Ignoramus9593 wrote:
On 2010-04-19, John R. Carroll wrote:
Winston wrote:
On 4/19/2010 10:08 AM, John R. Carroll wrote:
Ignoramus9593 wrote:
On 2010-04-19, wrote:
Let's say that I sell you a product that I know is worthless
and will almost certainly cause you to lose a large amount
of time and money. Let's say that I game the system
so that the product appears to be well regarded and a good
value; I use that to convince you to buy.

Exactly.

Let's say that I sold you a lathe that was made of parts
handpicked to fail, greased with abrasive added to grease, pee
instead of oil, etc.

Furthermore, assume that my client actually built this lathe so
that it will fail as early as possible, say to eliminate
competition (just to make this example more realistic).

I know that full well, sell you a lathe like that, and say
"here's a lathe, as far as I know it is great, it runs, but it is
sold AS IS".

Then the lathe fails in 2 weeks.

Would I be a fraud? Yes. Would saying something like "but the
buyer considered hilself sophisticated", absolve me from
responsibility? No.

Nicely put, Ig.

They haven't been charged with, or done, anything criminal.

Bill Moyers Journal that aired last night:

http://video.pbs.org/video/1471123509/#

"SIMON JOHNSON: (...) the person who nailed this intellectually a
long time ago was from the University of Chicago. George Stigler.
Not a man of the left. He got a Nobel Prize for his observation.
All regulated industries end up with the industry capturing the
regulators."

It's a little disingenuous to claim that nothing criminal took place
only because the captured regulators were told to regard broad
categories of theft as 'technically legal'.


I follow Moyers to the extent possible and he's just excellent.

There isn't anything "disingenuous" about such a claim at all.
You and Ig are placing the failure of both the voters and regulatory
agencies on the backs of the regulated.
I'm not condoning GS's behavior in any way, I'm saying that putting
people in jail anytime someone gets mad is a bad idea.
Even promoting that possibility is counterproductive.

I never suggested that the fraud was criminal.

You didn't.
Winston did. George would probably have. He has in the past IIRC.
I wrote a sort of "catch-all" response.

Blaming Goldman for something they and everyone else didn't actually do will
only distract from any effective effort to
impliment effective or meaningful regulatory reform.

The guys doing the reform are elected representatives of the people and if
we get crappy reform it won't be the fault of crappy legislators. It will be
the result of crappy voters and a process that's been corrupted by
organizations like Fox News to make a buck off of peoples natural emotional
response to catastrophe. That's something that shouldn't be legal either but
can't really be legislated.
Market forces ought to discourage the practice but there are a lot of sheep.

That's why I say American's have done themselves. The real truth is that
American's demanded the screwing we've all gotten.
LOL

--
John R. Carroll