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Bernie Madoff has died

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Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#331

Post by unethical_ban »

ginko wrote: post #161
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…

I guess the corporate equivalent would be the forced shutdown of all company infrastructure for N months.

Banking? Raw materials? Shipping?

How do people think that all corporations/companies are discretionary?

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#332

Post by Ekaros »

hamandcheese wrote: post #228
newsclues wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Maybe if certain percentage of ownership can be proven, by any route. Let's say 1%. So you own 1% of company and it does some criminal. You will suffer 1% of penalty.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#333

Post by hamandcheese »

lostcolony wrote: post #284
hamandcheese wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why try to stop it? Pretty sure a sufficiently enabled and incentivized prosecutor will be able to find the actual culprits. "Discovery" exists as a legal process after all. Sham boards/executives only are issues if the prosecution itself is a sham, more concerned with the appearance of the thing than deterrence.

My interpretation of the GP was that if companies are guilty of wrongdoing, boards and executives should be imprisoned without any additional burden of proof required to establish individual culpability. This sounds somewhat appealing, as how can these people _not_ be responsible in some way?

Otherwise, no need to single out the board.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#334

Post by finikytou »

finikytou wrote: post #304
bidirectional wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

sure. they dont get access to all robinhood transactions. their trading algorithms do the work. if you know a few ms in advance the trades you can literaly make money out of it. and this should be clearly advertised when getting into robinhood. Your argument that it is to help retail traders to enter for cheap into trading is fallacious. It is exactly like saying getting into real estate nowadays is a no brainer due…

You re right. they do the trades for robinhood users. What do you think they do between the time they receive the order and execute it? don't forget that the default trade on robinhood has no limit to it. you buying market value. now try doing that on millions of users just like madoff did playing with the cents.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#335

Post by SkyMarshal »

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.

One other thing worth observing: Bernie Madoff had nothing whatsoever to do with causing the Global Financial Crisis. Yes he committed a financial crime and defrauded a few investors with a ponzi, but he wasn’t behind the systemic financial mass destruction of the GFC.

Yet the media implicitly made him into a scapegoat for the GFC with heavy coverage of his trial filling the airwaves just as the public was authorities hold the perpetrators responsible. The media never explicitly claimed Madoff was part of the cause of the GFC, but rather used constant coverage of him to deflect attention from the real perpetrators of the crisis, who got away clean.

What the media doesn’t report is often more telling about its integrity and agenda than what they do report.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#336

Post by gambiting »

bboylen wrote: post #322
ericd wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their cash balance, debt, or equity raise. Or they go bankrupt. That would be part of the risk of doing something that got your company this punishment. To be clear, I’m not advocating these shutdowns as a good idea, there are a lot of implications that I haven’t thought through.

Who is going to invest cash into a business that has to stop operating for N months, while maintaining everyone on payroll?

Why would anyone invest anything in this scenario? Most companies in the world operate without any investment whatsoever.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#337

Post by Ekaros »

comprev wrote: post #129
cletus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The criminal justice system already does this extensively. Often people are sentenced to community service. So I guess your question is really should this be extended to more low-level offenses like minor traffic violations? It's an interesting question. In Switzerland, for example, speeding above a certain level ceases to be a fixed fine and is instead a percentage of your income. I'm a fan of that. Fixed fines tend…

Same in Finland I believe. The fine is a % of your annual income.

Calculate daily income, minus some protected cut and then multiplied by number of days. For drunk driving for example 50 "day fines". So at net monthly wage of 1800€ would be 1288. At 10k€ monthly netwage 8128€...

Also Finland does have option to turn some of these day fines to prison time at rate of 4 to 1..

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#338

Post by graeme »

shawnz wrote: post #314
graeme wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The mechanism you are describing is the mechanism by which every speculative investment works. That’s not true. Most speculative investment promise revenues if they succeed. For your last sentence, why would that be true? In the case of bitcoin, the early investors have been led to believe that later investors will need to invest. But this can easily be false.

> That’s not true. Most speculative investment promise revenues if they succeed. That wouldn't be speculative then (at least not completely) > For your last sentence, why would that be true? Because it's not a Ponzi scheme unless you are lying about the origin of the returns which you are giving to investors.

> That wouldn't be speculative then (at least not completely)

Can you give an example of non crypto speculative investments which are not expected to produce revenues? That’s how 100% of business promise to eventually provide returns.

Even real estate is rents. Collectibles such as sports cards and art are the one exception category I can think of.

> Because it's not a Ponzi scheme unless you are lying about the origin of the returns which you are giving to investors.

Yes that was my point. Bitcoin could be a distributed Ponzi, where people make representations about bitcoin’s eventual value through network value, but it turns out there is nothing to it. There’s no single agent telling a lie but it has the same effect.

To make the limit argument: if bitcoin was run by a single person selling coins and claiming their value would go up because of network value, but this claim was not true, this would be a ponzi correct? Assuming the proferred proof was reported coin value appreciation to date. (I.e. the returns)

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#339

Post by gambiting »

elil17 wrote: post #140
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Other countries have $10k speeding tickets for the rich who ignore traffic rules. It’s not such a fantasy, it’s a real world way to reduce emissions and automobile deaths.

The problem is that above a certain level even that doesn't work. Like, answer me this - if you catch Jeff Bezos speeding, what possible fine can we impose on him to "hurt"? Compared to his wealth, we'd probably need to fine him like $1B for it to have any effect, right? And someone would still argue that it doesn't hurt him like a $500 ticket hurts a poor person.

But then literally no court anywhere in the world would agree that a $1BN fine for speeding is "punishment fitting the crime". It's just not.

Like, I like idea in general, but there will ways be people immune to it. Like others have said - the only real punishment is time. And not even necessarily prison - just make a CEO do 300 hours of community service, see how that works out.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#340

Post by ericd »

bboylen wrote: post #322
ericd wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their cash balance, debt, or equity raise. Or they go bankrupt. That would be part of the risk of doing something that got your company this punishment. To be clear, I’m not advocating these shutdowns as a good idea, there are a lot of implications that I haven’t thought through.

Who is going to invest cash into a business that has to stop operating for N months, while maintaining everyone on payroll?

Perhaps one of the many professionals working in distressed debt or special situations? If you're not familiar, there are desks at Goldman, etc called "Special Situations" that focus on relatively niche investment opportunities. Investors just need the price to be right. Would likely be bad for the shareholders, but again, that's part of the punishment.
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