SEC is garbage every where. I found a foreclosed property that was lost due from a reverse mortgage and the lender wasn't in a hurry to sell for fair market value. I dove in and found out that this company is taking poor performing reversed mortgage properties that are at risk of foreclosure and packaging it as a securitized debt and selling to Wallstreet. Pretty much stamped AAA+ by Moody's filed by SEC, same ol crap from 2008 is still happening, and the house can't even sell for how much they loaned out. Depending on any govt agency to protect us is just dreams, dig into the data yourself and figure it out. Lots of people noticed issues with Wirecard, you can do the same for any US company just learn to read their 10K filings, they might lie but it's often a good start.
Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard
241–250 of 350 posts
Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the problem with short setlling - you don't need the company to be a fraud, you need it to be publicly outed as a fraud in a timeframe you can afford. This is what distinguishes 'The Big Short' and Bill Ackman with Herbalife. The mortgage crisis had a timeline for when the collapse would happen, that was the key. With Herbalife it was down to Ackman to convince the entire market that Herbalife wasn't a real b…
Herbalife still is a 'real' business. Ackman would like you to think otherwise but it still is. The whole thing might be a point against short sellers.
Another famous short seller, John Hempton, responded to Ackman's short with a very public investment case for going long Herbalife (he argues it's a kind of social club with supplement sales attached as dues). Short sellers definitely don't bat anything close to 1.000 though.
Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard
#243SEC is garbage every where. I found a foreclosed property that was lost due from a reverse mortgage and the lender wasn't in a hurry to sell for fair market value. I dove in and found out that this company is taking poor performing reversed mortgage properties that are at risk of foreclosure and packaging it as a securitized debt and selling to Wallstreet. Pretty much stamped AAA+ by Moody's filed by SEC, same ol cra…
Not saying that your example isn't a valid critique, but shouldn't you weigh the number of problematic cases against the number in which the SEC functions well?
Moreover, certain parties would benefit from the SEC being starved of resources due to people not trusting governments in general anymore. Its a strategy that has paid out in the US in many instances.
Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being Spanish yet having lived in Germany for quite some time, I agree with you... I'm not saying there's no corruption in Germany - I think there's always going to be some level corruption at a certain scale of state - but there's no need to go as far as China or Russia for comparison. Just come to the South of Europe for a taste of what grand-scale corruption in what are otherwise (seemingly) high-functioning democ…
The issue is people are just not aware on the corruption in Germany because there's no "personal" and "everyday" corruption in a daily life. But if you look "up" the amount of corruption rise to the astonishing levels. Just remember Stuttgart 21 or the Berlin Airport, Hamburg Elb Philharmonic, Battleship Gorch Fock. Germany is full of such corrupt projects, it's obvious and everyone knows about it, but nobody yet wen…
Hopefully the newly created EPPO would fix some of that, at least the ones involving fraud with EU funds.
Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
The affair you're talking about happened more than a decade ago, it was a major and pretty unique scandal in Germany, and the "expert" has been convicted not only to pay damages, but was also found to be guilty of malpractice. The state eventually offered the investigators to be re-hired. There were no consequences for the "instigators" because, to my understanding, it couldn't be proven that there was criminal inten…
Current head of the EU comission and former defense minister Ursula von der Leyen is another perfect example of German government corruption. She provided old buddies at various companies with jobs and tons of money for suspicious "couselling", nothing of consequence from that, she just failed upward. Maybe you can't bribe a policeman at a traffic stop in Germany. But in the levels above that, there are plenty of cur…
For sure you can. It just has to be a very high bribe, to make the policemen accept the risk.
Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't disagree that the investment in copper was the wrong decision, but according to that article the minister actually sold his shares to Nixdorf (now Siemens?) immediately before becoming a minister. So I'm not quite sure if this is actually a case of corruption or just a case of being too conservative and incompetent (which is also quite widespread in politics).
FTC and VDSL Copper from the CAB to the Home is not a "Bad" decision. For quite a while early on in the internets history we are talking 1990's the German Telcos still wanted to use IDSN
Germany did quite a lot of ISDN over fibre to the home in the 1990s, most of the recabling in the east after reunufication was done that way.
However, they made the mistake of burying active components along with the fibre strands that only spoke ISDN. And of course no tubes. For upgrades they ripped it out again and built copper when DSL was en vogue... If they hadn't fucked up this badly, probably due to corruption, Germany would have had 20% broadband fibre coverage instantly 20 years ago
Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard
#247> Sure, it's not like Russia or the CCP and you're not in danger of being suicided if you uncover some high level dirt You are not going to get disappered, but you are in danger of getting a fraudulent "psychiatric diagnosis" if you are a tax investigator uncovering dirt about some politicians or their cronies.[0][1] In this case the investigator got free, but I am sure there are some cases out there of people who di…
(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23869601)
Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard
#248>Germany's SEC Talk about a US centric headline lol
Ok, we've inlined that bit in the title.
Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
BTW this is why arrest records are public in the USA. The British would arrest people and their families and friends couldn’t tell what had happened, so as a result you “can’t” be secretly arrested. I put “can’t” in quotes because of course there are a bunch of ways the rules get bent and twisted, but I suspect the number of arrests unreported by 24 hours is pretty close to nil. OTOH the system has adapted to this co…
Yeah, but you can literally be 72 hour psych holded with absolutely zero contact with the outside world by the decision of a single, simple psychiatrist. That's arguably worse than being secretly arrested.
Not only this, but you can also get forced medication.
And once inside a mental clinic, it can be hard to get out.
Re: Germany’s top financial supervisor dismissed a decade of warnings about Wirecard
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even though losing the job is not a punishment, not everyone even lost his job. Andreas Sheuer is still in charge of transport as a federal Minister, despite the 500,000,000 € heavy corruption scandal. Von der Leyen got even "promoted" to EU-lead position after heavy corruption scandal last year when she was a Defense Minister of Germany. Not only Germany, but in the whole EU commission leadership it would be hard to…
The problem is that gross incompetence is not a crime. You can't arrest someone on account of them being an idiot. It's the responsibility of the other party members and especially the opposition to demand him being removed from office. Funnily enough the Green Party demanded exactly that, but then again that's the same party that wants general speed limits... So yeah, of course any party that wants to get reelected…
> You can't arrest someone on account of them being an idiot.
No but you can sure fire them, in the private sector at least.
The 21 km/h above the speed limit would probably not make the auto industry very happy. What good is a Porsche if one needs to drive slowly?