4 ms·

I know this may be a slap on the wrist for Robinhood, but honesty the SEC is one of the branches of government that I trust almost as much as the FDA. I apprec

I know this may be a slap on the wrist for Robinhood, but honesty the SEC is one of the branches of government that I trust almost as much as the FDA. I appreciate the work they do and I hope they continue it.

danielfoster 6y ago
So you place a lot of trust in the SEC or you don't?
- plouffy 6y ago
  He/She does.
  - phillnom 6y ago
    I didn't downvote but wanted to suggest just using "they" when you don't know.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      I’d recommend “OP” and “GP” as they are pretty common acronyms on the internet
      - 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
        Those always confuse me even more. Is OP the top level comment or the post we’re commenting on? Different people seem to use it differently, which isn’t super useful for communicating. And is GP the comment two above yours or two above mine?
      - 23B1 6y ago
        I like "Friendo" or "Bud" personally
    - simias 6y ago
      Correcting people when they use wrong pronouns is distracting but I get it, but can we at least not correct people for not using the right variety of neutral pronouns?
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        Not to really get into this debate, but I will note that "they" is more neutral than s/he.
        LanceH 6y ago
        But not necessarily correct, right? And what is correct? It's apparently whatever the addressee chooses these days, so good luck.
        whimsicalism 6y ago
        > But not necessarily correct, right? I'm pretty sure they is universally correct? No need to politicize this.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
gk1 6y ago
Does this cut them off from their revenue source? That would seem a bigger issue for them than the fine.
- fwsgonzo 6y ago
  Looks like it was a cease-and-desist
- rwmurrayVT 6y ago
  They only cost customers $35kk in execution compared to other brokers. I suspect they will take a hit in revenue, but the order routing will still be valuable.
- gruez 6y ago
  AFAIK payment for order flow is legal, and most of the other brokers do it as well.
karpodiem 6y ago
lol, you must be a TSLA shareholder. We live in a golden age of fraud. Look up $PEN, $OSTK, pretty much anything published by Muddy Waters.
befeltingu 6y ago
Why do you trust the FDA?
- bun_at_work 6y ago
  A good reason to trust the FDA is that they have contributed to the safest food in the world! Our strict food regulations in the USA make things like trichinosis very difficult to spread around.
  - Kranar 6y ago
    What evidence is there that U.S. food is safer than Japanese food, or even say Canadian food? I don't have strong evidence but I don't regard U.S. food to be particularly safe relative to most first world countries. It's not terrible by any means and you're right in that you won't get any immediate damage from anything you eat, but I suspect most other first world countries have food and safety and health standards that result in better health outcomes over a long period of time compared to U.S. food. [EDIT] After doing some minimal research it appears my intuition is correct, at least with respect to foodborne illness, the U.S. is certainly good compared to poverty stricken nations, but compared to most of Europe, Canada, Australia it has much higher rates of foodborne illness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodborne_illness#Comparison_between_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodborne_illness#Comparison_b... The deaths in the U.S. is the highest, but what's even more interesting are the hospitalizations. U.S. hospitalizations are among the lowest and one has to wonder why that is given that it has the highest death rate. It wouldn't be unreasonable to suspect that because of how expensive the U.S. health care system is, Americans who do get sick avoid going to the hospital altogether. That is admittedly simplified speculation on my part, but it's a starting point for further investigation.
    - gareim 6y ago
      At a 10x difference, it should clue you in that something is wrong. Choice quotes from a UK Gov page: > A report published by the FSA has found it is not possible to compare foodborne disease rates effectively between countries. > The report concludes that attempting to accurately compare different countries’ foodborne disease rates is an almost impossible task. The only way you could attempt this would be for different countries to have the same type of study with the exact same study specifications, over the same time period. Even then, differences in underlying surveillance data available in each country could cause issues, particularly in terms of determining what proportion of IID cases are due to food. https://www.food.gov.uk/news-alerts/news/report-into-international-foodborne-disease-rates-published https://www.food.gov.uk/news-alerts/news/report-into-interna...
whimsicalism 6y ago
> the SEC is one of the branches of government that I trust almost as much as the FDA Hm. I made this comment elsewhere but: The SEC has big structural problems. Way too close of ties with the people it is supposed to be regulating. Take the example of this SEC investigator [0] whose boss got a call from one of those Wall Street hedge funds under investigation and suddenly he's fired! Mysteriously, that boss gets a job with the same firm a few months later. Oh, the kicker? The person who made that call from the hedge fund? Appointed to be the SEC chair in 2013. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_J._Aguirre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_J._Aguirre
- NoOneNew 6y ago
  Well, here's my issue with the SEC that I admittedly don't have a good solution. https://www.federalpay.org/employees/securities-and-exchange-commission https://www.federalpay.org/employees/securities-and-exchange... The general purpose of the SEC is to investigate, fine and in general "stop" financial crimes in the financial market. This, in theory, requires said investigators to be smarter than the perpetrators or at least somewhere on par. While these folks are paid really well on average... this isn't "fuck you money" like on Wolf of Wallstreet. Even "poor fuck you money" is better than what they make. While I won't dismiss the need for a lot of attorneys and accountants in their profession, 333 examiners doesn't seem adequate against a $440k average salary industry with 176k employees 2018 numbers (https://www.osc.state.ny.us/sites/default/files/reports/documents/pdf/2018-11/report-6-2019.pdf https://www.osc.state.ny.us/sites/default/files/reports/docu...). Unless there's much more overlap than I'm imagining. I mean seriously, if you're smart enough for the financial industry, you need to have a much higher moral code to take the less than half rate of average salary compared to the people you're investigating. Which I'm not knocking. I always respect people who take a moral high ground stance and try to do some actionable good, especially if it's at a detriment to their own wallet. It's just, expectations need to tempered with their overall capabilities. On top, agreeing with you on structure, what kind of hell do some of these folks experience working in a government environment? How many get salty real fast and get all pissed off from the shit they deal with bureaucratic wise along with shitty pay compared to the industry's employee? There was a line from Burn Notice that I've always attributed to this, "Fighting for the little guy is for suckers". So yea, can we all really trust the SEC? Maybe... but can you really blame them by too much regarding "issues" granted that most of any industry, especially tech & finance, is about jumping to the next better paying job? I mean think of this scenario, "You're going to get fined no matter what happens today. But I can reduce it by half if a moving box full of cash magically appears on my back porch."
eru 6y ago
Are you sure the current FDA is worth your trust? Or are you being cynical? The pre-1962 FDA had perhaps the better regulatory framework: back then new drugs had to show safety, now they have to show safety and efficacy. Off-label prescription show that efficacy requirements are not necessary in practice, and just needlessly delay drugs and make their development more expensive.
- bagacrap 6y ago
  I for one am glad that pharma companies aren't allowed to peddle prescription meds that don't actually work. If there's some other use case for that drug (your "off label" application) then it will pass through the approval process with efficacy proven for that. I think it's more of a dilemma that off label scrips aren't used more often. Since there's zero monetary incentive to prove efficacy for a second application and doctors generally prefer officially sanctioned uses, lots of patients miss out on helpful treatment.
  - eru 6y ago
    You know that there is no approval process for off label prescriptions? Doctors just use their so called clinical judgement. The suggestion would be to go back to pre-1962 regulations, and put normal and off-label prescriptions on the same footing.

danielfoster 6y ago

So you place a lot of trust in the SEC or you don't?

plouffy 6y ago
He/She does.
- phillnom 6y ago
  I didn't downvote but wanted to suggest just using "they" when you don't know.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    I’d recommend “OP” and “GP” as they are pretty common acronyms on the internet
    - 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
      Those always confuse me even more. Is OP the top level comment or the post we’re commenting on? Different people seem to use it differently, which isn’t super useful for communicating. And is GP the comment two above yours or two above mine?
    - 23B1 6y ago
      I like "Friendo" or "Bud" personally
  - simias 6y ago
    Correcting people when they use wrong pronouns is distracting but I get it, but can we at least not correct people for not using the right variety of neutral pronouns?
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      Not to really get into this debate, but I will note that "they" is more neutral than s/he.
      - LanceH 6y ago
        But not necessarily correct, right? And what is correct? It's apparently whatever the addressee chooses these days, so good luck.
        whimsicalism 6y ago
        > But not necessarily correct, right? I'm pretty sure they is universally correct? No need to politicize this.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

gk1 6y ago

Does this cut them off from their revenue source? That would seem a bigger issue for them than the fine.

fwsgonzo 6y ago
Looks like it was a cease-and-desist
rwmurrayVT 6y ago
They only cost customers $35kk in execution compared to other brokers. I suspect they will take a hit in revenue, but the order routing will still be valuable.
gruez 6y ago
AFAIK payment for order flow is legal, and most of the other brokers do it as well.

karpodiem 6y ago

lol, you must be a TSLA shareholder. We live in a golden age of fraud. Look up $PEN, $OSTK, pretty much anything published by Muddy Waters.

befeltingu 6y ago

Why do you trust the FDA?

bun_at_work 6y ago
A good reason to trust the FDA is that they have contributed to the safest food in the world! Our strict food regulations in the USA make things like trichinosis very difficult to spread around.
- Kranar 6y ago
  What evidence is there that U.S. food is safer than Japanese food, or even say Canadian food? I don't have strong evidence but I don't regard U.S. food to be particularly safe relative to most first world countries. It's not terrible by any means and you're right in that you won't get any immediate damage from anything you eat, but I suspect most other first world countries have food and safety and health standards that result in better health outcomes over a long period of time compared to U.S. food. [EDIT] After doing some minimal research it appears my intuition is correct, at least with respect to foodborne illness, the U.S. is certainly good compared to poverty stricken nations, but compared to most of Europe, Canada, Australia it has much higher rates of foodborne illness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodborne_illness#Comparison_between_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodborne_illness#Comparison_b... The deaths in the U.S. is the highest, but what's even more interesting are the hospitalizations. U.S. hospitalizations are among the lowest and one has to wonder why that is given that it has the highest death rate. It wouldn't be unreasonable to suspect that because of how expensive the U.S. health care system is, Americans who do get sick avoid going to the hospital altogether. That is admittedly simplified speculation on my part, but it's a starting point for further investigation.
  - gareim 6y ago
    At a 10x difference, it should clue you in that something is wrong. Choice quotes from a UK Gov page: > A report published by the FSA has found it is not possible to compare foodborne disease rates effectively between countries. > The report concludes that attempting to accurately compare different countries’ foodborne disease rates is an almost impossible task. The only way you could attempt this would be for different countries to have the same type of study with the exact same study specifications, over the same time period. Even then, differences in underlying surveillance data available in each country could cause issues, particularly in terms of determining what proportion of IID cases are due to food. https://www.food.gov.uk/news-alerts/news/report-into-international-foodborne-disease-rates-published https://www.food.gov.uk/news-alerts/news/report-into-interna...

whimsicalism 6y ago

> the SEC is one of the branches of government that I trust almost as much as the FDA Hm. I made this comment elsewhere but: The SEC has big structural problems. Way too close of ties with the people it is supposed to be regulating. Take the example of this SEC investigator [0] whose boss got a call from one of those Wall Street hedge funds under investigation and suddenly he's fired! Mysteriously, that boss gets a job with the same firm a few months later. Oh, the kicker? The person who made that call from the hedge fund? Appointed to be the SEC chair in 2013. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_J._Aguirre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_J._Aguirre

NoOneNew 6y ago
Well, here's my issue with the SEC that I admittedly don't have a good solution. https://www.federalpay.org/employees/securities-and-exchange-commission https://www.federalpay.org/employees/securities-and-exchange... The general purpose of the SEC is to investigate, fine and in general "stop" financial crimes in the financial market. This, in theory, requires said investigators to be smarter than the perpetrators or at least somewhere on par. While these folks are paid really well on average... this isn't "fuck you money" like on Wolf of Wallstreet. Even "poor fuck you money" is better than what they make. While I won't dismiss the need for a lot of attorneys and accountants in their profession, 333 examiners doesn't seem adequate against a $440k average salary industry with 176k employees 2018 numbers (https://www.osc.state.ny.us/sites/default/files/reports/documents/pdf/2018-11/report-6-2019.pdf https://www.osc.state.ny.us/sites/default/files/reports/docu...). Unless there's much more overlap than I'm imagining. I mean seriously, if you're smart enough for the financial industry, you need to have a much higher moral code to take the less than half rate of average salary compared to the people you're investigating. Which I'm not knocking. I always respect people who take a moral high ground stance and try to do some actionable good, especially if it's at a detriment to their own wallet. It's just, expectations need to tempered with their overall capabilities. On top, agreeing with you on structure, what kind of hell do some of these folks experience working in a government environment? How many get salty real fast and get all pissed off from the shit they deal with bureaucratic wise along with shitty pay compared to the industry's employee? There was a line from Burn Notice that I've always attributed to this, "Fighting for the little guy is for suckers". So yea, can we all really trust the SEC? Maybe... but can you really blame them by too much regarding "issues" granted that most of any industry, especially tech & finance, is about jumping to the next better paying job? I mean think of this scenario, "You're going to get fined no matter what happens today. But I can reduce it by half if a moving box full of cash magically appears on my back porch."

eru 6y ago

Are you sure the current FDA is worth your trust? Or are you being cynical? The pre-1962 FDA had perhaps the better regulatory framework: back then new drugs had to show safety, now they have to show safety and efficacy. Off-label prescription show that efficacy requirements are not necessary in practice, and just needlessly delay drugs and make their development more expensive.

bagacrap 6y ago
I for one am glad that pharma companies aren't allowed to peddle prescription meds that don't actually work. If there's some other use case for that drug (your "off label" application) then it will pass through the approval process with efficacy proven for that. I think it's more of a dilemma that off label scrips aren't used more often. Since there's zero monetary incentive to prove efficacy for a second application and doctors generally prefer officially sanctioned uses, lots of patients miss out on helpful treatment.
- eru 6y ago
  You know that there is no approval process for off label prescriptions? Doctors just use their so called clinical judgement. The suggestion would be to go back to pre-1962 regulations, and put normal and off-label prescriptions on the same footing.