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Bernie Madoff has died

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Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#261

Post by tfehring »

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…

I’d also like to see more fines in the range of multiple years’ worth of revenue, but it wouldn’t change directors’ incentives since they still have limited downside exposure and therefore asymmetric payoffs. Even if a CEO runs a company into the ground they’ll probably still be rich since they only have levered exposure on the upside (through ISOs, etc.) and comparatively limited exposure on the downside.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#262

Post by bobthechef »

finikytou wrote: post #196
bidirectional wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly are sell-side trading desks stealing from the poor?

I meant Madoff would be free to do whatever he wants. But ill bite. Just look at all the robinhood millenials getting robbed by Citadel that literally has insider knowledge of all the robinhood transactions.

The more fundamental problem is that interest is usury and usury is theft. And naturally, the entire modern banking system runs on interest (which is probably the least egregious of all the wacky financial instruments out there). You'll hear nonsense about the opportunity cost and risk, none of which have any relevance to or rebut the notion that charging interest (as opposed to just fixed administrative fees) is theft. Time isn't a commodity, so why am I paying you more the longer it takes me to pay back my loan?

Is your gold and silver ewes and rams? Shylock cannot tell. He makes it breed as fast.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#263

Post by mumblemumble »

haram_masala wrote: post #160
dboreham wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is as much or as little a ponzi scheme as things like the US dollar.

Bitcoin is in some ways preferable, since you’re not subjected to violence if you choose not to participate in it.

I think you've made a distinction without a difference. Bitcoin assets, and income that is denominated in Bitcoin, is every bit as taxable under US law.

It's true that attempting to conduct your entire financial life in Bitcoin won't save you from receiving tax bills that are denominated in dollars. I think your more immediate problem, though, would be that it's probably impossible for someone living in the US to participate in Bitcoin without owing someone a bill that they will expect to be paid in USD. It's difficult to transact Bitcoin without Internet access, for example. And that'll get you long before the IRS sends police to knock on your door.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#264

Post by skeeter2020 »

>> "Bernie was by no means perfect. But no man is."

Compared to Madoff most of us ARE perfect. I have no doubt he felt sorry for his actions once caught and punished, ut this is not the same thing as regretting them enough to voluntarily work at change your ways. Good riddance.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#265

Post by graeme »

shawnz wrote: post #246
graeme wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The possible ponzi is people claiming Bitcoin will replace the existing financial system due to its intrinsic superior qualities and will go to $1 million and beyond. The HODLers don’t believe they are merely speculating. Of course that could be true, and people saying it may well believe it. Ponzi believed his international reply coupon scheme would actually pay out. So to some extent it will only be proveable in hi…

That's not a Ponzi scheme. Misleading investors about the potential of a technology isn't a Ponzi scheme. You have to mislead them about the origin of the returns they are getting.

If the technology in fact has no such potential I fail to see the distinction.

Particularly when the actual mechanism of raising value for early investors is convincing more to come in based on that narrative, but old investors can only cash out from new ones.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#266

Post by nathanvanfleet »

> He was soft spoken and an intellectual. Bernie was by no means perfect. But no man is.

Actually in comparison to Madoff and as someone who hasn't stolen $19 billion dollars I feel relatively perfect. It's funny how someone who might steal something worth a few hundred dollars in an instant are somehow not given the second chances of people like Madoff who was operating a much larger criminal scheme over 15 years.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#267

Post by shawnz »

graeme wrote: post #265
shawnz wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a Ponzi scheme. Misleading investors about the potential of a technology isn't a Ponzi scheme. You have to mislead them about the origin of the returns they are getting.

If the technology in fact has no such potential I fail to see the distinction. Particularly when the actual mechanism of raising value for early investors is convincing more to come in based on that narrative, but old investors can only cash out from new ones.

The distinction is that any investor can form their own opinion about the technology equally well. We don't, and can't dictate to investors what technologies they ought to consider worth investing in.

The mechanism you are describing is the mechanism by which every speculative investment works. That's not what identifies a Ponzi scheme. In fact it specifically can't be a Ponzi scheme if the old investors are aware that the returns are coming from new investors.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#269

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

slibhb wrote: post #122

I was always fascinated by how violently people felt toward Madoff. Madoff reminds me of a character in a Woody Allen movie. Martin Landau in Crimes and Misdemeanors. In Dosteovsky, the perpetrator feels real guilt, confesses, and finds salvation in God. In Woody Allen, the perpetrator gets over his guilt and lives happily ever after, avoiding punishment. In Madoff's case, the perpetrator dies in prison and his famil…

I think a lot of it is simply there's a lot of frustration that crimes like this go on every day. Many people see the top levels of finance as all being tainted by fraud, stealing from ordinary workers, and this acts as confirmation for that.

Bernie's fraud imploding did motivate several suicides. Not exactly killing by his own hand, but he does bear some responsibility. We also shouldn't ignore he cravenly focused on charities as their legal requirements would give his ponzi scheme the longest runway. He also leveraged his reputation in the ultra wealthy NE Jewish community to find victims. So independent of the common outrage, I can see how a lot of people would see this as a particularly ugly betrayal.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#270

Post by [deleted] »

pjc50 wrote: post #32
sokoloff wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think this is about the "pari passu" saga. It's one thing to hound individuals for their debts, quite another to hound an entire country - and in some cases there had already been a creditor resolution which he overturned. Still I feel that asking him to die in jail for doing legal if nasty things is going a bit far.

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