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The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

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Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#101

Post by riku_iki »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #95
jjeaff wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there have recently been some issues with some elections in the US, we definitely don't have an "election integrity" issue. There is very little evidence that any elections in the US have been affected by fraud by any significant amount.

Fraud in the form of the outcome of a specific election being different than the actual votes counted: well, probably not super widespread or rampant but not exactly non-existent. Disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, polling place reductions, unequal representation, etc. are, however, quite rampant. Not all votes are equal in the US, and not all voters are treated as equal either. The result is the same (subversion of…

I think the biggest issue for elections is that candidates can lie to public without any consequences.

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#102

Post by hueving »

csdreamer7 wrote: post #94
harryh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that again isn't an example of someone being caught and receiving a penalty lower than the gain from the crime. I don't know why the justice department didn't pursue charges here. Maybe HSBC wasn't guilty? Maybe there wasn't sufficient evidence to win? Who knows. But this isn't an example of a caught party with a "so low that they don't matter" penalty.

> Well that again isn't an example of someone being caught and receiving a penalty lower than the gain from the crime. I disagree... and frankly, just saying it isn't is a poor answer. > Maybe there wasn't sufficient evidence to win? Once again, your ignorance shows. The Justice Department expressed concern it would threaten the health of the financial system if they were too hard on HSBC at the time so they gave a l…

No penalty is not the same thing as a lower penalty. You don't go around saying people got a lower penalty that were never actually prosecuted for something.

You claim the parent is speculating without basis but the parent is asking for an example where a normal penalty is lower than the profit, because that is an extraordinary claim.

If hsbc was able to profit from money laundering while paying they penalty, they would still be doing it. They obviously had no moral barriers to doing it before so why would they stop?

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#103

Post by FireBeyond »

atr_gz wrote: post #91
zekevermillion wrote: post #12

We don't need a "crackdown". The problem with our approach to financial crimes is that it is based almost entirely on crackdowns -- splashy press releases that are supposed to deter all the thousands of other financial crimes that we lack resources to prosecute. Sometimes this leads to injustice, e.g., see the documentary film Abacus: Small Enough to Jail. The only bank to be prosecuted criminally for shenanigans in…

The story about Abacus was interesting. I didn't realize they were the only actual bank to be prosecuted. That said, a handful of employees at other small banks around the country were prosecuted - I personally know a low-level mortgage broker who went to prison for fraud related to the 2008 crisis. They were falsifying mortgage applications for unqualified customers. The enforcement still wasn't enough in my opinion…

Abacus as a bank wasn't guilty of this.

They had some brokers that they fired, before any criminal action had been filed, when a senior manager noted indiscrepancies in the closing process (like writing multiple small checks for down payments and closing costs).

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#105

Post by fosk »

UncleEntity wrote: post #61
freehunter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because the overarching goal of a project is awful doesn't mean every detail about the project is awful. There are lessons to be learned from every failure, and like it or not the war on drugs funds itself quite well through asset forfeiture. Case in point: no one would argue the Nazi regime was anything approaching "good", but when the war was done, we didn't throw away the V2 rocket and start research from scr…

> ...but when the war was done, we didn't throw away the V2 rocket and start research from scratch. But we did throw away all the research they did on unwilling human subjects even though it could conceivably have lead to better science if we ignored all the "racist bullshit"...

No, we did not. Introducing you to Japanese Unit 731 [1] that was conducting atrocious human testing during World War 2 and whose information was happily collected afterwards with the promise of “forgetting” about the crimes committed.

> Shiro Ishii, as the chief of the unit, was granted war crime immunity from the US occupation authorities, because of his provision of human experimentation research materials to the US.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#106

Post by DrJokepu »

themagician wrote: post #89
DrJokepu wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A percentage of what though? A percentage of unlawfully obtained income or a percentage of personal wealth, whether or not it’s connected to any unlawful activities?

Total assets. If all you lose is the income from illegal activity and a small fine it’s not much of a penalty now is it? The criminal justice system needs to be as vicious against criminals as collection agencies are against poor people. I really have no problem seizing absolutely everything from somone who manipulates markets or defrauds investors. In fact, step it up. Seize everything and stick them with a lifetime…

In that case, regardless of the merits of the idea, it’s constitutionally rather problematic in the United States, as the Eighth Amendment prohibits imposing excessive fines.

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#107

Post by AnthonyMouse »

tptacek wrote: post #76
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What this is really exposing is a facet of the sham of "transfer pricing" in general. The problem with transfer pricing is that "market price" is a context-dependent volatile fiction. If you buy a jar of peanut butter, it might cost $2 at one store and $2.50 at another on the other side of town. Which one is the market price? The difference is 25%, which at scale is enough to consume most companies' entire profit mar…

It's much more bizarre than that. Vanguard is organized upside-down from most funds companies. Instead of a company that owns mutual funds, Vanguard funds own the management services company (and investors in turn own the funds). This aligns the incentives of Vanguard with its investors --- which is exactly what you want from a fund manager. Vanguard is in trouble for "charging" the funds below-market rate on the ser…

It's still kind of the same thing.

Suppose you open a car dealership that gives every person who buys a car a share of the dealership. The next thing you know that dealership has the best service and the lowest prices and makes no profits, because all the owners are also customers and they care less about getting a $10 dividend than about service quality and price.

So then the argument is they're under-charging themselves and they owe tax on the difference between what they charged themselves and the fair market value. But it turns out all the customers love this ownership structure and having to compete with it has caused all the other dealerships to lose business and cut prices, and two new independent dealerships with the same structure sprang up and are now charging similar prices, meanwhile several of the incumbents with the old structure have gone out of business.

So the question is, what's the market price? It's clearly lower than it was, even the old incumbents that are still around are charging less, and losing market share while doing it. If there are now multiple companies offering the razor thin margins, isn't that the new market price? It's a price available to any member of the public and it's what anybody has to compete with if they want to enter the market.

The argument that there is a difference between what they're charging and the market price is ignoring the fact that their aggressive competition has lowered the market price down to what they're charging. But if you try to compare with what rates were like in 1975 then you get a squirrely result.

It's the same problem as with any of it. The grey area covers the entire map. The price they're charging is reasonable -- someone could charge it and operate a sustainable business, and several people do. But somebody else argues that it used to be higher. They're both right, and that's why the entire concept is a farce.

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#108

Post by nickpsecurity »

dragontamer wrote: post #67
cronix wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with this. Take the recent Tesla fiasco. Do you think a $20M fine means a damn thing to Musk? That's like $0.01 for most people. Now a $20M fine and a year in prison would make them think twice. More often than not, they make more in the commission of their crimes than they are fined, so they still come out in the black. In other words, they aren't truly punished.

> I totally agree with this. Take the recent Tesla fiasco. Do you think a $20M fine means a damn thing to Musk? That's like $0.01 for most people. Elon Musk was forcibly removed as Tesla's chairman. That was the real punishment. Furthermore, Elon Musk agreed that two new board members would be selected by the SEC. Finally, Tesla promised that they'd watch Elon Musk's twitter account better. The $20 Million was a slap…

"Elon Musk was forcibly removed as Tesla's chairman. That was the real punishment. "

Supporting parent comments, it really wasn't. Poor people often get fines that wipe out most of their money, sometimes cost them jobs, and/or get jail time for low-value crimes. People like Musk get a fine that's a tiny percentage of they and their companies' worth with usually no jail time. I've always been in favor of jailing executives and/or board members for their part in crimes. Even if it's "make the numbers go up or else without giving me details." Oh no, we already know that's how most dodge responsibility. I think companies that do way better on talking to employees and accountability already show it could be done better. And then there's stuff like Undercover Boss showing a lot of problems can be spotted with one, undercover visit. Not even necessarily by CEO.

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#109

Post by teslaberry »

the entire u.s. socio economic system us defined by usury cascades ( interest rate financing of publuc /private activities) that ultimately are paid off by long term

rises in cost of living ( via money printing) . the u.s. id also built on theft of labor ( payroll and EARNED income tax)

the tax system is designed to emcourage speculation as well as the over burdening of local labor upon the federal rather than state government munipial bonds are federally tax free.

the supreme court ruled in the 70s that states can block imported usurous loans from out of state to their local real estate markets.

the clintons eliminated glass steagal and unconstitutional deprived unsecured (educational) debt from being dischareable in bankruptcy. bushs 2005 bankruptcy act instituionalized further deterioration of bankruptcy rights.

empires are buult upon a sytem of human promises , that means human debt.

when the debt is abstracted by third partes for the purpose of making further profit via secodary mechanisms such as financialization and speculation for its own sake, the empire is eventually reduced to operating as a casino.

our empires business is legalizing white collar 'crime' and making it into a series of redistribution games run out of new york and washington dc.

its not posdible to fix' the system.

we need dictatorship, at least temporarily. democracy is broken.

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#110

Post by thirdsun »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #88
liftbigweights wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Abacus: Small Enough to Jail. My goodness that documentary had me so infuriated. If people haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. > The only bank to be prosecuted criminally for shenanigans in the subprime era. That's the amazing part. Out of all the multinational "too big to fail" banks in NYC, they went after a small community bank. Just on optics it looks terrible, but the bank they went after actually had very…

FYI, for others reading. You can watch the abacus documentary in the link below. I highly recommend it as well. Well worth the 90 mins for sure. https://www.pbs.org/video/abacus-small-enough-to-jail-suqmxe...

> FYI, for others reading. You can watch the abacus documentary in the link below.

*unless you live outside the US.

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