51–60 of 93 posts
It's always amazing to me how in the world of high profile white collar criminality you can make billions and your punishment is to pay a few percent of it back. I wish ordinary theft worked like this. Steal 500 bucks and your punishment is to return 100.
The amount of human capital that has gone into financial engineering is depressing. Thousands of brilliant minds who are designing complex financial products instead of useful technology.
Prompts one to ask what the incentive is?
[When a rocket scientist is asked why he joined a Wall Street firm.]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To clarify, the 7.7 billion figure is the 6.8 billion owed plus ~900 million in interest and fines.
Imagine you steal 500 bucks and if caught, the only punishment is to pay back 600 years later. You'd have be almost certain of getting caught for it to not be a great idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vanguard already gets a blind eye for their management structure’s taxation because they manage the retirement accounts of so many common people without greed.
But they patented it, so other companies (Fidelity, Schwab etc.,) can't use it.
The amount of human capital that has gone into financial engineering is depressing. Thousands of brilliant minds who are designing complex financial products instead of useful technology.
I once asked an Oxford-educated post-doc, who had worked as a quant, "are you going to go back to finance?" He replied that he simply doesn't know. He wants to do mathematical research, but both academia and industry stifle such ambitions. For the former, unless you're in the literal handful at IAS, you'll have to waste the majority of your time teaching, advising, and writing grant proposals. For the latter, one lacks not only the time, but also resources for research (seminars, journal access, colleagues, etc.).
The critical difference is that working in finance (or any ad factory) provides less stress and much more financial stability. Of the professors I've known, many work obscene hours every day of the week. Society will benefit, but at what personal cost?
The amount of human capital that has gone into financial engineering is depressing. Thousands of brilliant minds who are designing complex financial products instead of useful technology.
Why work for society's benefit at the expense of your well-being? I once asked an Oxford-educated post-doc, who had worked as a quant, "are you going to go back to finance?" He replied that he simply doesn't know. He wants to do mathematical research, but both academia and industry stifle such ambitions. For the former, unless you're in the literal handful at IAS, you'll have to waste the majority of your time teachi…
It is a deep structural problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They saved 6.8B seven years ago. If they put that money in broad market index, they already made the fine amount by now and then some.
The discount rate is usually based on a risk free asset. They could have put it in an index and ended up with a 30-40% decline in value as well.
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This isn't insider trading. It's tax fraud.
I believe they’re saying that the Medallion fund which RenTech runs is an insider trading scheme, probably due to the incredible rate of return over decades. And that for RenTech to agree to this penalty implies they have a ton of money sitting around that they shouldn’t, given the capacity constrained nature of the Medallion fund. On these I have no opinion. I may have misinterpreted the commenter.
They might know they would definitely lose in court, and end up with a bigger penalty (on top of more legal expenses).