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Excellent news for American society. “The Chickenshit Club” by Eisinger recently explained why the lack of criminal charges had emboldened white collar crime.

by mhneu 8y ago

Excellent news for American society. “The Chickenshit Club” by Eisinger recently explained why the lack of criminal charges had emboldened white collar crime. Basically, individuals need to have the risk of criminal charges if they do something very egregious - they need to have skin in the game. The US Justice Dept has in the past two decades largely only been fining corporations. And so companies estimate risk and budget for these numbers. So fines are not a completely effective deterrent. The book explains this and how the DOJ policy grew out of backlash to the Enron verdict. Ps we talked about this in May, and @danso predicted criminal charges would come - and he was right. This is good news for the US DOJ. Too bad the US can’t retrospectively prosecute bankers for 2008 and claw back their size-subsidized, low risk premium profits. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17123315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17123315 Edit: book review here. It’s a really good book. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/books/review/the-chickenshit-club-jesse-eisinger-.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/books/review/the-chick...

knuththetruth 8y ago
Yeah, it was crazy to me that Lazlo Bock not only came out with a book about Google’s “hiring culture,” but even started his own HR company AFTER being involved with Google’s wage fixing scandal. Absolutely shameless.
lord_ring_11 8y ago
Amen. The risk reward is crazily skewed towards breaking law. Most relying on ethics and social pressure.
delbel 8y ago
I was hoping the bankers can still be charged under the Patriot act, there is a provision for something to the effet threat to cause financial risk or damage if I remember. Paulson made a direct threat of financial doom if there was no bailout to President Bush. I think there is a way we can declare them enemy combatants and send them to gitmo for their trial. Sorry for typos, typing with a bad finger the last few days.
- Ice_cream_suit 8y ago
  That is pretty far fetched. Using your sketchy rationale, one could claim that you are threatening Paulson and have you charged with a threat to kidnap Paulson to put him in Guantanamo Bay. And in any legal dispute between you and Paulson, you would be incidental roadkill, in view of his deep pockets. That is why the legal system has semi-reasonable heuristics that govern the range of interpretations that are acceptable.
  - delbel 8y ago
    Well I don't have the legal authority to do this. The DOJ would have to look into this. I guess people don't remember how it went down. There was an emergency meeting at the whitehouse, I remember Bush and Nancy Peloski, and a few senators. After the meeting, one of them (perhaps a congressman) was interviewed on the whitehouse lawn and basically said that Paulson told them, if they didn't do this, the entire economy and country would collapse. So he said it in a way that would give him plausible deniability, but if there was evidence that he knew otherwise or coordinate to create a crisis situation, (that is probably the stretch you are missing to connect), which I allege -- because later on we found out that the banks were both buying and shorting securities knowing they would default (and this is a fact), I think this would be evidence to charge him. This is a specific area in the Patriot act for dealing with terrorism threatening financial crisis. Since there is no statue of limitations on this, it would be an avenue to charge him. There is no provision in the Patriot Act for normal citizens to kidnap people and have access to Guantanamo Bay, that's a bizarre and bewildering statement/counter argument to what I am saying. Perhaps people are to young or don't remember how the financial crisis went down. There are plenty of people at Zerohedge that remember. Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYrDtpAkppM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYrDtpAkppM
    - Ice_cream_suit 8y ago
      Zerohedge is mildly entertaining, but is prone to anarcho-syndicalist conspiracy theories. It is slightly more credible than the Onion. And Congress-persons are slightly less credible than the Onion.
paulddraper 8y ago
> the US can’t retrospectively prosecute bankers AFAIK there were poor decisions and bad investments but not straight up fraud. Nobody needed to be jailed; there were a few that needed to be allowed to fail.
- gaius 8y ago
  poor decisions and bad investments but not straight up fraud LIBOR rigging?
  - tragic 8y ago
    And FX rigging ... Speaking morally, rather than legally, the packaging of loans into CDOs was clearly fraudulent, basically the equivalent of tampering with the mile meter in your car before selling it. The fact that there is apparently no law to prosecute people under is a failure of our various legislatures and judicial systems.
    - cm2187 8y ago
      But for both Libor and FX people went to jail. I think the original poster was refering to banker going to jail for causing the 2008 crisis.
- telchar 8y ago
  You're forgetting robo-signing foreclosure affidavits in the wake of the financial crisis. That's potentially hundreds of thousands of counts of fraud. The banks were only forced to settle, and were not prosecuted. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_foreclosure_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_foreclosure...
  - paulddraper 8y ago
    I thought the robo-signing meant fraud for mortgage companies not banks. But perhaps I was wrong.
slantedview 8y ago
Today isn't a statement about white collar crime in general, only white collar crime that impacts wealthy people. Compare with white collar crime that involves defrauding minority home buyers, for example. Not only did the perpetrators there not get prosecuted, one of them is now our Treasury Secretary [1]. 1. https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-mnuchins-bank-accused-of-widespread-misconduct-in-leaked-memo/ https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-m...
keo93ndn 8y ago
I wish I could agree but really the people that lost were rich people This will do jack squat to set precedents to the benefit of lower castes Elizabeth is a pariah and “not one of them” anymore. Don’t bite the hand that feeds That sounds cynical, but: https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/8793/what-did-james-madison-try-to-say-when-talking-about-agrarian-reform https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/8793/what-did-j...
joering2 8y ago
Many people on HN and outside "predicted" that criminal charges will follow FTC case, that was no-brainer. But not many know that what truly made it unable for DOJ to "turn the blind eye on", is that many medical decision on real-life patients has been made mostly based on results from Theranos devices that had been wrong so many times. At least 4 times I wrote about Holmes being charged by DOJ on HN -- now I predict within 3 months they will find victim(s) that are dead today because of improper results of Holmes' devices.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
dghughes 8y ago
Even speeding tickets or anything most normal people would find a burden are nothing to super rich. But making few days in jail mandatory is a major deterrent. Then again even people texting and driving are not swayed by fines. In my region of the world a $3,000 fine is not a deterrent to many people. I say jail time would change that attitude.
- tluyben2 8y ago
  Losing your license is a major deterrent as well: as someone who finds driving a waste of time I cannot understand why rich people do it, but they do and they get extremely upset if that privilege is taken away. So 3 times and you lose your license for life? That would solve the reckless behavior and cannot be fixed with money. Ofcourse for less well off people this would be very bad (maybe not being able to go to work etc) but then again; they had 2 opportunities to better themselves.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - vincentmarle 8y ago
    > That would solve the reckless behavior and cannot be fixed with money. I knew a rich person once with a drinking problem: he kept losing his license but his solution would be to just hire a private driver the next day.
    - lokedhs 8y ago
      But from the perspective of wanting drunk drivers off the road, it worked, yes?
      - RaceWon 8y ago
        IDK if that's true. Consider that a real alcoholic drinks all day long and truly can not control this. Typically they tolerate alcohol better than the rest of us, but still, there also comes a time when they are simply bombed and then they are (really) a huge danger. A casual partier though or even someone heading out and thinking they will take the chance of driving home and getting there ok, then yes I agree.
dvtv75 8y ago
It's not just a problem in the US, either. I recently learned of a New Zealand concrete company who deliberately don't bother with environmental compliance and instead just cop a fine and pay it. They budget for the fine every year, rather than spending the money to get into compliance. Edit: change of wording
- dorgo 8y ago
  don't co2 certificates work this way? You can reduce your co2 output or buy certificates instead. If government wants to reduce co2 output they just increase the price of co2 certificates.
- tyleo 8y ago
  While not entirely related, this reminds me of some of my friends who park illegally and just pay off the tickets rather than paying for an expensive legal parking pass.
downandout 8y ago
For the record I have been predicting criminal charges in these threads for over a year now. You can’t make blatant misrepresentations that result in hundreds of millions of dollars being transferred to you without criminal charges eventually coming. I don’t think she did it out personal greed (except perhaps greed for publicity) - I think she believed she would probably make the tech work and just never got there. But regardless of the reason, investors are out a ton of money as a direct result of material misrepresentations. You cannot “fake it ‘til you make it” at least where investors are concerned. Because of the amount of money involved, these two defendants are looking at a stiff sentence. The federal sentencing guidelines would easily put them at the maximum (20 years), though they may get something like 10-12 years if they take a plea early in the process and don’t make prosecutors work too hard to prepare for trial. This will not be a Martha Stewart type of sentence. It’s a sad day for everyone involved.
- MarkMMullin 8y ago
  I agree with all but one of your points, the projection of her mindset. I've known many good technologists driving for the next big thing, hell I've done it more than once. Usually we're a bundle of quivering insecurities with an unhealthy focus on all the things that are failing in the approach and a level of fear approaching utter terror that the entire thing is going to end ignominiously. My take is that she may have had a vision, but no real understanding of the process to get there, hence 'she' never would have made the tech work and would have known that she could not anchor any of her claims to reality. That's pretty much deliberate fraud. The other alternative I see is she was pretty much brainwashed by her partner, which might be some defense.
  - downandout 8y ago
    Interesting take. It's certainly possible that you are right. I based my thoughts on my impression from listening to her in a couple of interviews. I like to think I have a good BS meter, and it seemed to me (and apparently to her investors) that she believed in what she was saying, and was deeply passionate about the issues her company was trying to solve. I think she probably had a healthy dose of naïveté, and thought that with enough money, anything was possible. Regardless of what was going on in her head, she seems to have made provably false statements in order to induce massive investments in her company. That's fraud, and she'll pay a heavy price for it.
kennxfl 8y ago
I think medical-related crimes are very different. Especially when they directly affect patients. Few people have gotten away with fraud on the cash side in this industry though. Valeant Phamaceuticals. Shkreli
- csomar 8y ago
  > Few people have gotten away with fraud on the cash side in this industry though. Valeant Phamaceuticals. Shkreli I don't think Shkreli was defrauding regarding his pharmaceutical practices. (though he has security charges). He was using shady practices that were totally legal. Completely different game.
  - dnautics 8y ago
    Also iirc the shkreli case is strange since no one actually suffered any damages.
    - csomar 8y ago
      According to him (in an interview) he only jacked the prices up for insurance companies.
      - telchar 8y ago
        Which makes every single person with insurance a (diffuse) victim. Let's not pretend that exorbitant pricing doesn't have any relation to the high cost of medical insurance/care, which in turn of course indirectly kills people.
        csomar 8y ago
        Drop the tone. All I said is his pharmaceutical practices were 1. legal 2. didn't have direct effect on the consumers of the medicines. Skherli said he gave the medicine free to those who have no insurance. I don't think by good heart but rather to avoid a major bad publicity from the inability of non-insured to pay.
rayiner 8y ago
> Too bad the US can’t retrospectively prosecute bankers for 2008 and claw back their size-subsidized, low risk premium profits. The Theranos case clearly illustrates why. Fraud by the top executives of a company, who lied about what their technology can do to raise a bunch of money, and endangered patients in the process--that is a story you can explain to a jury. Even if you think there are "bankers" (curiously, you do not identify specific bankers) who broke the law, good luck explaining to a jury exactly what anyone did that was illegal. I'd also posit that this is a very good thing. You shouldn't be able to put people in jail for a crime you can't explain to a group of a dozen ordinary people.
- DSingularity 8y ago
  If “the big short” can explain it then the DOJ can.
  - Trundle 8y ago
    As far as I remember the big short doesn't though.
    - bitcharmer 8y ago
      Part of the premise behind writing the book was to explain to the public what happened and why. There are several good analogies in both the book and the movie (ie. the chef and the fish) that greatly helped me understand the mechanics of it.
      - wgerard 8y ago
        The book and movie do a pretty solid job about explaining what CDOs, derivatives, etc. are. What the book and movie don't do (unless I'm forgetting something) is explain how anything involved with the 2008 crisis was illegal - the sole exception being that CDSs are very arguably insurance contracts and should be regulated by insurance laws.
    - jjoonathan 8y ago
spamizbad 8y ago
I'm curious about the "backlash" against the Enron verdict. I don't think there was any public sympathy for that company when it happened. Was the feeling of unfair justice largely concentrated in elite circles outside of the view of the public?
- misiti3780 8y ago
  No, the result of the Enron verdict put Arthur Anderson (their consulting firm) out of business also. Only a small number of AA knew and participated in the fraud, but the thought is in retrospect, the government should not have punished all of the employees and the shareholders
NinaJZapala 8y ago
This is profoundly interesting and so disgusting that companies are eager to do the wrong thing and even plan for it by having contingency budgets to pay the fines. Think what we as a collective could do with all of that money; feed the poor, water for everyone, clean the oceans, stopping child sex trafficking...Ok, I'm becoming angry thinking of all this gotta run!

by mhneu 8y ago

knuththetruth 8y ago

Yeah, it was crazy to me that Lazlo Bock not only came out with a book about Google’s “hiring culture,” but even started his own HR company AFTER being involved with Google’s wage fixing scandal. Absolutely shameless.

lord_ring_11 8y ago

Amen. The risk reward is crazily skewed towards breaking law. Most relying on ethics and social pressure.

delbel 8y ago

I was hoping the bankers can still be charged under the Patriot act, there is a provision for something to the effet threat to cause financial risk or damage if I remember. Paulson made a direct threat of financial doom if there was no bailout to President Bush. I think there is a way we can declare them enemy combatants and send them to gitmo for their trial. Sorry for typos, typing with a bad finger the last few days.

Ice_cream_suit 8y ago
That is pretty far fetched. Using your sketchy rationale, one could claim that you are threatening Paulson and have you charged with a threat to kidnap Paulson to put him in Guantanamo Bay. And in any legal dispute between you and Paulson, you would be incidental roadkill, in view of his deep pockets. That is why the legal system has semi-reasonable heuristics that govern the range of interpretations that are acceptable.
- delbel 8y ago
  Well I don't have the legal authority to do this. The DOJ would have to look into this. I guess people don't remember how it went down. There was an emergency meeting at the whitehouse, I remember Bush and Nancy Peloski, and a few senators. After the meeting, one of them (perhaps a congressman) was interviewed on the whitehouse lawn and basically said that Paulson told them, if they didn't do this, the entire economy and country would collapse. So he said it in a way that would give him plausible deniability, but if there was evidence that he knew otherwise or coordinate to create a crisis situation, (that is probably the stretch you are missing to connect), which I allege -- because later on we found out that the banks were both buying and shorting securities knowing they would default (and this is a fact), I think this would be evidence to charge him. This is a specific area in the Patriot act for dealing with terrorism threatening financial crisis. Since there is no statue of limitations on this, it would be an avenue to charge him. There is no provision in the Patriot Act for normal citizens to kidnap people and have access to Guantanamo Bay, that's a bizarre and bewildering statement/counter argument to what I am saying. Perhaps people are to young or don't remember how the financial crisis went down. There are plenty of people at Zerohedge that remember. Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYrDtpAkppM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYrDtpAkppM
  - Ice_cream_suit 8y ago
    Zerohedge is mildly entertaining, but is prone to anarcho-syndicalist conspiracy theories. It is slightly more credible than the Onion. And Congress-persons are slightly less credible than the Onion.

paulddraper 8y ago

> the US can’t retrospectively prosecute bankers AFAIK there were poor decisions and bad investments but not straight up fraud. Nobody needed to be jailed; there were a few that needed to be allowed to fail.

gaius 8y ago
poor decisions and bad investments but not straight up fraud LIBOR rigging?
- tragic 8y ago
  And FX rigging ... Speaking morally, rather than legally, the packaging of loans into CDOs was clearly fraudulent, basically the equivalent of tampering with the mile meter in your car before selling it. The fact that there is apparently no law to prosecute people under is a failure of our various legislatures and judicial systems.
  - cm2187 8y ago
    But for both Libor and FX people went to jail. I think the original poster was refering to banker going to jail for causing the 2008 crisis.
telchar 8y ago
You're forgetting robo-signing foreclosure affidavits in the wake of the financial crisis. That's potentially hundreds of thousands of counts of fraud. The banks were only forced to settle, and were not prosecuted. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_foreclosure_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_foreclosure...
- paulddraper 8y ago
  I thought the robo-signing meant fraud for mortgage companies not banks. But perhaps I was wrong.

slantedview 8y ago

Today isn't a statement about white collar crime in general, only white collar crime that impacts wealthy people. Compare with white collar crime that involves defrauding minority home buyers, for example. Not only did the perpetrators there not get prosecuted, one of them is now our Treasury Secretary [1]. 1. https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-mnuchins-bank-accused-of-widespread-misconduct-in-leaked-memo/ https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-m...

keo93ndn 8y ago

I wish I could agree but really the people that lost were rich people This will do jack squat to set precedents to the benefit of lower castes Elizabeth is a pariah and “not one of them” anymore. Don’t bite the hand that feeds That sounds cynical, but: https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/8793/what-did-james-madison-try-to-say-when-talking-about-agrarian-reform https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/8793/what-did-j...

joering2 8y ago

Many people on HN and outside "predicted" that criminal charges will follow FTC case, that was no-brainer. But not many know that what truly made it unable for DOJ to "turn the blind eye on", is that many medical decision on real-life patients has been made mostly based on results from Theranos devices that had been wrong so many times. At least 4 times I wrote about Holmes being charged by DOJ on HN -- now I predict within 3 months they will find victim(s) that are dead today because of improper results of Holmes' devices.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

dghughes 8y ago

Even speeding tickets or anything most normal people would find a burden are nothing to super rich. But making few days in jail mandatory is a major deterrent. Then again even people texting and driving are not swayed by fines. In my region of the world a $3,000 fine is not a deterrent to many people. I say jail time would change that attitude.

tluyben2 8y ago
Losing your license is a major deterrent as well: as someone who finds driving a waste of time I cannot understand why rich people do it, but they do and they get extremely upset if that privilege is taken away. So 3 times and you lose your license for life? That would solve the reckless behavior and cannot be fixed with money. Ofcourse for less well off people this would be very bad (maybe not being able to go to work etc) but then again; they had 2 opportunities to better themselves.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- vincentmarle 8y ago
  > That would solve the reckless behavior and cannot be fixed with money. I knew a rich person once with a drinking problem: he kept losing his license but his solution would be to just hire a private driver the next day.
  - lokedhs 8y ago
    But from the perspective of wanting drunk drivers off the road, it worked, yes?
    - RaceWon 8y ago
      IDK if that's true. Consider that a real alcoholic drinks all day long and truly can not control this. Typically they tolerate alcohol better than the rest of us, but still, there also comes a time when they are simply bombed and then they are (really) a huge danger. A casual partier though or even someone heading out and thinking they will take the chance of driving home and getting there ok, then yes I agree.

dvtv75 8y ago

It's not just a problem in the US, either. I recently learned of a New Zealand concrete company who deliberately don't bother with environmental compliance and instead just cop a fine and pay it. They budget for the fine every year, rather than spending the money to get into compliance. Edit: change of wording

dorgo 8y ago
don't co2 certificates work this way? You can reduce your co2 output or buy certificates instead. If government wants to reduce co2 output they just increase the price of co2 certificates.
tyleo 8y ago
While not entirely related, this reminds me of some of my friends who park illegally and just pay off the tickets rather than paying for an expensive legal parking pass.

downandout 8y ago

For the record I have been predicting criminal charges in these threads for over a year now. You can’t make blatant misrepresentations that result in hundreds of millions of dollars being transferred to you without criminal charges eventually coming. I don’t think she did it out personal greed (except perhaps greed for publicity) - I think she believed she would probably make the tech work and just never got there. But regardless of the reason, investors are out a ton of money as a direct result of material misrepresentations. You cannot “fake it ‘til you make it” at least where investors are concerned. Because of the amount of money involved, these two defendants are looking at a stiff sentence. The federal sentencing guidelines would easily put them at the maximum (20 years), though they may get something like 10-12 years if they take a plea early in the process and don’t make prosecutors work too hard to prepare for trial. This will not be a Martha Stewart type of sentence. It’s a sad day for everyone involved.

MarkMMullin 8y ago
I agree with all but one of your points, the projection of her mindset. I've known many good technologists driving for the next big thing, hell I've done it more than once. Usually we're a bundle of quivering insecurities with an unhealthy focus on all the things that are failing in the approach and a level of fear approaching utter terror that the entire thing is going to end ignominiously. My take is that she may have had a vision, but no real understanding of the process to get there, hence 'she' never would have made the tech work and would have known that she could not anchor any of her claims to reality. That's pretty much deliberate fraud. The other alternative I see is she was pretty much brainwashed by her partner, which might be some defense.
- downandout 8y ago
  Interesting take. It's certainly possible that you are right. I based my thoughts on my impression from listening to her in a couple of interviews. I like to think I have a good BS meter, and it seemed to me (and apparently to her investors) that she believed in what she was saying, and was deeply passionate about the issues her company was trying to solve. I think she probably had a healthy dose of naïveté, and thought that with enough money, anything was possible. Regardless of what was going on in her head, she seems to have made provably false statements in order to induce massive investments in her company. That's fraud, and she'll pay a heavy price for it.

kennxfl 8y ago

I think medical-related crimes are very different. Especially when they directly affect patients. Few people have gotten away with fraud on the cash side in this industry though. Valeant Phamaceuticals. Shkreli

csomar 8y ago
> Few people have gotten away with fraud on the cash side in this industry though. Valeant Phamaceuticals. Shkreli I don't think Shkreli was defrauding regarding his pharmaceutical practices. (though he has security charges). He was using shady practices that were totally legal. Completely different game.
- dnautics 8y ago
  Also iirc the shkreli case is strange since no one actually suffered any damages.
  - csomar 8y ago
    According to him (in an interview) he only jacked the prices up for insurance companies.
    - telchar 8y ago
      Which makes every single person with insurance a (diffuse) victim. Let's not pretend that exorbitant pricing doesn't have any relation to the high cost of medical insurance/care, which in turn of course indirectly kills people.
      - csomar 8y ago
        Drop the tone. All I said is his pharmaceutical practices were 1. legal 2. didn't have direct effect on the consumers of the medicines. Skherli said he gave the medicine free to those who have no insurance. I don't think by good heart but rather to avoid a major bad publicity from the inability of non-insured to pay.

rayiner 8y ago

> Too bad the US can’t retrospectively prosecute bankers for 2008 and claw back their size-subsidized, low risk premium profits. The Theranos case clearly illustrates why. Fraud by the top executives of a company, who lied about what their technology can do to raise a bunch of money, and endangered patients in the process--that is a story you can explain to a jury. Even if you think there are "bankers" (curiously, you do not identify specific bankers) who broke the law, good luck explaining to a jury exactly what anyone did that was illegal. I'd also posit that this is a very good thing. You shouldn't be able to put people in jail for a crime you can't explain to a group of a dozen ordinary people.

DSingularity 8y ago
If “the big short” can explain it then the DOJ can.
- Trundle 8y ago
  As far as I remember the big short doesn't though.
  - bitcharmer 8y ago
    Part of the premise behind writing the book was to explain to the public what happened and why. There are several good analogies in both the book and the movie (ie. the chef and the fish) that greatly helped me understand the mechanics of it.
    - wgerard 8y ago
      The book and movie do a pretty solid job about explaining what CDOs, derivatives, etc. are. What the book and movie don't do (unless I'm forgetting something) is explain how anything involved with the 2008 crisis was illegal - the sole exception being that CDSs are very arguably insurance contracts and should be regulated by insurance laws.
  - jjoonathan 8y ago

spamizbad 8y ago

I'm curious about the "backlash" against the Enron verdict. I don't think there was any public sympathy for that company when it happened. Was the feeling of unfair justice largely concentrated in elite circles outside of the view of the public?

misiti3780 8y ago
No, the result of the Enron verdict put Arthur Anderson (their consulting firm) out of business also. Only a small number of AA knew and participated in the fraud, but the thought is in retrospect, the government should not have punished all of the employees and the shareholders

NinaJZapala 8y ago

This is profoundly interesting and so disgusting that companies are eager to do the wrong thing and even plan for it by having contingency budgets to pay the fines. Think what we as a collective could do with all of that money; feed the poor, water for everyone, clean the oceans, stopping child sex trafficking...Ok, I'm becoming angry thinking of all this gotta run!