achieved what Paris Hilton couldn’t–to limit the damages from unearned family money. It may even force some of today’s wealthy offspring to consider more drastic measures for their future–like working for a living.
Of course, it is a tragedy when anyone gets defrauded–whether the wealth is earned or inherited. But rather than this Halloween prank, which seems so, well, Middle School, couldn’t they have been more constructive, or least creative. Perhaps exercising their constitutional right to petition the government for some of that bailout cash?

From Wall Street Journal