111–120 of 232 posts
anti-Church pitchforks come out pretty fast here? it shows that some people simply want to eliminate Church itself, and use bad news to propel that point of view. why not address the actions themselves, specifically; plenty of crooks in the investment game, some of them use Church money it seems.
$5M penalty seems very small.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, either way, I'm looking for an intuition about how much an infraction like this should cost. Presumably, the settlement also includes the LDS church's consent to start filing reliable 13F's. I'm not saying I think 5MM is the right number; I'm just saying I have no intuition for what the number should be, and the rationale I see on the thread seems to be "they're big". If I get pulled over in a Bentley with an…
If the fine is less than the profit of committing the crime, then it is now de facto legal, taxed profit. There is no incentive not to continue committing the crime. Perhaps $5mm is a valid fine on top of repaying the illegal profits. But on its own? It is an endorsement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually a settlement, not a fine, which is probably pinned closer to the "This is the amount we think we'd have to pay lawyers to argue the case" value than the "This is how much we would owe if we were found guilty of breaking the law" value.
Right, either way, I'm looking for an intuition about how much an infraction like this should cost. Presumably, the settlement also includes the LDS church's consent to start filing reliable 13F's. I'm not saying I think 5MM is the right number; I'm just saying I have no intuition for what the number should be, and the rationale I see on the thread seems to be "they're big". If I get pulled over in a Bentley with an…
The fine should scale with the size of the infraction. If you sticker expires on your car, the infraction is the same severity, no matter the car [0]. ~Hiding a few million vs. hiding a few billion in taxes is a whole different level.~ EDIT: They just hid it for information purposes. Not to avoid tax. Therefore, this does not apply in this case.
Also, the fine is intended to discourage the behavior. If the money obtained by breaking the law minus the fee is still positive, there's no incentive to stop breaking the law. $5MM on a fund worth a few billion is very likely to be well within the still profitable area.
[0] I'm not sure about the US, but at least in Germany, an expired sticker actually is a larger infraction for commercial vehicles, especially if you transport people. So even there it's correctly scaling with severity.
Curious. At $32B, the LDS church controls more than virtually all US university endowments -- with the only exception being Harvard. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73
(Thoughtful comments appreciated with downvotes; thanks.)
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For context, 0.016% of 22 years is 1.25 days. They got fined effectively 1.25 days out of 22 years of profit.
They did not make $32 billion in profit over 22 years.
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Simpler : if churches get tax-exempt status, then they are bound to the state in receiving that status, and violate separation of church and state? I haven't been able to find where tax exempt status for churches is established, and I've looked, but not my area of expertise at all. What if the goverment were to just stop giving churches tax exempt status? (edit: clearer)
The separation of church and state is not about preventing any kind of relationship between religious institutions and the government. Rather, it is about ensuring that the government does not establish an official state religion, and that it remains neutral towards different religious beliefs and practices.
- $5 million in fines, for - 22 years of willful reporting violations - using 13 shell companies - to conceal ownership of a $32 billion portfolio I'm sure they're gutted by this ~0.016% fine.
The SEC is, largely, a powerless bogeyman due to chronic underfunding and lack of staff. Another wonderful feature of corporate regulatory capture in the US.