How apt that 2008 – the year when all economic and financial certainties seemed to shift – should come to a close with the story of Bernard Madoff (appropriately pronounced Made Off).

Here was a highly respected, former NASDAQ chairman, whose credentials and probity no one would dream of questioning, a man who famously turned away many ultra-rich clients to create an ever more exclusive feel to his ‘hedge fund’ investments and who explained away his uncannily consistent success with a conspiratorial “I can’t say too much, it’s a proprietorial system”.

People believed what they wanted to believe because, well, who cared too much so long as the money came in.

The man’s mystique and the easy rewards for those who didn’t ask too many questions were a winning combination.

Yet, in the end there was nothing sophisticated about the formula. It was just pass the parcel – with billions of dollars in the brown wrapper. A cheap Ponzi con, practiced by the last person anyone would suspect. As he was arrested, Mr Made Off is reported to have said that it was “all just one big lie".

What better way of summing up the year (or almost a decade) than the demise of this man and his plan?

The end of cheap and easy money for people who could never hope to repay - and the end of naïve trust in big financial names and institutions everywhere.

After 2008, who trusts their money in big banks anymore? Who thinks their pension fund is safe? Who any longer is tempted by promised profits so long as they don’t ask too many questions?

The word is over-used, but surely Mr Made Off really is a zeitgeist.

Makes buying something you can see and touch and control rather appealing. Like bricks and mortar. Let them out for a reasonable rent and hold for as long as possible in a marketplace that at least works according to principles we can measure – if not always perfectly predict. Thanks Mr Made Off for providing a reminder of this.