IBM, Intel Execs Arrested Over Insider Trading 198
An anonymous reader writes to share a report from The Register stating that executives from IBM and Intel have been arrested as a part of insider trading allegations. "According to a report from the Associated Press, six people were arrested today as part of an insider trading case, including Bob Moffat, senior vice president and general manager of IBM's Systems and Technology Group; Rajiv Goel, director of strategic investments at Intel Capital; Anil Kumar, a director at management consultancy McKinsey & Co; and Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of the $7bn Galleon Group hedge fund."
Intel (Score:2)
Didn't Intel just a while ago discontinue some of their largest product line too?
And IBM only supports the enterprise companies.
Even if Google just today reported great increase in profits, maybe recression still has something to do with it.
Well now... (Score:2)
Re:Well now... (Score:5, Insightful)
No it's not interesting. It takes time to move through all the documents and prepare for the arrest. The word you were looking for is routine.
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No, routine is doing it, a short investigation showing you're guilty, and then waving your hands like a Jedi and getting off the hook.
Oh wait, that's only routine for Steve Jobs.
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Jobs (meaning Apple, Inc) did not wait for an investigation, or the results of one, before alerting the SEC and the Press to the presence of irregularities in their stock option pricing methods. You want to be an Apple/Jobs hater? Fine with me, but focus on the facts in pursuit of that noble quest; there's enough of them.
I proofread and edited the Apple press release that went to the SEC through EDGAR, and I also considered a little insider trading when I realized I had market-moving information, and 30 min
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Probably nobody cared to investigate it until last January or February.
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Perhaps it wasn't known until later and after the fact. A lot of laws that are broken do not get discovered until well after the fact.
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No, they weren't de-emphasized. They just weren't as publicized. The last administration went after the CEO's of Tyco, worldcom, enron, and several other companies for insider trading and the equivalent of embezzlement. If anything, they concentrated too much on the big fish and failed to see the smaller fish growing.
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I hope you realize that the Ds and Rs do not really decide who investigates what or who get prosecuted or not. Puting politics in this is rather short sighted and as far as the money trail goes, that's generally in shaping laws, not investigating violations of the laws.
However, if you know of a memo or something where an administration said do not prosecute or do not investigate this person or these charges or this corruption, I would really like to see it and it would lend more credit to your position. Unt
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Yes, that's why it's such a fucking scandal that the Bush administration was firing lawyers in Justice for political reasons.
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You mean because they weren't prosecuting illegal aliens? It's not more of a scandal then Clinton firing all the justice department prosecutors and replacing them when he first got in office.
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Nice, make shit up, hope it sticks.
At the beginning of presidential terms, prosecutors traditionally hand in their resignations. Every president.
And the fired prosecutors were the ones investigating public corruption.
And this one was fired to give the job to a buddy.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-02-06-prosecutor-rove-aide_x.htm [usatoday.com]
You're relying on people's ignorance to slide these by, to slam the Clintons, to praise Bush.
I am not ignorant, so it doesn't work on me.
Instead, I point out your lies.
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Your pretty ignorant indeed. It seems that your doing what your accusing me of. Your excusing Clinton in order to bash Bush when neither is relevant. You even seem to be perpetuating BS in order to make it stick. Here is a more accurate accounting of what happened [latimes.com] At least I didn't praise Bush, like you are Clinton.
And yes, Clinton came into office with him and/or his friends being investigated for corruption. Well, Hillary and her gang anyways. It's no different and you attempting to make it so has no refl
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Blah blah blah. Where did I praise Clinton? Where?
Quote me.
The days when you assholes like you can get away with that shit are long over. We've got the Google now. Anybody can just go find the truth. You have no excuse.
Put on some pants, you freak.
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At the same place you falsely accused me of praising Bush. Now go troll somewhere else idiot.
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That isn't praise, it's the facts. Since when is stating the facts praise? I guess you were impressed or something and in your mind thought Bush deserved praise that you twisted tolling mind simply couldn't allow to happen.
But hey, when your retort consists of calling me gay, we know who has the problem. Like I said earlier, go troll somewhere else.
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Stating selective facts is praise, especially since I'm the one who had to bring up the justice firings. You want to cover them up.
You call me trolling. It does not matter. The fact is, 70% of the American people are awake and think you're full of shit. You can't fool the any longer.
Your ideas are dead. Your side is dead. Conservatism is dead. Yer mom's sex life is dead. Her pussy is really dead, let me tell you.
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The recession has changed attitudes. They are now using criminal, rather than civil charges, and the apologists for insider trading have disappeared: people were arguing that it is not really harmful and that it should be decriminalised. While it remained a crime, that attitude probably permeated to the authorities to some extent.
I know Raj slightly: nice enough a person socially.
Re:Well now... (Score:4, Informative)
Probably wanted to make sure they had a solid case. If they are guilty, who else thinks these guys will get away with a lower sentence then a non-violent drug user?
Re:Well now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. Most people don't realize it, but financial crimes in the US are punished pretty severely. Enron's Skilling got 24 years in jail for conspiracy to defraud investors. You can get less than that for killing somebody. Martha Stewart got six months for lying to an investigator (while she wasn't under oath) about something that wasn't a crime. As with drunk driving for awhile people have this idea the penalties are light, but in the meantime legislators are reacting to public anger and jacking up the sentences. It takes awhile for reality to sink in to the public consciousness. From here [nytimes.com]:
I think the drug laws are pretty stupid, too, but where I live first time offenders never get jail time for possession. You can usually avoid jail on the second conviction as well if you don't have a bunch of other stuff on your record. By the third one, well, you're an idiot who's going to jail for being an idiot. But only for a few months.
Re:Well now... (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. Most people don't realize it, but financial crimes in the US are punished pretty severely.
I don't have a problem with the amount of punishment, but I'm pissed with how few get caught. If you follow the market and take a look at important announcements like rate cuts, economic numbers, earnings reports, etc., you could often (not always) see high volume trade before the announcements pre-announcing the result. Its sad that people almost never get caught, considering how often it happens.
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Many other criminals don't get caught either.
As for insider trading, to me the following is just as unfair and should be as illegal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print [nytimes.com]
So who is going to jail for that?
In the finance trading world, knowing something 1 day before the rest of the market isn't so different from knowing something 30 milliseconds before everyone else in the market.
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Drug crimes are often victimless, financial crimes not so.
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No they're not. Are you nuts? How much time do you think you get for robbing a liquor store? Do you know how many liquor stores you'd have to knock over to make even a million dollars? Let's assume that all liquor stores keep $5000 in the till. You knock them over after hours in a way that ensures no one could possibly get hurt, and not armed. That's 200 liquor stores to make a million bucks.
No chance in hell you're getting less than 24 years for knocking over 200 liquor stores.
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Well, okay. But I wasn't arguing you'd get exactly the equivalent time as burglary. The original poster was trying to say these guys would get less than somebody would for simple possession. Which is wrong.
Do you get more time for burglary than you would for a white collar crime that netted you the same amount of money? Sure. But I'm okay with that, because no matter what the burglar intended, people get hurt during burglaries.
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There, fixed that for you. Never thought I'd say that, but I just did. I don't know if this link is any good, it's just the first one I found.
America Has Become Incarceration Nation [alternet.org]
Circa not so long ago, America had 2.2 million people incarcerated, 5 to 8 times the rate of any other industrial nation, and one guy is serving a
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The point is that's not the high end of the scale at all. It's not that uncommon to see people who get, literally, hundreds of years for white collar crime. Madoff got 150 years. Now, granted, that's mostly symbolic for a guy in his 70s, but in general financial crimes are such that a prosecutor can usually throw a whole bunch of counts of 3-5 at you to end up with some eye-popping total.
If I were doing an over/under on these guys I'd say (assuming they're guilty as charged) they each get at lea
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Well, even young guys who get sentenced to 150 years sometimes get out in their lifetime. The point is that you haven't presented any evidence that in general white-collar criminals are treated more harshly than other criminals.
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I think your generalizing too much. Financial fraud generally has a harsh sentencing because the very nature of trust that needs to be in place when getting into those positions. This isn't really the same as all white color crimes where some mid-level manager is embezzling a couple grand a month or takes liberal use of the company car, or makes loans to himself and never repays them. That would be included in white collar crimes. What happened here is that securities were exchanged in ways the law consider
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Not for federal crimes they don't. There's no parole in the federal system for crimes committed since November of 1987 - you do every minute of your sentence unless you can get it reversed somehow or you can get a pardon.
This is exactly what I'm talking about - people remember an article they read twenty years ago about some heinous felon getting early release. Lots of voters read that same article and started baying
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I don't recall saying anything specifically about federal crimes.
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Not for federal crimes they don't. There's no parole in the federal system for crimes committed since November of 1987 - you do every minute of your sentence unless you can get it reversed somehow or you can get a pardon.
According to Justin Petersen [phrack.org] (who spent 41 months in federal prison - he should know), they have indeed abolished parole, but you still get 15% time off for good behavior.
Re:Well now... (Score:5, Interesting)
I totally agree with you.
These people are going to have the very very best investigators, experts, and lawyers. They are going to examine every nook and cranny of the case in the attempt to find one little crack of reasonable doubt that will enable them to beat the rap.
The FBI doesn't just need to dot every i and cross every t, they need to develop a case so tight that even the most moronic juror will see the wrong clear as day, when the best lawyers in the world are trying to obscure everything.
On top of that, the US Attorneys don't like to go to trial unless they have a slam dunk. Losing makes them (and their administration) look bad--and image is sooo important!!
Bottom line is that the FBI had to work their ass off to get the goods on these guys and we should all damn well appreciate it!
It's Double Jeopardy Stupid... (Score:2, Informative)
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Whatever makes you think the FBI did any significant part of this investigation? Even when the FBI arrests someone, the case is often assembled by the victims, especially of fiscal fraud.
Re:Well now... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are victims of this crime. Those who bought or didn't buy shares at the 'wrong' price because they didn't have the information that the insiders did. Insider trading causes the honest people to A) lose money or B) not make as much money. So there are victims and injuries.
The drug thing is a whole different debate that I do not wish to even start with.
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Yep, one player in the market had 'more perfect' information than the others, so it wasn't a fair market.
OK, Slashcrowd, so what's the way to structurally prevent this from happening? SEC raids are expensive (both the raids and SEC
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Associate trader information (first/last/ss#) with every trade.
There *are* patterns. Problem now is: from regulation's perspective, there's no way to tie you to a trade. All an exchange/clearing sees is the firm you used (ie: when you buy shares, all a regulator sees is "bank of america" or something, but then that's the same info they see for thousands of other folks buying/selling in the same day).
From that pool, it's hard to get a pattern signal that regulators can go to firms with to actually request yo
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The problem with insider trading has nothing to do with some investors having better information than others. That's true of every trade, and the vast majority of the time is nothing to worry about. Finding ways to get more timely and trustworthy information than your competitors is central to trade in general, and giving people incentives to discover and act on this information is one of the main functions of a market.
No, the problem with insider trading is when one or more agents—e.g. the hired mana
Re:Well now... (Score:5, Insightful)
You think that there are no victims and no injuries caused by insider trading? How about the people at the other end of those trades? What about the former shareholder who sold stock early, not having had access to information showing that the stock was undervalued? Or how about the new shareholder who did not have the information to know that the stock was overvalued? Those who have access to proprietary information, or who are in a position to manipulate the value of an organization, have a fiduciary duty of loyalty to shareholders. Insider trading violates that duty and is a subtle, but very real, method of stealing from them. For another perspective, click here [gbcnv.edu].
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What about the former shareholder who sold stock early, not having had access to information showing that the stock was undervalued? Or how about the new shareholder who did not have the information to know that the stock was overvalued?
I agree with you in general—particularly regarding agents' (trusted insiders) duty toward their principals (the shareholders at large)—but this part makes no sense. In what way would someone else's trades prevent an existing shareholder from selling too early? If they were inclined to sell at the current price it seems to me that they would sell regardless of any insider trading. Any attempt to buy up stock at the lower price would signal other investors to anticipate a price increase, making th
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If they were inclined to sell at the current price it seems to me that they would sell regardless of any insider trading. Any attempt to buy up stock at the lower price would signal other investors to anticipate a price increase, making them less likely to sell....
Your arguments presume an extremely large amount of insider trading, large enough to affect the market price. Such a large amount of insider trading is probably not happening in today's markets, since insider trading is, after all, illegal.
With insider trading being illegal, the few who break the law gain an unfair advantage, and since finance (unlike manufacturing or engineering) is a zero sum game, if some people have an advantage, then others are by definition disadvantaged.
If insider trading were l
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Is that you George? How much more do your neocon masters want us to deregulate? We've already dismantled almost all the laws that were put in place after the crash of '29! There really isn't much more we can do!!
Well, wait - we CAN allow people to trade entirely on credit, with no collateral at all. Would that make you happy, Mr. Bush?
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The SEC is overwhelmed with work -- so you can imagine that building a case against >6 people took them some time..
That's not too bad (Score:4, Funny)
No bad or worse (Score:2)
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When they do get caught can we kill 'em?
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When they do get caught can we kill 'em?
You can do whatever you want just don't get caught.
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OOOHHH! HATE SPEECH!
We have laws to deal with those who think as you do! Never forget: Corporations are persons [wikipedia.org] and have all the rights of personhood, as enshrined (entombed?) in law. You are a hate-criminal, [wikipedia.org] and probably therefore a violent extremist. [wikipedia.org]
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http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/ [reclaimdemocracy.org]
http://www.ourpla.net/cgi/pikie?CorporatePersonhood [ourpla.net]
Corrupt Complete. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Corrupt Complete. (Score:5, Insightful)
Will somebody please flush the elitist toilet?
Elitist is a loaded term used by useful idiots, seeking to lump together people of above-average intelligence, (supposedly) more highly refined culture, and (very, very secondarily) the wealthy into a political target group that can be exploited by the right wing populist. Unfortunately, this normally results in the demise of smart people (who cannot defend themselves), while leaving in place the wealthy (who can). In doing so, the right wing defang a properly targeted populist revolt that might actually change the system, which is based on economic class/power differences rather than on cultural/IQ differences. Doing this ensures that the fundamental class system, determined by power structures dictated by economics and wealth are never changed, leaving the idiots in the lower class forever subservient. Wash, repeat.
So have a ball flushing your elitist toilet and wave back from the sewer outlet as you try to figure out why that doesn't change a damn thing.
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Useful idiot was Stalin's term for Westerners who sympathized with the Soviet system and wished to implement it in their own free countries. Stalin was well aware of the horrid nature of his regime, and found it baffling that anyone would actually want to perpetrate such a thing on their countrymen. The more you know...
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Elitist is a loaded term used by useful idiots, seeking to lump together people of above-average intelligence
Thank you for demonstrating that you are not one of these people! Elitist is a term used to describe people who think they're part of the best of the best, and treat others accordingly. Period, the end. In fact, it talks about their attitude, not about their financial status. Why don't you try looking at a dictionary sometime? I hear they have a few online.
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You're both idiots. You're responding to posts assuming a definition of the word that is not the definition the parent was using. I know context is a real subtle thing, but really, you should try paying attention to it. It'll help.
(For reference, the above text is elitist.)
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Um, do you mean like Hollywood stars who jet around the globe to tell us to cut down our carbon footprints? Or ex-secretaries like Nancy Pelosi who want to decide what health care options we have, and how our children should be educated? Sounds like the definition of the modern liberal to me "I'm better than you, so I can te
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"Common sense" is nothing more than the mass of background assumptions you picked up by osmosis while growing up and never bothered to challenge. Lots of it is perfectly logical, for obvious reasons, but other parts are nothing more than oft-repeated lies.
Bob Moffat et al (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice. So executives at Intel, IBM, Bear Stearns, and McKinsey were tipping off a Billionaire hedge fund manager. Any wonder _how_ he made those Billions, then? And all of them massive contributors to politicians. How nice. These idiots should all go to jail, for a very long time. Maybe, use the per capita income of ordinary Americans to judge their prison terms; 25M/43k/yr = 500 years between them. Some of them _might_ get out in time to die.
andy
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Yes, rehabilitation sounds perfect.
and I know just who we can call in for the job.
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What you fail to understand is that it would not be the hedge fund managers who were involved in insider trading who would be shot in the public stadium, no they have far too much power and influence (read as money).
It would be the drug dealers and other relatively insignificant criminals who would find themselves in a stadium preparing to be shot on national television.
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Sure, that's the way it was done for centuries all over the world and look at the result. Crime is unknown now .. oh wait.
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So your theory is that hearing about punishment in places far away from home is more effective in deterring crime than hearing about punishment in your own community?
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"The Chinese method for dealing with political corruption is better, final, and satisfies the public right to vengeance against those who betray them."
And a dozen lucky people on various transplant lists get new organs.
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No, parent is a troll, because their nationality has nothing to do with the crime they allegedly committed, and was used purely for the purpose of bigotry...Unless the parent also goes around writing in "WHITE AMERICAN" on all articles that mention bad things white Americans do. It's totally irrelevant.
Honestly though... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Insider trading is only for board members (Score:5, Informative)
I'm afraid that insider trading is deeply, deeply frowned on by most companies, who put strong clauses in their confidentiality agreements, and at some larger companies provide "training" about how not to do it. I've attended such training several times, as part of corporate mergers, and it's striking how thee announced policy does not apply to VP's in practice: does not apply to "corporate partners": and does not apply to the people who have the most to trade with and the most to gain. It _does_ apply to the peons, the people with stock options who might want to trade them in at the right moment but whose activity might pre-announce and thus reduce the profitability of the corporate changes which are the direct knowledge of those most with the most to gain from insider trading.
Yes, I've become extremely cynical about this: I know VP's who really try to help their companies and improve their products, but I've been running into far too many since the Dotcom boom who simply studied how to make their bundle and get out with the last glowing quarter on their resume, and get out before the SEC or the market stomps their grandiose "big vision" plans into the dust.
Re:Insider trading is only for board members (Score:4, Interesting)
I blame Gordon Gekko. No joke. Ever read Oliver Stone's comments about Wall Street? He's horrified by how many stockbrokers and money managers and accountants and traders come up to him and say, "Thanks. That movie changed my life." Gordon Gekko, who said he made 800 thou on his first real estate deal, and it was better than sex, but now it's just a day's pay. Gekko only got caught because he made the mistake of angering a protege who got too close. The latest batch of Gekko wannabes won't make that mistake.
Seriously, if anyone with inside information wanted to cash in on it, how difficult would it be not to get caught? Just make sure not to leave a trail or be obvious about it. In fact, this is probably factored in to every valuation - as a kind of value leakage, a toll. The cost of doing business. Things could only have gotten a lot more sophisticated since Gekko was king. We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg.
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It's not trivial to successfully hide insider trading. When you're talking about executives moving thousands of shares, those moves must be reported and will be placed under a microscope. Regulators have statistical models, that will raise red flags if trading patterns are unusual, not to mention the potential of alienating other trad
Re:Insider trading is only for board members (Score:5, Insightful)
This part is especially worthy of note:
"The U.S. real economy suffers from critical shortages of employees with strong mathematical, engineering, and scientific backgrounds. Graduates in these three fields all too frequently choose careers in finance rather than the real economy because the financial sector provides far greater executive compensation. Individuals with these quantitative backgrounds work overwhelmingly in devising the kinds of financial models that were important contributors to the financial crisis. We take people that could be conducting the research & development work essential to the success of our real economy (including its success in becoming sustainable) and put them instead in financial sector activities where, because of that sector’s perverse incentives, they further damage both the financial sector and the real economy."
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I am a fdr type guy. So I read the cite. Probably cops, but maybe just degenerate. Pretty much technophile, which I admit might play well on slashdot. Support sustainable whatever. Notice they liked the post-sputnik era, but as far as I can tell, just become we put an emphasis on science and engineering. Liked the tech bubble, and that is just inexplicable. Did not mention Roosevelt's big industrial push like the TVA project. Pretty much just anti-corruption.
No program. They had a comments section,
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No matter what a person does if one of the premises is unsound or false the conclusion is false.
You'd be better off describing the conclusion as unsound; it's usually the case that reasoning involves implication and when the premises are not satisfied there, it ends up impossible to make any statement about the truth-status of the conclusion (based on that evidence anyway; other deductions might lead to useful statements).
There gonna put the IBM guy in a little cell (Score:2)
with vertical steel bars from side to side and horizontal blue bars at the top and bottom.
While they're at it ... (Score:3, Insightful)
they can arrest everyone who has ever worked for Goldman Sachs or any of those other bankster firms who are now heaping lavish bonuses on their people, paid for by taxpayers who are becoming unemployed and homeless.
These IBM/intel guys are small potatoes. Make Geithner and Paulson do the perp walk.
Poor guy (Score:3)
No White Guys Arrested (Score:2)
Sorry, but I'm sure the real criminals got away, these guys are probably fall guys.
No, they are guilty of the ONLY crime in business (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called, 'getting caught.' You see, when you get caught, everyone else in business has to pretend they don't do it, and that they are shocked! Shocked and appalled at the bad apples ruining the barrel. By 'bad apples,' they mean, 'people just like me except they got caught' and by 'ruining the barrel,' they mean, 'drawing the attention of the peons to our utter corruption.'
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Here's your bonus.
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Re:No, they are guilty of the ONLY crime in busine (Score:4, Insightful)
It's really a tossup. +5 insightful, or +5 cynical. Ironic that cynicism and insight are so much alike, isn't it?
Re:No, they are guilty of the ONLY crime in busine (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it's not like there aren't any good, ethical people even at the highest levels of corporate power. There are good, ethical politicians, too. Heck, I've met some of both.
But in both cases, you have two things working against there being a preponderance of ethical people. First, power tends to attract high functioning sociopaths. Second, and perhaps as a consequence of the first, you have a culture where corruption is seen as normal, a perk of one's position over other people.
People in positions of power are shielded from anything that can touch their comforting illusions about themselves. They believe that they deserve their positions because they are good people. They are good people because they are in those positions of power, sacrificing their superior selves to make the lives of we, the incompetent peons who need them to look after us, better. Of course they deserve a little on the side for such sacrifice!
You see, the terrible burden of such awesome responsibility entitles them to whatever they can take because the rules for little people don't apply to them.
Re:No, they are guilty of the ONLY crime in busine (Score:5, Interesting)
I knew a guy who had a collection of old/historical bibles. He always locked them up whenever a pastor came over, because he'd had too many of them stolen, by pastors.
Nietzsche had it covered (Score:2)
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It's just the bad 99% giving the other 1% a bad name. ;-)
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They are good people because they are in those positions of power, sacrificing their superior selves to make the lives of we, the incompetent peons who need them to look after us, better.
You're dead wrong on this one: psychopaths have no illusion whatsoever about what good they do to "us", the lowly ones. Psychopaths only and exclusively look for their own benefit, even if it means a damage for everyone else. They have no conscience whatsoever, but are very charismatic and expert at manipulating. I highly recommend the book Snakes in Suits [msn.com] for anyone interested in the phenomenon of psychopaty in corporate life.
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Well, obviously the sociopaths and psychopaths don't need those excuses internally. I'm talking about the non-sociopaths who tell themselves these things.
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Where do you see the need for more regulation?
Do you see a need to have these people violate two or three regulations instead of simply one?
Do you believe that their penalties (if they are proven guilty) are insufficient and deserving of harsher punishment?
By the way, many of these companies aren't on Wall street, but in Aramok, NY, and Santa Clara, CA.
Your populi
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"Do you see a need to have these people violate two or three regulations instead of simply one?"
He doesn't see the need for them to violate any regulations but instead to obey them. Nobody but the straw man in your head is interested in creating redundant regulations.
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I mean really how many houses cars boats do you need ?
ALL OF THEM
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I mean really how many houses cars boats do you need ?
Capitalist: All of them.
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"Start taking up responsibility for your own actions."
You mean he outsourced himself? Perhaps you should sober-up before climbing on your high horse.
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I think information is allowed to be provided to investors, but it has to be done through a public disclosure, where any investor could potentially access the information at the same time, right? Things like press releases/conferences, maybe announcements on a website, tv/radio/internet news, etc. I might be wrong - I'm definitely no expert on securities law, but I think the *point* is to prevent people getting rich (or avoiding losses) from having access to secrets that other investors don't.
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This seems nonsensical when the annual corporate meetings are held with all employees, who may own stock or stock options. Even if you tell those employees "there is a trading freeze on, due to these business changes", this is why those VP's and more stock-playing employees have divested their shares to family members or business colleagues, with whom they regularly and quietly share insider information.
I think you're right about the point of the laws, I just find that they're often a sad joke in practice.