Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wells Fargo Penalties Since 2000: $22B

violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 119 posts

Re: Wells Fargo Penalties Since 2000: $22B

#81

Post by dsfyu404ed »

blippage wrote: post #23
blippage wrote: post #4

As Nassim Taleb observed, the problem here is no skin in the game. Bankers keep the upside, but shareholders have to carry the can. It's an agency problem. The fix to all this is dispensing some good solid jail time.

My other suggestion is that to practise banking, one needs a license, which can be revoked. Now that I think of it, Taleb's suggested that banking should be a civil servant job. So, no financial engineering or bonuses, just boring paperwork. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 (IIRC), the role of regular banking and hedge fund activities was split in two. The idea is, of course, that if all the fancy derivati…

>My other suggestion is that to practise banking, one needs a license, which can be revoked.

You are ignorant of current regulation. While there is no paper license that you have to apply for in most cases there is tons of "if you do X you are a Y and must register yourself with some regulatory agency Z and follow our list of rules for your business to be lawful" which is functionally identical to a license.

Re: Wells Fargo Penalties Since 2000: $22B

#82

Post by dsfyu404ed »

nine_k wrote: post #34
MattGaiser wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is generally a problem with employees in general, especially as tenures decline. Sales stuffs the channel with products that are later returned as they get their commission. Or they vastly oversell what the product can do. Engineers rack up tech debt to keep the Scrum Master happy and choose technologies based on how good they look on a resume. HR people pass around crappy or abusive employees to other departmen…

> rather than doing the hard work of terminating I don't think that terminating an at-will employee is any hard work. What's hard is to hire a replacement; it can easily take months, and cost months of the employee's salary in the interviewing costs. And somebody got to do the jerk employee's work in the meantime. (And this is in the US; I can't start imagining the hurdles of firing somebody in the EU.)

>I don't think that terminating an at-will employee is any hard work.

Contrary to what HN may have implied, you still have to comply with federal labor law in at-will states and if you want to terminate someone in a manner where you can be all but guaranteed you will not have to settle a frivolous wrongful termination lawsuit there is a pretty decent amount of coordination and documentation work that needs to be done. I wouldn't call it hard work but it's not non-work and it does take time.

Re: Wells Fargo Penalties Since 2000: $22B

#83

Post by Forgeties79 »

blippage wrote: post #4

As Nassim Taleb observed, the problem here is no skin in the game. Bankers keep the upside, but shareholders have to carry the can. It's an agency problem. The fix to all this is dispensing some good solid jail time.

WF keeps doing this over and over. It’s baffling how the fines haven’t just gone up exponentially and folks haven’t gone to jail. They literally do not care. They know exactly what will happen and the math makes sense every time.

Re: Wells Fargo Penalties Since 2000: $22B

#84

Post by BirAdam »

sbarre wrote: post #77
Joeri wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If in America politicians are bought and paid for by large corporations, does it mean the country is no longer a democracy? Or is it still a democracy and the blame ultimately lies with voters who vote on corporate-backed candidates?

Have you ever seen what happens when a non-corporate-backed (i.e. independent) candidate steps up for election? They are almost always out-spent and out-campaigned from all sides because both bought parties want to maintain the two-party system at all costs. There are exceptions of course, but not meaningfully. Blame Citizens United for all this. That decision marked the day the US completely stopped being a "by the…

One could make the argument that the USA became an oligarchy during the 1896 Presidential election season. McKinley’s campaign was run by Mark Hanna, and the campaign managed to secure funding from Standard Oil as well as various mining companies. This doomed the Bryan campaign. I find it interesting that the McKinley administration launched the US into war against Spain, and the USA has thereafter been continually at war… so first modern campaign finance, modern press involvement, military-industrial complex, and so on. McKinley looks to be the first truly bought and paid for politician in the USA. The rich got what they wanted and the poor were sent to fight and die and slaughter the innocent in a poor nation (the Philippines in this case). Seems startlingly similar to the current state of the USA.

Re: Wells Fargo Penalties Since 2000: $22B

#86

Post by pwillia7 »

tjpnz wrote: post #66
blippage wrote: post #4

As Nassim Taleb observed, the problem here is no skin in the game. Bankers keep the upside, but shareholders have to carry the can. It's an agency problem. The fix to all this is dispensing some good solid jail time.

I like the idea of prison time but that's only going to happen with an impartial legal system that treats everyone the same; regardless of wealth, upbringing or Ivy League attendance among others. In the meantime how about fining companies so much that the bank will become insolvent if they don't give a crap and passing laws (if they don't exist already) to force a halt in trade for x-days/weeks?

What would be the 'cost' international competition wise to harming your own banking sector with penalties for the banks and not individuals? It's not a leading question. Are there enough banks and enough 'good' banks to do this obvious domestic win with no international consequences?

Re: Wells Fargo Penalties Since 2000: $22B

#87

Post by kqr »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #80
kqr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graeber has an observation on a different part of this: the penalties are never greater than the profit that triggered the penalties. We're basically telling the bankers that "it's okay as long as the government gets a cut of the loot".

>it's okay as long as the government gets a cut of the loot". That's how most "bad things" work. Why would asinine banking practices be different?

It's not exactly how bad-things taxes work, though. Sure, from a business point of view the nicotine tax is seen as "you're allowed to peddle it as long as the government gets a cut of the loot" but from the consumer perspective, there is actually evidence that it reduces the inclination to make the transaction in the first place.

This is not the case with banking penalties which are clearly only a net positive exchange for the banks.

Re: Wells Fargo Penalties Since 2000: $22B

#88

Post by mtnGoat »

I remember I was about 19, getting into a screaming match with a branch manager about multiple “new accounts” I had opened that were now overdrawn because of fees. Problem was, I had proof the signature wasn’t mine and I was out of the state at the time they were signed.

Free days later I get a call asking me to come close my accounts, all these strange accounts went from -$300-500 each, to $5.

For years and years people thought I was crazy when I said I don’t do business there and they were scammers, why would a bank steal? lol, here we are two decades later and they are still up to no good.

What level of malice must a company site repeatedly teach before regulators actually protect those they are set to protect?

Re: Wells Fargo Penalties Since 2000: $22B

#89

Post by Pigalowda »

mschuster91 wrote: post #50
thinking4real wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The culture goes even further. We demand individuals to do pointless self flogging rituals like tediously organizing their recycling just to have it be buried in china. Meanwhile corporations are free to waste as much plastic product as they care to without repercussion. America is all about squeezing the individual for the few in power and wealth.

> We demand individuals to do pointless self flogging rituals like tediously organizing their recycling just to have it be buried in china. German here. It's not that hard to separate paper, glass, metal, plastics and remainder waste. Paper, glass and metal are recycled at very high rates (over 80% for paper and glass [1][2] and over 90% for metal), and the separation between plastics and remainder waste allows trash…

In America we do things differently. We carefully organize our recycling but instead of it being recycled it is sent to China, who extracts the tiny amount of value it can from it, and then buries or dumps the rest in the ocean. There’s some nice articles about it.

I’m stupid enough that I still performatively wash out the glass and aluminum so the workers in China have to do less. But what is a West coast American if not performative?

Re: Wells Fargo Penalties Since 2000: $22B

#90

Post by dudul »

Joeri wrote: post #54
BirAdam wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USA, politicians are bought and paid for by megacorps. They can’t really punish anyone without losing money themselves. In China, politicians are part of the CCP. If they don’t do what the CCP wants they have very serious consequences. Two systems, two very different yet serious problems.

If in America politicians are bought and paid for by large corporations, does it mean the country is no longer a democracy? Or is it still a democracy and the blame ultimately lies with voters who vote on corporate-backed candidates?

Maybe one day we'll break free of the lie that election == democracy.
Post reply on HN