On Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:08:00 -0700, Gunner Asch
wrote:
snip
But..if they put the entire management in prison for 5-20 yrs..it will
give a bit of pause to the next nefarious scofflaw...and there are
enough people out there who are guilty of Criminal Fraud in the
industry..that a very very good and widespread example can be made of
them.
Not to mention impoverishing each and everyone of them to get the money
back....

Gunner
=========
Indeed it would ==IF WE WERE DEALING WITH NORMAL PEOPLE.== The
problem is, almost by definition, the people running the
financial firms [and other mega corporations] are egomaniacs and
sociopaths in their manic phase. Operationally we are dealing
with beings from another planet.

IMNSHO: The only real effect on this "elite" group that would
result from the mass conviction and imprisonment, even with
individual disgorgement of profits, of the Goldman-Sachs "outfit"
and its dons, cappos and "button men," would be to reinforce
their belief "I am smarter than those G/S people, because I have
not been caught, and I won't get caught if I learn from the G/S
mistakes."

John Carroll's observations that we must enact a new "super"
Glass-Steagall, and require that derivatives including "synthetic
collateralize debt obligations" such as Abacus, are both closely
regulated and traded only on specialty exchanges with publicly
accessible records, including prices and parties, appears to be
exactly correct, if we are to avoid another financial meltdown in
a few years. I would add "small enough to fail" caps on both
market share and capitalization and "fire walls" between firms
are also required, if future taxpayer rescue of private firms is
to be avoided or at least minimized. The result desired is not
that they won't do it -- the result desired is they *CAN'T* do
it.


Unka George (George McDuffee)
...............................
The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author.
The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).