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Bernie Madoff has died

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Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#211

Post by sn41 »

aero-glide2 wrote: post #195
EMM_386 wrote: post #63

Always worth reading: The World's Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud [PDF] Nov 7, 2005 Submission to the SEC - Harry Markopolos https://www.math.nyu.edu/faculty/avellane/madoffmarkopoulos....

What happened to his General Electric fraud allegations?

The accusation sounded credible - his main idea seemed to be that GE oversold insurance schemes that were detrimental to GE if the average lifespan increased. Which it has.

On the other hand, there were some conflict of interest issues - I am not sure what the exact issue was.

But on the whole, the issue seems to have disappeared with the great Covid bust-boom of the stock market.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#212

Post by macjohnmcc »

askesisdev wrote: post #183
lordnacho wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were they coding? Sounded to me like nothing at all was going on inside.

They built software to create a fake history of the trading and also imitated certain software from other companies and regulators so the customer could check the trades were real. There is a decent book on Madoff called 'Wizard of Lies'

Yeah and knowing the programmer personally at the time I have no reason to believe he would not have known what he was helping to facilitate. Eventually the two programmers asked for their pay to be in diamonds like they were working for a James Bond villain and that is not how you do if you are ignorant of what they were doing.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#213

Post by rjsw »

hackflip wrote: post #200
mannykannot wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second paragraph of the post you are replying to seems to anticipate this response: "So, we need to both move more towards prison and start digging in to which actual people inside bad corporations were responsible for deciding to do wrongdoing." In the post-Enron world, however, executives have learned how to use incentives to motivate their minions to break the law without being explicitly told to do so. On the…

"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"

Also "Working Towards the Führer" [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kershaw#%22Working_Towards...

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#214

Post by 55555 »

john_moscow wrote: post #167
ryandrake wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations (which are usually the payer of fines for bad behavior) don't fear prison because they can't be physically imprisoned. You can't put Exxon in jail. And, lawmakers deliberately make it so damn hard to pierce the corporate liability veil and hold shareholders or directors personally liable for the corporation's actions. So, we need to both move more towards prison and start digging in to which actual peopl…

>Joe Bigshot, former SVP at BigCo, was sentenced to 5 years in jail, and had to sell two of his nine houses to pay the $20M fine" is much better. Well, they sort of do that in Russia. So the CEO/founder of almost any sketchy company is a homeless person that signed the paperwork in exchange for some free vodka. Didn't particularly solve the problem. Corporate fines just need to be sufficient to make such "business" u…

> Well, they sort of do that in Russia. So the CEO/founder of almost any sketchy company is a homeless person that signed the paperwork in exchange for some free vodka. Didn't particularly solve the problem.

Can you find me a reference to this? I could believe it, but by default I'd be surprised if it were true at any real scale.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#215

Post by dep_b »

sokoloff wrote: post #13
dep_b wrote: post #8

The scapegoat. The only one who ripped off the rich instead of the poor. I would like to see people like Paul Singer die in prison, who made the lives of millions of people miserable, but I guess it's all legal what he did...

If you're talking about this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Singer_(businessman) I don't get any clear understanding of why someone would wish to see him die in prison.

Argentina was paying off debts when he pushed them into default to force a full payout on a debt he only paid a fraction for.

The IMF puppet president that got installed after that and that paid him off in full doubled the Argentinian foreign debt, resetting the economic situation to 2001.

An entire generation will know nothing but a broken country and regression without hope for future. People were dying of hunger in 2001 and people are dying of hunger now.

But Paul Singer got his 500% ROI.

And read up about what he did in Detroit if you think he only does it to some 3rd world countries.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#217

Post by geoduck14 »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #113
nemacol wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the % of income idea.

I like it simply because screwing the rich and middle as hard as the poors on trivial issues is gonna make it real clear real quick how excessive penalties for common civil offenses are and pretty soon thereafter the laws will change. HN has this fantasy of $10k speeding tickets. In reality it's gonna look like 100mph speed limits, $100 fines for you and $10 fines for your nanny.

>gonna make it real clear real quick how excessive penalties for common civil offenses are and pretty soon thereafter the laws will change.

I like you. This is good.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#218

Post by OscarCunningham »

dilippkumar wrote: post #69
xutopia wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Bitcoin different than gold though? Is gold also a Ponzi scheme?

Not GP, here is my thesis. Right now, on coinbase, rate of bitcoin purchases paid in dollars > rate of dollars purchased in bitcoin. Anyone who wants to exit bitcoin today is getting dollars from people buying into bitcoin. When this changes (for whatever reason), coinbase and other exchanges have a limited capacity to buy back bitcoins for dollars, assuming they would even want to do that in the middle of a run on c…

"rate of bitcoin purchases paid in dollars > rate of dollars purchased in bitcoin"

Why don't these two numbers have to be equal?

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#219

Post by albatross »

bedhead wrote: post #209
ryandrake wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations (which are usually the payer of fines for bad behavior) don't fear prison because they can't be physically imprisoned. You can't put Exxon in jail. And, lawmakers deliberately make it so damn hard to pierce the corporate liability veil and hold shareholders or directors personally liable for the corporation's actions. So, we need to both move more towards prison and start digging in to which actual peopl…

This is one reason why CEO pay has skyrocketed: hazard pay. Something goes wrong, even if the CEO had no idea about it, and who gets vilified and maybe even prosecuted? The CEO. Just saying...there are trade offs for everything.

Is that really a reason for skyrocketing pay though? Struggling to come up with any instances where this actually happened and such "hazard pay" was "justified."

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#220

Post by monocasa »

seneca wrote: post #190
etripe wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't put Exxon in jail. If a corporation is a legal person with inalienable rights (as the SCOTUS seems to have decided on), but is intangible and immortal at the same time, what can you do? Any of the below: * freezing assets (=~ reclamation) * seizing accounts (=~ civil forfeiture) * suspend a business license (=~ locking them up) * introduce a revenue cap (=~ prison labour) * remove lobbyists (=~ losing vot…

> If a corporation is a legal person with inalienable rights (as the SCOTUS seems to have decided on) Please stop repeating this nonsense. Corporate Personhood is a legal idea, and does not mean a "corporation is a legal person". Without corporate personhood, you wouldn't be able to sue a company for wrongdoing if the guilty employee quit, or even enforce basic contracts. There are serious problems with corporations…

You can sue the government even though they aren't granted personhood.
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