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All you'll be doing then is turning him into a high-priced industry consultant or public speaker. Not that prison always prevents that (See: Michael Milken) but

All you'll be doing then is turning him into a high-priced industry consultant or public speaker. Not that prison always prevents that (See: Michael Milken) but it at least puts the brakes on it for a few years.

egor83 14y ago
More than that, I believe. That would also create a good incentive to avoid lies for the rest of executives.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  Haven't there been studies proving that a prison sentence is a poor deterrent? I mean, on the face of it, the fact that there are still prisons full of criminals sort of points in that general direction. (At the very least, it shows that people do a poor job of comparing risk of prison vs. reward of wrongdoing.)
  - egor83 14y ago
    I was referring to "ban the guy from being the CEO for 10 years", not prison sentence. As for prison effectiveness - that's a huge question that I'm just not qualified enough to discuss. I think US is a bit too zealous in this regard, but I'm really not ready to advise here.
newbie12 14y ago
Milken is an interesting case. He literally created the market for high yield ("junk") bonds, and a lot of the charges the feds threw at him were because creating a new market meant breaking stupid regulations about yields and such.
- tomkarlo 14y ago
  Regardless of whether they're stupid or not, they're still regulations. Unless he was breaking the laws as a form of civil disobedience, he was still basically a guy breaking the rules to make more money.
- loganfrederick 14y ago
  I'm not anti-Milken by any means, but based on Connie Bruck's "The Predator's Ball", Drexel Burnham Lambert was scurting a lot of regulations when it came to appropriately labeling the types of deals and securities in which they were engaging. Milken might not have been running any blatant frauds or insider trading rings, but he was at the very least misrepresenting DBL's activities and or avoiding proper filings altogether.

egor83 14y ago

More than that, I believe. That would also create a good incentive to avoid lies for the rest of executives.

pavel_lishin 14y ago
Haven't there been studies proving that a prison sentence is a poor deterrent? I mean, on the face of it, the fact that there are still prisons full of criminals sort of points in that general direction. (At the very least, it shows that people do a poor job of comparing risk of prison vs. reward of wrongdoing.)
- egor83 14y ago
  I was referring to "ban the guy from being the CEO for 10 years", not prison sentence. As for prison effectiveness - that's a huge question that I'm just not qualified enough to discuss. I think US is a bit too zealous in this regard, but I'm really not ready to advise here.

newbie12 14y ago

Milken is an interesting case. He literally created the market for high yield ("junk") bonds, and a lot of the charges the feds threw at him were because creating a new market meant breaking stupid regulations about yields and such.

tomkarlo 14y ago
Regardless of whether they're stupid or not, they're still regulations. Unless he was breaking the laws as a form of civil disobedience, he was still basically a guy breaking the rules to make more money.
loganfrederick 14y ago
I'm not anti-Milken by any means, but based on Connie Bruck's "The Predator's Ball", Drexel Burnham Lambert was scurting a lot of regulations when it came to appropriately labeling the types of deals and securities in which they were engaging. Milken might not have been running any blatant frauds or insider trading rings, but he was at the very least misrepresenting DBL's activities and or avoiding proper filings altogether.