"Say, 'She lost a bundle with Bernie Madoff,'" comedienne and facial dysmorphic disorder victim Joan Rivers asked the Times when interviewed by Deborah Solomon some weeks ago. "Everybody is walking around now saying that, and that shows that you used to be very rich."

This is what we thought of today when Wells Fargo & Co. — the bank that was so sure of itself back in October that its chairman told Hank Paulson to keep his dirty taxpayer cash, they didn't need any of it — wrote down $294 million. And then blamed it on Bernie Madoff. Not their exposure to Madoff, mind you, because good ol' homesteading Wells would never have gotten into bed with such an obvious rube, but their exposure to people who had exposure, as CFO Howard Atkins explained to Bloomberg: "This is not our exposure to Madoff, this is our exposure to customers of ours who had investments in Madoff."

“They’ve gone from being wealthy to not having any money,” Atkins said. He didn’t say how many were involved.

It doesn't matter how many of them there are, you see, only that they used to be very rich.

Wells Fargo Says Madoff Scheme Cost Bank $294 Million [Bloomberg]