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Bernie Madoff has died

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Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#401

Post by shawnz »

user-the-name wrote: post #393
shawnz wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still not a Ponzi scheme unless you are also lying to investors by telling them that the returns are coming from some kind of business venture or something. Investors willingly speculating on commodities because they think they will rise isn't a Ponzi scheme.

The lie is that your bitcoins are worth, today, 62000 USD each. Again, this is not an organised Ponzi scheme, but it is functionality identical anyway.

That isn't a lie, I think you are just misunderstanding what you are looking at.

When Coinbase (or whoever) shows a bitcoin price of 62000, what they are saying is that in their order book they have customers waiting to buy and sell bitcoins at that price right now. It is not just a made up number, it is actually the place where the demand between buyers and sellers is being met right now.

If you think that price is too high, then sell some for cheaper and you will take some of the high-price buyers off the market, therefore lowering the actual fair price of bitcoin.

> this is not an organised Ponzi scheme, but it is functionality identical anyway.

Functionally, a Ponzi scheme requires that investors are being deceived about the origins of their returns. What you are describing just isn't anything like a Ponzi scheme at all and it is a misunderstanding of what they are.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#402

Post by daniel-cussen »

V-2 wrote: post #381
dimitrios1 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even if they didn't make any exceptions, still, why should regular level employees get punished for something over which they've never held any responsibility whatsoever?

I think "never held any responsibility whatsoever" is going too far. There's one company I know that narrowly avoided the RICO act and paid out a huge amount in a lawsuit, and admitted to having behaved criminally, only to commit the same crime in the same way, in some cases, to the same persons. You're telling me, their employees had no idea, no impact, no responsibility?

This reminds me of 2006. The subprime bubble. In California, everyone had six magazines about real estate on their brand new coffee table. You'd go to someone's house, they'd talk about their house. And the houses around them. Anybody people admired, it was because she bought 4 years ago and sold 6 months ago, or better still, because she owned 2 houses and not merely 1. "Real estate agent" was one of the "careers" people rattled off as being respectable, along with doctors and firefighters (lawyers barely, engineers not at all). Everyone was afraid of being priced out of the market, and there was a constant cycle between selling your house at a huge profit, paying out the realtor's fees and taxes and costs of the fixer-upper-ing, and then the dread of having all this money but no house, and buying an expensive new house. With a lot of leverage, but somehow the Ferrari-driving hotshots at the mortgage refinancing found a way to get you a HELOC (home equity line of credit, possible because of the appreciation) so you could buy a hummer. And nobody did anything! Nobody could explain their job then, if what you did for a living made sense outside the bubble you were missing out. I couldn't understand how so many people could contribute to society through sales, retail banking, transactions, appraisers was another one. Unbelievable.

The middle class may not have benefitted like the upper class (as it was then called, now you'd say "the rich" or "the 1%"), but they were still avidly playing the game when the music stopped. And they ended up suffering much more for it, (some rich people suffered too), jobs became much more demanding, but they were in on it. It wasn't just Wall Street that kept repeating "real estate never goes down", it absolutely was Main Street too.

With that said, the regular employees probably have something to do with the dirty work the business engages in. Otherwise they'd be contractors or outsourced, like the janitors and moderators are.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#403

Post by [deleted] »

user-the-name wrote: post #392
mumblemumble wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said up above, even if, for the sake of argument, it were subject to market manipulation, that would still not make it a Ponzi scheme. Not every financial crime is a Ponzi scheme.

The market manipulation is not the issue here. The issue is that Bitcoin acts exactly like a Ponzi scheme in practice, even if there is no central fraudster driving it.

[deleted]

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#404

Post by user-the-name »

nocommentguy wrote: post #400
user-the-name wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolute nonsense.

If we look strictly at present mechanisms (ignoring the fact that the definition of the dollar could be changed as it has several times in the past), the dollar is much closer to a Ponzi scheme than Bitcoin is.

Again: Absolute nonsense.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#405

Post by wholinator2 »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #402
V-2 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they didn't make any exceptions, still, why should regular level employees get punished for something over which they've never held any responsibility whatsoever?

I think "never held any responsibility whatsoever" is going too far. There's one company I know that narrowly avoided the RICO act and paid out a huge amount in a lawsuit, and admitted to having behaved criminally, only to commit the same crime in the same way, in some cases, to the same persons. You're telling me, their employees had no idea, no impact, no responsibility? This reminds me of 2006. The subprime bubble…

And what actions should Joe Schmoe with a mortgage, two kids and their college funds, and a wife who was laid off and has no health insurance take against his employer. What do you consider a reasonable level of risk for him to undertake? How much should he be punished for continuing to feed and house his family while the CEO embezzles or otherwise abuses his power?

My point is this, why should we punish people who feel they (and in many cases truly) have no choice in whether criminal action was taken? If I held a gun to your head and said, "Just ignore that or I will take everything from you and plunge your life into chaos", what do you do? What is the responsible thing to do? For you? For your family? Your children? Society? The company? The government? For the most part, people working in these companies don't do so becaus they love to work, they do so because they have to to survive and to keep their families afloat.

Joe Schmoe executed the orders because he's terrified if he doesn't, there will be retaliation and his life and the lives of those he loves will be severely damaged. CEO person gave the orders because they know a fine is just the cost of doing business and they don't give a fuck who or what they hurt, what laws they break, what damage they do. Do you see the power imbalance here? Why should we not use "who had the power" as a determination for who to prosecute? Unless you provide protection from explicit retaliation and even the power dynamic some I don't see reason to prosecute Joe over CEO. Even then, there are other forms of retaliation that are harder to verify or see. Think about trying to get rid of bullying in a middle or high school.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#406

Post by nocommentguy »

user-the-name wrote: post #404
nocommentguy wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we look strictly at present mechanisms (ignoring the fact that the definition of the dollar could be changed as it has several times in the past), the dollar is much closer to a Ponzi scheme than Bitcoin is.

Again: Absolute nonsense.

You keep saying that but increasingly more and more people are wisening up to what the central bankers have pulled off and you calling it nonsense won’t change the mathematics
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