2 ms·
If I "deceive myself" by thinking I can drive with my eyes closed, and I crash my car and destroy someone's property, aren't I then required to pay the damages
by colpabar 5y ago
If I "deceive myself" by thinking I can drive with my eyes closed, and I crash my car and destroy someone's property, aren't I then required to pay the damages or face jail time?
It's odd that we can all agree on cases where the number of participants is small, but for some reason, if an entire economy is affected, we have to pretend that the people responsible weren't actually responsible and shouldn't be punished in the same way.
- nickff 5y agoI would agree that the self-deceiving fiduciary should be held financially responsible for the impact of their blindness, but I’m not sure all these cases are actually crimes.
- NovemberWhiskey 5y agoI'm sure you know this but a broker-dealer (which is what we're primarily talking about in the context of Wall St banks) doesn't have a fiduciary duty to their counterparty.
- nickff 5y agoI was still addressing Enron case where many of the people charged were fiduciaries, but you're right re: the investment banks.
- jollybean 5y ago"we can all agree on cases where the number of participants is small," It was definitely not small, the fraud was top to bottom including the home owners lying on their loan applications, the loan officers, the managers of the loan operations, the VPs, the ratings agencies, those not doing their due diligence and just assuming that the ratings agencies were perfect etc.. It was a mania more than anything, where regulations were bent and the system lost all of it's checks and balances. It's illegal to drive blindfolded, it's not illegal for Bear Stearns to make most kinds of stupid bets in real estate. This was not 'executives do fraud, or at least something like it and banks fall'. It was more like a bad housing bubble where all the limiting parameters were bent out of shape.