Bernie Madoff has died • Hacker News Board

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#271

Post by iudqnolq » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #252

ac29 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its harder to sue the government than you might think, see for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit...

Regardless, the argument there isn't that you can't sue the government at all, but instead that the government is granted immunity for some subset of actions. Going back to the original point, personhood is clearly not a requirement for being named in a suit. For more examples you can also see in rem cases, where the government sues property itself for civil forfeiture. 11 1/4 Dozen Packages of Articles Labeled in Pa…

> but instead that the government is granted immunity for some subset of actions.

It's actually the opposite. You can only sue the government when they explicitly give you permission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit...

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#272

Post by bidirectional » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

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.

That's not what I'm asking about. They specifically said trading desks at banks, Citadel is a market maker.

But what's really you're just parroting baseless conspiracy -- Citadel is a legitimate business which provides a great service to Robin Hood users. Payment for order flow is very good for the retail investor, reducing commissions and improving prices, the recent episode of Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast with Doug Cifu went explained exactly how this works, it's a classic example of incentives aligning. Also by design no market maker gets access to all Robinhood transactions.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#273

Post by trasz » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

dep_b wrote: post #215

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.

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 i…

Tbh this is more of a failure of Argentinian government institutions to protect their country against it.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#274

Post by smcl » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

drawkbox wrote: post #95

Still blown away that he was basically just putting the funds in a Chase bank account and not even investing it. > In a 2013 email to CNBC from prison, Madoff claimed the break in the market that started the Great Recession led to his scam. > “I thought this would be only a short-term trade which could be made up once the market became receptive,” he wrote. “The rest is my tragic history of never being able to recove…

I have no idea how he coped knowing that he was bound to get caught. Whenever I told any white lies as a kid I felt SO exposed, nervous and vulnerable. I wonder how on earth he could live his life for nearly a couple of decades knowing the was bound to get caught. Was he torn apart by anxiety, or was he just a “LOL YOLO” type of guy?

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#275

Post by a3camero » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

i_haz_rabies wrote: post #177

hobs wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So fix the social safety net, too big to fail is not something we want to have, especially when it comes to actively harmful companies...

Jailing the people responsible seems like a way better option than putting potentially tens of thousands of people on welfare.

Who not both? Just because it’s normal that low level workers are fired and get nothing doesn’t mean that’s how it has to be. Severance could be generous enough to make this work out.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#276

Post by saalweachter » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #231

saalweachter wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here, let me google that for you: https://www.google.com/search?q=ponzi+scheme+definition Pon·zi scheme /ˈpänzē ˌskēm/ noun a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.

That's not really a good definition, dragged up by the Google bot without a link to the source. It says "Definitions from Oxford Languages" but I'm having a job finding where that was from. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis... was kind of similar and has " a plan for making money that involves encouraging people to invest by offering them a high rate of interest and using their money to pay…

I'll admit, Ponzi schemes could be considered centralized by definition. It might be more accurate to describe it as a pyramid scheme -- because investors become a part of the scheme, actively seeking more investors from whom they hope to recoup their investment -- or a pump-and-dump, focusing on the market component.

Re: Bitcoin as a digital payments, my complaint there would be that Bitcoin is not structured to return transaction fees to people buying Bitcoin as an investment.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#277

Post by randomguy5421 » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

Clewza313 wrote: post #111

soneca wrote: post #33

Madoff made his ponzi scheme last 17 years with a limited network. Imagine how long a ponzi scheme accessible by the whole world could last. Possibly forever (or at least longer than my lifetime). I am thinking about Bitcoin here.

Tether, which is apparently backed by Bitcoin itself, fits the bill. They've printed $20 billion (BILLION!) new USDT since the start of the year, and the rate of Tether printing is currently over 4x faster than the rate at which new Bitcoin is being mined. And like Madoff's scheme, it can keep going until the tide goes out and we find out who's been swimming naked.

I sold a month or so ago. I'd rather not hold the bag in the end, but at the same time I figured this thing can keep running so long as Tether is there to prop it up.

Tether just printed another 2 billion USDT today, and didn't they print another billion USDT a few days ago?

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#278

Post by bidirectional » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

bobthechef wrote: post #262

finikytou wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Of course time is a commodity. A (potentially false promise of a) dollar in one year is less useful than a dollar tomorrow which is less useful than a dollar right now.

If you do believe interest is theft and time has no value, you can act as a kind of Robin Hood by putting all of your money into bonds from Goldman Sachs, the US government or whoever you deem the worst perpetrator of this theft. You'll literally be stealing from them!

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#279

Post by dep_b » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

trasz wrote: post #273

dep_b wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Tbh this is more of a failure of Argentinian government institutions to protect their country against it.

And a failure of the US government to protect itself against people like Singer.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#280

Post by tacostakohashi » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #141

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.

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…

You may enjoy reading this press release, then.

https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2008/September/08-at-...

Unfortunately, there aren't too many of those.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_convicted_of...