531–540 of 886 posts
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The HN commenters in question were universally saying that he made up the donations to Republicans to cover up his more extensive connections to Democrats.
I'm sorry, but pretty sure they are public record.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/22/senate-re...
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Hm... does that mean she gets away scot-free? Not sure that's fair, she seems very complicit.
93% of prisoners are men[1], so it's pretty common that women do not face justice. [1] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gende...
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With the amount of money that's missing, $10B, one could afford to pay a regiment of 1,000 men a salary of $100,000 for the next hundred years.
Oh yeah, and how exactly do you imagine this going ? You're going to ask to see a cartel boss and tell him you have $10B in untraceable money, and you need a small army - you're willing to pay 1,000 men - $100,000 for the next 10 years ? They will most probably start to torture you to know where the money is, before you finish these words. That's a fun mental exercise btw - imagine you have $1B now - let's say illega…
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She was spotted in NYC with another Alameda employee too. Maybe the Alameda execs are trying to say they just made irresponsible gambles (like a shitty Wall St investor) but SBF is the one who secretly covered the massive losses with FTX customer assets without telling the public and was responsible for the "dual accounting" issue where deposits were counted twice. Among all the other things that they did wrong. Or m…
What you've described is also consistent with her asking the DOJ for a deal and then being laughed out of the room.
Maybe part of the urgency was also the planned congressional testimony.
His parents are law professors, themselves with hundreds of millions they must have gained from their son's activities. We know that they have at least 10s of millions of dollars in real estate to their names. The probabilty that it's hubris, stupidity or privilege (all suggested in these comments) causing these interviews is less close to 1 than the probability it's a tactic to portray himself as a distracted lunati…
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Hm... does that mean she gets away scot-free? Not sure that's fair, she seems very complicit.
I haven’t seen any evidence Alameda itself committed any crime, only that they were terrible traders and lost many billions on margin through FTX, who gave them special treatment for collateral. SBF then tried to bail them out with FTX customer funds since he owned both. I think Ellison will get off scot free since she only controlled Alameda, and not entirely. Her crimes are probably minor and worth forgiving for he…
At the very least she will be deemed unfit or proper, which means she will be barred from any financial activity for the years to come.
On top of that, as a MOO & RO she will be professionally and personally liable to millions in fines, and most likely jail time.
Negligence _is_ a crime, a lack of means _is_ a crime, a lack of knowledge or control are crimes as well, for any regulated person, especially at the MOO/RO level, a lack of chinese wall between investment and retail is a crime, accepting money from an unverified source is akin to money laundering for an investment firm.
Edit: MOO, ROs (responsible officers) and MICs (managers in charge) are regulated activities that should be assigned to individuals performing specific duties in an investment fund. Each regulator will have different names and variations on their duties and structure, but overall it's pretty much aligned.
It is mandatory for a regulated firm to have a specific amount and hierarchy of these regulated activities, and each one of them comes with a set of duties.
These activities are the main vector by which regulators enforce and control individual managers.
MOO is often assigned to the CEO. ROs are often the key investment officers, and MICs are often the key tech & operation officers.
Edit2: Hedge funds are no less regulated than any other investment firm. You are mixing "prop shops"/"family offices" and hedge funds.
Alameda was definitely an asset manager as it received external funds and was selling (debt) securities.
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It’s not that everything’s a conspiracy, it’s that everything is corrupt. Our whole system is from top to bottom. The PR and public statements are almost never the private statements or full story. Even with all the corruption, sometimes the optics are a bridge too far, even for the connected.
Strongly disagree. I think you can fairly say that about developing countries. I live in one now and it’s almost assumed politicians are on the take. But in the US many people are very principled. I also don’t see why complete transparency would be the goal of the justice department. Sam might think of moving to Dubai if he knows all their moves.
The evidence of widespread corruption in the US government is everywhere if you open your eyes: legislators become vastly more wealthy after getting elected via insider trading, regulators invest in the very companies they oversee, prosecutors selectively prosecute crimes, sweetheart book deals and speaking gigs, positions on boards of think tanks and companies after their “public service” has ended, I could go on.
It’s not about transparency, it’s about integrity. All the things I mentioned above are open secrets. The US is a third world country with cell phones.
Much sooner than I expected. Figured it'd be a couple of years before the AG was secure enough in their case to bring charges. This is MUCH faster than Madoff or Holmes. Then again, he's been much more out in the open about everything. He pretty much laid the prosecution's case out to the public for them.
I imagine SBF constantly confessing crimes into a microphone accelerated the timeline a little bit.
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> Both cooperate -> both go free for a moment, spend some months or maybe even a few years living in fear, then with 95% chance go to prison for life. That's because the whole deal is about saving work for the Feds, but they will put in that work if needed, and come back with bullet-proof case. This isn't necessarily the case. The Feds convict on 95% of the cases they decide to prosecute. Which means that they decide…
That's a generic case. Parent is describing a specific case in which prisoners determine they have a 95% chance they will be convicted. Given such a case, parent's argument follows logically. How many cases the Fed prosecutes or convicts is irrelevant to the scenario.
But even if not, then have the prisoners multiply that 95% by whatever they believe is the chance Feds will eventually prosecute. Is it 50/50? That just gives them 52% chance of avoiding spending rest of their lives in prison, which is still not a good bet.
(Note that prisoners won't be unbiased here - the Feds will be trying to make them believe this chance is much higher than it really is.)
There is a third factor here, whether the prisoners can disappear before Feds go after them - I assumed they effectively can't, and/or it comes with sacrifices so big that it's not much different than prison.
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No, they don't have my consent. I'm forced to use banks because the government won't protect me from criminals if I shove cash under my mattresses. The banks don't offer an "opt-out" option when you register. Real consent means you offer "yes" and "no" and the other party says yes. It's effectively forced upon me.
Just rent a deposit box at the bank and put your cash there. They won’t touch it. Just like having it under your mattress but probably safer from criminals.
B) I don’t know about all of them, but the ones I’ve used have explicit rules against storing cash.