The question wasn't whether he should take blame, but whether he should be criminally charged. Sounds a bit over the top - I'd rather see WF fined, and then the CEO sued by the shareholders, and forced to pay damages if proven he knew or should have known.
That's an okay opinion, but I'd like to see CEOs criminally charged and go to jail if it's proven that they knew or should have known what was going on.
He is the CEO. He should have known 5000 employees were engaging in fraudulent operations.
I think Matt Levine's take on this is right on: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-09/wells-far... . Senior management wanted employees to do REAL cross-selling to make money, but the metrics were set so high that employees turned to fake accounts to meet the standard. The fake accounts did not benefit the bank in any substantial way: So that's about 2.1 million fake deposit and credit-card accounts, of…
We have a perfectly good approach already; it's called the Nordic model. Arrest johns, not prostitutes. And there are thousands of former sex workers that will give you an earful about what you think you know about prostitution and what prostitutes think.
Ah, the Nordic model... That's the one where they criminalized landlords who knowingly rented to sex workers, then used that law to kick sex workers out of their homes for reporting their rapes to the police, right? The best part is that when Amnesty International took a stance against this, the sleazy slimeballs in the anti-trafficking movement accused them of making it up because those countries didn't criminalize…
> the sleazy slimeballs in the anti-trafficking movement
Defending pimps and johns while calling anti-prostitution activists "sleazy slimeballs." I love it.
Why is it that in such cases, the government reaches for the CEO right away; but when Wells Fargo employees open millions of fraudulent accounts, it's not the CEO's fault? If I were to commit identity theft (which is basically what the WF employees did), then I would be facing jail time; why hasn't anyone in WF been charged with criminal fraud yet? Why not the CEO?
You're comparing apples and oranges. The CEO of a small internet company almost certainly has a hand in everything the company does. The CEO of a large corporation has no idea what the line workers are doing.[1] If a bunch of Yahoo employees had gone off and run as sex-trafficking site off Yahoo's servers, they wouldn't go arrest Marissa Mayer. Not because "lobbying" but because that would be stupid and unreasonable.…
It's not credible that C-level management were unaware. 5000+ employees doing the same thing, repeatedly, means collusion and coordination up the management hierarchy was taking place. Either internal anti-fraud controls failed, or this activity was actively ignored at management direction. At the very least, the C-level manager at the top of the organization that engaged in this fraud was responsible for a system failure and should be dismissed for cause, without their bonus or severance. Having a lawyer say "Huh, I guess they didn't know" is exactly the cover they need for feigned ignorance.
Ah, the Nordic model... That's the one where they criminalized landlords who knowingly rented to sex workers, then used that law to kick sex workers out of their homes for reporting their rapes to the police, right? The best part is that when Amnesty International took a stance against this, the sleazy slimeballs in the anti-trafficking movement accused them of making it up because those countries didn't criminalize…
> the sleazy slimeballs in the anti-trafficking movement Defending pimps and johns while calling anti-prostitution activists "sleazy slimeballs." I love it.
Am I correct in interpreting that as you suggesting that anti-prostitution activists did not, in fact, claim that Amnesty International were making things up when they pointed out the negative outcomes of "the Nordic model" for sex workers, the people you're claiming it was supposed to protect?
You are talking about 5,000 current employees being fired and many employees who were fired for reporting it. If he didn't know, then he must not know other things about Wells Fargo that are equally important.
> You are talking about 5,000 current employees being fired and many employees who were fired for reporting it. If he didn't know, then he must not know other things about Wells Fargo that are equally important. I'm sure that's the case, and I'm sure it's also the case for most CEOs of massive companies. Wells Fargo has more than 250,000 employees and more than 6000 branches -- more branches than any other US bank. T…
It's about 5% of US employees, concentrated in one part of the organization.
> So why not actually try to solve that problem - reach out to individuals, listen to them, and help them achieve their goals I do. I reach out to would-be purchasers of sex and those who would defend them, and point out the dire consequences of their approach. Economic transfer doesn't suddenly make rape something one should aspire to or tolerate.
I was talking about sex workers. The ones you're not listening to. Edit: Specifically, if the goal is to help sex workers who want help, the solution is... to help sex workers who want help. It's to perform research into the barriers to seeking help, and try to remove those barriers. It's not to prevent consensual trade between a person who has few issues with their job, and someone seeking their services. If, on the…
The goal is to eradicate sex work for reasons of "morality," exactly how the slavery abolition movement had no other reasons besides "morality."
This was no more a prostitution website than Craigslist, before Craigslist struck a deal with attorney generals of several states to shut down its Adult Classifieds section [1]. In fact, given Craigslist scale it had many more prostitution (and probably child prostitution) ads. The question is: why Craig and this CEO were given such disparate treatment? Because the times have changed, or because Craigslist was much b…
I was wondering about this too. Specifically, I thought websites were held harmless for the content they carry. If somebody posts a threat to the President or something else illegal on a website, is the website liable? If something slanderous shows up in Google, is Google liable for slander? How does that work?
I was talking about sex workers. The ones you're not listening to. Edit: Specifically, if the goal is to help sex workers who want help, the solution is... to help sex workers who want help. It's to perform research into the barriers to seeking help, and try to remove those barriers. It's not to prevent consensual trade between a person who has few issues with their job, and someone seeking their services. If, on the…
The goal is to eradicate sex work for reasons of "morality," exactly how the slavery abolition movement had no other reasons besides "morality."
OK. Exactly what about sex work is immoral, when the sex worker can choose their clients? Is it that sex is inherently something special that other work isn't?
Why is it that in such cases, the government reaches for the CEO right away; but when Wells Fargo employees open millions of fraudulent accounts, it's not the CEO's fault? If I were to commit identity theft (which is basically what the WF employees did), then I would be facing jail time; why hasn't anyone in WF been charged with criminal fraud yet? Why not the CEO?
Because bankers are better at committing fraud and hiding their tracks?