The law allows for jail time, it's just rarely pursued these days by the DoJ because Eric Holder changed their system to pursue 'wins' (fines) rather than criminal prosecution, because the bar for successful prosecution is so much higher to convict someone of a crime.
Can't lose a case if you never try and convict anyone.
From government perspective the prosecution with jailtime will mean lengthy court processes with an army of lawyers. Lots of costs for government and headache for the government officials.
Instead if you just impose a fine, the government will actually get lots of money with little work and headache, and everyone involved will be moderately happy.
> From government perspective the prosecution with jailtime will mean lengthy court processes with an army of lawyers.
You're missing the point.
The US government has no desire to try SEC and/or white-collar cases without almost certainty that they will win. They don't really care about deterrence - losses tarnish runs for political office later. (You can watch "Law and Order" to see how that works at the city and state level.)
This is a subtle form of regulatory capture that greatly favors the largest companies. Fines look like a govt. win without the risk of a loss.
It's so bad that federal prosecutors mailed companies to not fund legal defenses for executives charged with a crime, in order to win more cases against defendants who couldn't mount a vigorous defense. (There are even some court forms that ask where you got the money to pay your defense lawyer.)
The Countryside shutdown was a multi-billion dollar debacle for the US government. Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo basically walked away without legal repercussions after it cratered. He even gave discounted mortgages to politicians to ingratiate the company in Washington. Who's going to indict their mortgage holder?
The KPMG report was a good moment. As was earlier this week when EY refused to attest the 2019 balance sheet. Maybe not perfect, but still enough profit potential if you ask me.
Short sellers seem to be a much more reliable indicator of something corrupt going on in a company than the big auditors. You could be forgiven for thinking they are in on the scam and working to keep the director's bonuses rolling in right until the final months before a company collapses.
I suppose governments couldn't ignore the obvious forever and they are being forced to actually doing their job now.
In the UK Carrillion comes to mind as a big one, and more recently Thomas Cook. There have been many others.
I suppose there are a lot of reasons to short sell a stock, and as a laymen I always felt it was just traders manipulating the stock market casino at the cost of real businesses.
Not sure who was/is shorting Tesla, maybe they just don't like Elon, or maybe there is something going on.
With the "big four" accountants/auditors seemingly being corrupt, and governments ignoring this, or worse being complicit, how else can the financial health of a company really be known?
It now comes down to a hedge fund with the skills to do so realising a company is cooking their books, shorting it as quietly as possible. Then they drop their PDF on Twitter and watch everyone else get screwed.
Rather than EY/KPMG etc. doing their job and warning investors/regulators before the problem gets so big it crashes the stock.
Another example, NMC Health being shorted by Muddy Waters at the end of last year, a FTSE 100 company with EY as the "auditor" since 2012.
My understanding is, that short sellers look for reasons to assume a company is over-valued (for whatever reason), calculate an more reasonable evaluation and then short sell for that value.
Doesn't mean it is always fraud. Oesn#t mean they are always right. But more foten thn not, they seem to be very rational about it. Given the amount of money they are moving around, they better are.
For Tesla, it means that, more likely than not, it has nothing to do with Elon. And more with things like:
- Is Tesla a car manufacturer or a "tech" comapny? If the former, it is over-valued, if the latter, it is much less so.
- Some, I'd say questionable, business deals. E.g. the Musk family bail out of Solar City, the sometimes not so clear intercomapny lending between Musks enterproses (SpaceX, Tesla,...)
- Musk seeming lack of focus on Tesla, he does work drectly on a lot f other ventures in parallel
- Musk's pubic behaviour, which seems of compared to other CEOs. Especially in the car industry, which has again a ot to do with the first point
- Corporate governance, that seems to be abit strange in Tesla's case. Normally, when publicly traded comapnies have that kind of trouble with the SEC, it is a bad sign.
Sure, Musk plays a role in all of that. But liking or not liking him is, IMHO, the least reason why someone would put millions at the table to short Tesla.
Regarding the big four, so. If you think back to the time before Enron and SOX, it was a lot worse. Since then, the Big Fur had split up operations, auditors have to change every coupe of years.
That being said, they could a lot stricter. I was way to deeply involved in one audit once, and I wouldn't have signed of balance sheet. Well, they kind of did only bcause the subsidiery I was involved in contributed a tiny fraction and everthing else added up. But still.
Also, Wirecard is a German company, so a lot of the SEC rules don't apply. Doesn't make it any better so.
If you think Tesla is an exception, perhaps you should revisit your assumptions. Their story is not over,it is just beginning.
These stories all work the same way: "Obviously there is no fraud here, this is a short seller scam!" to "this company was always a fraud, obviously." Most people have their head in the sand on the way up, and pretend they knew all along when it implodes.
Recovery token. It can optionally be emailed but you will be advised to write it down on paper -- this is already done with some 2FA auth. Let me flip tables:what if someone got access to your email and took over your image hosting account. How will you recover? Now they have access to private images and they can host illegal content and you will have to prove in court your account was taken over.
I like pen and paper because you can lock it away somewhere safe. If your physical security is bad anyways, no recovery method can help you. Offline,simple and unhackable.
I agree the problem is that implementation of a backup for 1FA ends up coming back to the phone. But often the target service has no certainty of which mechanisms are going where.
They send to your email.. They use TOTP. They use Oauth, etc, etc. What other things accounts go back to either your SIM or someone stealing your phone, SIM and all?
Even U2F will fall down this hole soon since everyone wants to implement it on phones! Will the attestation certs for phones say multipurpose device that is probably involved in other factors?
Would you please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the HN guidelines.
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From the comments.. for anyone that didn't scroll all the way:
Before "apologizing", you need to come clean: did you lie?
Earlier, you (Stack Exchange) wrote:
>We removed a moderator for repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct and being unwilling to accept our CM’s repeated requests to change that behavior.
However, Monica disputed that she had received repeated requests to change her behavior.
Clearly one party here is lying, and much of the community believes that party is Stack Exchange.
So—did you lie, or not? Your "apology" is meaningless until you clean this up.
I think this is probably the most important part of this whole issue, whether or not Stack Exchange is acting in good faith. And it's true, how can anything they say be trusted anymore if they would lie like that to the community?
Whether or not they lied, I wish they'd say something about it. Staying silent about it really gives a bad impression.
It seems pretty clear that Sara Chipps is effectively lying. Even if she's convinced herself that "we've been as clear as we can and your values are out of alignment".[0] At least, if "An employee with a 'director' title" is in fact
Sara Chipps. If it wasn't her, there's the possibility that the two SE employees miscommunicated, or could pretend so.
neither party may be lying. for example, Monica may not have received explicit official reprimands, however SO may feel that rejecting her position multiple times during communications meets this criteria.
That’s a pretty low bar and if accepted will place a chilling effect on any debate in moderator lounges.
Note that the essence of the debate is: “you must always use the person’s nominated pronouns” versus “you can write in such a way that pronouns aren’t used at all.”
To me there is a huge difference between, “you can write inclusively without talking about a person in the third or second person” and “I refuse to accept this attempt at inclusive regulation.”
But we will see what SO dredges up in order to justify their position that debates in a moderator lounge are the equivalent to formal requests.
She posted her side of the story, with no material backing information making, as I’ve said, a he-said-she-said tale. We don’t know anything material of the exchange. Yet everyone feels compelled to assume bad faith on SE’s part.
Monica’s defence is proving a negative at this point. She claims she was removed without just cause. She has provided evidence that she was removed. However, it is difficult for her to prove there was no just cause. Maybe she could provide transcripts for her N years at stackoverflow detailing all her interactions with the community then we can be sure she was removed without good reason.
This is basically guilt determined by a closed court in which the accused has no representation and no reason is given for the judgement, and in fact even the rule they've been found guilty of isn't disclosed, even to them.
So what is it exactly that they've done to earn any benefit of the doubt?
A few dozen long-time moderators vouching for the one that was fired and stepping down should inspire some doubt. Personally, vague judgements that say "she totally, repeatedly overstepped the lines, and didn't want to change after we confronted her, but we won't comment on issues like these" always sound fishy to me. If they won't comment, they wouldn't have commented. It looks like "we're inventing reasons that make people shut up about it because we don't have an actual case that we could present".
Can't lose a case if you never try and convict anyone.