Why didn’t any Wall Street CEOs go to jail after the financial crisis? (2019)

Re:Why didn’t any Wall Street CEOs go to jail after the fina... by mojomark on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @04:13PM (#28294338)

> You dont necessarily need to charge the Wall Street CEOs. You can charge the Senior Managing Director of Structured Products.

You can delegate authority, not responsibility.

This fundamental rule of hierarchical organizations is why CEO's need to be held accountable. CEO's are responsible for creating the environment, culture and rules that allow such activities to take place. Failure within an organization on a CEO's watch is that CEO's fault. That's why CEO's deserve high compensation - because the difficulty and risk are so high. If there's no CEO penalty for failing (or worse, breaking the law), than all companies in society suffer.

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Re:Why didn’t any Wall Street CEOs go to jail after the fina... by nickff on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @04:36PM (#28294663)

The problem is that it is impossible to delegate authority, but no responsibility. Realistically, the CEO of a large company cannot know everything that happens under the umbrella, much like the President of the USA cannot know what every government employees does. In both situations, some subordinates will inevitably commit crimes in the name of the organization (eventually), and holding the person at the top completely responsible is totally unreasonable.

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Re:Why didn’t any Wall Street CEOs go to jail after the fina... by taway2021s on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @05:29PM (#28295231)

>> In both situations, some subordinates will inevitably commit crimes in the name of the organization (eventually), and holding the person at the top completely responsible is totally unreasonable.

My entire argument was that someone somewhere along the chain was indeed responsible and it doesnt have to be the CEO. Youre arguing that the CEO cannot be completely responsible, which totally sidesteps the 14 other layers of people responsible and also conveniently ignores the other 14 layers that could be held responsible, investigated, and prosecuted.

Fine, the CEO cant be responsible -- is absolutely no one responsible at all within the organization? If so, how did tens of billions of dollars of profits pour in? How can no one be responsible and yet the companies be so profitable?

Probably has something to do with the upper-crust NY culture where those at the SEC, NY Times, SD-DoJ, and Walls Street are all friends. It is also not surprising that the two individuals on whom most issues were hung were a French trader with a deep french accent and an Egyption desk head at a Swiss bank.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/08/01/gol...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kareem_Serageldin

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Re:Why didn’t any Wall Street CEOs go to jail after the fina... by soco on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @07:14PM (#28296157)

And this is why exactly none is ever held responsible for any crime done by an organization with more than two levels of authority. In my opinion, the problem is not the organization, but the lack of legal framework to put them all in jail. Then you'd see how all subordinates and CxOs would scramble to fix their shady practices. But I guess a clean business environment wouldn't be "competitive" or what's the word of the month...

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