On June 16th, Bernie Madoff, the man accused of taking more than 65 billion dollars from unsuspecting people settled his civil case with the SEC. In the settlement, Madoff did not admit any wrongdoing. As of now, the SEC’s internal auditing agency is conducting an investigation of how this was botched so severely. The SEC received numerous complaints about Madoff and chose to ignore them.

An interesting piece of news ended up buried in a flood of other news but I think it’s worth looking at and learning from. Today, all investors of Bernie Madoff who received any payout were ordered to pay it back. This could be very problematic for some investors who received sizable payouts from Madoff.

With that in mind, this week’s list is political in nature but I tried to word as neutral as possible because as a financial person, I’m not overly concerned with who is in office as long as they do right for the economy. I know that the financial experts may disagree but I’m pretty sure that if you want to be a financial expert you must be highly skilled at disagreeing. (Just watch CNBC)