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In many other jobs, gross negligence resulting in billions of dollars of property damage can get you jail time. Why is it ok for the people at the top of these

In many other jobs, gross negligence resulting in billions of dollars of property damage can get you jail time. Why is it ok for the people at the top of these financial disasters to be immune? Whether they're deceiving themselves is irrelevant. Drunk drivers deceive themselves about their ability to drive safely, we still put them in jail.

bpodgursky 5y ago
If the "property damage" is to your own shareholders, that's a fuckup, not a crime (on its own). If that starts a market rout, or bank collapses, that sucks, but it's still not a crime If that leads to the collapse of the US dollar, it's a catastrophe, but it's still not a crime. US policymakers are responsible for the stability of the US economic system. CEOs are responsible for their own companies. Congress calling for CEOs to be put in jail is in large part simply trying to deflect from the fact that they are not doing their own jobs, and are simply trying to offload responsibility for US economic policy onto the private sector.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  Sure, but write a bad check or mess up your cash flow such that you fail to meet some court-ordered financial obligation and watch how much finger-wagging accountability and social opprobrium rains down upon you. You can get in much worse trouble for some transgression involving a thousand dollars than a million or billion. There's a guy in the US Senate who used to be CEO of a healthcare company until he was forced out by the board, and the company had to pay out billions in settlements and fines for defrauding medicare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott#Columbia/HCA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott#Columbia/HCA I agree with you that many in legislative and executive positions are negligent and or corrupt, but let's not pretend that the private sector doesn't aggressively lobby for its own financial interests or that it is populated by angels brought down by wicked politicians.
nickff 5y ago
In many of these instances, it seems more like multiple layers of ‘rose-colored glasses’, than one person being willfully ignorant. This is somewhat similar to engineering situations where each reviewer adds some safety margin, and the end product becomes bloated. Enron is a particularly interesting case, because the filings and statements were all truthful, but almost nobody ever read them. They also had one or two good businesses, but were dragged down by liabilities from the others, so it wasn’t a total fraud. That said, I do think the Enron CFO was guilty of criminal fraud, though I think Lay and Skilling should have only been held civilly liable.
the-dude 5y ago
Do you have (many) examples? And I very much doubt many drunk drivers end up in jail. AFAIK they are not even prosecuted for manslaughter or murder if they kill.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
> In many other jobs, gross negligence resulting in billions of dollars of property damage can get you jail time. Can it? Say I design a bridge, it falls down and kills people, and does a large amount of economic damage in the process (maybe it falls on a chemical factory which explodes, or something). I'm fired, sure. I probably never work as an engineer again. I'm very unpopular, and my name becomes an insult. But do I go to jail?
6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
What if someone grossly negligently screws up a $1000 smart contract that convinces the public that bitcoin sucks and the value plummets? It's gross negligence resulting in billions of dollars of losses for others. Are you going to call that property damage in the same way?
- deleted 5y ago
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cm2187 5y ago
You mean like incompetent programmers who leak millions of records of personal information? When is the last time one went to jail for that?

bpodgursky 5y ago

If the "property damage" is to your own shareholders, that's a fuckup, not a crime (on its own). If that starts a market rout, or bank collapses, that sucks, but it's still not a crime If that leads to the collapse of the US dollar, it's a catastrophe, but it's still not a crime. US policymakers are responsible for the stability of the US economic system. CEOs are responsible for their own companies. Congress calling for CEOs to be put in jail is in large part simply trying to deflect from the fact that they are not doing their own jobs, and are simply trying to offload responsibility for US economic policy onto the private sector.

anigbrowl 5y ago
Sure, but write a bad check or mess up your cash flow such that you fail to meet some court-ordered financial obligation and watch how much finger-wagging accountability and social opprobrium rains down upon you. You can get in much worse trouble for some transgression involving a thousand dollars than a million or billion. There's a guy in the US Senate who used to be CEO of a healthcare company until he was forced out by the board, and the company had to pay out billions in settlements and fines for defrauding medicare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott#Columbia/HCA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott#Columbia/HCA I agree with you that many in legislative and executive positions are negligent and or corrupt, but let's not pretend that the private sector doesn't aggressively lobby for its own financial interests or that it is populated by angels brought down by wicked politicians.

nickff 5y ago

In many of these instances, it seems more like multiple layers of ‘rose-colored glasses’, than one person being willfully ignorant. This is somewhat similar to engineering situations where each reviewer adds some safety margin, and the end product becomes bloated. Enron is a particularly interesting case, because the filings and statements were all truthful, but almost nobody ever read them. They also had one or two good businesses, but were dragged down by liabilities from the others, so it wasn’t a total fraud. That said, I do think the Enron CFO was guilty of criminal fraud, though I think Lay and Skilling should have only been held civilly liable.

the-dude 5y ago

Do you have (many) examples? And I very much doubt many drunk drivers end up in jail. AFAIK they are not even prosecuted for manslaughter or murder if they kill.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

> In many other jobs, gross negligence resulting in billions of dollars of property damage can get you jail time. Can it? Say I design a bridge, it falls down and kills people, and does a large amount of economic damage in the process (maybe it falls on a chemical factory which explodes, or something). I'm fired, sure. I probably never work as an engineer again. I'm very unpopular, and my name becomes an insult. But do I go to jail?

6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago

What if someone grossly negligently screws up a $1000 smart contract that convinces the public that bitcoin sucks and the value plummets? It's gross negligence resulting in billions of dollars of losses for others. Are you going to call that property damage in the same way?

deleted 5y ago
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cm2187 5y ago

You mean like incompetent programmers who leak millions of records of personal information? When is the last time one went to jail for that?