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Do you really think he would risk something like this for a measly $31M investment? The guy is worth like $17B. Maybe this is why I am not rich. I just don't h

Do you really think he would risk something like this for a measly $31M investment? The guy is worth like $17B. Maybe this is why I am not rich. I just don't have the right mindset.

EggsOnToast 9y ago
I've always wondered if after a certain point the numbers quit mattering and it's more about the principle of doing good, which is to say optimal not necessarily ethical, business.
InclinedPlane 9y ago
Answer to the first: absolutely yes. Answer to the second: yup, rich people typically look for how to game every system and gain every advantage they can.
scottmf 9y ago
As another comment pointed out, it’s not the first time he’s been accused. This administration is the most corrupt we’ve seen in a long time[1]. It wouldn’t be at all surprising. And I can’t see anyone doing anything about it. 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/never-have-we-seen-such-chaos-and-corruption/2018/03/01/f64c5c2e-1d8f-11e8-9de1-147dd2df3829_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/never-have-we-seen-s...
- adamrezich 9y ago
  Without even clicking your link, just looking at the URL: why cite an opinion piece as evidence of something?
- djsumdog 9y ago
  > This administration is the most corrupt we’ve seen in a long time I don't think this is true. We had the Bay of Pigs, the 1973 CIA backed coupe in Chile, the Iranian Contras ... Every administration from the time I was born and from the time my parents were born has been hopelessly corrupt. Obama won a noble prize and then became the first president to spend every day of his term at war (or I guess every day in office in an extended military engagement since America has not technically been at war in a long time because we like changing the names of things to pretend they're not true). That and he predator droned a bunch of people, passed a useless health care act, etc. I'm not saying the current administration isn't corrupt. It is, and it's not just the puppet on top. It's all the industry that funnels money into legislative and executive branches. Neither Bush nor Obama went after the corrupt housing industry that caused so many people to lose their homes. Citizens united didn't cause the corruption. Corruption has been legal for decades.
  - krapp 9y ago
    Passing unpopular healthcare legislation isn't an example of corruption.
  - imron 9y ago
    > Obama won a noble prize and then became the first president to spend every day of his term at war You could argue that the wars were started by previous administrations and ending them was harder than starting them. Far more egregious was his administration's decision to classify all military aged men as combatants at bombing targets, regardless of whether they were combatants or not, so as to reduce civilian casualty counts: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-o... His Nobel peace prize should be revoked.
  - lsc 9y ago
    I mean, on one hand, sure, there's always corruption; nobody is perfect. But there are huge differences. "Less corrupt" is a goal worth working towards; I just don't think you can compare our current president to any other president since Nixon, and I think that this attitude that everyone is corrupt so it doesn't matter is a big part of how we got our current president. (well... maybe Reagan. Iran-contra was shocking, and I'm a little surprised that nobody seems to think it was as big a deal as Watergate. Nixon cracked a safe. Regan... well, I'm not saying that this is what he did... but it sure looked like his deals with Iran delayed the release of US hostages until after the election. (you could also argue that those releases wouldn't have happened at all without those deals... I'm just saying, it looked pretty bad.)
    - abecedarius 9y ago
      If we're comparing to Nixon, iiuc during the 1968 campaign he was equally shady with Vietnam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Accords#Claimed_sabotage_of_negotiations_by_Nixon_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Accords#Claimed_sa... But I agree with you that whataboutism is the wrong response to what's going on now.
    - 9y ago
pasbesoin 9y ago
There's a certain reputation -- I gather, not undeserved -- for rich people being some of the most tight-fisted you'll find. At least, some rich people. Also, all humans have it in their nature to test limits. And what we are seeing, among some of the wealthy and would-be wealthy in the U.S., is that with each egregious behavior, particularly financial and economic, the worst they face is a fine that most often represents a fraction of their profit from the behavior. So, yes, I can see this. Get rich by not giving any money away unnecessarily, practiced diligently and relentlessly over years and decades, combined with the lesson that you won't be punished -- at least, not significantly. So, why "waste" 31 million? I don't know that this is what happened. But I can imagine it.
sumedh 9y ago
Someone asked Warren Buffett if he would pick up a penny on the street, he said yes.
icantdrive55 9y ago
I live among the wealthy. I live in a little enclave called Marin County. I'm not one of them, just service their stuff, usually with them watching me. I'm constantly astonished over just how frugal they are. Their bodies are decaying, but as long as the assets grow; they seem happy. Actually, many are lonely. Their kids just use them. People treat them nicely because they just might need them one day, and they know they are being placated. They break laws to save a few dollars, while drowning in seemingly unending wealth? The crimes are usually hidden, like hiring immigrants under the table--not even paying minimum wage, or shoplifting from Nordstrums. (I heard bigger department stores will not prosecute the better spenders. They will detain, and look up how much they spent in the past. If enough, the cops are not called.) SEC/Taxes--it's just a game when you have the money to get out of a sticky situation. I can afford to break the law is part of the problem? This is why I feel it time to tie Fees/Fines to Income. I grew up around them, and they are different when they think no one is looking, or they think they can get away with with it. I'll get hammered for bringing up the differences between the "classes", but I'm tired of glorification they get. Buffet is one of the few I do like though.
cepth 9y ago
Keep in mind the scores of business icons who have been caught insider trading seemingly insignificant amounts of money. Martha Stewart “avoided a loss of $45,673 by selling all 3,928 shares of her ImClone Systems stock on December 27, 2001, after receiving material, nonpublic information from Peter Bacanovic, who was Stewart's broker at Merrill Lynch.” (wiki) The Galleon Group case ensnared Rajat Gupta (former head of McKinsey), who provided insider information that helped Galleon Group net a $17 million profit by tipping them off about Warren Buffett’s investment into Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis. Galleon Group’s owner, Raj Rajaratnam was a billionaire at the time of the insider trading. SAC Capital (Stephen A Cohen’s firm, now known as Point 72) was charged with using insider information to generate $275 million in profits and averted losses. Cohen is a multi billionaire. I recommend reading The Chickenshit Club. Given the institutional and resource constraints on regulators and prosecutors, the odds that you actually are punished are slim. Leaving aside any potential political machinations, behavioral economics resource has shown that humans generally value avoiding losses much more than making more money. Behavior like the endowment effect comes into play here. Bottom line, what may seem like pocket change for billionaires may cause “irrational” behavior.
- dforrestwilson 9y ago
  Galleon and SAC Capital are not good examples. Their entire business models are built around gathering insider information and profiting. These 2 instances in which they caught red-handed were simply the strongest cases that the U.S. government could bring. Cohen is a multi-billionaire because he built a business which is designed to launder insider information into "clean" information without implicating himself or his lieutenants.
  - cepth 9y ago
    I’m not sure that it’s charitable to characterize either fund as being “built around gathering insider information and profiting”. Raj Rajaratnam started at Needham & Co. in 1985, and worked his way up to firm president in 1991. He eventually bought the firm, and renamed it Galleon Group. If you look at the history of returns for Galleon, the most lucrative years were 1999 through 2002. Raj rode the tech bubble up, and got out before it burst. You don’t generate outsize, 90%+ returns solely on the basis of insider information. As for SAC, for the vast majority of his career, Stephen A Cohen was a momentum trader in the style of Paul Tudor Jones. If you read the book Black Edge or watch the PBS documentary To Catch a Trader, at some point in the late 90s to early 2000s, Cohen started employing expert networks. The use of expert networks was legal at the time, and remains a grey area. Obviously, at some point Cohen crossed the line into outright insider trading. My point for both of these examples was that both men were overwhelmingly rich by the time they got involved in insider trading. We can speculate on why they did it, but to suggest that they made their first hundred millions or billion with insider trading is inaccurate.

Do you really think he would risk something like this for a measly $31M investment? The guy is worth like $17B. Maybe this is why I am not rich. I just don't have the right mindset.

EggsOnToast 9y ago

I've always wondered if after a certain point the numbers quit mattering and it's more about the principle of doing good, which is to say optimal not necessarily ethical, business.

InclinedPlane 9y ago

Answer to the first: absolutely yes. Answer to the second: yup, rich people typically look for how to game every system and gain every advantage they can.

scottmf 9y ago

As another comment pointed out, it’s not the first time he’s been accused. This administration is the most corrupt we’ve seen in a long time[1]. It wouldn’t be at all surprising. And I can’t see anyone doing anything about it. 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/never-have-we-seen-such-chaos-and-corruption/2018/03/01/f64c5c2e-1d8f-11e8-9de1-147dd2df3829_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/never-have-we-seen-s...

adamrezich 9y ago
Without even clicking your link, just looking at the URL: why cite an opinion piece as evidence of something?
djsumdog 9y ago
> This administration is the most corrupt we’ve seen in a long time I don't think this is true. We had the Bay of Pigs, the 1973 CIA backed coupe in Chile, the Iranian Contras ... Every administration from the time I was born and from the time my parents were born has been hopelessly corrupt. Obama won a noble prize and then became the first president to spend every day of his term at war (or I guess every day in office in an extended military engagement since America has not technically been at war in a long time because we like changing the names of things to pretend they're not true). That and he predator droned a bunch of people, passed a useless health care act, etc. I'm not saying the current administration isn't corrupt. It is, and it's not just the puppet on top. It's all the industry that funnels money into legislative and executive branches. Neither Bush nor Obama went after the corrupt housing industry that caused so many people to lose their homes. Citizens united didn't cause the corruption. Corruption has been legal for decades.
- krapp 9y ago
  Passing unpopular healthcare legislation isn't an example of corruption.
- imron 9y ago
  > Obama won a noble prize and then became the first president to spend every day of his term at war You could argue that the wars were started by previous administrations and ending them was harder than starting them. Far more egregious was his administration's decision to classify all military aged men as combatants at bombing targets, regardless of whether they were combatants or not, so as to reduce civilian casualty counts: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-o... His Nobel peace prize should be revoked.
- lsc 9y ago
  I mean, on one hand, sure, there's always corruption; nobody is perfect. But there are huge differences. "Less corrupt" is a goal worth working towards; I just don't think you can compare our current president to any other president since Nixon, and I think that this attitude that everyone is corrupt so it doesn't matter is a big part of how we got our current president. (well... maybe Reagan. Iran-contra was shocking, and I'm a little surprised that nobody seems to think it was as big a deal as Watergate. Nixon cracked a safe. Regan... well, I'm not saying that this is what he did... but it sure looked like his deals with Iran delayed the release of US hostages until after the election. (you could also argue that those releases wouldn't have happened at all without those deals... I'm just saying, it looked pretty bad.)
  - abecedarius 9y ago
    If we're comparing to Nixon, iiuc during the 1968 campaign he was equally shady with Vietnam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Accords#Claimed_sabotage_of_negotiations_by_Nixon_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Accords#Claimed_sa... But I agree with you that whataboutism is the wrong response to what's going on now.
  - 9y ago

pasbesoin 9y ago

There's a certain reputation -- I gather, not undeserved -- for rich people being some of the most tight-fisted you'll find. At least, some rich people. Also, all humans have it in their nature to test limits. And what we are seeing, among some of the wealthy and would-be wealthy in the U.S., is that with each egregious behavior, particularly financial and economic, the worst they face is a fine that most often represents a fraction of their profit from the behavior. So, yes, I can see this. Get rich by not giving any money away unnecessarily, practiced diligently and relentlessly over years and decades, combined with the lesson that you won't be punished -- at least, not significantly. So, why "waste" 31 million? I don't know that this is what happened. But I can imagine it.

sumedh 9y ago

Someone asked Warren Buffett if he would pick up a penny on the street, he said yes.

icantdrive55 9y ago

I live among the wealthy. I live in a little enclave called Marin County. I'm not one of them, just service their stuff, usually with them watching me. I'm constantly astonished over just how frugal they are. Their bodies are decaying, but as long as the assets grow; they seem happy. Actually, many are lonely. Their kids just use them. People treat them nicely because they just might need them one day, and they know they are being placated. They break laws to save a few dollars, while drowning in seemingly unending wealth? The crimes are usually hidden, like hiring immigrants under the table--not even paying minimum wage, or shoplifting from Nordstrums. (I heard bigger department stores will not prosecute the better spenders. They will detain, and look up how much they spent in the past. If enough, the cops are not called.) SEC/Taxes--it's just a game when you have the money to get out of a sticky situation. I can afford to break the law is part of the problem? This is why I feel it time to tie Fees/Fines to Income. I grew up around them, and they are different when they think no one is looking, or they think they can get away with with it. I'll get hammered for bringing up the differences between the "classes", but I'm tired of glorification they get. Buffet is one of the few I do like though.

cepth 9y ago

Keep in mind the scores of business icons who have been caught insider trading seemingly insignificant amounts of money. Martha Stewart “avoided a loss of $45,673 by selling all 3,928 shares of her ImClone Systems stock on December 27, 2001, after receiving material, nonpublic information from Peter Bacanovic, who was Stewart's broker at Merrill Lynch.” (wiki) The Galleon Group case ensnared Rajat Gupta (former head of McKinsey), who provided insider information that helped Galleon Group net a $17 million profit by tipping them off about Warren Buffett’s investment into Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis. Galleon Group’s owner, Raj Rajaratnam was a billionaire at the time of the insider trading. SAC Capital (Stephen A Cohen’s firm, now known as Point 72) was charged with using insider information to generate $275 million in profits and averted losses. Cohen is a multi billionaire. I recommend reading The Chickenshit Club. Given the institutional and resource constraints on regulators and prosecutors, the odds that you actually are punished are slim. Leaving aside any potential political machinations, behavioral economics resource has shown that humans generally value avoiding losses much more than making more money. Behavior like the endowment effect comes into play here. Bottom line, what may seem like pocket change for billionaires may cause “irrational” behavior.

dforrestwilson 9y ago
Galleon and SAC Capital are not good examples. Their entire business models are built around gathering insider information and profiting. These 2 instances in which they caught red-handed were simply the strongest cases that the U.S. government could bring. Cohen is a multi-billionaire because he built a business which is designed to launder insider information into "clean" information without implicating himself or his lieutenants.
- cepth 9y ago
  I’m not sure that it’s charitable to characterize either fund as being “built around gathering insider information and profiting”. Raj Rajaratnam started at Needham & Co. in 1985, and worked his way up to firm president in 1991. He eventually bought the firm, and renamed it Galleon Group. If you look at the history of returns for Galleon, the most lucrative years were 1999 through 2002. Raj rode the tech bubble up, and got out before it burst. You don’t generate outsize, 90%+ returns solely on the basis of insider information. As for SAC, for the vast majority of his career, Stephen A Cohen was a momentum trader in the style of Paul Tudor Jones. If you read the book Black Edge or watch the PBS documentary To Catch a Trader, at some point in the late 90s to early 2000s, Cohen started employing expert networks. The use of expert networks was legal at the time, and remains a grey area. Obviously, at some point Cohen crossed the line into outright insider trading. My point for both of these examples was that both men were overwhelmingly rich by the time they got involved in insider trading. We can speculate on why they did it, but to suggest that they made their first hundred millions or billion with insider trading is inaccurate.