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Bernie Madoff has died

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Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#221

Post by ajcp »

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…

I think the (now deeply ingrained) confusion stems from a misconception surrounding the Citizens United vs. FEC ruling, where the majority opinion in part cited campaign finance restrictions as a violation of First Amendment rights.

Since the Bill of Rights are protections of citizens rights, it has widely been misreported that this meant the SCOTUS ruling de jure recognized corporations to be citizens themselves.

This, of course, is not correct. The majority opinion in part says that "if the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." The key phrase here being "associations of citizens", which the majority interpreted broadly to include corporations. This does not at all bestow personhood or citizenship upon corporations, legal or otherwise. It does afford corporations some protections as they are now legally recognized as "associations of citizens".

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#222

Post by hudon »

jcbrand wrote: post #202
hudon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Real ones. The supply cap is just decided by a coded algorithm. That algorithm can change and the social consensus can and will accept that change. Democracies moved off of the gold standard didn’t they?

It won't be the real one, it will be a fork. Not everyone will accept such a change, so the original 21 million version of the network will still exist and will by many be considered the real bitcoin.

Sure, and I can try paying for gas with gold but at some point I’m forced to do what the herd is doing, and the herd doesn’t care about arguments of “sound money”, they’ll just follow whatever monetary policy the ruling class decides is best.

The herd coming into Bitcoin as we speak implies a weakening of its founding values.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#223

Post by _ea1k »

MereInterest wrote: post #70
_ea1k wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that I see how it could be a ponzi scheme. Ultimately, everyone has as many bitcoins as they believe that they have. The only question is how valuable are those coins? That should always be a function of market demand.

Money goes in, with the promise that you will get more money out at the end. While this works in some cases (e.g. investing in a business that produces value), in this case the only other money in the system comes from other people buying into it. Therefore, I believe bitcoin to be equivalent to a ponzi scheme. Implicit in this is the assumption that bitcoin does not provide value in itself, which is another discussi…

> Money goes in, with the promise that you will get more money out at the end.

I'm not aware of any such promise.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#224

Post by paulpauper »

Even 1st degree murderers, serial rapists, and producers of kid porn get smaller sentences . I think only serial killers get a worse sentence. It goes to show how when it comes to money, prosecutors , judges, and juries do not mess around . Lost money ruins and harms lives as badly as actual violence. Some of the longest sentences are handed out to people who do non violent crimes of a financial nature, often because of how the charges are stacked (wire fraud, laundering, mail fraud, etc.) and then there are multiple counts. SO it is easy to get a very long sentence.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#225

Post by dilippkumar »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #218
dilippkumar wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

“Rate” here meant the first derivative of the number of transactions. Not the “btc usd exchange rate”

An equivalent way to say the same thing is:

“number of bitcoins being purchased with USD per hour > number of USDs being purchased with bitcoin per hour”.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#226

Post by ajcp »

lordnacho wrote: post #90

I remember when this happened, I was running a hedge fund. Supposedly he was doing collars (split-strike conversions) to make this money, but it just seemed implausible to me at the time, since I traded options. I figured he just punted futures, nice and easy way to sorta hug the index (I hadn't seen his "returns"), maybe Martingale it and get lucky until you're not so lucky. But then it turned out he wasn't doing an…

> Supposedly he was doing collars (split-strike conversions) to make this money, but it just seemed implausible to me at the time, since I traded options. I figured he just punted futures, nice and easy way to sorta hug the index (I hadn't seen his "returns"), maybe Martingale it and get lucky until you're not so lucky.

For all I know you might as well be talking about a Rockwell Retro Encabulator[1]

1. https://youtu.be/RXJKdh1KZ0w?t=50

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#227

Post by dimitrios1 »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #201
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…

Order the company to operate out of a prison complex, under guard surveillance, with monitored phone calls, the works. Every employee must go there for his entire shift, no telecommuting.

They'll carve out exceptions for the ones responsible at the top. You'll just be penalizing the common wage earner who have to feed their families.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#228

Post by hamandcheese »

newsclues wrote: post #187
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…

Normalization imprisonment of boards of directors and executive officers of companies that break the law.

I tend to agree, but how do you deal with sketchy companies installing a sham board and executives?

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#229

Post by devmunchies »

cletus wrote: post #30

Here's the one lesson I really want us to all learn from this: the only thing the rich fear is prison because prison robs them of time. Fines are just the cost of doing business. There are many other scandals: the whole subprime disaster, pollution from plants and the like where no one went to prison and people really should've.

so you're suggesting that there should be different punishments based on how much money someone has?

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#230

Post by sooheon »

bluedino wrote: post #155
cogman10 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the US most commonly jail's people for (drug offenses) is barbaric. That said, the reason for jail is to not only rehabilitate but also to deter. The problem we have is that white collar crimes almost never result in jail time for the rich. The financial deterrent is just ineffective at stopping bad behavior. They can run the risk/rewards calculations and often come up with the conclusion that "we'll make more m…

>> What the US most commonly jail's people for (drug offenses) is barbaric. If you're talking about prisons, nearly 4 times as many people are in prison for violent crimes (robbery, assault, rape, murder...) than drug charges. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html

Great link, thanks.
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