It's not just a guess: Markopolos says his now-famous probe of Madoff's Ponzi fraud tracked the scamster's "feeder funds" in Europe.

And Markopolos reminds us that not nearly all of Madoff's investors got bilked:

It's up to trustee Irving Picard to recover that money, but how sharp Picard's claws really are has yet to be determined. So far, not so sharp.

Markopolos didn't appear at all nervous when he testified before Congress earlier this year, but now he's positively comfortable, the Boston Globe reports, having seen him in action last night at a financial conference at Boston College:

Proving once again that paranoia can be a powerful tool.

The stock market may be returning to normal: Before this morning's opening bell, futures rose on the news that jobless Americans' claims for state unemployment benefits declined.

That prompted the usual woofing. The Wall Street Journal quotes Arrow Funds investment chief Bill Flaig as saying, "We seemed to have priced in a V-shaped recovery," but adding, "We're really not going to see the data for another few months."

The real question: Are we so lucky as to have reached the bottom of the "V"? Flaig earns a 6 on the Woofness Index for the mildly sexual content of his "V-scale" prediction, mitigated by his caveat.

Andrew Madoff told friends, according to Vanity Fair's David Margolick, that what dad Bernie Madoff did to him and his brother, Mark, was "a father-son betrayal of biblical proportions."

No, Andrew, you're just woofing some bullshit. Here's a betrayal of biblical proportions: Abraham being all too willing to kill Isaac — on orders from God, as if Abe were a Scott Roeder stalking abortion docs. And that father-son betrayal was only halted by another hallucination by Abraham that God told him not to kill his son. If you recall, Abe had hoodwinked Isaac into thinking that the two of them were just going to go pray. Yeah, right. And Bernie Madoff was just going to invest your money. Bernie's scam, not his "betrayal" of his sons, was of biblical proportions.

Andrew gets a 9 on the Woofness Index.

"Funemployment." What a great word for the recession! The Urban Dictionary uses it in a sentence: "I spent all day Tuesday at the pool; funemployment rocks!"

Doubt that it's so popular a word in Detroit.

But leave it to an academic, USC business prof David Logan, to explain it with sublime bullshit: "Recession gives people permission to be unemployed."

You get a 9.5 on the Woofness Index.

Relieved that you've still got health insurance? Don't break a leg while you're jumping for joy.

"Medical bills, plus related problems such as lost wages for the ill and their caregivers, contributed to 62% of all bankruptcies filed in 2007," the L.A. Times reports, citing a survey by two Harvard profs.

One of the authors, Harvard doc and prof Steffie Woolhandler (a longtime activist for national health care), says: "Health insurance is not a guarantee that illness won't bankrupt you."

No bullshit. That rates a zero on the Woofness Index.

Oh, what a joy it was to see this CNN headline last week: "Economists: Recession to end in 2009."

You could have watching Family Feud, on which the host regularly proclaims, "Survey says..." And the story, which said "the end of the recession is in sight," according to a "panel of 45 economists," has about as much connection to reality.

CNN's story contained more than just a whiff of woofness (see this item for a definition of this synonym for "bullshit"). I'd give it a 9 on the Woofness Index.

Why was it bullshit? On Seeking Alpha, Eduard Fischer points out why in "7 Arguments Against a Quick Recovery."