But Ponzi was special. He bilked Americans for $10 million back in 1919-1920 when that kind of money was a huge fortune. Even as the wolves closed in on Ponzi, making a run on a bank he ran, the namesake of financial schemes personally handed out coffee and donuts to those in line.

Despite all of the Wall Street problems – Fannie Mae, Enron and more – it’s hard to believe we could be so easily taken in by someone long on promises and short on honesty.

But CNBC’s Jim Cramer had a harsh reminder recently that government does this to us all the time. The “Mad Money” host was critical of “everybody in the press, who’s calling Bernie Madoff’s alleged $50 billion scam the ‘largest Ponzi scheme ever.’”

The Dec. 17 show highlighted a much larger and longer running Ponzi scheme – Social Security. “We all know the name of the biggest Ponzi scheme in history and it’s not even illegal. In fact, it is run by the U.S. government. And the name of it – well they call it Social Security,” Cramer explained.

He’s right. The whole premise of Social Security is that more workers will come into the system to prop up those who retire. Only, the number of people working is declining as the number of retirees grows. Eventually, we’ll all count on one worker named Atlas to keep the program going. Money is also an issue. While the program is projected to be insolvent by 2042, it stops bringing in enough cash to cover the outflows as of 2017.

Cramer actually understates the case. Social Security is worse than a Ponzi scheme. At least with Ponzi and his acolytes, you get promises of great wealth and high returns. With Social Security, many of us will be lucky to get our money back.

Barnum was right indeed.