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points by 59percentmore 3 days ago | 0 comments
TSLA is the beneficiary of a slow-walked short squeeze. If measures hadn't been taken, it would have have turned into a black hole for the markets. TSLA was not owned by large institutional holders, and was actually bet against by them, the opposite of SPCX. SPCX is currently liquidity for X investors and it will collapse when they have exited.

People need to go to jail this time.

[–] pc86 3 days ago
What crime has been committed?
[–] 59percentmore 3 days ago
That's the wrong question. The right question is, "What crimes can be construed to have been committed, in order to put enough people in jail for long enough sentences such that the chain of malicious and destructive financial misconduct which lead to the crisis can be severed?".

We put Capone away on tax evasion. Get creative.

[–] janderson215 3 days ago
Maybe I’m the only person who thinks this, but I think your line of thinking is very dangerous and way more dangerous than ANT or SPCX.
[–] 59percentmore 2 days ago
Is it? How so?

And tell that to the people whose retirement index funds are about to drop xx% in order to facilitate an exit for ANT and SPCX insiders.

[–] pc86 3 days ago
Capone actually did evade taxes, though. Nobody "construed [it] to have been committed." It was a real crime.

If you think something is bad for society but it's not legal, you make it illegal. You don't make up false crimes and arrest people for those. That's what tyrants and sociopaths do. It's disgusting.

[–] 59percentmore 2 days ago
No one said anything about making up crimes. The point is to look at a financial crisis or catastrophic market event with the mindset that functional markets where everyone is playing fair do not behave that way, and that, because the situation is abnormal, a crime is likely to have been committed to set it in those circumstances.

Further, because the complexity and opacity of markets and firms makes finding and proving specific securities fraud instances difficult and expensive, makes pinning those instances on the actual decision-makers difficult and expensive, and makes securing consequences that actually stop the fraud functionally or as a deterrent difficult and expensive, it is prudent and pragmatic to identify those decision-makers and to go after them for anything and everything you can find. If you're a high-powered banker and hedge fund manager who uses sophisticated strategies to fleece millions of Americans out of their investments, you shouldn't get off because investigators can't get at the smoking gun documents that you burned or hid from discovery. I want them to ignore the small-fry and go after you with everything they've got.

We did not do this after 2008, which is why we are where we are.

So again, the correct question is not a skeptical, "What crime has been committed?", but a willful," What crimes can we find among the people involved here, whatever they are?". I have no moral qualms or compunction about this, and no one who remembers the ravages of the GFC or the last few years will have an issue, either.

[–] pc86 2 days ago
I expect law enforcement to find a crime, then find the perpetrator. You expect them to find a person they (or someone powerful) doesn't like, and find a crime to suit. That's fine, it even makes sense. Most tyrants don't believe they're actually tyrants.

At the risk of feeding the trolls...

> If you're a high-powered banker and hedge fund manager who uses sophisticated strategies to fleece millions of Americans out of their investments

How exactly do you tell the difference between the trader who fleeces millions and the trader who is simply good at their job and makes an equivalent amount of money?

[–] 59percentmore 1 day ago
>You expect them to find a person they (or someone powerful) doesn't like, and find a crime to suit.

I expect investigators to follow up on reasonable suspicion, which is what unusual market events or behavior should arouse. The crime and the perpetrator are found at the same time, because one can't exist without the other, legally speaking; to start with a definitive crime is to assume guilt, which, as you say, is incorrect. You triangulate on the crime-perpetrator (think space-time); this, of course, means that you must investigate people who are merely suspected of committing a crime. Some will be wholly innocent. Some will present evidence of crime other than the one you initially suspected; you should pursue that, too, in the interests of justice.

Speak only for yourself, please.

>How exactly do you tell the difference between the trader who fleeces millions and the trader who is simply good at their job and makes an equivalent amount of money?

Most tyrants don't believe they're actually tyrants.

The point of an efficient market is that it's difficult to beat, and the difficulty increases exponentially. Unless you cheat.