Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: Ron on January 15, 2017, 11:52:27 AM
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So Trump has put former Goldman Sachs people into very powerful positions in his cabinet.
Of course it is possible that there are good international bankers and bad international bankers or is that just me rationalizing away the facts in my face.
What do you think? Is it possible that there are America first, MAGA international bankers?
Or is that just wishful thinking?
Heidi Cruz did a stint at Goldman Sachs and her husband is considered the "conservatives conservative".
http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/30/investing/donald-trump-goldman-sachs-steve-mnuchin/
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Good thing we didn't get Cruz, right? =)
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Good thing we didn't get Cruz, right? =)
Ha! I was editing to add that in my post as you posted!
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JMHO, but I don't get too worked up just because there's a Goldman Sachs link in places. It seems almost everyone and their brother and sister in politics and big business has done a stint there, or is connected to someone who has.
I recognize I'm likely in the minority here, but I don't have all that big of a problem with big banks and Wall Street. The fat cats on Wall Street created opportunities that let a little guy like me retire early. :)
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I have no beef with the bankers.
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Shouldn't we hate them for being joooooooos?
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JMHO, but I don't get too worked up just because there's a Goldman Sachs link in places. It seems almost everyone and their brother and sister in politics and big business has done a stint there, or is connected to someone who has.
I recognize I'm likely in the minority here, but I don't have all that big of a problem with big banks and Wall Street. The fat cats on Wall Street created opportunities that let a little guy like me retire early. :)
YOU may not, but the enthusiastic Trump backers screamed to high heaven that because Heidi Cruz worked for Goldman Sachs, that was PROOF POSITIVE that Cruz was in the pockets of the big banks.
I'm quite certain this will elicit a shrug and an unadmitted 180.
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I have no beef with the bankers.
The international banking system seems to be nearly synonymous with the globalism and anti-nationalism that folks are rejecting across the globe.
Goldman Sachs is an American multi-national investment firm; as an institution are they necessarily pro USA?
I suspect if there is a business decision that hurts the USA but helps Goldman Sachs they will hurt the USA every time.
Having "their" people continuing to control our fiscal policy isn't exactly swamp draining.
Or maybe they are a patriotic institution, I really don't know.
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Shouldn't we hate them for being joooooooos?
Why?
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Why?
Because jooooooos! Scary ZIONISTS!! :O
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Goldman Sachs is an American multi-national investment firm; as an institution are they necessarily pro USA?
Unlikely.
I suspect if there is a business decision that hurts the USA but helps Goldman Sachs they will hurt the USA every time.
Much more likely.
Having "their" people continuing to control our fiscal policy isn't exactly swamp draining.
QFT
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I have no beef with the bankers.
I do. Substantial. In the past couple of decades, they've managed to privatize gains and socialize loss. Going back to the S&L scandal, when banks have failed, the American people get the bill for hundreds of billions of dollars. At best, you get token arrests and light slaps on the wrist. That's your tax dollars being used for their welfare.
Goldman Sachs has jokingly been called Government Sachs for those decades as well. They put people into the Treasury Department (and the SEC, and other regulatory agencies) and hire Treasury Department (and SEC, et al) officials to work for them. If you need a partisan reason to be angry, they tend to donate more money to Democrats than Republicans.
If I parse you're statement correctly, you're claiming you DO support welfare fraud, giving lots of money to Democrats and making that swamp bigger. Weird, never figured you for being more of a hardcore Democrat than me. ;)
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I guess you include the SEC in that also.
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I do. Substantial. In the past couple of decades, they've managed to privatize gains and socialize loss. Going back to the S&L scandal, when banks have failed, the American people get the bill for hundreds of billions of dollars. At best, you get token arrests and light slaps on the wrist. That's your tax dollars being used for their welfare.
Goldman Sachs has jokingly been called Government Sachs for those decades as well. They put people into the Treasury Department (and the SEC, and other regulatory agencies) and hire Treasury Department (and SEC, et al) officials to work for them. If you need a partisan reason to be angry, they tend to donate more money to Democrats than Republicans.
If I parse you're statement correctly, you're claiming you DO support welfare fraud, giving lots of money to Democrats and making that swamp bigger. Weird, never figured you for being more of a hardcore Democrat than me. ;)
So, because the bankers used the loopholes laws available to them, you're angry? The fault that they got bailed out lies with the government, not the bankers. You want idiots to be responsible for their own actions? Then make laws that make them responsible.
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The fault that they got bailed out lies with the government, not the bankers.
Except that these are the same people - that's the point. They go back and forth between the two making bad policy in government and then taking advantage of it at the banks.
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So, because the bankers used the loopholes laws available to them, you're angry? The fault that they got bailed out lies with the government, not the bankers. You want idiots to be responsible for their own actions? Then make laws that make them responsible.
Exactly. They did nothing illegal. They did plenty that is immoral, but since our society has long rejected the idea that morals are a good thing, I don't find it surprising they take every advantage legally available to them.
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Except that these are the same people - that's the point. They go back and forth between the two making bad policy in government and then taking advantage of it at the banks.
And that will never change. You call it bad policy, others call it networking.
Congress will never be free of influence from money or peer pressure.
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So, because the bankers used the loopholes laws available to them, you're angry? The fault that they got bailed out lies with the government, not the bankers. You want idiots to be responsible for their own actions? Then make laws that make them responsible.
Exactly. They did nothing illegal. They did plenty that is immoral, but since our society has long rejected the idea that morals are a good thing, I don't find it surprising they take every advantage legally available to them.
Yeah, nope.
If bankers followed the law, I'd be unhappy with the government. Not the bankers. Though buying enough Congresscritters to rewrite the laws to put hundreds of billions of losses on the taxpayers would put my personal ire back on them (as well as said Congresscritters). But no, there has been widespread systemic fraud that was and is criminal. Problem is, there were enough people with enough money to make it problematic for the US, if not global economy.
For a real example, Moody, S&P and Fitch Ratings were knowingly giving out ratings they knew to be false. This is fraud. Same as if you told investors you were making ten billion dollars in profit this quarter when you knew you were losing ten billion dollars. They committed fraud because agencies are paid by the organizations whose debt they rate.
Combined, they are 95% of the entire credit rating in the US and substantial percentage of the international marketing. If you appropriately arrested the knowing parties and took damages against the responsible parties (all of them), you have <5% of credit ratings agencies left. The remaining rating agencies are overseas and only used for international purposes. No one is going to buy an unrated bond. In many cases, it would be illegal to do so. In virtually all cases, you'd be sued by your investors, regulatory agencies, business partners, et al for making such an unwise move. It would have immediately halted a substantial part of the global economy, even if the feds allowed them to continue doing business while in trial.
So, the American government took the easy path and did nothing rather than take the 'right' steps and slow burned the Big Three in federal court. Because they were worried about the short term damage to the economy rather than the long term implications of paying out billions for risky or illegal behavior.
I can provide plenty more examples of actual criminal behavior. But I'd be deeply entertained to hear anyone attempt to explain away my given example as anything other than fraud. My money is on the "well, if the law isn't enforced, it's not actually illegal" dodge. Or more likely, just willfully ignoring any evidence.
=D
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Wait a sec. Are you agree with the banks or the credit rating agencies?
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Wait a sec. Are you agree with the banks or the credit rating agencies?
It was just the first example, and simplest, I could come up with on the fly. I can pick other examples if you would prefer?
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Rev has the right of it. And there are a potful more examples of fraud and illegality DESPITE disgusting, putrescent law-loopholes already extant in the legal and regulatory codes.
Then there are the after the fact bailouts. Financiers get to best others' money on high-risk high yield investments and reap the profits when things go good. If things go bad, the taxpayers bail them out.
I am of the mind that we ought to decorate the highway lights on I-95 between NYC and DC with their corpses as a warning to others. And south of DC we can do something similar for their buddies in gov't.
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Wait a sec. Are you agree with the banks or the credit rating agencies?
Who do you think influences the credit rating agencies to rate dogshit as 24K gold? The banks (and gov't). It is not a case of "either banks or credit rating agencies," but "both and more."
This sector has become a vampire on the economy, as can be seen by its share of the GDP relative to past times. It needs a stake through the heart.
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This sector has become a vampire on the economy, as can be seen by its share of the GDP relative to past times. It needs a stake through the heart.
I now understand why you were so adamant about keeping Jackson on the currency. =)
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So the bankers are bad and the politicians are bad because they all know each other. Then who should be in charge of oversight? I presume you want someone with experience and knowledge of the banking industry.
Solve the problem.
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I could come up with on the fly.
That makes me uncomfortable. [barf]
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I think sometimes Republicans confuse being pro-free-market with being pro-business. Wanting a free market for businesses to compete doesn't mean defending all the anti-free-market stuff they do. The financial industry has done an awful lot of terrible stuff in the recent years and we don't have anything to gain from justifying it.
Fly,
Lawyers become judges, but if a judge was promised a job at a firm after a few years for constantly ruling in favor in their cases we would be a little miffed, no? Same sort of deal here.
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While I would have (and still would) enjoy watching some/many/most bankers being frog marched into courts and prisons, I would be satisfied if they had just been allowed to enjoy the consequences of their actions.
For example. When JP Morgan Chase was fined $13 billion for it's part in the crisis, $ 4Billion was earmarked to "Haelp Homeowners". Most of that money went to setup "Homeowners Assistance Centers", where the banks hired employees to process the Loan Modifications of which less then one in ten homeowners actually received any assistance (and mostly that consisted of backloading the interest on their mortgage loans). Geithner was even questioned by Congress at one point about why there were still over 10 million homes in the foreclosure process. Turns out that the it was to save the banks, not the homes of their owners. I spent several months applying, reapplying, filing out paperwork, going to "Homeowner education seminars" put on by the local "Homeowners Assistance Center" after being told time, and time again. (Because I asked the question every time), that going through the process would remove my ex from the mortgage. Then right at the end before I signed anything, they finally came clean and said, that no. It would not remove her from the mortgage. Chase then went ahead and reported to the credit bureaus that I had accepted the the modification and further crashed my credit rating and score beyond the damage my ex- did not paying her bills while the divorce was pending. (I will be forever grateful to those her that helped "bail me out", especially two that are no longer with us. SADShooter and VASkidmark. )
Anyway, from what I understand less then $400 million (and even that number is dubious) of the $4 Billion actually went to help homeowners.
I'm currently suing my ex- for damages, as I have refinanced the house into my name only. And I can show the e-mails she wrote where she refused to meeting with the bank to work on getting her name off the mortgage and the she wanted to see me thrown out into the street. SO each month I paid a higher house payment then what I could have had it been re-fi'd up front is damages. There are a few other things, like allowing our son to participate in his activities that is in the complaint. It promises to be great fun. Especially since she won't have a lawyer...
Anyway. They should have been allowed to fail. Like WaMu, Bear-Stearn, Lehman Bros. The lot of them. Other less corrupt, and healthier banks would have taken their places. It would have been ugly in NYC for a while, but the country as a whole would be better off.
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Agree on letting them fail. Anything else is simply un-american, and rewarding failure. This includes bailing out Carrier btw.
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Even though I like the monopoly guy in the top hat, I also agree that he, and everyone else in any other business, should not get government bailouts when they screw up*. I still very much respect Ford for refusing a bailout while gov.motors took one.
*Though there should be something, not a bailout, but something (I really don't know what) if a bank goes down because of government interference, like forcing them to give loans to people they know can't pay the loan back. Of course the easiest solution would be for gov to butt out. Then if banks choose to do something like give bad loans on their own, it's their fault and too bad if they fail. Same with any business that suffers greatly because the gov forced them to do business in a way that guarantees going into the red.
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Because jooooooos! Scary ZIONISTS!! :O
I was concerned you didn't like followers of a 20th century German theoretical physicist.
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Hilariously, today my state announced it's getting a couple of bucks from a settlement with Moody.
http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-moodys-settlement-pa-20170116-story.html
In the settlement, the world's second-largest credit ratings agency acknowledged that it didn't follow its own standards in rating the risk of securities backed by home mortgages and the collateralized debt obligations that relied on their health.
The system spread the risk of mortgage defaults to banks around the globe and led to a string of financial collapses in 2008 when people began defaulting on risky subprime loans.
(snip)
Moody's acknowledged that it used a more lenient standard for certain financial products and didn't make public the differences from its published standards.
For those that don't follow compliance regulations, that's admitting to fraud. When you make public statements that do not match your published standards. To put it in gun terms, imagine a gun dealer was selling A+ firearms that were D- junk grade unsafe firearms that had a high risk of blowing up. After the dealer published a guide that all A+ grade firearms were new, tested and inspected for safety. That's fraud.
While I am not blaming the housing market crash on the credit rating agencies, without their fraudulent ratings, the crash probably wouldn't have been 5% of what it ended up. A lot of institutions couldn't have legally invested in BB or lower rated instruments. Though with proper analysis, they should have rated most CDOs as B or CCC. Rating them as BB would have been pushing legal boundaries, but maybe they could have argued it. Instead of AA or AAA. In case anyone was wondering, that's eight or ten places down. No one can or would blink an eye over a difference of one or maybe two rungs. This isn't rocket surgery, the current standards have been around for decades.
Ten rungs means someone is committing fraud. There's no other possible explanation.
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I was concerned you didn't like followers of a 20th century German theoretical physicist.
Oh, I don't like them, either.
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For a pretty decent explanation of what happened, the movie The Big Short does encapsulate the Housing Crisis and how we got there.
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For a pretty decent explanation of what happened, the movie The Big Short does encapsulate the Housing Crisis and how we got there.
Any Michael Lewis book is pretty much an overview of the latest (or next) financial scandal where financial markets violate security laws/regulations, get a bailout from the feds and spend the next decade wrangling over fines that will be a small fraction of the revenue they made from breaking the law.
Serious question, NOT a personal attack, for actually anyone like Fly320s and makattak. Why the "Bankers did nothing illegal" position. Is it a position that you thought was factual (ie you didn't think bankers committed thousands of felonies), or was it just ideological (some kind of "I support capitalism" thing)? Not trying to start a dog pile on anyone, just legit curious and it's near impossible to get actual feedback on that sort of thing.
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Any Michael Lewis book is pretty much an overview of the latest (or next) financial scandal where financial markets violate security laws/regulations, get a bailout from the feds and spend the next decade wrangling over fines that will be a small fraction of the revenue they made from breaking the law.
Serious question, NOT a personal attack, for actually anyone like Fly320s and makattak. Why the "Bankers did nothing illegal" position. Is it a position that you thought was factual (ie you didn't think bankers committed thousands of felonies), or was it just ideological (some kind of "I support capitalism" thing)? Not trying to start a dog pile on anyone, just legit curious and it's near impossible to get actual feedback on that sort of thing.
I had no idea the bankers committed so much fraud. I probably didn't pay attention to the reasons back then or maybe it wasn't reported well. As I understood it, the banks played loose and fast with the banking rules, like they always do, and got caught up in the frenzy. Too many banks playing on the edge of the rules pulled everyone down. In any case, I still don't have a grudge against bankers as a whole and I don't automatically assume that the next banker in charge of the SEC will act as previous people have.
I am 100% in favor of prosecuting the guys who did break the laws. Also, I was 100% opposed to the bailouts. Still am.
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I had no idea the bankers committed so much fraud. I probably didn't pay attention to the reasons back then or maybe it wasn't reported well. As I understood it, the banks played loose and fast with the banking rules, like they always do, and got caught up in the frenzy. Too many banks playing on the edge of the rules pulled everyone down. In any case, I still don't have a grudge against bankers as a whole and I don't automatically assume that the next banker in charge of the SEC will act as previous people have.
I am 100% in favor of prosecuting the guys who did break the laws. Also, I was 100% opposed to the bailouts. Still am.
Gotcha. Sorry if I seemed like I was beating up on you. I concur with Ben's recommendation of "The Big Short". Probably best job I've seen on the scandal. "Too Big to Fail" was an excellent movie based on the book, same title, by Andrew Ross Sorkin. In Too Big to Fail, it was all high level political thriller basically about the government folks trying to keep the economy from tanking and taking down the world economy. Think CEOs and Government Sachs (they hit on the Treasury folks being super sensitive about that) and hundreds of billions being thrown around like confetti.
The Big Short is about the absolute nobodies that weren't complete morons and wondered if they weren't absolutely insane for thinking the US economy was going to implode. The movie is very very close to reality. Hilariously, the points that weren't reality they do an aside to talk to the camera and say what really happened. Some of the investors trust the numbers and make huge shorts against the housing market, others actually run down the asset lists in the CDOs directly.
There's plenty of other fraud. Vaguely remember "robo-signing"? That's illegal in certain states, circumstances, etc. Intentionally misleading investors on valuation? Also illegal. Issuing fraudulent mortgage loans in order to resell them? Also, unshocking, illegal. Hell, mortgage fraud by lenders and borrowers both hilariously skyrocketed. Oh, and banks also illegally foreclosed properties they didn't own. Including properties without mortgages.
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Gotcha. Sorry if I seemed like I was beating up on you. I concur with Ben's recommendation of "The Big Short".
That was actually Scout. :)
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Gotcha. Sorry if I seemed like I was beating up on you.
Not at all.
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That was actually Scout. :)
Probably because we look so much alike. :P
And yes Rev. I do like Flys320 and makattack. I disagree with their views on this, but I have no reason to dislike them... ;)
The Big Short also breaks down how everyone at every level was complicit. From the realtors, to the mortgage lenders/originators, to the lending banks, to the bond rating companies, to the Wall Street bankers, Fannie and Freddie, to the US government and the Fed. Everybody gave a wink and nudge and passed along the potato. Then the music stopped....
We may have to watch it again this weekend.
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It isn't available on NetFlix. Is on another service?
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Amazon, I think. I normally just hit my local library, they have a great selection.
Ayep. In the last crisis, absolutely EVERYONE was complicit. Realtors were pushing houses they knew the buyers couldn't afford, generally lying about absolutely everything. Buyers were lying about income and assets. Mortgage lenders were issuing mortgages often on fraudulent basis, to turn around and sell them to someone else. Brokers were fraudulently valuating their products. Rating agencies were fraudulently rating absolutely everything. US government was turning an absolutely blind eye.
It's absolutely amazing amount of stupidity on everyone's part. Thing is, only the banks got paid off for their part. Yes, I am aware that some of the varies funds got paid back. I still count hundreds of billions of dollars at very very favorable rates to be a bailout and preferable treatment.
As far as I'm aware, the only financial scandal that actually had consequences was the S&L scandal were around a thousand people were convicted. Mostly light sentences, highest I think was around a decade in prison. Still some consequences is better than no consequences. Which is why making Treasury and SEC to be an extension of Goldman Sachs (really, other investment banks as well, GS just has the highest percent due to networking) is so dangerous. In the S&L scandal, the regulatory agencies did referrals. Basically, they gave a roadmap to the Justice Department that laid out who broke what law and how. Without that information, the Justice Department is flying blind. And gives them the excuse to not try to even press charges.
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The problem still exists. You want someone in charge of the SEC and Treasury who knows what he is doing, but you don't want him to have ties to other people who still work in the industry. How do you do that?
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The problem still exists. You want someone in charge of the SEC and Treasury who knows what he is doing, but you don't want him to have ties to other people who still work in the industry. How do you do that?
Good question. But you also have a situation where you have people making major money working for a private company, going into government service for a couple of years for comparative peanuts, and then go back to working for said private company. The entire time you have close friends and colleagues working for said private company.
You're a pilot. Suppose you were making a couple of million (or tens of millions) being a pilot. Some buddies pull some strings and offer you a cushy political job at the FAA. Unofficially you get a guarantee from a buddy you'll get a job as a pilot afterwards. If not your old job, something well paying. A lot, if not all, of your buddies work as pilots. Maybe you have family members working as pilots. During that time at the FAA, you have a scandal were pilots were doing something very illegal but not necessarily easy to prosecute. I mean, it can be done, but without you sharing pilot specific information to the FAA, they may have no idea how to prosecute these thousands of rogue pilots.
What do you do? Rock the boat, alienate every single friend you have, put your future paycheck in jeopardy and ensure virtually no airline would ever hire you again, but you'd have the possibility (not guarantee) that you'll put guilty people behind bars. Maybe with light sentences, probably walk free. Or do you hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, collect the govt check and then go back to being a pilot making millions. You have a family, kids and a mortgage. Your buddies have families, kids, mortgages. You know them. You've been to their house.
What do you do? Protect your buddies, your future job? Or throw all of that way to MAYBE get some of your buddies put behind bars?
Not saying this as a dodge. It's still a perfectly valid situation. But you need to find experts that aren't significantly incentivized to ignore illegal behavior.
Current roster of Goldman Sachs folks directly moving over are Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Securities and Exchange Commission Chair is Jay Clayton (one of Goldman Sachs' lawyers). Slightly less than a dozen other Goldman Sachs folks becoming advisors. I would agree that it would be excessive to beat up on one company, except I think it's slightly weird for folks from ONE company holding so many top level positions. Ignoring even previous administrations (of both parties), that statistical distribution is very very off.
I'm far from being anti-capitalism. Far from it, I'm worried about capitalism being corrupted by individuals abusing their government positions for personal gain.
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Good question. But you also have a situation where you have people making major money working for a private company, going into government service for a couple of years for comparative peanuts, and then go back to working for said private company. The entire time you have close friends and colleagues working for said private company.
You're a pilot. Suppose you were making a couple of million (or tens of millions) being a pilot. Some buddies pull some strings and offer you a cushy political job at the FAA. Unofficially you get a guarantee from a buddy you'll get a job as a pilot afterwards. If not your old job, something well paying. A lot, if not all, of your buddies work as pilots. Maybe you have family members working as pilots. During that time at the FAA, you have a scandal were pilots were doing something very illegal but not necessarily easy to prosecute. I mean, it can be done, but without you sharing pilot specific information to the FAA, they may have no idea how to prosecute these thousands of rogue pilots.
What do you do? Rock the boat, alienate every single friend you have, put your future paycheck in jeopardy and ensure virtually no airline would ever hire you again, but you'd have the possibility (not guarantee) that you'll put guilty people behind bars. Maybe with light sentences, probably walk free. Or do you hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, collect the govt check and then go back to being a pilot making millions. You have a family, kids and a mortgage. Your buddies have families, kids, mortgages. You know them. You've been to their house.
What do you do? Protect your buddies, your future job? Or throw all of that way to MAYBE get some of your buddies put behind bars?
Not saying this as a dodge. It's still a perfectly valid situation. But you need to find experts that aren't significantly incentivized to ignore illegal behavior.
Current roster of Goldman Sachs folks directly moving over are Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Securities and Exchange Commission Chair is Jay Clayton (one of Goldman Sachs' lawyers). Slightly less than a dozen other Goldman Sachs folks becoming advisors. I would agree that it would be excessive to beat up on one company, except I think it's slightly weird for folks from ONE company holding so many top level positions. Ignoring even previous administrations (of both parties), that statistical distribution is very very off.
I'm far from being anti-capitalism. Far from it, I'm worried about capitalism being corrupted by individuals abusing their government positions for personal gain.
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
-Adam Smith
It's not the bankers. It's the government. Collusive agreements are very hard to enforce without the help of some force. (i.e. government) Get the government's fingers out of everything and the conspiracies become much harder.
Personally, I'm against cronyism as well. It is a necessary consequence of a government that is far too large and involved in the economy.
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Well for starters, by default, banking in its current form is outright evil. So when you say bankers, I say [barf] . Creating interest on something that does not exist... ;/ It's a fraudulent zero sum game in the long run. It's the bane of humanity.
And... while it is true that "everyone" had a part in the problem, it was the big banks that foresaw the problem, knowingly participated in the ruse and orchestrated a profit from the disaster and misery by using their revolving cronies inside the government to make sure they ended up getting PAID for their part in the fraud and failiure, AKA "rigging the system with malice and forethought to fail in your crap-sales buisness and make money out of it". It was the biggest theft transfer of wealth in history... and justice was not served.
OK, let me put it like this:
Picture me, privileged businessman extraordinaire, knowingly packaging and selling dog-poo, smelly wormy dog-poo. I'm selling this dog-poo as a delicious treat in a really nice quality shiny gold inlayed box, big name brand, FDA stamped... ISO rated. Perfect gourmet. OK, so people buy it, its a good quality deal! I'm making a killing by scooping stuff off of the sidewalk and selling it!! Now everything is fine until people pop the vacuum seal and eat it, then all hell breaks loose. People get sick, kitchens become un-usably stenched and word comes out that my product is in fact... dog-poo. So what happens? Well the people who bought this product obviuosly ate s**t, some small retail vendors that carried my product get sued, un-opend boxes are now worthless and get thrown out, and poor little me goes out of business and stright into prison... or do I?... NO! because I have a roster of former employees positioned at high levels of government in strategic agencies and they insure, through changes in regulation, changes of key definitions, and a blind eye here and there (ALL LEGAL, ALL LEGAL)... that not only did I get approval to push this product onto the public, nor do I get any meaningful punishment for my actions, but that I get reimbursed for the dog-poo stockpile that I can no longer sell... because <I AM TOO BIG TO FAIL> :facepalm:
So yeah, if these characters ever get strung up, let me know I'll buy a ticket and [popcorn].
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You're a pilot. Suppose you were making a couple of million (or tens of millions) being a pilot. Some buddies pull some strings and offer you a cushy political job at the FAA. Unofficially you get a guarantee from a buddy you'll get a job as a pilot afterwards. If not your old job, something well paying. A lot, if not all, of your buddies work as pilots. Maybe you have family members working as pilots. During that time at the FAA, you have a scandal were pilots were doing something very illegal but not necessarily easy to prosecute. I mean, it can be done, but without you sharing pilot specific information to the FAA, they may have no idea how to prosecute these thousands of rogue pilots.
What do you do?
Easy question. Hell yes, I would prosecute those guys.
I've spent all of my professional life having my decisions and actions critiqued as well as critiquing other pilots. It is normal and proper in my profession. We all know right from wrong even though we still make mistakes. The difference is our mistakes are usually minor and almost never intentional. So, yes, I would prosecute any pilot who intentionally violates safety rules.
I think it all tracks back to personal responsibility. If I can maintain my professionalism, my responsibility, as a pilot, then those bankers and government employees can maintain theirs. But, just as I don't want to be judged by the actions of others, I won't prejudge the actions of the new bankers. Maybe, hopefully, the new guy will be a stand-up guy. If he isn't, fire him and prosecute him as needed. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Which brings me to one of the biggest problems I see in business and government: bosses are scared to fire people. Firings should a quick and simple matter, not a long drawn-out process involving lawyers, counselors, and 42 pages of documents.
I think Trump should change his motto to "Make America Responsible Again" because personal responsibility is sorely lacking in this country.
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So Trump has put former Goldman Sachs people into very powerful positions in his cabinet.
Of course it is possible that there are good international bankers and bad international bankers or is that just me rationalizing away the facts in my face.
What do you think? Is it possible that there are America first, MAGA international bankers?
Or is that just wishful thinking?
Heidi Cruz did a stint at Goldman Sachs and her husband is considered the "conservatives conservative".
http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/30/investing/donald-trump-goldman-sachs-steve-mnuchin/
Do you bring a knife to a gun fight? A kitten to a dog fight? A snowflake/SJW to an economic rumble?