301–310 of 348 posts
The headline says "execs" but I don't see any Board members getting prison terms. Martin Winterkorn, the CEO, has basically escaped prosecution altogether.
The US indicted seven senior executives including Martin Winterkorn in 2017 [1]. None of these seven were extradited from Germany to the US to face trial. [1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-ceo-volkswage...
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Matt Levine: “I find all of this so weird because of how it elevates finance. [Various cases] imply that we are not entitled to be protected from pollution as citizens, or as humans. [Another] implies that we are not entitled to be told the truth as citizens. (Which: is true!) Rather, in each case, we are only entitled to be protected from lies as shareholders. The great harm of pollution, or of political dishonesty,…
Obviously the solution is to buy one share in every company.
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Obviously the solution is to buy one share in every company.
Or just one share in a whole-of-market index fund.
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That doesn't make much sense as military technology typically comes first before any civilian application. Also, it would imply that we should already have lost the capability of making tank tracks as civilian vehicles don't use them.
> have lost the capability of making tank tracks Western Europe has certainly lost the capability of making even artillery shells at scale, let alone tank tracks, just look where we're at it now. > as military technology typically comes first before any civilian application. Diesel himself wasn't involved in any military thing, as far as I know, so I think you're wrong on that one. The thing is that without a strong…
Must be due to the lack of demand for civilian artillery shells, right?
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> retail and food service. Two industries that typically pay significantly less than a living wage and which have a reputation for treating their employees like absolute dirt. Would you respect your employer if they didn’t respect you?
My sister was a waitress at Red Lobster in somewhat of a tourism city and made absolute bank. She still stole stuff like cutlery, salt shakers, etc. Let’s not pretend that most people that are stealing are Robin Hood types.
It’s mutual distain between employee and employer.
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that's really not what it means, it means that if you owe the bank enough money (which is probably more than 100 million nowadays for any significant bank) then it is you in the position of power in relation to the bank, when the bank comes and says hey we need the money sure you have the "problem" that you need to pay it, but let's say you can pay it no sweat, but you'd rather not because reasons so you say hmm, I t…
> If you owe the bank enough money, you have the power in the relationship in most cases. If you have any assets, the bank can take them from you. The thing about renegotiating a loan is you don't have enough assets, but if the bank takes what you do have, you will never be able to repay the loan. I.e. the bank stands to recover more if you are successful than if you are bankrupt.
If you have any assets in the less than a billion dollars range, if you have assets over a billion dollars (which if you have enough of a loan in today's money to match the 100 million quote, you probably have over a billion in assets) then the bank knows its looking at a real fight. Nobody likes a real fight.
People like fights they're guaranteed to win quickly.
Good for Germany, but it is all too rare to see bad corporate behaviour punished like this. Steal £10k from a company, and you will probably go to prison for a long time. Start a company and steal billions from your customers and/or the tax payer, and you will probably get away with it. I believe Iceland was the only country to jail bankers after the 2008 banking disaster. We are still waiting for the British governm…
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Working too hard is rewarded with more work.
I agree, but this point seems to be orthogonal to the matters being discussed here. Your point is roughly analogous to 'providing too much consumer surplus is rewarded with more customers'.