sjehay

I zoned out at Section II ("The Central Banking Narrative Has Collapsed") because every single paper he cites is written by him (and in fact so are 18 of the 20 publications he cites in the entire article)

Incentives are generally designed to attract inward investment and job creation, rather than to persuade companies to sell into the market (i.e. please set up your factory/European HQ here, regardless of where you're actually going to sell most of your goods)

I am not a lawyer, but have had a similar argument with a recruiter in the past (their claim sounds like it was rather more concrete than this one). We sent them a firm letter from a lawyer, and never heard from them again. It might be worth taking advice before paying the £15k.

If they are short Madoff, it's in their interest for its value to go to zero - i.e. him getting shut down by law enforcement makes them a lot of money, so their incentives are very much aligned with those of the regulators. (If you're cynical, you might argue that in an ideal world they'd like the rest of the world to remain in the dark for long enough for them to build up a sizeable position first). Conversely, investors would benefit from it finding more investors before being shut down so they could cash out first.