A handful of distraught investors have committed suicide. Charities and foundations have been ruined. Pensioners have seen their life savings wiped out. The scale of the fraud committed by Bernard Madoff is astounding. No one knows how much money he stole in a so-called Ponzi scheme, a deception that paid returns not from investments but from new capital. Prosecutors say that $170 billion flowed through the principal Madoff account over 30 years. It is estimated that around $50 billion, more than the GDP of Luxembourg , is missing. Much of it paid for the former Nasdaq stock market chairman’s lavish lifestyle. Yesterday he was sentenced to 150 years in prison. He will die in jail (see opposite page).

His contrition, his guilty plea and his proclaimed “shame” at the pain that he has caused are of small comfort to the hundreds of people he has ruined. Their anguish is profound, their anger justified. But the shame is not Madoff’s alone. Since his admission six months ago that his entire business was “one big lie”, investors, regulators and law enforcement officials have been racked by their own astonishing blindness and negligence. How did he get away with such an elementary racket for so long? Why did no one notice that the returns were unfeasibly consistent, affected neither by downturns, stock market jitters or investor confidence? Why did no blue-chip company remark that no one could point to a Madoff stake? Why, in short, did common sense not tell the foolish, the greedy and the lazy that if something is too good to be true, it probably isn’t true?

Though it is too late to close the door on this abuse, Madoff’s fraud appears to be far from the only standing rebuke to America’s financial regulators. Allen Stanford, the Texan financier arrested on charges of running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme, appeared in a Houston federal court for the third time yesterday. Two earlier spectacular scandals — the WorldCom accounting fraud, and the Enron affair that tarnished the reputation of so many senior US officials — have created an impression that white-collar crime not only occurs in America, as it surely does everywhere, but that it is also prosecuted there. The US may boast some of the most spectacular frauds, but also the most public convictions. The “perp walk” — the intentional march of the perpetrator of a white-collar crime, stripped of his swanky suit and chauffeur-driven limo and dressed in an orange jump suit and bundled into the back of a squad car — serves a valuable purpose in a free-market economy to show everyone that no one is above the law.

By comparison, Britain’s record in tackling financial crime is appalling. It strains credulity that, with the revelations of incompetence verging on criminal negligence shown up by the downturn, no one has had to answer charges for the banks and companies brought low by sharp practice and regulatory neglect. The blame must partly be laid on the Serious Fraud Office, whose record is remembered as much for the collapse of high-profile trials as for convictions. The political reluctance to go after those who seemed to be raking in money for the City has fomented the widespread anger with the City itself. Respect can be returned only by the rigorous enforcement of the rules. Madoff’s exemplary sentence will, at least, send a warning to financiers across America. The lesson should be heeded here too.