351–360 of 446 posts
He was so obnoxious that I guess it is easy to be happy about that, but he was so small time in the grand scheme of things. But nearly no bankers responsible for the 2008 financial crisis ever went to jail: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/how-wal...
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>At the same time, people can get hyped up about what they read in internet tabloids or are told through the media, and politicians will be forced to respond to that. This is spot on. That gives a heck of a lot of power to news organizations. That's scary when thinking of the quality and journalistic integrity of many, if not most news organizations. People react much more strongly to what they read/watch/listen to o…
I‘d say it gives a heck of a lot of power to influential Twitter users, the press just seems to react to them nowadays.
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> So how does this all boil down to a judge's feelings being hurt? The way I read the parent is that this conviction would almost certainly not merit seven years in a typical non-Shkreli case. But the judge handed down seven years, not because of his crime, but because of his attitude . The OP even suggested as much, suggesting if he had just "kissed the ring", the sentence would have been substantially less. I read…
Why don’t we approach his sentence from the opposite direction: the prosecution proposed a 15-year sentence, which is less than a reported max of ~25 years under federal guidelines. 7 years is a fraction of what Shkreli could face, so why don’t we accuse her of being emotionally swayed to be lenient? I agree that feelings are inextricably involved when human judges and juries make decisions. And all initiatives to co…
Because other, similar cases seem to have lesser sentences, not greater. This case has a larger sentence compared to other actual practical cases, though clearly it wasn't as large as it could legally have been.
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CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligation) origination fraud is a crime. The GFC was not caused by law abiding activities. It was fraud, plain and simple. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/bank-america-pay-1665-billion... As part of the RMBS Working Group, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey conducted a FIRREA investigation into misrepresentations made by Merrill Lynch to investors in 72 RMBS throughout…
"Fraud" can be civil fraud, or criminal fraud. Criminal fraud is something like "they said they were going to sell me something, but just took my money instead." Civil fraud might be something like "they sold me 10-inch sandwiches as 12-inch sandwiches." What you're describing in the paragraph above is even one step removed from the sandwiches. Knowing that "loans had material underwriting and compliance defects" doe…
Is it purely a matter of partial delivery, or does magnitude matter? What if it's "they sold me 10 tons of gold as 12 tons of gold?" Because that's a big difference.
Then again, 10 inch sandwhiches sold as 12 inch sandwhiches allows you to save over 15% of materials, which if you're a nationwide chain could be quite a lot of money as well.
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> So how does this all boil down to a judge's feelings being hurt? The way I read the parent is that this conviction would almost certainly not merit seven years in a typical non-Shkreli case. But the judge handed down seven years, not because of his crime, but because of his attitude . The OP even suggested as much, suggesting if he had just "kissed the ring", the sentence would have been substantially less. I read…
Why don’t we approach his sentence from the opposite direction: the prosecution proposed a 15-year sentence, which is less than a reported max of ~25 years under federal guidelines. 7 years is a fraction of what Shkreli could face, so why don’t we accuse her of being emotionally swayed to be lenient? I agree that feelings are inextricably involved when human judges and juries make decisions. And all initiatives to co…
> You think the judge faces no risk if she decides to draw up a sentence without defensible legal basis?
What are the risks that judges face? My understanding is that Federal judges are appointed for life, with no chance of removal outside of impeachment. Is this not the case?
He was so obnoxious that I guess it is easy to be happy about that, but he was so small time in the grand scheme of things. But nearly no bankers responsible for the 2008 financial crisis ever went to jail: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/how-wal...
You think people should go to prison for being obnoxious?
He was so obnoxious that I guess it is easy to be happy about that, but he was so small time in the grand scheme of things. But nearly no bankers responsible for the 2008 financial crisis ever went to jail: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/how-wal...
You think people should go to prison for being obnoxious?
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The SEC, DOJ, et al also have limited amounts of resources. They just can't go after everyone.
The fact that they can't go after everyone doesn't mean that they should punish Shkreli extra hard for what amounts to being a jerk.
The majority of comments here being sad about Shkreli kinda reaffirms my views about HN, I have to say. Shkreli always seemed like a personified 4chan teenager "memelord" with money. Good to see that playing out your delusions of grandeur and arrogance toward the justice system is met with consequences. Maybe in prison he will mature a bit.
This is a travesty. He is sentenced not for drug prices but for this: he started a hedge fund which lost money, used some of the funds to start a pharma co, the pharma co did well went public and he returned the investors their money at a huge profit for them. Who sufffered? No one. But he misrepresented his funds performance and did not inform them of the pharma co investment. This man is an entrepreneur.
This man is not an entrepreneur, and to try and say so is to insult and demean actual entrepreneurs everywhere. His investors got lucky that he had the funds to repay them due to his other company. Had he gotten away with this, he likely would have done it again, and those investors might not have been so lucky.